• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

From Windows to Linux: yes, that is still a thing

A request from a bank to look at a switch from Windows to Linux has led to UK-based IT specialist Patrick Fitzgerald and his colleagues at British firm i-Layer developing a detailed method for an institution to make the transition.

Fitzgerald, who gave a talk about it at SUSECon 2016, has been in the IT business for a long time. He and his colleagues only came up with the detailed plan when he had to tackle the task set for him by the Allied Irish Bank.

“The bank has 900 branches and 7500 teller workstations,” Fitzgerald said. “After the move, just two people are needed to manage the lot.” He added that the smallest branch had just two users, one teller and ran on bandwidth of 128k.

The bank initially called him in for advice and help when it experienced a shortage of trained staff.

A Loopy Non-Interview With Linux Advocate Marcel Gagné

This week, Roblimo again takes a virtual trip up to the Great White North, that would be Canada for the benefit of the NSA and those of you taking notes at home, and has way too much fun hanging out with Linux advocate Marcel Gagné.

Server

• ​When to use NGINX instead of Apache

  They’re both popular open-source web servers but, according to NGINX CEO Gus Robertson, they have different use cases. And Microsoft? Its web server has dropped below 10 percent of all active websites for the first time in 20 years.

• Enabling the Digital Revolution: SDN and Beyond

  SDN can create far greater manageability by enabling network managers and developers to access network resources at a programmatic level, treating network resources in much the way they treat other computing resources such as central processing units (CPUs) and memory. It can enable networks to become easier to scale up or down, shorten setup time, increase security, and reduce costs. And SDN can take advantage of programmable network hardware, enabling managers to change the behavior of network devices through software upgrades instead of expensive hardware replacements.

• Re-Imagining the Container Stack to Optimize Space and Speed

• Keynote: Blurring the Lines: The Continuum Between Containers and VMs

  Graham Whaley, Sr. Software Engineer at Intel, says there is a continuum of features and benefits across the container/VM spectrum, and you should be able to choose which point on that continuum best suits you.

• Docker and machine learning top the tech trends for ‘17

  With 2017 fast approaching, technology trends that will keep gathering steam in the new year range from augmented and virtual reality to machine intelligence, Docker, and microservices, according to technology consulting firm ThoughtWorks.

• AWS Gives Customers On-Premises Linux Option

  Amazon Web Services recently expanded its menu of cloud services to give customers the option of using the Amazon Linux AMI on premises. Customers can use the Amazon Container Image on premises for the purpose of developing and testing workloads, AWS Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr explained. The AMI provides a stable, secure and high-performance environment for applications running on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, he said. “It is built from the same source code and packages as the AMI and will give you a smooth path to container adoption.”

Kernel Space

• Linux 4.8.7

  I’m announcing the release of the 4.8.7 kernel.

  All users of the 4.8 kernel series must upgrade.

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

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

• Linux 4.4.31

• Linux Kernel 4.4.31 LTS Released with Multiple Updated Drivers, Various Fixes

  Immediately after informing the community about the release of Linux kernel 4.8.7, which is now the most advanced kernel you can get for a GNU/Linux distribution, Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the availability of Linux kernel 4.4.31 LTS.

• Linux Kernel 4.8.7 Updates Intel and Radeon Drivers, Improves Wireless Support

  Today, November 10, 2016, Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the release of the seventh maintenance update to the Linux 4.8 kernel series, along with the Linux kernel 4.4.31 LTS long-term support version.

  Finally, the release cycle of Linux kernel 4.8 has settled in and it looks like more and more GNU/Linux distributions are adopting it, including the upcoming openSUSE Leap 42.2 and Fedora 25, due for release next week. Rolling release users of Solus, Arch Linux, and openSUSE Tumbleweed are already enjoying the latest Linux kernel 4.8 updates, and soon they’ll receive a new one, Linux kernel 4.8.7, which comes ten days after Linux kernel 4.8.6.

• The Code To Intel’s New Linux Wireless Daemon Is Now Public

  During this year’s systemd conference there was talk of A New Wireless Daemon Is In Development To Potentially Replace wpa_supplicant. At that time the code wasn’t yet public to this new open-source WiFi daemon developed by Intel, but since then the code has now opened up.

• Hyperledger’s Next Act: A Blockchain Bridge to China

  Immutable, shared ledgers of transactions and goods could come to serve as a reminder that everything we grow, build, buy and sell comes from the same tiny planet.

  But this future is far from guaranteed, and the various blockchain developer groups competing to bring it to life have so far struggled to involve talent from all over the world in this global vision.

  Blockchain consortium Hyperledger, for example, was initially founded with support from companies in almost exclusively Western nations. Yet, the consortium has grown this year to include more than 20 members headquartered in China and 10 from Japan and South Korea, with a spattering of members from other nations represented as well.

• Graphics Stack

  • Mesa 12.0.4 Released With Dozens Of Fixes

  • Intel Publishes Open-Source Graphics Driver Code For Bringing Up “Geminilake”

    Coming out this morning from the Intel Open-Source Technology Center is their initial hardware enablement code for the future “Geminilake” hardware with their Linux graphics driver stack.

  • Intel Kaby Lake HD Graphics 620 OpenGL/Vulkan Performance On Linux

    Now having my initial Intel Kaby Lake Core i5-7200U MSI Cubi 2 benchmarks with Ubuntu 16.10 out of the way, this second article is focusing upon the HD Graphics 620 Kaby Lake performance with this latest stable Ubuntu release as well as when trying out Linux 4.9 and Mesa 13.1-dev.

  • Igalia Joins The Khronos Group

    The well known Linux/open-source focused consulting firm Igalia has joined The Khronos Group as a contributing member.

  • Nouveau Exposes Performance Counters For Maxwell

    Samuel Pitoiset, one of the few significant contributors to the open-source NVIDIA Linux graphics stack particularly when it comes to the area of performance counters, has now enabled MP performance counters in the NVC0 Gallium3D driver for NVIDIA GTX 750/900 series Maxwell hardware.

Applications

• A New Version of SimpleScreenRecorder Has Been Released

  A new version of Simple Screen Recorder, a powerful desktop screen capture programme for Linux, premiered earlier this month. It is the first update to the app in almost a year. SimpleScreenRecorder 0.3.x adds support for the latest FFmpeg/libav libraries, supports fragmented recording (whatever that may be) and the indicator applet icon will now notify you when there’s an error during capture.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Security Exercises

  • Using the Scality S3 Server in Homeduction

  • How To Use Nautilus To Connect To The Raspberry PI

  • Getting MPDroid working with an Archphile-based box

  • Build a VR app in 15 minutes with Linux

  • How to Install Seafile with Nginx on CentOS 7

  • Using drush for Drupal site Backup/Restore and Migration

  • How to split a large archive file into multiple small files using Split command in Linux

  • Papirus Icon Theme to ‘Discontinue’ PPA

  • Get Exact Boot and Uptime on Ubuntu from the Command Line

  • Display CPU Temperature in the Unity Launcher

• Games

  • OpenMW 0.40 – Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind on Linux

    The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is one of my personal favourite games of all time. Years ago I would have happily run the game in Linux, but the only real way to do so was through WINE. Thanks to OpenMW, a totally rewritten and open source engine for Morrowind, it is now very much possible to have a near complete Morrowind experience, completely natively.

    OpenMW has been in development for some years now and if you’ve been following its development, you would know Morrowind has been playable to varying degrees with each new release. When I last tried out OpenMW (again, on Linux) a couple of years ago, it was amazing how much did work, but there were certainly missing features like opening doors in-game. You could get around these issues by using the in-game console to activate objects like doors, but it was obviously not a complete experience that you would get with vanilla Morrowind.

  • Dishonored 2 Linux support is only a pipe dream

    Dishonored 2 isn’t even officially out yet and the sequel to the critically acclaimed original is already stepping on some toes. On top of the recent problems regarding the 9 GB day one patch, the eagerly awaited title also lacks Linux support.

  • ‘Red Comrades 2: For the Great Justice. Reloaded’ now available on SteamOS & Linux

    ‘Red Comrades 2: For the Great Justice. Reloaded’ [Steam], is the sequel to a point & click adventure game about two Russian pop-culture legends. It released a few days ago for SteamOS & Linux, so now you can try out this Russian adventure game on Linux.

    Reviews are good so far, so it may be worth a shot!

  • ‘Super Rad Raygun’ might be the retro action game you need, now on Linux

    ‘Super Rad Raygun’ [Steam, Official Site] is a very retro looking action game with a visual style much like on the original gameboy. With it’s sweet monochrome graphics, its a blast from the past with a modern take.

    If you try it out, let us know how it is. While I love the retro style, the colour would likely hurt my eyes after a very short amount of time in it.

  • ‘Motorsport Manager’ won’t get a Linux version until later, despite it releasing with a SteamOS icon (updated)

    Update: The developers have now had the SteamOS icon removed.

  • Tyranny, the massive new RPG from Obsidian Entertainment releases today day-1 on Linux, our review

  • Steam Machines & SteamOS after a year in the wild

    On this day, last year, Valve released Steam Machines onto the world, after the typical Valve delays. While the state of the Linux desktop regarding gaming has improved, Steam Machines have not taken off as a platform, and SteamOS remains stagnant. What happened with these projects from Valve? Why were they created, why did they fail, and what could have been done to make them succeed?

  • The Humble Store is having a huge birthday sale, tons of stuff for insanely cheap

    Someone pass the cake, as The Humble Store is having a massive sale to celebrate a birthday and there’s lots of cheap Linux games.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• Many Xfce Package Updates Bring Stable GTK3 Support, Notifyd Gets Do-Not-Disturb

  While it’s likely a long time before Xfce 4.14 gets released with full GTK3 tool-kit integration, there are some new Xfce4 package updates available this week.

  Xfce4-settings 4.13 is out and is a development release for the 4.13 series. This initial release marks Xfce Settings being fully-ported to GTK+ 3.x. That’s the main change with this release is the port from GTK2 to GTK3 but some bugs do remain. There are some screenshots via this blog post.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Krita 3.1: third beta released

    Here is the third Krita 3.1 beta! From the Krita 3.1 on, Krita will officially support OSX. All OSX users are urged to use this version instead of earlier “stable” versions for OSX.

  • Qt on the NVIDIA Jetson TX1 – Device Creation Style

    NVIDIA’s Jetson line of development platforms is not new to Qt; a while ago we already talked about how to utilize OpenGL and CUDA in Qt applications on the Jetson TK1. Since then, most of Qt’s focus has been on the bigger brothers, namely the automotive-oriented DRIVE CX and PX systems. However, this does not mean that the more affordable and publicly available Jetson TX1 devkits are left behind. In this post we are going to take a look how to get started with the latest Qt versions in a proper embedded device creation manner, using cross-compilation and remote deployment for both Qt itself and applications.

  • Cutelyst 1.0.0 with stable API/ABI is out!

    Cutelyst the Qt web framework just reached it’s first stable release, it’s been 3 years since the first commit and I can say it finally got to a shape where I think I’m able to keep it’s API/ABI stable. The idea is to have any break into a 2.0 release by the end of next year although I don’t expect many changes as the I’m quite happy with it’s current state.

  • Cutelyst 1.0 Qt Web Framework Released

    Announced today is Cutelyst 1.0 with it reaching a state where the API/ABI can be maintained until Cutelyst 2.0, which will likely come at the end of 2017. Read that announcement if you are interested in this framework and yet another interesting deployment around the Qt tool-kit.

  • Kwave is in kdereview

  • After 18 Years, KWave Sound Editor Is Working Its Way Into KDE Multimedia

    KWave is a graphical sound editor that’s been in development since 1998 and is finally working its way into KDE Multimedia for becoming a proper part of KDE.

    A Phoronix reader pointed out today that KWave is finally working to become formally part of KDE rather than a separate project. KWave is currently in the KDE review process to be a component of KDE Multimedia, as outlined last month via this KDE-core-devel message.

  • KDE Applications 16.08.3 Is the Last in the Series, 16.12 Lands December 15

    Today, November 10, 2016, the KDE Project announced the release and general availability of the third and last scheduled maintenance update of the KDE Applications 16.08 software suite for KDE Plasma 5 desktops.

    That’s right, we’re talking about KDE Applications 16.08.3, which lands almost a month after the previous update, namely KDE Applications 16.08.2, bringing the long-term support version of KDE Development Platform 4.14.26 along for the ride. KDE Applications 16.08.3 is here to address over 20 bugs reported by users since then.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • An Everyday Linux User Guide To The Nautilus File Manager

    Nautilus is a very popular file manager so if it isn’t installed for your particular distribution you should be able to find it in the graphical package manager.

    Nautilus is the default file manager within Ubuntu Linux.

  • Mutter 3.22.2

  • GNOME’s Mutter 3.22.2 Ships With Many Wayland Fixes

    Normally GNOME point releases aren’t too worth mentioning over here, but with this morning’s release of GNOME Mutter 3.22.2 it’s a bit of a different story.

    GNOME Mutter 3.22.2 is a worthwhile upgrade particularly if you are running on Wayland. Mutter 3.22.2 has several Wayland crash fixes (two separate bug reports_ plus has at least four bugs fixed around placement issues of windows/elements when running on Wayland. There is also a fix for popup grabs blocking the screen lock on Wayland. There is also a fix for two finger and edge scrolling under Wayland.

  • GNOME Shell and Mutter Get Wayland and Wi-Fi Improvements for GNOME 3.22.2

    As part of the soon-to-be-released second and last scheduled point release of the GNOME 3.22 desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions, the GNOME Shell and Mutter components have received new versions earlier today, November 10, 2016.

    GNOME Shell 3.22.2 and Mutter 3.22.2 are now available for download, and it looks like they bring various improvements to make your GNOME 3.22 desktop experience better, especially of you’re using the next-generation Wayland display server.

    For example, the Mutter 3.22.2 window and composite manager release fixes various placement issues and several crashes on Wayland, and also repairs the functionality that allowed users to switch between edge and two-finger-scrolling on the Wayland session.

Distributions

• Solus Project to No Longer Support openSUSE & Fedora Repos for Budgie 11 Desktop

  While many of us, Solus users, are preparing for the winter holidays, the team lead by renowned developer Ikey Doherty is currently working hard on bringing what might just be the biggest Budgie desktop release so far.

  We can all agree that the current Budgie desktop environment is pretty cool with its GNOME 2-like vibe, and you can even enjoy it on Ubuntu Budgie, Arch Linux, Debian GNU/Linux, SparkyLinux (Debian based), and Manjaro (Arch Linux based). You can also enjoy Budgie on RPM-based distros like openSUSE and Fedora, which currently lies on the Solus Project’s OBS (Open Build Service) repositories.

• Reviews

  • elementary OS 0.4 Loki

    elementary OS is a Linux desktop distribution that’s based on Ubuntu. The project’s goal is crafting a “fast and open replacement for Windows and macOS”.

    The latest, stable edition, with a core that’s based on Ubuntu 16.04, is elementary OS 0.4, code-named Loki.

    This article provides a walk-through of the distribution’s most important features.

    The distribution’s login screen. By default, a guest account is enabled.

• New Releases

  • Black Lab Linux 8.0 “Onyx” Officially Released, It’s Based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

    Today, November 10, 2016, PC/OpenSystems LLC and Black Lab Software, through Roberto J. Dohnert, happily informed Softpedia about the release of the Black Lab Linux 8.0 computer operating system.

  • 4MLinux 21.0 Operating System Enters Development, First Beta Ready for Testing

    4MLinux developer Zbigniew Konojacki informs Softpedia today, November 10, 2016, about the immediate availability of the Beta development milestone of the upcoming 4MLinux 21.0 operating system series.

• OpenSUSE/SUSE

  • SUSE: A look inside the new SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 2

    While out in the streets of DC there was alternately depression and elation, gnashing of teeth and celebration, at SUSECon yesterday, SUSE announced SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 12 Service Pack 2 designed to power physical, virtual and cloud-based mission-critical environments. The goal with this release is to help SLE users accelerate innovation, improve system reliability, meet ever more challenging security requirements and adapt to the accelerating pace of new technologies. SUSE expressed great pride in the fact that 2/3 of the Fortune Global 100 are currently using SLE.

  • Red Hat ‘spy’ makes appearance at SUSECon

    The attendees at SUSECon 2016, the annual conference of the Germany-based SUSE Linux being held in Washington DC this week, fall into the usual well-known categories: employee, media, analyst, speaker etc.

  • openSUSE Tumbleweed Users Get Latest Linux Kernel, Mesa, and KDE Plasma Updates

    Today, November 10, 2016, openSUSE Project’s Douglas DeMaio reports on the latest updates brought by a total of four snapshots for the openSUSE Tumbleweed rolling release Linux-based operating system.

  • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Lands Mesa 13.0

  • openSUSE News: Mesa 13 Arrives in Tumbleweed with New Kernel

    This week has been a bit hectic with dramatic change affecting people around the world, but openSUSE Tumbleweed users who are use to change can find some clarity in the chaos with five snapshots that were released this week.

    These snapshots brought not only a new major version of Mesa but a new kernel and Plasma 5.8.3.

    The newest snapshot 20161108 updated yast2 to version 3.2.3 and added a patch to fix a crash from upstream for Wayland. Lightweight web browser epiphany, which updated to version 3.22.2 in the snapshot, added fixes for adblocker and improved the password form for autofill handling.

  • Highlights of YaST development sprint 27

    This week, during SUSECon 2016, SUSE announced an exciting upcoming new product. SUSE CASP – a Kubernetes based Container As a Service Platform.

    That has, of course, some implications for the installer, like the need of some products (like CASP) to specify a fixed configuration for some subsystems. For example, an established selection of packages. The user should not be allowed to change those fixed configurations during installation.

    We have implemented a possibility to mark some modules in the installation proposal as read-only. These read-only modules then cannot be started from the installer and therefore their configuration is kept at the default initial state.

  • openSUSE Leap Goes Gold, Fedora 25 Delayed a Week

    Today in Linux news openSUSE 42.2 Leap has gone Gold Master in time for next Wednesday’s release. On the other side of town Fedora 25 has been delayed a week, pushing its release to November 22, 2016. Sam Varghese and John Grogan reported on the latest from SUSECon 2016, with one covering a Red Hat spy in attendance. Eric Hameleers released his latest liveslak and ISOs. The Hectic Geek compared Ubuntu 16.10 flavors and Carla Schroder examined Ubuntu’s enterprise chops.

  • SUSE plans container as a service platform

    Germany-based SUSE Linux has announced a container as a service platform that it hopes to release as a public beta in April next year, before the first customer version comes out in July the same year.

    Three of the developers involved — Federica Teodori, project manager for container and orchestration, Andreas Jaeger, senior product manager, and Simona Arsene, product manager — spoke to iTWire about the technology on the sidelines of SUSECon 2016, the company’s annual conference that is being held in Washington DC this week.

    Jaeger said the idea was to have a software-defined infrastructure where containers handled the workloads. The advantage was that containers, which include an application and its dependencies, could be moved around and could run from more than one location.

  • SUSE Deal Includes Ceph Storage Project

  • SUSE Growing Linux Biz Revenue at 18 percent in 2016

    According to Brauckmann, the fastest-growing route to market for SUSE now is the public cloud.

• Slackware Family

  • More Flash fixes in November

  • Q4 2016 fixes for Java 8 (openjdk)

  • LibreOffice 5.2.3 for Slackware-current

    I wanted the latest LibreOffice in the upcoming Slackware Live Edition 1.1.4 (PLASMA 5 variant) so I have built and uploaded a set of packages for LibreOffice 5.2.3. They are for Slackware-current only.

  • Slackware Live Edition 1.1.4 – based on slackware-current of 4 Nov 2016

    Today I conclude my packaging frenzy with a new release of ‘liveslak‘. Version 1.1.4 is ready with only some minor tweaks. Users of the “iso2usb.sh” script on non-Slackware distros should be happy that the script finds all the required programs now.
    I made a set of ISO images for several variants of the 64bit version of Slackware Live Edition based on liveslak 1.1.4 and using Slackware-current dated “Fri Nov 4 03:31:38 UTC 2016”. These ISO images have been uploaded and are available on the primary server ‘bear‘. You will find ISO images for a full Slackware, Plasma5 and MATE variants and the 700MB small XFCE variant.

• Red Hat Family

  • Finance

    • Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Bullish Price Target At $110

    • Analysts Give Price Target To Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) $91.117

    • Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) – Top Stock from Technology Sector

    • Why Red Hat Inc (RHT) Is (And Shouldn’t Be) Overlooked

  • Fedora

    • Fedora 25 Linux Delayed by a Week, Could Arrive on November 22, 2016

      Today, November 10, 2016, was the Fedora 25 Go/No-Go meeting, and it appears that the upcoming GNU/Linux distribution, which was scheduled for release next week, on November 15, was delayed by a week.

    • Fedora 25 Has Been Delayed To 22 November

    • Fedora 25 Is Quite Possibly My Most Favorite Release Yet

      Fedora 25 is nearly complete and this afternoon we should hear whether it will be formally released next week or will be pushed back one week due to lingering blocker bugs. Nevertheless, I’ve been carrying out more tests on Fedora 25 on multiple test systems in recent days and have been very pleased with this Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution release.

    • Fedora 25 Finally Makes MP3 Playback Easy, Fedora 26 Might Ship It By Default

    • Fedora 25 Linux Workstation to Ship with MP3 Playback Support Through New Plugin

      On November 10, 2016, Fedora, Red Hat and GStreamer developer Christian Schaller reports that the Workstation edition of the upcoming Fedora 25 Linux operating system is coming with MP3 support by default.

      According to Mr. Schaller, who reminds us that the current stable release of Fedora Workstation, version 24, includes the open-source OpenH264 H.264 implementation for H.264 decoding and encoding, Fedora 25 Workstation is shipping with a new plugin that should allow for playback of MP3 audio files.

    • Fedora Looks At Changing The Default Hostname For F26 & Beyond

      One of the most discussed items this week on the Fedora developers’ mailing list is in regards to changing the hostname on Fedora 26 and future versions.

      Fedora has defaulted to localhost.localdomain but this is becoming a problem for systems acting as a client to FreeIPA and Active Directory domain controllers.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Enterprise Linux Showdown: Ubuntu Linux

        Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux is the newcomer in the enterprise Linux space. Its first release was in 2004; the other two enterprise Linux distributions in this series, SUSE and Red Hat, were born in 1992 and 1993. In its short life Ubuntu has generated considerable controversy, supporters, detractors, excitement, and given the Linux world a much-needed injection of energy.

        One of the primary differentiators between Ubuntu, RHEL, and SUSE is Ubuntu unashamedly and boldly promotes their desktop version. RHEL and SUSE soft-pedal their desktop editions. Not Canonical. Desktop Ubuntu has been front and center from the beginning.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Ubuntu 16.10 Flavors Comparison: Ubuntu vs Ubuntu GNOME vs Kubuntu vs Xubuntu

          As promised in my earlier Ubuntu 16.10 review, I have come up with an Ubuntu 16.10 flavors comparison as well, although, I was planning on coming up with this comparison much sooner (but hey, it’s here!)

          Unlike in my Ubuntu 16.04 LTS flavors comparison which only included two main Ubuntu flavors (Ubuntu GNOME & Kubuntu), this time, I’ve also added Xubuntu 16.10 to the comparison because it was requested by a couple of my readers. The ISO disc image sizes are as follows: Ubuntu 16.10 (1.6 GB), Ubuntu GNOME 16.10 (1.5 GB), Kubuntu 16.10 (1.6 GB) & Xubuntu 16.10 (1.3 GB). And also, I only chose the 64-bit versions of the disc images for the flavors review as well.

          And in this comparison, I’ll only be comparing the performance related data, the stability and hardware recognition of each flavor. I’ll skip new features and whatnot, because you can find information about those features elsewhere, quite easily.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • Google responds in EU antitrust case: “Android hasn’t hurt competition” [Ed: This is Microsoft pulling EU strings]

      Google—as expected—has dismissed the European Commission’s charge that the ad giant abused Android’s dominance to block its competitors in the market.

      The company is accused of using Android’s position as the dominant smartphone operating system in Europe to force manufacturers to pre-install Google services while locking out competitors.

GitLab, Consumer Driven Contracts, Helm and Kubernetes

This article will focus on building a workflow driven by Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery for deploying the services on Kubernetes.

We’ll develop and deliver an Application with two different services that communicate with each other. One service is internal and the other will be accessible from the outside world via Traefik. We’ll want to develop, deploy and evolve each service independently of the rest.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Announcing Rust 1.13

    The Rust team is happy to announce the latest version of Rust, 1.13.0. Rust is a systems programming language focused on safety, speed, and concurrency.

    As always, you can install Rust 1.13.0 from the appropriate page on our website, and check out the detailed release notes for 1.13.0 on GitHub. 1448 patches were landed in this release.

    It’s been a busy season in Rust. We enjoyed three Rust conferences, RustConf, RustFest, and Rust Belt Rust, in short succession. It was great to see so many Rustaceans in person, some for the first time! We’ve been thinking a lot about the future, developing a roadmap for 2017, and building the tools our users tell us they need.

  • Rust 1.13 Brings ? Operator, Better Performance

    Rust 1.13 is now available as the latest implementation of this popular and growing programming language.

SaaS/Back End

• How OpenStack Uses Nodepool

  OpenStack is an open-source cloud platform at its core, but it’s also much more. In order to build OpenStack itself, the OpenStack Foundation has needed to build out all kinds of infrastructure management tooling, including an effort known as nodepool.

• Survey Shows Spark Spreading Out, Heading to the Cloud

  New survey data from nearly 7,000 respondents in the Big Data space are in, conducted by The Taneja Group for Cloudera, which focuses on Hadoop/Spark-based data-centric tools. The new “Apache Spark Market Survey” shows that Spark is set to break from the Hadoop ecosystem and function more and more as an independent data processing tool. It may move from on-premises installations to the cloud in many instances.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• LibreOffice 5 – Free Office Suite Keeps Getting Better

  LibreOffice is the best office software available, or at least on Linux. LibreOffice is a powerful office suite that comes with a clean interface and feature-rich tools that seeks to make your productive and creative. LibreOffice includes several applications including Writer for word processing, Calc for spreadsheets, Impress for presentations, Draw for vector graphics and flowcharts, Base for databases, and Math for formula editing.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

• Wim Coekaerts Returns to Oracle After Brief Microsoft Stint

  Wim Coekaerts first got a job working as a support analysts for Oracle in Belgium in March 1995. He ended up moving up the ranks at Oracle, leading Linux and virtualization efforts, until he left in March 2016.

• Why open source Munich may bring Windows back [Ed: Microsoft paid a lot of money for Wim Coekaerts to pretend that "Microsoft loves Linux", but he has just quit]

• Open source champion mulls return to Microsoft [Ed: More Microsoft nonsense courtesy if its proxy Accenture which tries to undermine Munich's migration and success story]

• The Renaissance Continues for Open Source Artificial Intelligence [Ed: the latest Microsoft openwashing from the usual suspects]

• City that swapped Windows for Linux debates proposed Windows 10 move [iophk: “Microsoft shill #Accenture at work. MS works through proxies even more now that it “loves” Linux”]

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• OpenMP 4.5 Fortran Support Is Being Worked On For GCC

• Qualcomm FALKOR ARM Core Added To GCC

  Qualcomm’s Falkor core has been added formally to the GNU Compiler Collection

Programming/Development

• What is hackathon culture?

  That’s the type of culture codeRIT and BrickHack are about. Race, gender, and how much you know about coding software doesn’t matter; what matters is that you want to learn, and you want to better yourself and the world.

Microsoft lays out its hopes for a Trump presidency

As America wraps its head around the result of Tuesday’s election, the tech world is taking stock of what’s about to happen to it, both in the short and long term. We’ve heard how Silicon Valley has reacted with disappointment and uncertainty over what President Donald Trump means for tech-related policy. Microsoft on the other hand has gone into a little more detail about the relationship it wants with the president-elect.

In a blog post published the day after the election, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, offered his congratulations to Trump while making it clear that there was a great deal of work ahead for both sides.

Health/Nutrition

• WTO Members Discuss UN High-Level Report On Medicines Access That WHO Declined To Discuss

  The World Trade Organization intellectual property committee this week discussed the report of United Nations Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on access to medicines which offered recommendations regarding the use of intellectual property in international trade. Developing countries taking the floor accentuated the use of flexibilities under trade rules, and the World Health Organization gave an overview of how its activities follow the panel’s recommendations, and its future projects. Civil society meanwhile criticised the WHO’s decision to dismiss a request by some developing countries to include discussions on the UN report at the next Executive Board Meeting. WHO then used this WTO meeting to make a statement about the UN report.

• American Women Are Preparing for a War on Reproductive Rights Under President Trump

  Benoit told The Intercept that more than two dozen women reached out to her for advice about the IUD, a small device inserted into the uterus that, depending on the type, works for three to 12 years. “I recommend the IUD right now especially because it’s long term, which with 20 million+ Americans potentially losing their health insurance and potentially right to an abortion, is important,” she said.

• India Patent Office denies patent for prostate cancer drug sold under brand name Xtandi, generic name enzalutamide

  According to this story, the India Patent Office has denied a patent for the prostate cancer drug sold under the brand name Xtandi (generic name Enzalutamide). Opponents of the patent claimed it was a new form of a known substance, and not eligible in India under Section 3(d) of its patent act.

  According to the Times of India, the Astellas price for 112 pills (a 28 day supply) of Xtandi was 335,000 rupees, or about $5014.60 US Dollars. This is $179 per day or $44.77 per pill, much higher than the $26 per pill price Astellas sells the drug for in Japan.

  According to the World Bank, the 2015 per capita income in India was $1,590 per year, or $4.36 per day.

• Six Candidates For WHO Director General Lay Out Their Views

  Funding, universal health, multisectoral work and access to medicines were among the issues addressed at the recent candidates’ forum of the World Health Organization in Geneva as part of the process to choose the next director general of the UN health agency. Candidates spoke on how to fund the organisation in its quest for universal health care and response to emergencies.

• Two Generics Companies Apply For First WHO Prequalification Of Novel Antiretroviral

  Today, the Medicines Patent Pool announced that two generic drug companies applied for the World Health Organization prequalification of an innovative antiretroviral.

Security

• The Future of IoT: Containers Aim to Solve Security Crisis

  Despite growing security threats, the Internet of Things hype shows no sign of abating. Feeling the FoMo, companies are busily rearranging their roadmaps for IoT. The transition to IoT runs even deeper and broader than the mobile revolution. Everything gets swallowed in the IoT maw, including smartphones, which are often our windows on the IoT world, and sometimes our hubs or sensor endpoints.

  New IoT focused processors and embedded boards continue to reshape the tech landscape. Since our Linux and Open Source Hardware for IoT story in September, we’ve seen Intel Atom E3900 “Apollo Lake” SoCs aimed at IoT gateways, as well as new Samsung Artik modules, including a Linux-driven, 64-bit Artik7 COM for gateways and an RTOS-ready, Cortex-M4 Artik0. ARM announced Cortex-M23 and Cortex-M33 cores for IoT endpoints featuring ARMv8-M and TrustZone security.

• GCHQ encourages ISPs to rewrite their software to stop DDoS attacks

  The head of the GCHQ believes that if ISPs were to rewrite their software that they could potentially stop DDoS attacks from affecting their networks.

• GCHQ thinks ISPs can solve DDoS by taking a good look at themselves

  THE BOSS OF UK SPOOK AGENCY GCHQ reckons that he has the solution to the global problem of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that blight online services: a standard rewrite of the software and code on which ISPs run.

  Ian Levy, technical director of GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre, told The Sunday Telegraph that the organisation is already planning talks with ISPs like BT about this silver bullet, and he is hopeful that it won’t turn out to be silver-plated bullshit.

• OpenSSL Security Advisory [10 Nov 2016]

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Is Disclosure of Podesta’s Emails a Step Too Far? A Conversation With Naomi Klein

  There’s an amazing irony here in some sense because I’ve been defending the news value of the WikiLeaks archives over the past several months, not just the Podesta but also the DNC archive. And I’ve defended WikiLeaks in the past, long prior to the Snowden archive. There are a couple of really fascinating nuances that I think set the stage for the kinds of distinctions that you’re urging be drawn.

  When I first started defending WikiLeaks back in 2010, one of my primary arguments was that WikiLeaks, contrary to the way they were being depicted by the U.S. intelligence community and their friends, was not some reckless rogue agent running around sociopathically dumping information on the internet without concern about who might be endangered. And in fact, if you look at how the biggest WikiLeaks releases were handled early on — the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, as well as the State Department cables — not only did they redact huge numbers of documents on the grounds that doing so was necessary to protect the welfare of innocent people, they actually requested that the State Department meet with them to help them figure out what kind of information should be withheld on the grounds that it could endanger innocent people.

  So they were very much an ardent and enthusiastic proponent of that model — that when you get tons of information that belongs in the public eye, you have the corresponding responsibility to protect not only people’s physical security but also their privacy. I used to defend them on that all the time.

  Somewhere along the way, WikiLeaks and Julian decided, and they’ve said this explicitly, that they changed their mind on that question — they no longer believe in redactions or withholding documents of any kind.

• Reddit users take WikiLeaks to task over email dumps, Russia

  Among the highlights of the AMA, was WikiLeaks revealing it decides to publish information according to its “promise to sources for maximum impact.” WikiLeaks also denied colluding with Trump’s campaign and Russia, and defended the information it dumped and its timing.

• We are the WikiLeaks staff. Despite our editor Julian Assange’s increasingly precarious situation WikiLeaks continues publishing

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• Marrakech climate talks: giving the fossil fuel lobby a seat at the table

  As the world gathers in Morocco for the historic first meeting under the Paris agreement – called “COP22” but now also “CMA1” – it does so with the unprecedented involvement of corporate interests who have fought climate action around the world, funded climate change denial and whose fundamental interest is in extracting and burning as much fossil fuel as possible.

  Earlier this year, desperate moves from countries representing the majority of the world’s population to examine how the UN might identify and minimise conflicts of interest were swept under the carpet by rich countries – especially the US, EU and Australia – who argued they wanted to be as “inclusive” as possible and that the concept of “conflict of interest” was too hard to define.

• Myron Ebell: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

  Donald Trump is rumored to appoint Myron Ebell, a climate change denier, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

  Ebell serves as the director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and he’s currently heading President-Elect Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition process. Politico reports that Ebell himself will likely become the new head of the EPA. While nothing official has been announced by the Trump campaign, the appointment of Ebell would represent a dramatic shift in the United States’ environmental policies.

  Here’s what you need to know about Myron Ebell, the possible next head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

• Team Trump is already filled with Washington insiders

  To shape his administration, President-elect Donald Trump is drawing squarely from the “swamp” he has pledged to drain.
  Trump’s transition team is staffed with long-time Washington experts and lobbyists from K Street, think tanks and political offices.

  It’s a far cry from Trump’s campaign, which ended only Tuesday night, and message that he would “drain the swamp” in Washington. He has advocated congressional term limits and proposed a “five-point plan for ethics reform” that included strengthening restrictions on lobbying, including five-year bans for members and staff of the executive branch and Congress from lobbying, and expanding the definition of lobbyist to prevent more revolving door activity.
  But he has so far fully embraced lobbyists within his transition, and all signs point to a heavy influence from longtime Washington Republican circles on his transition. And with Trump mostly skipping detailed policy proposals during his campaign, these they can have a powerful impact on his agenda.

• Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic to Lead EPA Transition

  Donald Trump has selected one of the best-known climate skeptics to lead his U.S. EPA transition team, according to two sources close to the campaign.

  Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, is spearheading Trump’s transition plans for EPA, the sources said.

  The Trump team has also lined up leaders for its Energy Department and Interior Department teams. Republican energy lobbyist Mike McKenna is heading the DOE team; former Interior Department solicitor David Bernhardt is leading the effort for that agency, according to sources close to the campaign.

• Palm oil industry under fire as Indonesia’s haze drama continues

  In August, haze from Indonesian slash-and-burn agriculture enveloped Singapore and wafted into Malaysia and up to Thailand. It was not as bad as last year, however.

  The usual wave of complaints came from Singapore and the diplomatic spat started again.

  Indonesia’s Minister of Environment and Forestry, Dr Siti Nurbaya Bakar, asked that Singapore focus on its own role in addressing the issue instead of “making so many comments”. She said that Indonesia has stuck to its side of the bargain in trying to avoid the recurrence of forest fires and in strictly enforcing the law. She is right.

  Dr Siti has vowed to bring the culprits to justice – mostly palm oil plantation companies, some headquartered in Singapore.

• What does a Trump presidency mean for climate change?

  Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, has called climate change a “Chinese hoax,” so it’s no wonder climate scientists are freaking out about what will happen to the environment in the years to come.

  Trump has already threatened to pull America out of the landmark Paris climate change accord, eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency, repeal environmental regulations, and cut climate funding. He proposed an incoherent energy plan aimed at reviving the coal industry. It’s difficult to know which of these promises Trump will follow through on, but climate scientists warn that his plan is a disaster that would create lasting harm to everything from global biodiversity to food availability.

• Climate change may be escalating so fast it could be ‘game over’, scientists warn

  It is a vision of a future so apocalyptic that it is hard to even imagine.

  But, if leading scientists writing in one of the most respected academic journals are right, planet Earth could be on course for global warming of more than seven degrees Celsius within a lifetime.

  And that, according to one of the world’s most renowned climatologists, could be “game over” – particularly given the imminent presence of climate change denier Donald Trump in the White House.

Finance

• Even Fans Admit Chances Of TPP Being Ratified By US Soon — Or Ever — Have Just Slumped

  In the wake of the unexpected win of Donald Trump, people in many fields are starting to re-examine their assumptions about what might happen in the next few years. One of the areas impacted by Trump’s success is trade in general, and trade deals in particular. For perhaps the first time, the 2016 election campaign put trade deals front and center. They may even have contributed to Hillary Clinton’s downfall, since many found her sudden conversion to the anti-TPP movement unconvincing, to say the least.

• Judge rejects Trump bid to bar campaign statements from fraud trial

  A U.S. judge on Thursday tentatively rejected a bid by Donald Trump to keep a wide range of statements from the presidential campaign out of an upcoming fraud trial over his Trump University venture.

  The ruling came in advance of a pretrial hearing later on Thursday where lawyers for the president-elect will square off against students who claim they were they were lured by false promises to pay up to $35,000 to learn Trump’s real estate investing “secrets” from his “hand-picked” instructors.

  Trump owned 92 percent of Trump University and had control over all major decisions, the students’ court papers say. The president-elect denies the allegations and has argued that he relied on others to manage the business.

• The Trans-Pacific Partnership is dead, Schumer tells labor leaders

  The Senate’s soon-to-be top Democrat told labor leaders Thursday that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade deal at the center of President Obama’s “pivot” to strengthen ties with key Asian allies, will not be ratified by Congress.

  That remark from Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is expected to be the incoming Senate minority leader, came as good news to the AFL-CIO Executive Council, which met Thursday in Washington. Schumer relayed statements that Republican congressional leaders had made to him, according to an aide who confirmed the remarks.

• TiSA: Trade in Services Agreement is Bad News for Workers and Communities

  The report sets out how a TiSA agreement would concentrate more power in the hands of multinational corporations, put a stranglehold on vital government regulation, undo the limited progress which has been made on regulating banks and finance conglomerates, and lead to an “Uberisation” of millions of workers’ jobs.

  Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary, said: “While trade deals like TTIP, TPP and CETA are making headlines, government negotiators working hand in glove with corporate lobbyists are hoping to smuggle TiSA through while attention is focused elsewhere. This must not be allowed to happen.

  From what is known about the secret TiSA deal, it would have a profound and negative impact on financial regulation, protections for workers and consumers alike, and across a whole raft of other areas. Governments have still not learned the lesson that putting corporate interests ahead of the living standards and lives of their own people is not only unjust, it is political stupidity.”

• Theresa May faces Brexit resistance as MPs threaten to vote against Article 50

  Theresa May has been given a fresh indicator of the difficulties she could face if Parliament is given a vote on article 50, as MPs lined up threatening to vote against triggering Brexit .

  Ministers are challenging a High Court ruling that Parliament must be given a say before the formal two-year process can be started by the Government, but if it comes to a Commons vote a number of MPs have indicated they would oppose the measure unless there are major concessions.

  Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said his party would vote against Article 50 unless there was a guarantee that the final Brexit deal with the European Union is put to a fresh referendum.

  He insisted he respected the decision made by voters in favour of leaving the EU but said nobody should have a deal “imposed” upon them.

  Although the Lib Dems only have eight MPs they have more than 100 peers in the Lords, which could spell trouble for the Government if judges rule that a full act of Parliament is required before Article 50 can be triggered, as the legislation would have to clear both Houses.

• Saudi Arabia owes billions to private firms after collapse in oil revenues

  Saudi Arabia has admiited that it owes billions of dollars to private firms and foreign workers after oil revenues collapsed, the kingdom’s new finance minister said.

  The arrears have left tens of thousands of foreign workers, chiefly in the construction sector, struggling for months while they await back pay.

  “I don’t recall the exact amount now but its billions of dollars,” Mohammed Aljadaan told reporters on Thursday.

• Your money’s no good: rupee note cancellation plunges India into panic

  Queues of angry, panicked Indians wound around bank buildings in Mumbai, the financial capital, on Thursday morning, two days after the prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced that 500- and 1,000-rupee notes, worth around £6 and £12, would be taken out of circulation.

  In a televised announcement on Tuesday night, Modi had urged Indians not to rush to banks, as they would have until the end of 2016 to deposit cash in their accounts. But with the high-value notes withdrawn from Wednesday in an effort to combat corruption, black-market trade and tax evasion, many were left without cash for day-to-day expenses.

  Banks were closed on Wednesday, and reopened on Thursday morning with a cap on cash withdrawals. ATMs remained closed, so currency was only available from the banks. Newspapers around the country reported long queues at branches, as people scrambled to exchange their high-value banknotes for 100-rupee bills.

• Trump tapped the viral anger over H-1B use

  President-elect Donald Trump realized early in his campaign that U.S. IT workers were angry over training foreign visa-holding replacements. He knew this anger was volcanic.

  Trump is the first major U.S. presidential candidate in this race — or any previous presidential race — to focus on the use of the H-1B visa to displace IT workers. He asked former Disney IT employees, upset over having to train foreign replacements, to speak at his rallies.

  “The fact is that Americans are losing their jobs to foreigners,” said Dena Moore, a former Disney IT worker at a Trump rally in Alabama in February. “I believe Mr. Trump is for Americans first.”

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Donald Trump could be impeached within weeks, claims legal professor

  Donald Trump could be impeached within weeks, according to at least one legal professor.

  There is a strong case for the beginning of legal proceedings that would stop Donald Trump from being president, says law professor Christopher Peterson.

  A paper from Professor Peterson says that there is ample evidence to charge the new President-elect with crimes that would see him potentially being removed from office.

  Professor Peterson’s analysis was written in September, before Mr Trump became president. But the argument makes it applies after the election, too.

• Facebook’s failure: did fake news and polarized politics get Trump elected?

  It’s a great quote, but he never said it.

  It typifies the kind of fake news and misinformation that has plagued the 2016 election on an unprecedented scale. In the wake of the surprise election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, pressure is growing on Facebook to not only tackle the problem but also to find ways to encourage healthier discourse between people with different political views.

  Rather than connecting people – as Facebook’s euphoric mission statement claims – the bitter polarization of the social network over the last eighteen months suggests Facebook is actually doing more to divide the world.

• Why Mark Zuckerberg Is Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year

• President Trump: How America Got It So Wrong

  “Fuck yourself,” he says, thrusting a middle finger in my face. He then turns around and walks a boy of about five away from me down Fifth Avenue, a hand gently tousling his son’s hair.

  This was before Donald Trump’s historic victory. The message afterward no doubt would have been the same. There’s no way to overstate the horror of what just went down. Sure, we’ve had some unstable characters enter the White House. JFK had health problems that led him to take amphetamine shots during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Reagan’s attention span was so short, the CIA had to make mini-movies to brief him on foreign leaders. George W. Bush not only didn’t read the news, he wasn’t interested in it (“What’s in the newspapers worth worrying about?” he once asked, without irony).

  But all of these men were just fronts for one or the other half of the familiar alternating power structure, surrounded by predictable, relatively sober confederates who managed the day-to-day. Trump enters the White House as a lone wrecking ball of conspiratorial ideas, a one-man movement unto himself who owes almost nothing to traditional Republicans and can be expected to be anything but a figurehead. He takes office at a time when the chief executive is vastly more powerful than ever before, with nearly unlimited authority to investigate, surveil, torture and assassinate foreigners and even U.S. citizens – powers that didn’t seem to trouble people much when they were granted to Barack Obama.

• Elections, the Internet, and the Power of Narrative

  Once again, the struggle over the Power of Narrative has been laid bare – just as it was in the 1530s and countless other times in history. Once again, a colluding establishment had decided to tell a unified story as The Truth, only to be shattered by new communications technology revealing the collusion and a set of alternative, unapproved talking points. This has happened before, and this will happen again, and it is the biggest power shift that can happen in society – far greater than an election.

  Elections are ultimately about violence. Since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, far predating modern democracy, states have taken upon themselves to enforce a certain set of rules on their population – with violence, if need be. The territorial governments under the Treaty of Westphalia – loosely what we call “countries” today – therefore have a monopoly on exercising lawful violence against bad people. This mechanism remains with modern voting, which therefore becomes an indirect way of wielding violence against those bad people.

• How Data Failed Us in Calling an Election

  It was a rough night for number crunchers. And for the faith that people in every field — business, politics, sports and academia — have increasingly placed in the power of data.

  Donald J. Trump’s victory ran counter to almost every major forecast — undercutting the belief that analyzing reams of data can accurately predict events. Voters demonstrated how much predictive analytics, and election forecasting in particular, remains a young science: Some people may have been misled into thinking Hillary Clinton’s win was assured because some of the forecasts lacked context explaining potentially wide margins of error.

  “It’s the overselling of precision,” said Dr. Pradeep Mutalik, a research scientist at the Yale Center for Medical Informatics, who had calculated that some of the vote models could be off by 15 to 20 percent.

  Virtually all the major vote forecasters, including Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight site, The New York Times Upshot and the Princeton Election Consortium, put Mrs. Clinton’s chances of winning in the 70 to 99 percent range.

• Polls etc.

  Two points which have come up at work and may be generally interesting as everyone picks through the wreckage. Research/marketing stuff, be warned. Also remember I was HIDEOUSLY WRONG about Trump not being like Brexit because I was a straw-clutching idiot. So pinch of salt but…

  1) The Polls. They fucked up, and so did the aggregators (in fact worse, as one of the individual polls (IBM/TPP) did rather well). 538, PEC, etc look like post-meteor dinosaurs. But obviously the individual polls are also in trouble if the business is going to come down to “poll all year and then at the end we see who’s turnout assumptions are best”.

  But the problem actually runs deeper than that – the trouble isn’t “shy Trump voters” which you can often detect using other indicators. It’s Trump voters who barely even get the chance to be shy, because years of declining response rates (down from 25% to 5% or so in the last 20 years) have created an entirely skewed survey-taking universe where the set of people who will take surveys at all is very different from the population. Estimating how many might be missing is pure guesswork: yes, an insurgent electorate is more right wing, but by 2 points? 5? 10? There’s no way of knowing. These people are dark matter. PS the exit polls ARE STILL POLLS this still applies.

• Tech founders want California to secede

  Shervin Pishevar, an early Uber investor and cofounder of Hyperloop, posted a series of tweets Tuesday night announcing his plans to fund “a legitimate campaign for California to become its own nation.”

  And no, he’s not joking.

  “Yes it’s serious,” Pishevar told CNNMoney in an e-mail. “It’s the most patriotic thing I can do. The country is [at] a serious crossroads.”

  Within hours, several other tech founders offered their support for the plan.

  “I was literally just going to tweet this. I’m in and will partner with you on it,” Dave Morin, an investor and founder of private social networking tool Path, tweeted in response to Pishevar.

• Donna Brazile: I’m sorry only that I got caught cheating with debate questions

  Donna Brazile, the interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, is not only refusing to apologize for giving debate questions to candidate Hillary Clinton. She’s also saying she would do it again if given the opportunity.

  “My conscience — as an activist, a strategist — is very clear,” she said in an interview with talk-radio host Joe Madison that aired on Monday.

  Brazile argued she was simply doing her job as a strategist to know what questions the debate moderators might pose: “You’re doggone right I’m gonna talk to everybody. Joe, I will never go out on TV or go on radio without the facts. I will ask. I will submit things. I will circulate things. And guess what? I also enjoy the exchange that I have with my colleagues.”

• Everyone Is Sharing Michael Moore’s 5-Point ‘Morning After To-Do List’

  The morning after Donald Trump became the U.S. president-elect felt like something of a hangover for millions of Democrats. With a Republican Senate and House of Representatives to boot, to say nothing of Supreme Court vacancies, many liberals were understandably depressed.

  Maybe that’s why documentary filmmaker Michael Moore’s five-point plan has been shared over 100,000 times since it was posted on Facebook Wednesday morning. It offers a blueprint for how Democrats can get back up and fight for their causes.

• It’s Still the Same United States

  In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s shocking victory, many liberals woke up Wednesday morning feeling like strangers in their own country, or perhaps, as if they were the familiar ones and it was the country itself that had become the stranger. I heard it in the voices of friends. I read it in texts from family. I found it in newspaper headlines from some of my favorite writers and in tweets and Facebook messages. What kind of a country do I live in? they asked. Something important has changed. This is not the nation I thought I knew.

• Trump campaign staff redirects, then restores, mention of Muslim ban from website

  President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign staff temporarily redirected the webpage detailing his controversial proposal to temporarily ban Muslim immigration into the United States, one of the most divisive and controversial policy ideas of his campaign, but swiftly sought to restore it after reporter inquiries Thursday.

  The proposal is detailed on a page titled, “Donald J. Trump statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration.” Starting on Election Day, that page redirected to a new page where supporters could donate to the campaign. “Thank you America,” said the banner on the new page. “We showed America the silent majority is no longer silent.”

• KKK announces North Carolina ‘victory’ parade

  While one report of Ku Klux Klan activity in North Carolina following Donald Trump’s election as president was debunked, the real KKK has announced a rally in the state.

  Trump, a Republican, was officially endorsed by the KKK during his campaign against Hillary Clinton, a Democrat. Trump won North Carolina on his way to winning the presidency, defeating Clinton here by nearly 5 percentage points.

  Details on the rally celebrating Trump’s victory are scarce. It’s being held by The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which is based in Pelham – a small, unincorporated community about 45 minutes north of Burlington, near the Virginia border.

  The group was behind a rally in South Carolina last year protesting the removal of the Confederate flag from the state Capitol building.

• Trump’s dystopia is coming – but it will destroy itself

  It means that the reactionary forces of the far-right are resurgent. Trump’s victory is the latest in a global trend which was previously manifest in Britain’s Brexit vote, which saw Britons vote to get out of the European Union. That itself follows a growing wave of popularity for right-wing extremists across Europe.

  It’s no surprise that among the first in Europe to congratulate Trump on taking the White House were far-right leaders like France’s Marine Le Pen and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders.

  That is because, as I’ve documented elsewhere, Trump’s advisory team has close ties to Europe’s fascist political parties.

  His campaign rhetoric has meant that the forces he rode to victory are hardly a secret.

• Theresa May still awaiting call from Donald Trump

  The UK’s hopes for a continuation of the much-vaunted special relationship with the US under Donald Trump have suffered an early setback after the new president-elect spoke to nine world leaders in the 24 hours after his election win, without Theresa May getting a call.

  Trump has thus far talked to the leaders of Ireland, Mexico, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, India, Japan, Australia and South Korea, according to various reports.

  A Downing Street spokesman said a phone call between May and Trump was “being arranged now”. He said: “They will speak at the earliest possible opportunity.” The spokesman added that May had sent the president-elect a letter.

• DNC Staffer Screams At Donna Brazile For Helping Elect Donald Trump

  On Thursday, Democratic Party officials held their first staff meeting since Hillary Clinton’s stunning loss to Donald Trump in the presidential race. It didn’t go well.

  Donna Brazile, the interim leader of the Democratic National Committee, was giving what one attendee described as “a rip-roaring speech” to about 150 employees, about the need to have hope for wins going forward, when a staffer identified only as Zach stood up with a question.

  “Why should we trust you as chair to lead us through this?” he asked, according to two people in the room. “You backed a flawed candidate, and your friend [former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz] plotted through this to support your own gain and yourself.”

  Some DNC staffers started to boo and some told him to sit down. Brazile began to answer, but Zach had more to say.

  “You are part of the problem,” he continued, blaming Brazile for clearing the path for Trump’s victory by siding with Clinton early on. “You and your friends will die of old age and I’m going to die from climate change. You and your friends let this happen, which is going to cut 40 years off my life expectancy.”

• This Photo Of Sad Obama Staffers Isn’t From Trump’s White House Visit

  The photo was taken by European Press Agency photographer Jim Lo Scalzo and shows White House staff listening as Obama spoke from the Rose Garden Wednesday.

• Obama To Pardon Hillary To Save Her From Jail

  Obama’s last act as president will be saving Hillary from jail by granting her a pardon, despite spending the last months claiming she has done nothing wrong.

  Washington insiders claim an elaborate pardon is being drawn up to protect Hillary from prosecution and jail time.

  The White House is deflecting questions about President-elect Donald Trump’s intent to appoint a special prosecutor to review Clinton’s case, and steadfastly refusing to rule out a pardon.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Users Around the World Reject Europe’s Upload Filtering Proposal

  Users around the world have been outraged by the European Commission’s proposal to require websites to enter into Shadow Regulation agreements with copyright holders concerning the automatic filtering of user-generated content. This proposal, which some are calling RoboCopyright and others Europe’s #CensorshipMachine, would require many Internet platforms to integrate content scanning software into their websites to alert copyright holders every time it detected their content being uploaded by a user, without any consideration of the context.

  People are right to be mad. This is going to result in the wrongful blocking of non-infringing content, such as the fair use dancing baby video. But that’s only the start of it. The European proposal may also require images and text—not just video—to be automatically blocked on copyright grounds. Because automated scanning technologies are unable to evaluate the applicability of copyright exceptions, such as fair use or quotation, this could mean no more image macros, and no more reposting of song lyrics or excerpts from news articles to social media.

• In The Rush To Blame Facebook, Come The Calls To Suppress Ideas People Disagree With

  In fact, it’s likely to make things even worse. Remember the mostly made up “controversy” about Facebook suppressing conservative news? Remember the outrage it provoked (or have you already forgotten?). Just imagine what would happen if Facebook now decided that it was only going to let people share “true” news. Whoever gets to decide that kind of thing has tremendous power — and there will be immediately claims of bias and hiding “important” stories — even if they’re bullshit. It will lead many of the people who are already angry about things to argue that their views are being suppressed and hidden and that they are being “censored.” That’s not a good recipe. And it’s an especially terrible recipe if people really want to understand why so many people are so angry at the status quo.

  Telling them that the news needs to be censored to “protect” them isn’t going to magically turn Trump supporters into Hillary supporters. It will just convince them that they’re even more persecuted.

  Other than “censoring” certain content, the only other suggestion I seriously heard was someone suggesting that Facebook should force-feed its users opposing views. Like that’s actually going to change anyone’s mind, rather than get them pissed off again. And, once again, this seems like people failing to take responsibility for their own actions. If you don’t have any friends who supported Trump, don’t lump that on Facebook.

  There are legitimate questions about whether you can better inform a populace. But censorship and force-feeding information is general paternalistic nonsense that totally misunderstands the issue and misdiagnoses the problem. As Clay Shirky noted earlier this year, too many Hillary supporters thought that “bringing fact checkers to a culture war” would win out, when that’s never going to happen. Fighting Facebook’s algorithim is more of the same nonsense. It’s based in the faulty belief that those who voted for “the other” are simply too dumb to understand the truth, and if they just got more truth, they’d buy it. It’s not understanding why they voted the way they did. It’s looking for easy scapegoats.

  Facebook’s algorithm is an easy target, but it’s even less likely to solve a culture war than fact checkers.

• Less Censorship Could Make Independent Film Productions Suffer

  China passed its first comprehensive law governing the film industry on Monday, a move that some said would simplify the process of approving and censoring films. Others, however, worried that it could put more pressure on filmmakers, particularly independent producers.

• Number of imported films in China reaches record high

  Chinese moviegoers will be spoilt for choice this month, with over 50 films, some of which are highly anticipated, from home and abroad hitting the cinemas in the month.

  November will see the release of 12 foreign films, including Doctor Strange, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Allied, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, taking the number of imported films in the Chinese market to a record high of 39 this year. The number was 34 last year.

  Some domestic films are also highly anticipated, like I am not Madame Bovary, directed by Feng Xiaogang and starring Fan Bingbing, which has already won awards at Toronto International Film Festival and San Sebastian International Film Festival, and was nominated for many other awards.

  Even though most Chinese audiences are already used to overseas blockbusters flushing into the Chinese market in recent years, the cinematic booty of this month is still quite unprecedented.

• New claims of Facebook censorship in Norway

  Just two months after Facebook found itself in the centre of an international controversy after censoring posts in Norway, the social media giant has banned another prominent Norwegian for posting a photo that included nudity.
  Artist, writer and Dagbladet columnist Kjetil Rolness was banned from Facebook for three days for having shared an article from online newspaper iTromsø.

  Author Tom Egeland, who was at the centre of the ‘Napalm Girl’ Facebook controversy back in August, was the one to bring the new case to light. He did so, naturally enough, on his Facebook page.

• Polish minister accuses Facebook of censorship over right-wing symbol

• Poland’s far-right groups protest Facebook

• Far-right Polish groups protest Facebook profile blockages

• Are Mark Cuban’s Reasons For Banning ESPN’s Mavericks Reporters Science Fiction?

• Mark Cuban turns pro-censorship in latest NBA fit

Privacy/Surveillance

• Should You Spy on Your Kids?

  In the middle of a long bicycle ride several weeks ago, I pulled over for a rest and took out my iPhone to send a text message to my wife. I had a feeling she might be watching me.

  “If you’re checking my location, I’m not dead,” I wrote to her. “I’m getting coffee on Mercer Island.”

  As it happens, she was not keeping tabs on where I was, but she could have — and has in the past — because I have allowed her to do so using the location-tracking capability in my phone. Whenever she’s curious, she can see me represented as an orange dot on a digital map on her phone. An unmoving dot could be a cyclist husband who got a flat tire, grabbed a beer with a friend or was hit by a car (hence the reassuring text).

  Now and again, I, too, check my wife’s location so I know when she leaves work and can time dinner with her arrival. She and I have both tracked the whereabouts of our 13-year-old daughter using her phone to reassure ourselves that she was on her way home from school or a trip to the store.

• King County using customer grocery store data to target pet owners, send licensing notices

  A King County letter that ended up in the mailboxes of thousands of pet owners is raising concerns over privacy.

  The letter told pet owners to license their pets or face a $250 fine.

  “It feels weird to me, it feels like they’re kind of snooping around in a place where they shouldn’t be,” said dog owner Chris Lee.

  Turns out for the last four years, King County has been using data companies to target specific taxpayers, or in this case pet owners. That means every time customers swipe those rewards cards, they’re gathering data.

• Government Needs Access To Big Data To Fight, Uh, Terrierism

  Scummy King County, Washington is using customer grocery store data to target pet owners and send them letters threatening them with a $250 fine if they don’t license their pets.

  Good reason to pay in cash, to avoid linking a “loyalty card” to the real you (Just call me “Mrs. Claus, 1010 North Pole Lane), and to vote out the assholes doing this.

• The phone so secure even the head of the NSA uses it: Boeing’s secret ‘blackphone’ that can SELF DESTRUCT if tampered with begins testing (and no, you can’t buy one)

  Developed by Boeing and the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Boeing Black phone is designed for secure communication between governmental agencies and their contractors.

  The handset can even self destruct if it is tampered with, destroying all the data on it, and is so secure that Boeing will only sell it to ‘approved’ purchasers.

• New IBM Platform Brings Watson to IoT
  

  IBM unveiled today an experimental platform that allows developers to embed Watson functions and cognitive technology into various devices. The platform, dubbed Project Intu, can be accessed through the Watson Developer Cloud, Intu Gateway, and GitHub.

Civil Rights/Policing

• EU citizenship proposal could guarantee rights in Europe after Brexit

  The European parliament is to review a proposal for an associate EU citizenship open to nationals of a country that has left the union but who want to stay part of the European project and retain some of their EU rights.

  The plan, tabled by a liberal MEP from Luxembourg, could mean British citizens who opt for the new status would be able to continue to travel freely and live on the continent – rights that may no longer be automatic after Brexit.

  “It’s clear the UK is divided, and many people want to remain part of Europe,” said Charles Goerens, who proposed amendment 882 to a draft report by the parliament’s constitutional affairs committee on possible changes to “the current institutional set-up” of the European Union.

  “The idea is simply to guarantee those who want it some of the same rights they had as full EU citizens, including the right of residence in the EU, and to be able to vote in European elections and be represented by an MEP.”

• Reports of racist graffiti, hate crimes in Trump’s America

  Fears of heightened bigotry and hate crimes have turned into reality for some Americans after Donald Trump’s presidential win.
  Racist, pro-Trump graffiti painted inside a high school. A hijab-wearing college student robbed by men talking about Trump and Muslims.
  While Trump has been accused of fostering xenophobia and Islamophobia, some of his supporters have used his words as justification to carry out hateful acts.
  Here’s what some Americans are dealing with across the country.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Here’s How President Trump Could Destroy Net Neutrality

  Donald Trump’s presidential election victory could have dire consequences for US internet freedom and openness, according to several tech policy experts and public interest advocates surveyed by Motherboard on Wednesday.

  The Republican billionaire will likely seek to roll back hard-won consumer protections safeguarding net neutrality, the principle that all internet content should be equally accessible, as well as a host of other policies designed to protect consumers, ensure internet freedom, and promote broadband access, these experts and advocates said.

  “Everything we’ve accomplished over the last ten years is now in jeopardy,” said Malkia Cyril, co-founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice, a nonprofit group that advocates for digital freedom and inclusion. “From net neutrality to broadband privacy to prison phone reform and the Lifeline expansion, that’s all at risk now.”

• Trump’s FCC: Tom Wheeler to be replaced, set-top box reform could be dead

  Tom Wheeler’s time as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is nearing an end now that Republican Donald Trump has won the presidency. You can expect Wheeler to step down from his chairmanship on or before January 20, when Trump is inaugurated.

  It’s customary for the chair to step down when the White House shifts to the opposing party. All five FCC commissioners are appointed by the president and confirmed by the US Senate, with the president’s party having a one-vote majority. (The president usually appoints minority party commissioners based on recommendations made by minority party lawmakers.)

  Trump can’t force Wheeler, a Democrat, to leave the commission entirely before his term expires, but the president can designate a new chairperson.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Trademarks

  • CJEU rules against Rubik’s Cube shape trade mark

    In the judgment, published today, the five-judge panel said the General Court was wrong in its evaluation of functionality.

    Article 7(1)(e) of the (old) CTM Regulation provides that signs which consist exclusively of the shape of the goods themselves, a shape necessary to obtain a technical result or a shape which gives substantial value are not registrable.

  • CJEU upholds duty to reverse-engineer trade marks in Rubik’s cube decision, but what about the actual v abstract test?

    The role of the graphical representation included in trade mark applications is to let competitors and bodies in charge of the registration know the scope of the requested protection.

    In theory, owners’ exclusive rights are limited to the aesthetic appearance of the sign as represented in the application graphic representation. Thus – according to some – the chance to register a certain sign should be based on the self-contained, easily accessible, and intelligible images that appear in trade mark application.

• Copyrights

  • Anti-Piracy Group FACT Expands Reach Beyond Hollywood

    The Federation Against Copyright Theft says that it will branch out into new areas of IP enforcement. For decades the anti-piracy group has relied on Hollywood for much of its business but with that work now being carried out by the MPA and others, FACT will offer services to companies outside the audio-visual sector.

  • CJEU says that EU law allows e-lending

    As reported by this blog, this reference arose in the context of proceedings brought by the association of Dutch public libraries which – contrary to the position of Dutch government – holds the view that libraries should be entitled to lend electronic books included in their collections according to the principle “one copy one user”.

    This envisages the possibility for a library user to download an electronic copy of a work included in the collection of a library with the result that – as long as that user “has” the book – it is not possible for other library users to download a copy. Upon expiry of the e-lending period, the electronic copy downloaded by the first user becomes unusable, so that the book in question can be e-borrowed by another user.

  • E-books can be lent by libraries just like normal books, rules EU’s top court

    Public libraries can lend out electronic books, the European Union’s highest court has ruled.

    The judgment confirms the opinion of Maciej Szpunar, advocate general to the the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), who said back in June that lending out e-books should be permitted in the 28-member-state bloc provided authors are fairly compensated in the same way as for physical books.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Why Is Corporate Linux Welcoming Microsoft?

The next largest Linux companies are even smaller. Canonical Software and SUSE are both private companies, so their income is unreported, but both have around 700 employees apiece.

In other words, what is easy to miss if you are working with Linux and open source regularly is how small their corporate presence actually is. Probably, the average computer user has never heard of Red Hat, Canonical, or SUSE.

However, when a small company welcomes a megacorporation into its professional association or signs an agreement with one, its name is reported in places where it is rarely heard. By association, it becomes a player.

For example, take the case of Canonical. Founded in 2004, it has never reported a profit, although its OpenStack division did well enough in 2015 that going public was briefly an option.

Trinity Updated, Welcoming Microsoft, Munich Backslide

Why oh why is the Linux world so quick to welcome our once mortal enemy into the fold? Matt Hartley today said it basically boils down to “the lines between proprietary and free software are blurring” – at least for those wanting them to blur. I imagine they’re still pretty bold to Richard Stallman types. Nevertheless, Hartley said for corporate Linux that line is fairly blurry and, for said corporations, Microsoft’s new leaf seems sincere. He also said that Microsoft’s desire to use Linux proves we’ve won world domination as we always said we wanted. In addition, Microsoft lends credibility to companies such as Red Hat, SUSE, or Canonical and cooperation might be the best hedge against future patent litigation.

Does Microsoft Love Linux Too Much? [Ed: Does Trump love Clinton too much? Microsoft propaganda from a Microsoft 'news' network!]

Desktop

• Open-source pioneer Munich debates report that suggests abandoning Linux for Windows 10 [Ed: Under the guise of “Microsoft loves Linux”,“Interop”, mixed infrastructure or whatever expect Microsoft to replace Linux with Windows. EEE. “Accenture did in the LSE previously. MS partner tries to drum up MS business”-iophk]

  Over a nine year period starting in 2004, the council moved about 15,000 staff from using Windows and Office to LiMux—a custom version of the Ubuntu desktop OS—and other open-source software. At the time, Munich was one of the largest organizations to reject Windows, and Microsoft took the city’s leaving so seriously that then CEO Steve Ballmer flew to Munich to meet the mayor.

  Now a report commissioned by current mayor Dieter Reiter to help determine the future of IT at the council has outlined a project to make Windows 10 and Microsoft Office available to all departments, and give staff the choice about whether to use Windows or LiMux.

  If Windows subsequently became a popular choice, the report says “it could be investigated whether it makes economic sense to continue using Linux as a client operating system”.

  [...]

  Kirschner also questioned why Accenture was chosen to co-author a report assessing the use of Microsoft software, when the consultancy runs a joint venture with Microsoft called Avanade, which helps businesses implement Microsoft technologies.

  “Such relationships are problematic and people should interpret the results considering that,” he said.

• After Switching to Linux, Munich Considering Windows and Office Once Again

• BIOS Update Will Put Linux Back on Popular Lenovo Laptops [Ed: thanks to Techrights exposing them; they repeatedly lied about and for Microsoft]

  Lenovo’s Yoga 900 and IdeaPad 710S shipped without the ability to run Linux or other operating systems, and open-source enthusiasts were less than pleased.

• After protest, Lenovo adds Linux compatibility to Yoga 900/900S

  Still not an ideal solution, but at least they’re listening.

Kernel Space

• The Linux Foundation and the National Center for Women & Information Technology Partner to Develop Inclusive Speaker Orientation Course for Events

• How Continuous Integration Can Help You Keep Pace With the Linux Kernel

  Almost all of Collabora’s customers use the Linux kernel on their products. Often they will use the exact code as delivered by the SBC vendors and we’ll work with them in other parts of their software stack. But it’s becoming increasingly common for our customers to adapt the kernel sources to the specific needs of their particular products.

• F2FS File-System Gaining Multiple Device Support

  The lead developer of the Flash-Friendly File-System, Jaegeuk Kim, has published a patch implementing multiple device support for F2FS.

• Graphics Stack

  • Intel Vulkan Driver Lands Major Performance Boost, RADV Lands GPU Hang Fixes

Applications

• 3 Great Linux Apps I Never Knew Existed

  I’ve written about a lot of desktop Linux software in the nearly 8 years this site has been running. Apps, utilities, tools and clients for almost everything, from bling-laden music players to java monstrosities via photo editors and command line Twitter clients. And yet even I have not heard of every app that’s out there.

• Temps is a Beautiful Open Source Weather App

  But when the weather is unpredictable, or to keep an eye on its plans for the coming days, we turn to weather forecast apps, websites and services.

  A slate of desktop weather apps are available for Linux. These range from basic terminal-based reports to indicator applets that unfurl all kinds of meteorological mumbo jumbo.

• Atom 1.12

  New APIs available in Chrome 52 allowed us to take on this long-requested feature. The new APIs turned out to be less important than we originally thought but we’re nonetheless happy to report Atom users in all locales now get typical keyboard behavior in Atom’s default installation.

• Atom 1.12 Hackable Text Editor Released with International Keyboard Support

  On November 9, 2016, GitHub’s Ian Olsen was proud to announce the release and immediate availability of the Atom 1.12 open-source and hackable text editor for all supported platforms.

  Atom 1.12 has been in Beta stages of development since the release of Atom 1.11 on October 11, 2016, and it now hits the stable channel with a bunch of exciting new features, among which we can mention international keyboard support Electron 1.3.6 update, which also brings Chrome 52 along for this update.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Creating stop motion animation with StopGo

  • How to share a mouse and keyboard across multiple computers

  • How To See A Preview of One Workspace While Using Another

  • How to Setup Minecraft Multiplayer Server on Ubuntu 16.04

  • Python Multidimensional Lists

  • Debugging gobject reference count problems

• Games

  • 0 A.D. Alpha 21 “Ulysses” Open-Source Game of Ancient Warfare Adds New Features

    Wildfire Games was proud to announce the release of the twenty-first Alpha update to its 0 A.D. open-source game of ancient warfare for supported Linux-based operating systems, as well as Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X platforms.

    Dubbed Ulysses, the 0 A.D. Alpha 21 release features a large number of content and improvements, starting with a bunch of new maps that you’ll most certainly want to conquer, as well as several new game modes, and continuing with the official introduction of the final civilization, namely The Seleucid Empire.

    Prominent gameplay features include the Herocide and Regicide, Wonder Victory, and Last Man Standing modes, new champions and buildings, the ability for Briton Crannog to act as both a dock and civic center, and support for Hellenic Royal Stoa and Persian Hall to train new Infantry Champions in the city and town phases.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • KDE3-Forked Desktop Updated With Partial FreeBSD Support, Compatibility For GCC 6

    For those still preferring KDE3 to what’s offered by KDE4 or KDE5, the Trinity Desktop Environment continues living on as a fork of the KDE3 code-base but with support for making use of modern components.

    This week’s Trinity Desktop R14.0.4 was made available as another maintenance update, but does come with some notable changes. This new Trinity release now has support for the CUPS 2.2 printing system, FFmpeg 3.x support, GCC 6.x compiler support, GStreamer 1.x support, and Rar 5.x support. Being able to build under the GCC6 compiler is important and support for the modern GStreamer 1.x is overdue and nice to see the other updated software support.

  • KDE 5_16.11 available for Slackware 14.2 and -current

    Back after a hiatus due to my changing employment status: KDE 5_16.11 is my November release of the combined KDE Frameworks 5.27.0, Plasma 5.8.3 and Applications 16.08.2 for Slackware, built on top of Qt 5.7.0. You can use the latest KDE 5 on Slackware 14.2 and -current.

    My intention is to keep releasing versions of the stable Plasma 5 software through the “14.2/latest” and “current/latest” URLs. I still carry a “testing” repository but that does not get updated nearly as often and is currently outdated. So please disregard that “testing” area until further notice and be sure to check your automated package management programs for the correct repository URL.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Web Engines Hackfest 2016

    From September 26th to 28th we celebrated at the Igalia HQ the 2016 edition of the Web Engines Hackfest. This year we broke all records and got participants from the three main companies behind the three biggest open source web engines, say Mozilla, Google and Apple. Or course, it was not only them, we had some other companies and ourselves. I was active part of the organization and I think we not only did not get any complain but people were comfortable and happy around.

  • Move status icons to your GNOME top bar

    The GNOME desktop environment comes installed with Fedora Workstation. GNOME hackers have continued to refine it over several years. However, not all third party software providers update their apps accordingly. Some software providers still make use of outdated status bar icons for their apps, for instance. It’s nice to be able to move status icons for these apps to the GNOME top bar. Often these apps are proprietary but popular, including:

    Google Chrome addons like Hangouts
    Google Music Manager
    DropBox
    Skype

    However, there are also free and open source apps with the same issues. These apps haven’t been updated to use newer features when installed in a GNOME environment like Fedora Workstation.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • GoboLinux 016 Enters Beta, Gets New Kernel with Support for Generic 64-bit CPUs

    On November 9, 2016, GoboLinux developer Lucas C. Villa Real happily announced the release of the Beta milestone of the upcoming GoboLinux 016 Linux-based computer operating system.

    GoboLinux 016 Beta comes exactly one month after the release of the Alpha snapshot from the new development series, and it looks like it adds a large number of improvements in many areas, including the kernel, which got updated with support for generic 64-bit (x86_64) processors.

  • Rockstor 3.8-15 Linux and Btrfs-Powered Open Source NAS Solution Now Available

    It’s been almost five months since Rockstor 3.8 open-source and free Linux-based NAS (Network-Attached Storage) operating system received an update, and project developer Suman Chakravartula informed us about the release of Rockstor 3.8-15.

    Rockstor 3.8-15 appears to be a substantial update that closes a total of 43 issues reported by users since Rockstor version 3.8-14 announced on the 20th of June 2016, and it also looks like it’s the 30th release of the GNU/Linux distribution that uses Btrfs as default file system.

  • IPFire 2.19 Linux-Based Firewall OS Patched Against “Dirty COW” Vulnerability

    On November 8, 2016, Michael Tremer from the IPFire project, an open source initiative trying to produce a hardened, professional, secure, and easy-to-use Linux-based firewall operating system, announced the release of IPFire 2.19 Core Update 107.

    IPFire 2.19 Core Update 107 is the latest, most stable and advanced version of the IPFire 2.19 series, and it looks like it finally patches that nasty “Dirty COW” Linux kernel vulnerability that was fixed by Linus Torvalds himself awhile ago in all supported Linux kernel branches.

    “This update patches the IPFire Linux kernel against a recently disclosed vulnerability called Dirty COW. This is a local privilege escalation bug which could be used by a local attacker to gain root privileges,” said Michael Tremer in the release announcement for the IPFire 2.19 Core Update 107 update.

  • Alpine Linux 3.4.6 Updates PHP, BusyBox, and cURL, Uses Linux Kernel 4.4.30 LTS

    A new stable release of the open-source, server-oriented Alpine Linux operating system has been announced on the 8th of November 2016, bringing a brand new kernel and many up-to-date components.

    Alpine Linux 3.4.6 is the sixth maintenance update in the stable 3.4 series of the GNU/Linux distribution used in numerous smaller or big server environments worldwide, and it comes only two weeks after the 3.4.5 release to bump the kernel version to the latest upstream release, namely Linux kernel 4.4.30 LTS, which was a minor update patching a bug in Linux kernel 4.4.29 LTS and older builds.

• OpenSUSE/SUSE

  • SUSE Extends Partner Software Certification for Cloud and Storage Customers

  • Fujitsu and SUSE Expand Strategic Alliance to Develop and Promote Dynamic, Flexible and Secure Open Source Solutions

  • Today’s channel rundown – 9 November 2016

    SUSE is extending its “SUSE Ready” application-certification program to include SUSE OpenStack Cloud and SUSE Enterprise Storage, the company has announced.

  • SUSE, Microsoft, Linux and containers: open source continues its enterprise march

    Open source has risen to become a truly viable option for enterprises due to the cost savings that can be achieved, the often faster production cycles, and the ability to tap into a growing community of highly skilled workers.

  • SUSE still has spirit of a start-up: kernel guru

    The head of kernel development at SUSE Linux, Vojtěch Pavlík, says it is remarkable that the company has managed to grow its numbers as much as it has and still retain the same spirit that many start-ups have, where anyone can influence the direction it takes.

    Pavlík said that the change of ownership from Novell to Attachmate in 2011 had meant that SUSE went back to its roots and operated under its own brand. This philosophy had been pursued even more vigorously by Micro Focus which bought the Attachmate group in 2014.

  • SUSE Updates Enterprise Linux as Business Grows

    Six years ago, Nils Brauckmann became CEO of SUSE after the company was split out from Novell in 2011. Speaking at his company’s annual SUSEcon event on November 8, Brauckmann reflected that SUSE has been on a growth path ever since the Novell exit.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat rolls OpenStack Platform double with help

    Red Hat is changing its OpenStack support plan to tap Agile with those craving long-term commitment following a shakeup in its engineering.

    The Linux flinger’s OpenStack Platform 10, due shortly and based on Newton, will see Red Hat introduce one and three-year lifecycle support for two new planned editions.

    One-year support will be applied to Red Hat OpenStack Platform every six months. This will feature the latest features in the OpenStack open-source cloud code and target those craving new capabilities and working in Agile shops.

  • Finance

    • Holder Move: Red Hat INC (RHT) Holder Blair William & Company Has Boosted Holding by $5.39 Million

    • Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Given PT Range Of $79-$110

    • Price Target For Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Is Set As $91.117 By Research Analysts

    • RAID Inc. Announces Storage at Scale Solutions with Red Hat Gluster Support

  • Fedora

    • Where to point newcomers to Fedora

      Like any FOSS community project, Fedora relies heavily on volunteers. It is, therefore, no surprise that we’re always looking to increase our contributor base. There is always so much to be done. Of course, many teams work in harmony to keep Fedora ticking. Each team tends to have its own “on-boarding process” for newcomers, which if you’ve been around recently, you’ll have noticed CommOps has been working on improving one by one.

    • Migration from Trac / FedoraHosted

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu Budgie Is Now an Official Ubuntu Flavor

        Say hello to the latest member of the official Ubuntu family: Ubuntu Budgie. The community spin, hitherto known as Ubuntu Budgie Remix, uses the nimble GNOME-based Budgie desktop environment as its default user experience. The Budgie desktop makes use of modern GNOME technologies but is not a GNOME fork.

      • Ubuntu Budgie is the latest official flavor of Ubuntu Linux

      • “Ubuntu Budgie” Becomes The New Official Ubuntu Flavor

      • Ubuntu Budgie now an official Ubuntu flavour

Devices/Embedded

• Orange Is the New Raspberry? Welcome to the Age of the $20 Quad-Core Computer

• Orange Pi: A 64-bit quad-core computer for $20

• Orange Pi PC 2 Quad Core Mini PC Launches For $20

• The new 64-bit Orange Pi is a quad-core computer for $20

• Orange Pi Zero

• The first-ever 64-bit Orange Pi PC with quad-core SoC, 1 GB RAM launched for $20

• Orange Pi PC 2 is a $20 single-board PC with quad-core, 64-bit processor

• Orange Pi quad-core 64-bit computer for $20

• Advantech’s first five Apollo Lake SBCs include Mini-ITX, Pico-ITX models

  Advantech announced five Linux-ready SBCs running Intel’s Apollo Lake SoCs in Mini-ITX, Pico-ITX, 3.5-inch, and EBX form factors.

  Advantech unveiled a variety of new boards and systems supporting Intel’s 14nm Atom E3900, Pentium N4200, and Celeron N3350 SoCs. The announcement, which also includes three COMs and three embedded computers that we hope to cover in the coming days, includes five single board computers, one of which is the first Apollo Lake Pico-ITX SBC we’ve seen.

• Phones

  • You Can Now Install Maru OS 0.3 on Your Mobile Device with Magic-Device-Tool

    Some nice additions have been made to Marius Quabeck’s amazing Magic-Device-Tool utility that lets smartphone and tablet users install various Linux-based mobile operating systems.

    It’s been a little over two weeks since our last report about Magic-Device-Tool, and even if Marius Quabeck is extremely busy with the preparations for the upcoming UbuCon Europe 2016 international European Ubuntu conference, which will take place between the 18th and 20th of November 2016, in Essen, Germany, he’s still updating the utility.

    And it looks like the newest Magic-Device-Tool update adds support for the recently released Maru OS 0.3 open-source operating system that lets you run Android software on your phone while providing a Debian desktop. Best of all, it looks like you’ll be able to install Maru OS 0.3 with or without Open GApps, a project that helps you install Google Apps on custom Android ROMs.

  • Tizen

    • Bat Attack Cricket game in the Tizen Store

      Some good news for the cricket fans as Nextwave Multimedia Pvt. Ltd. has added another new cricket game to the Tizen store. This seems like a popular, fun and casual mobile cricket game that we think you are going to enjoy.

  • Android

    • Google ‘strongly’ recommends against third-party fast charging technology on Android

    • Google doesn’t want proprietary fast charging in Android phones

    • Ranking the 10 Best Android Smartphones You Can Buy Right Now (Nov. 2016)

      It’s been an eventful year for Android smartphones, with a few huge surprises along the way—whether it’s Google’s first smartphone or the Galaxy Note 7’s exploding batteries.

    • Why my family is ditching Chromecast for Android TV (yes, really)

      After three years of casting videos to our TV with Chromecast, we’ve made the move back to a set-top box — for one very specific reason.

    • Latest CyanogenMod build supports Android 7.1 on the Nexus 6P, OnePlus 3, and other phones

    • CyanogenMod 14.1 (Android 7.1) will roll out soon to the Nexus 6P, OnePlus 3, LG G4, and others

      There was a time some years ago that CyanogenMod was the surest way to get the latest build of Android on your phone. It’s a little slower these days, but development continues to chug along. The CM team hopes to roll out the first nightly builds of CM14.1 later tonight, but not all devices will be supported right away.

      According to Steve Kondik, there are about a dozen devices slated for release in the first push. Here they are.

    • Android Patch For High-Severity ‘Dirty COW’ Linux Kernel Flaw Delayed For At Least Another Month [Ed: Should bugs with brands and cheesy logos be tackled first?]

    • Fix for critical Android rooting bug is a no-show in November patch release

    • Android patches fix Drammer RAM attack, but not Dirty Cow exploit

    • Dirty COW: Google releases a make-do patch for Linux vulnerability

    • Android November Security Update Doesn’t Contain Fix for ‘Dirty COW’ Linux Flaw

    • Google won’t spike Linux Dirty Cow exploit until December Android patch

    • How to use Smart storage in Android Nougat: Free up space on Android 7.1 Nougat

    • Next batch of Android Pay banks go live, Capital One included

    • Android Nougat feature spotlight: Improved bug report capture process

    • Getting started with Android Auto

    • Samsung Galaxy S7 Android Nougat launch date CONFIRMED

    • Samsung launches Android 7.0 beta program for S7 and S7 edge

    • Android 7.0 Nougat Heading To Sony Xperia X Via ‘Concept For Android’

    • Android banking Trojan used Chrome browser vulnerability to infect over 300,000 devices in 2 months

5 open source dashboard tools for visualizing data

I’ve always been fascinated by finding new and interesting ways to bring meaning to data with interactive visualization tools. While I’m definitely a geek for numbers, the human mind is simply much better at interpreting trends visually than it is just picking them out a spreadsheet. And even when your main interest in a dataset is the raw numbers themselves, a dashboard can help to bring meaning by highlighting which values matter most, and what the context of those numbers is.

Figuring out how to best visualize your data can be challenging. Maybe you started out by creating a few graphs in a spreadsheet and are trying to find a way to tie them all together. Or maybe you’re working with an existing analytics tool and want to find a way to make your data more accessible to a wider audience. Or perhaps you’ve go several real-time sources and are trying to find a way to tie them all together.

Fortunately, there are a number of great open source dashboard tools out there that make the job much easier. On one end of the spectrum are open source business intelligence tools, like BIRT or Pentaho. But for a smaller project, tools like these could be overkill, and in some cases, you might be able to find a dashboard tool that is already designed to work with the kind of data you are dealing with.

Events

• NetBSD machines at Open Source Conference 2016 Tokyo/Fall

• My First International FOSS Event: FUDCon Cambodia

  It was a privilege to be a speaker at FUDCon, Cambodia 2016. This being my first international FOSS event was ever more exciting. Right from the day I received the invitation from Sirko, I felt extremely privileged. On reaching the place I found that the event was much bigger than what I had expected it to be. There was a bar camp being organised by the university with over 5000 participants. Simply speaking it was a grand and huge occasion.

• Endace Sponsors Open Source Suricata Conference

  Endace, a world leader in high-speed network monitoring and recording technology, is a sponsor of Suricon, which kicks off on Wednesday November 9th at the Hamilton Crowne Plaza in Washington D.C. Suricon, which draws attendees from around the world (including Suricata project contributors, developers and users), is the annual conference for the community behind the popular open-source intrusion detection (IDS) application, Suricata.

• Message parsing and community building: All Things Open 2016

  Last week I visited All Things Open, one of the largest open source conferences of the US East Coast. The venue was the monumental building of the Raleigh Convention Center, just two blocks from Red Hat’s headquarters. I was presenting syslog-ng in the Operations track of the conference, but luckily I had a chance to stay for the full two days of the event.

  There were over 2400 visitors at the conference, so registration and check-in already started the day before. Those who leveraged this opportunity could not just avoid the crowd next morning, but also receive a nice t-shirt together with the conference badge:

SaaS/Back End

• Linux Foundation provides insights into the open cloud

• The OpenStack platform: What businesses need to know

• The Linux Foundation Creates Open Controller for Software-Defined Storage

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• LibreOffice 5 – Free Office Suite Keeps Getting Better

  LibreOffice is the best office software available, or at least on Linux. LibreOffice is a powerful office suite that comes with a clean interface and feature-rich tools that seeks to make your productive and creative. LibreOffice includes several applications including Writer for word processing, Calc for spreadsheets, Impress for presentations, Draw for vector graphics and flowcharts, Base for databases, and Math for formula editing.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

• Apple is doubling down on open source [Ed: Mac Asay is openwashing Apple again]

BSD

• TrueOS Succeeds PC-BSD Desktop-Friendly Unix OS

  The FreeBSD Unix operating system is one of the earliest open-source operating system projects, and it continues to be actively developed. The most recent update is the FreeBSD 11 release, which debuted Oct. 10. While FreeBSD is a robust operating system, it is not a desktop focused platform, which is where the PC-BSD operating system, based on FreeBSD used to fit in. On Sept. 1, PC-BSD was re-branded as TrueOS, providing FreeBSD users with an easy-to-use desktop as well as a new release cadence. In the past, PC-BSD releases followed FreeBSD milestones, providing users with code that had already been included in a generally available release. With TrueOS, the release model is now moving to what is known as a rolling release, with packages constantly being updated as they become available. As such, TrueOS is not based on the recently released FreeBSD 11; instead, it is based on the FreeBSD “current” branch that is the leading edge of the operating system development. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at the new TrueOS operating system and what it offers desktop users.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• Can America’s two-party system evolve to crowdocracy?

  Since I’ve studied civics and governments, I’ve never thought a two-party system of elected officials in our executive and legislative branches was the best form of democracy. It worked for a time, but now it’s time for change. In the United States, our representative democracy has become polarized and plagued with raising money for re-elections instead of focusing on the issues—issues that are largely influenced by lobbyist and corporate interests.

• Open Data

  • Who is leading Open Data in Europe? Walking the Open Data talk

    Capgemini Consulting’s Wendy Carrara, project manager for the European Data Portal, discusses the UK’s open data readiness, including ways it could learn from its neighbours and even improve on its open data policy

    Open data – that is, publicly available data that’s free for all to use – is set to have a monumental impact on societies in the next five years. Whether it’s information regarding public transportation, citypolicy or city infrastructures, open data enables public sector bodies, business and citizens alike to make more informed decisions about the things that really matter. While it may sound like a popular buzzword from years gone by, governments across the globe are now developing policies that encourage the release of open government data. However, having policy in place is a far cry from actually getting it done.

Health/Nutrition

• Nestlé Just Granted Permit to Double Water Extraction 120 Miles from Flint, MI

  Nestlé is at it again. Recently publicly condemned for pumping 36 million gallons of water from Strawberry Creek in the San Bernardino National Forest, paying a meager $524 annually for a permit that expired long ago, the multi-national company is now planning to milk the citizens of Flint, Michigan, to keep their water privatization plan afloat.

  Nestlé was just given a permit to almost double the groundwater they extract from the Michigan area amidst the recent Flint water crisis. This means the company will be taking more than 210 million gallons annually while many Flint residents are still suffering from the long-term effects of lead exposure.

  Nestlé is not even based in the U.S., but the Swiss transnational is taking water from hundreds of local water supplies. The U.S. represents its largest bottled water market. Nestlé also controls more than 70 of the world’s bottled water brands, among them Perrier, San Pellegrino, Ice Mountain, Pure Life, and Vittel.

Security

• Security advisories for Wednesday

• Microsoft patches 68 vulnerabilities, two actively exploited ones

  Microsoft has patched 68 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office, Edge, Internet Explorer and SQL Server, two of which have already been exploited by attackers and three that have been publicly disclosed.

  The patches are covered in 14 security bulletins, one dedicated to Adobe Flash Player which is upgraded through Windows Update in Windows 10 and 8.1. Six of the bulletins are rated critical and eight are rated important.

• [Older] Microsoft: Russian Hackers Exploit Windows Flaw

• Adobe Flash Player Vulnerabilities Patched by Microsoft

• Understanding and mitigating the Dirty Cow Vulnerability

• Time to act on IoT security before it is too late

  So said Intel general manager of IoT security Lorie Wigle at Intel Security’s Focus 16 conference last week.

  IoT security is really just security, she said, but the window is closing on the ability to implement IoT with maximum security and minimum risk.

  The recent attack on Dyn showed how IoT devices can be co-opted by evildoers.

• Self-Propagating Smart Light Bulb Worm

Defence/Aggression

• Pentagon Again Dramatically Under-Reports Civilians Killed in Airstrikes

  Previous reports from Centcom were a dramatic under-count, and that trend continued with this new report, which carefully omitted some of the biggest and most well-documented incidents, which apparently fell into the category of strikes that the Pentagon decided not to investigate at all.

  The most conspicuously absent figures are from mid-July, when a flurry of US airstrikes against the city of Manbij and the surrounding area killed an estimated 200 civilians. At least 56 civilians were killed in one single incident, which at the time the US claimed they “mistook for ISIS.”

  Despite the Pentagon feeling the need to come up with excuses for the Manbij strikes at the time, they not only didn’t include them in the final death toll, but didn’t even hazard an attempt to mention the well-documented incidents in the document.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• Now that Trump has won, TransCanada wants to give Keystone XL pipeline another try

  TransCanada said it hopes to persuade a new Trump administration to revive the controversial Keystone XL crude oil pipeline that President Obama rejected on Nov. 6, 2015.

  Taking advantage of President-elect Trump’s vow to launch a series of major infrastructure programs, Calgary-based TransCanada said it was “evaluating ways to convince the new administration on the benefits, the jobs and the tax revenues this project brings to the table.”

  “TransCanada remains fully committed to building Keystone XL,” the company said.

• Construction of Dakota Access Pipeline set to begin its final, most contested stretch

  The company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline is preparing to tunnel under Lake Oahe, the body of water at the heart of the protests against the crude oil pipeline. This last phase of construction would join the two already-completed sections of the pipeline, Reuters reports.

  The company, Energy Transfer Partners, announced today that drilling underneath the lake will start in two weeks despite government agencies’ requests to wait, according to The Guardian. The pipeline is expected to be completed by the end of 2016, the company says.

  Protesters, including the local Standing Rock Sioux tribe, have been fighting the the $3.7 billion pipeline since April. They argue that the pipeline, which is intended to carry crude oil from North Dakota to a refinery in Illinois, could pollute water supplies and destroy culturally important land. In September, the US Justice and Interior Departments and the Army Corps of Engineer requested that Energy Transfer Partners voluntarily stop construction underneath the lake.

• America’s Brief Role as a Climate Leader Is Probably Over

  While America was watching Donald Trump sweep the polls, climate representatives from over 200 countries saw America’s commitments to international climate goals blow away. This week, climate negotiators—along with NGOs, journalists, and other observers—are gathered in Marrakesh, Morroco to flesh out the details of the Paris agreement, newly ratified and enacted by the United Nations to address climate change. And though Trump hasn’t described his climate and energy policies in detail, he has made it clear that he will not honor promises the Obama administration made to combat the intensifying global warming catastrophe.

  The Clean Power Plan. Tax breaks for renewable energy. Cabinet appointees and a Supreme Court seat. Trump has the power to drastically change US environmental policy—and as the soon-to-be-leader of the world’s largest economy and second-largest greenhouse gas emitter, his decisions will change the math for other nations previously committed to climate regulations. Some will follow the US, and dial back (or abandon) their goals. Others will stay the course. And still others might double down on climate goals, potentially gaining global clout as a result. However the 45th president of the US proceeds, his decisions on climate will affect everyone on Earth.

Finance

• Shock as India scraps 500 and 1,000 rupee bank notes

  Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley says “honest people” have no need to worry about a decision to scrap 1,000 and 500 rupee notes.

  Mr Jaitley said the move would flush out tax evaders, adding that all old notes deposited in banks would be subjected to tax laws.

  The surprise move, announced on Tuesday evening, is part of a crackdown on corruption and illegal cash holdings.

• Robots Will Take Two-Thirds of All Jobs In the Developing World, UN Says

  It’s a common belief that low-wage workers will be hit the hardest by advanced robots in the workplace. When we take a global perspective on this, the people that will be most affected by widespread automation won’t be workers in North America, according to a new United Nations report—it’ll be people in developing countries.

  Automation stands to reduce opportunities for low-wage workers in North America, the report from the UN Conference on Trade and Development states. But the types of jobs most likely to be eliminated entirely are more prevalent in developing nations. That’s because those same jobs, in sectors like farming and manufacturing, have already mostly dried up in wealthier nations as corporations have moved their operations abroad, in search of higher profits through lower wage costs.

• Feeling the oil crunch: Saudi Arabia cancels $266bn in projects

  Saudi Arabia’s governing economic body called the Council of Economic and Development Affairs (CEDA) has cancelled $266.7 billion in projects, the Saudi Press Agency said, and announced it would be settling much-delayed private-sector payments by year end.

  The projects that have been canceled are the ones that are not expected to accelerate the kingdom’s growth or improve the living standards for its people.

  The cancellations were first considered in September, but at the time, it was noted that only $20 billion in projects would be considered to put on the chopping block.

  The size of the delayed payments—mainly due to severe hits to the kingdom’s oil revenue—remains undisclosed, but it includes delayed payments to construction firms, medical establishments, and foreign consultants. One analyst, according to Reuters, estimated that the amount still owing just to construction firms was US$21 billion.

• Engineer sold as slave in Saudi Arabia, family wants him back

  An automobile engineer, who went to Saudi Arabia for better job opportunities, has allegedly been “sold” to a Saudi national as a slave to work in his camel farm. The family members of Jayanta Biswas have approached the Ministry of External Affairs for help in bringing him back from Saudi Arabia.

  However, they are yet to receive a word from the ministry. “We appeal to the Indian government to initiate action in order to bring my brother back. We are at our wit’s end,” Gouri Biswas, elder sister of Jayanta, said.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The Huffington Post ending editor’s note that called Donald Trump ‘racist’

  The Huffington Post’s editor’s note calling Donald Trump as a “racist” and “xenophobe” is no more, a source in the newsroom tells POLITICO.

  For months, every story on the Huffington Post about Trump came with the following note at the bottom of the article.

• Vigils and protests swell across U.S. in wake of Trump victory

  Vigils and protests continued into the early hours Thursday as opponents of President-elect Donald Trump expressed dismay with the election results, underscoring the difficult task he faces in uniting a fractured country.

  Despite Hillary Clinton and President Obama urging their backers to accept Trump’s victory and support his transition into power, thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets decrying his crude comments about women and attacks on immigrants.

  Protests were reported in cities across the nation, from major metropolitan centers like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, to smaller cities, such as Richmond and Portland, Ore. Dozens of demonstrators were arrested.

  Even cities in red states, such as Atlanta, Dallas and Kansas City, Mo., saw demonstrations.

  At least two police officers in Oakland, Calif., were injured as protesters took to the streets and chanted slogans against Trump, a police spokeswoman said. A few protesters threw objects at police dressed in riot gear, set off fireworks and started small trash fires.

• Donald Trump and the Art of the Political Deal

  If you have a quick look at President-Elect Donald Trump’s approach – as a businessperson – to legal obligations, you may see something interesting about his approach to politics.

  Trump sees himself as a master of the “art of the deal”.

  And he certainly has an interesting and artful approach to contract law.

  By way of background, classical contract law is about the sanctity of the agreement: the bargain.

  All parties to a contract agree in advance what to do throughout the period of the contract regarding foreseeable risks. This means that there is a lot of “front-end” thought put into a contract: more time working things out in advance, the fewer problems later.

• The US Election

  But my main point is the European establishment’s response to the Trump presidential victory. And let us not deceive ourselves here – this was an emphatic victory. The American people wanted a candidate for change, for a push-back against the perceived Washington political elite.

  Perhaps the election could have swung in another direction towards another candidate for change – if Bernie Sanders had been the Democrat nominee. Alas, as we know from the DNC files leaked to and published by Wikileaks, his campaign was undermined by his own party in favour of Hillary Clinton, while promoting Trump as the Republican candidate that Clinton could beat.

• Canadian immigration site crashes after Trump leads in election

  As the US presidential elections move along, Canada’s informational website for immigration has unexpectedly crashed as Donald Trump currently leads in votes.

• RNC model showed Trump losing

  The RNC’s sophisticated predictive modeling had Trump losing in the campaign’s last stretch, all the way until the Friday afternoon before the election, according to an embargoed briefing the RNC delivered to reporters at the party’s Capitol Hill headquarters on Friday afternoon.

  At the time of the briefing, the RNC’s model showed Trump finishing 30 electoral votes short of the tally needed to clinch the White House, while losing by various margins to Hillary Clinton in the battleground states of Florida, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

  Trump won all those states, and the Associated Press declared him the winner at 2:31 a.m. on Wednesday — a shocking upset victory that most pollsters struggled to explain.

  [...]

  The briefing was called ostensibly to highlight the RNC’s advances in voter modeling and its heavy investment in the party’s ground game. But it also seemed at least partly intended to prove that the Republican Party gave Trump — and all of its 2016 candidates — the tools to succeed in 2016.

  The suggestion was unmistakable: if Trump loses, the blame should fall on the rookie candidate and his overmatched campaign — and not the party or its chairman Reince Priebus.

  The briefing was conducted by the RNC’s top staff, who asked reporters to agree not to divulge details — or even the existence of the briefing — before the election was called.

  The RNC’s model included 9.8 billion rows of data collected from 26 million phone calls that allowed the RNC to assign scores between 0 and 100 on all manner of issues.

• [Old] How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind

  I was born and raised in Trump country. My family are Trump people. If I hadn’t moved away and gotten this ridiculous job, I’d be voting for him. I know I would.

• How Does the Electoral College Work?

  The Electoral College is a group of people that elects the president and the vice president of the United States. (The word “college” in this case simply refers to an organized body of people engaged in a common task.)

  As voters head to the polls on Tuesday, they will not vote for the presidential candidates directly, in a popular vote. Instead, they will vote to elect specific people, known as “electors” to the college. Each state gets a certain number of electoral votes based on its population.

• Trump won – now what?

  In some sort of a reaction against the political elite, a corrupt system, and political correctness – the US has elected Donald Trump as president.

  On the one hand, it is more or less impossible to foresee the president elects politics on IT, mass surveillance, and civil rights. (OK, he has opened up for torture of suspected terrorists – but I’m not sure that he himself will remember or stand by that.)

• Why TV News Couldn’t Quit Donald Trump

  Donald Trump’s relationship with the news media during his successful run for the presidency was, put politely, complex. A better word might be codependent. Trump lashed out regularly at those whose coverage of his campaign he found unfavorable — tweeting insults, banning and unbanning news organizations, promising to strengthen libel and defamation laws. But free media coverage, particularly from TV news outlets, was also the fuel that powered the Trump machine.

  What television news outlets received in return were outsize ratings. For the four weeks of Oct. 10-Nov. 6, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC averaged 84% more primetime viewers than they did over the same period a year ago. The increased numbers — and accompanying ad dollars — rolled in as the networks handed large swathes of airtime over to live feeds of Trump campaign events. Those same networks were caught by surprise Tuesday night by Trump’s victory. Now they must decide whether the trade-off was worth it.

  “I think they have to examine the amount of unfiltered airtime they gave to the President-elect,” said Katz Television Group’s Bill Carroll. “If you were going to look at any of the cable networks for the last year, often the key phrase would be, ‘And now we go to a rally for Donald Trump.’”

• The Day After

  So: we wake up the morning after the US election to discover … what?

  Here’s my short term prediction, followed by my long term prediction. (And if you are American, I’m very, very, sorry.)

  Next couple of months: Obama exits. People will feel a strange sad fondness for the utopian era of good governance. (In time, the past 8 years will seem surrounded by a rosy glow, as of Camelot during the days of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table; they will even come to think kindly of George W. Bush.)

• Industry, party figures mix with Trump loyalists for cabinet picks

  The US government’s science efforts are split across a variety of agencies. Some are obvious, like the EPA, the Department of Energy, and the Department of the Interior, which oversees the national parks and Endangered Species Act. But others are less so. For example, the Commerce Department includes the NOAA, or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, while the National Institutes of Health falls within the Department of Health and Human Services.

  The people who run these agencies will have major say over the US’ research priorities for the next four years, and they’ll determine what role science plays in making policy decisions. So, as the Trump transition team begins the work of vetting potential candidates, the rumored names may say a lot about what we can expect.

  A lot of these rumors are preliminary enough that they essentially tell us nothing. For example, possible candidates floated for Commerce Secretary include everyone from the Republican National Committee finance chair (Lew Eisenberg), to two different business executives, to several of Trump’s former primary opponents like Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Perry. The NOAA keeps one of the US’ two temperature records used for climate monitoring (NASA keeps the other), and it tracks the ocean’s health. (It may also get all of NASA’s earth sciences research.) But it’s hard to guess whether any of these figures would pay much attention to these activities, much less make major revisions in them.

• WikiLeaks not letting up on Clinton, Podesta

  WikiLeaks on Wednesday published a 36th batch of emails from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, just hours after the presidential election concluded with Donald Trump’s victory over Clinton.

  The release, which includes 225 emails obtained from Podesta’s personal Gmail account, brings the total released by WikiLeaks to 58,660. The organization began releasing the messages in early October, and claimed at the time to have around 50,000 on hand. It isn’t clear how many more the website holds, or how long the releases will continue, but they seemed timed to hurt Clinton’s chances of becoming the next president.

Censorship/Free Speech

• China’s vast Internet prison

  CHINA’S INTERNET is a universe of contradictions. It has brought hundreds of millions of people online and has become a vast marketplace for digital commerce, yet it is also heavily policed by censors to snuff out any challenge to the ruling Communist Party. Under President Xi Jinping, the censors are working overtime to keep 721 million Internet users under control.

• China’s new cybersecurity laws could have chilling effect on Tibet

  The Chinese government is to further restrict Internet use by adopting a new law that may have serious consequences for Tibetans who try to communicate with the outside world.

  The regressive measure named the Cybersecurity Law was passed by China’s Parliament on 7 November in order to combat what Beijing said is a growing threat of hacking and terrorism, but it has drawn criticism from the international community, business groups and human rights groups.

  The law aims to strengthen the country’s already restrictive internet controls by forcing companies to censor information the government declares “prohibited” and to support state surveillance requests. This includes requiring them to monitor network activity and provide investigative assistance to security agencies.

• Far-right Polish groups protest Facebook profile blockages

  Several far-right Polish groups have protested outside Facebook’s office in Warsaw after the social networking site temporarily blocked their profiles.

  About 120 people demonstrated in the Polish capital Saturday afternoon, denouncing what they said was “censorship.”

  Facebook recently blocked the profiles of far-right nationalist groups ahead of nationalist demonstrations on Independence Day next Friday, Nov. 11. In recent years, extremist groups have clashed violently with police on the annual holiday. Facebook has since unblocked the profiles.

• When the screen goes blank

  The Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s 24-hour ban on the television channel NDTV India over its Pathankot coverage is being seen as an attempt to muzzle inconvenient live reportage. And worse, a case of selective vendetta. The Ministry has invoked the Cable Television Networks (Amendment) Rules, 2015, on the ground that the channel broadcast “crucial information” which compromised national security. These rules prohibit “live coverage of any anti-terrorist operation by security forces” and restrict media coverage to “periodic briefing” by a designated officer “till such operation concludes”. It is not clear if the channel’s impugned broadcast was ‘live coverage’ or just ‘reportage’.

• Censorship and ‘censorship’

  AT&T, the communications conglomerate which owns Direct TV, was hauled into the court of public opinion Friday, charged with censorship for pulling the plug on Fox News.

  Irate customers of the satellite television subscriber service took to the internet to voice their suspicions, tar and feathers at the ready.

Privacy/Surveillance

• A madman has been given the keys to the surveillance state

  When the USA PATRIOT Act was signed into law on October 26, 2001, it erased many of the vital checks and balances that stood between the American people and their government. As Bush supporters cheered the unprecedented power that their people in Washington now held, the civil liberties world warned them: “Your president has just fashioned a weapon that will be wielded by all who come after him.”

• Facebook built another Snapchat clone specifically for emerging markets [Ed: Facebook comes up with new ways to spy on people people, hoarding more secrets that can be sold]

  We’ve seen this play out before. Twice, in fact. In both instances — first with Poke, then with Slingshot — Facebook’s attempt to create a legitimate Snapchat competitor flopped.

• Google’s Android Phones Threaten Democracy, ACLU Technologist Warns

  The editors at Businessweek like that approach. In a Halloween post on Bloomberg View, the editors argued privacy would be better served if internet service providers gave consumers the option to pay for it rather than for the FCC to require—as it recently has—that consumers must opt in to corporate surveillance. The editors wrote, “So-called pay-for-privacy policies, in which companies charge users more in exchange for not tracking them, is one promising approach.”

  It turns out that privacy already has a price, and one can roughly find it in a straightforward way, according to Christopher Soghoian, a technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union. It runs about $400. That’s the price of the cheapest new iPhone available on the market today.

  In a recently released TED talk, Soghoian said there’s a “digital security divide” between wealthier iPhone users and generally low-income buyers of devices running on Google’s Android operating system. This threatens democracy, he argues, because today’s new civil rights movements run on mobile technology, but most of these new leaders’ followers will receive marching orders on phones that don’t protect them.

• A Trumped America makes for bad UK surveillance, warns Open Rights Group

  THE OPEN RIGHTS GROUP (ORG) has been quick to express concerns that the new American president, a known reactionary blowhard, now runs the US National Security Agency (NSA) and will therefore work closely with GCHQ.

• Trump’s torture support could mean the end of GCHQ-NSA relationship

• Obama has handed a surveillance state and war machine to a maniac

  In a little over two months, Donald Trump – after his shocking victory last night – will control a vast, unaccountable national security and military apparatus unparalleled in world history. The nightmare that civil libertarians have warned of for years has now tragically come true: instead of dismantling the surveillance state and war machine, the Obama administration and Democrats institutionalised it – and it will soon be in the hands of a maniac.

  It will go down in history as perhaps President Obama’s most catastrophic mistake.

  The Obama administration could have prosecuted torturers and war criminals in the Bush administration and sent an unmistakable message to the world: torture is illegal and unconscionable. Instead the president said they would “look forward, not backward”, basically turning a clear felony into a policy dispute. Trump has bragged that he will bring back torture – waterboarding and “much worse”. He has talked about killing the innocent family members of terrorists, openly telling the world he will commit war crimes.

• President Obama Should Shut Down the NSA’s Mass Spying Before It’s Too Late

  Modern surveillance programs would be a disaster under President Trump

  President Obama has just 71 days until Donald Trump is inaugurated as our next commander-in-chief. That means he has a matter of weeks to do one thing that could help prevent the United States from veering into fascism: declassifying and dismantling as much of the federal government’s unaccountable, secretive, mass surveillance state as he can — before Trump is the one running it.

• Scared About Trump Wielding FBI And NSA Cyber Power? You Should Be

• People in tech are freaking out about Donald Trump being given control of the NSA

  Last month, Wired published a story with the headline “Imagine if Donald Trump controlled the NSA.” Now there’s no need to imagine.

  Trump overcame all odds on Wednesday when he became the 45th president-elect of the United States. As a result, he’s about to gain control of the US intelligence agencies, including the NSA (National Security Agency).

• Could President Trump Really Turn the NSA Into a Personal Spy Machine?

  It’s the nightmare scenario that many worried about: the US elects a president who uses the country’s nearly omnipotent surveillance powers for his or her own gain. Edward Snowden has described the NSA’s spying capabilities as the “architecture of oppression,” with the fear being that it could be deployed by a malicious commander in chief.

  But what could President Trump, a man who has incited hate speech against minorities and threatened to jail his political rivals, actually do with the NSA? Could he turn the NSA into his own personal spying army?

Civil Rights/Policing

• Girls as young as 12 married off overseas, dropped off at school by 30-year-old husbands

  A Sydney woman, who attended Islamic colleges in Sydney’s west, says girls as young as 12 would be married off overseas and some were dropped off at school by husbands aged in their 30s.

  Iraqi-born Bee al-Darraj, now 24, said she tried to report multiple counts of child marriage among her friends and relatives to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) without success.

• Erdogan: Don’t heed what Europe says, listen to what Allah says

  Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday called on his supporters not to heed what “Europe says and care about what Allah says,” on the latest developments in his country which the European Union described as “extremely worrying.”

  Addressing a public gathering in the capital Ankara, Erdogan slammed the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) leaders and lawmakers, 10 of whom Turkish authorities imprisoned since Friday.

  “Those who lean on terrorists will continue paying the price,” said Erdogan referring to a speech by the now jailed HDP co-chair Figen Yuksekdag.

  The HDP co-chair had earlier praised the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) fight against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

  “We lean on the YPG, YPJ, and Rojava,” Yuksekdag had declared in a July 2015 speech to a crowd in the Suruc district of Urfa Province right across the border with the town of Kobani in Syrian Kurdistan.

  Kobani was notably saved from a complete IS takeover earlier in the year by the US-backed Kurdish forces.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Net neutrality is suddenly on the chopping block

  The release of the FCC’s net neutrality rules in 2015 heralded one of the most important progressive changes to the internet in memory. The rules, which barred data throttling and paid fast lanes, were celebrated as a central tenet of Obama-era government regulation. At the time, Obama said the “decision will protect innovation and create a level playing field for the next generation of entrepreneurs.”

  Now it seems possible that next generation won’t see net neutrality in action. Although telecom policy was hardly a central pillar of Trump’s candidacy, he has gone on record against it. “Obama’s attack on the internet is another top down power grab,” Trump tweeted in 2014. “Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target conservative media.” (It’s unclear what Trump means with comparisons to the FCC’s long-eliminated Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcasters to provide airtime for opposing views. Conservative media was also not “targeted” by net neutrality in any tangible way.)

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Copyright Troll Backs Down When Faced With Exposure

    Companies that make money from threatening alleged file-sharers are known for their bullying tactics but those who are prepared to fight back can enjoy success. A letter sent by a defense lawyer to the copyright trolls behind the movie London Has Fallen provides an excellent and highly entertaining example.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Kernel Space

• Get Trained and Certified on Kubernetes with The Linux Foundation and CNCF

  Companies in diverse industries are increasingly building applications designed to run in the cloud at a massive, distributed scale. That means they are also seeking talent with experience deploying and managing such cloud native applications using containers in microservices architectures.

• Kernel Summit + Linux Plumbers 2016

  Last week was the annual kernel summit and Linux Plumbers Conference in Santa Fe, NM. Like other conferences, this involved a bunch of scheduled talks and lots of hallway track (and plenty of Mexican food).

• Cloud Native Computing Foundation Adds New Project, Grows Membership

  With Kubernetes momentum building, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation adds a fourth project, announces new members and starts a certification program.
  The Cloud Native Computing Foundation, which got its start in July 2015 as a vendor-neutral home for the open-source Kubernetes container orchestration platform, is now a broader effort. On Nov. 8, the CNCF announced new members, certification, training and a new project at the inaugural Cloud Native Con, which is co-located with KubeCon in Seattle.

• Canonical and Others Join Cloud Native Computing Foundation

  When The Linux Foundation announced the Cloud Native Computing Foundation last year, its members already represented some of the most powerful technology and open source leaders around. Right out of the gate, members included AT&T, Box, Cisco, Cloud Foundry Foundation, CoreOS, Cycle Computing, Docker, eBay, Goldman Sachs, Google, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Joyent, Kismatic, Mesosphere, Red Hat, Switch SUPERNAP, Twitter, Univa, VMware and Weaveworks.

• Thunderbolt Networking Support For Linux Revised Once More

  Back during the summer we last wrote about Thunderbolt networking support for Linux being worked on. Back then the patches were up to its v3 revision while coming out today is the ninth version of these patches, but at least the end might finally be in sight.

• Graphics Stack

  • HiZ Improvement For Intel Mesa Driver Has Possible Small Performance Gains

    Mesa Git continues to be an exciting place to live for open-source GPU driver fans.

    Landing Tuesday in Mesa Git was a HiZ auxiliary buffer support for Skylake “Gen 9″ hardware and that was followed by support for sampling with HiZ, again something for Skylake and newer.

    With this HiZ-based sampling, performance improvements can be expected in some cases. The Git commit notes of gains between 0.4~2.2% for some OpenGL tests. While their Vulkan driver has taken much focus lately along with completing OpenGL 4.5 compliance, great to see the Intel Mesa driver continuing to receive performance optimizations.

• Benchmarks

  • Intel Kaby Lake Linux Testing With MSI’s Cubi 2 Mini PC

Applications

• Xen 4.6.4 and 4.7.1 Maintenance Releases Now Available with Many Improvements

  Xen Project, through Jan Beulich, announced the availability of new maintenance updates for the 4.6 and 4.7 stable series of the powerful and open source Xen hypervisor for x86 and ARM architectures.

• New Tor “The Onion Router” Anonymity Network Stable Branch Getting Closer

  Nick Mathewson from the Tor Project announced on the 8th of November 2016, the release of yet another Alpha development snapshot towards the major Tor 0.2.9 “The Onion Router” release.

• Proprietary

  • Minor Vivaldi 1.4 Browser Update Makes Adobe Pepper Flash Work Better on Linux

    Today, November 8, 2016, Vivaldi’s Ruarí Ødegaard was proud to inform the community about the immediate availability of a minor update to the Vivaldi 1.4 web browser for Linux-based operating systems.

    In other words, the Vivaldi 1.4.589.41 stable update is now available, and it appears to have been released only for GNU/Linux platforms, including Ubuntu/Debian 64- and 32-bit distributions, as well as RPM-based OSes. The update adds a patch to make Adobe Flash work for more users with different configurations by changing the locations the browser searches for the Adobe Pepper Flash (PPAPI) plugin.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Installing Debian Stretch on an Omnia Turris

  • On SPF

  • Disk encryption with Calamares, the Linux installer

  • How to deploy a fault tolerant cluster with continuous or high availability

  • Python List Methods

  • Top 30 SSH shenanigans

  • Setup Headless Virtualization Server Using KVM In Ubuntu

  • Spinning and Text Processing

  • Open Source Cloud Tools and How to Demystify Them

  • Scripting a DNA sequence viewer

  • An introduction to Linux log files

  • Getting Started With Kubernetes Is Easy With Minikube

• Games

  • ‘Planet Explorers’, the open world RPG sandbox finally released in full, with Linux support

    The game gained $137,765 from the original Kickstarter, so it wasn’t exactly short on money. Still, in games development that’s likely still only a small amount of what it cost to actually build the entire thing from start to finish.

  • Space Jammers, the roguelike shooter that works well on Linux needs funding on Kickstarter, possible source release

    I rarely write about Kickstarters, as most of the time I am too wary about them due to past issues with developers not delivering on their promises. Space Jammers, however, is different. Their Linux demo already works very nicely, but more importantly, it’s already quite a good game. I think it’s well worth supporting.

  • Black Mesa, the fan-made remake of Half-Life is rather unstable on Linux right now

    Note: Black Mesa isn’t yet finished and it’s in Early Access, as it’s missing the final chapter “Xen” of the Half-Life experience. People are quite torn on that part of the game as it is, so you may still enjoy it without it.

    When you first dive in, you will be struck by how well they have managed to capture the feel of the original Half-Life, a lot of it is the same, but it looks so much better.

  • Planetary Annihilation: TITANS lives again, about to get a lot more multi-threading

  • Unity 5.6 will be the first version of Unity to have SDL for Linux [Ed: but also Mono]

  • Motorsport Manager released, sort of, currently downloads nothing on Linux

    I am hoping they sort this out quickly, since it sounds like a really great simulation game to have on Linux. I was a massive F1 fan when I was younger, playing all sorts of games based around it on different platforms.

  • It’s looking like Linux may hit 3,000 games on Steam by the end of 2016

    It was only in September that Linux hit about 2,500 games on Steam and around a month later we’ve amassed another 200+, so if this keeps up it looks like we will break another milestone.

    We currently have, according to Steam, 2,715 games on Linux, but we do need to make allowances for Steam’s rubbish filtering system which ends up showing a few that have yet to release. Still, this is amazing progress to amass nearly 3,000 games that support Linux.

  • 0 A.D. Alpha 21 Ulysses released, check out this beautiful open source strategy game

    0 A.D. [Official Site] Alpha 21 Ulysses is the latest and greatest open source real time strategy game, and probably one of the most high quality open source games around.

  • Aspyr Media seem positive about Civilization VI for Linux according to their recent tweet

    A simple reply to this tweet is probably the most positive indication that we have seen yet for Civilization VI [Steam] actually releasing on Linux.

    While we know that Aspyr Media are behind the Linux port of Civilization VI, their previous communication in public was a little concerning in regards to it actually seeing a release. It seemed they were having issues with it, when they said about getting the game to “perform to our standards”.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Trinity Desktop Environment 14.0.4 Adds CUPS 2.2, RAR 5, and GCC 6 Support

    The Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) for Unix-like operating systems was updated recently to version 14.0.4, the fourth maintenance release in the stable 14.x series of the project, which still tries to keep the spirit of the old-school KDE 3.5 desktop alive.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • GTK+ 3.22.3 Brings GL Improvements on Windows, Adds HiDPI Support as Well

    We told you yesterday that GNOME 3.22 users are in for a treat this week as the project’s developers are hard at work to unleash the second and last stable update to the series, GNOME 3.22.2, due for release on November 9, 2016.

  • Cinnamon 3.2 Desktop Gets Its First Point Release, Adds Keyboard Applet Fixes

    Yesterday, we reported the release of the Cinnamon 3.2 desktop environment for the upcoming Linux Mint 18.1 “Serena” GNU/Linux distribution, and it looks like the first point release is already available.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • Q4OS 1.8 “Orion” GNU/Linux Distro Ships with Brand New Trinity 14.0.4 Desktop

    Today, November 9, 2016, the developers of the Q4OS GNU/Linux distribution were pleased to inform Softpedia about the release and immediate availability of the Q4OS 1.8 “Orion” release.

  • Alpine Linux 3.4.6 released

    The Alpine Linux project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 3.4.6 of its Alpine Linux operating system.

    This is a bugfix release of the v3.4 musl based branch, based on linux-4.4.30 kernels and it contains important security fixes for the kernel.

  • IPFire 2.19 – Core Update 107 released

    This is the official release announcement for IPFire 2.19 – Core Update 107. It mainly comes with a fix for the Dirty COW vulnerability in the Linux kernel and fixes various issues with the latest DNS proxy update in Core Update version 106.

  • Announcing Rockstor 3.8.15

    I am thrilled to announce the release of Rockstor 3.8.15. It’s been a long release cycle and It’s our 30th release, woohoo! We have entered a new phase of Rockstor community growth with steady patches from dedicated contributors. A total of 43 issues were closed making this a substantial update. Several enhancements were made to the UI, prominently to the dashboard. I’d like to also highlight the big(design and implementation) refactoring of our backend disk management. Last but not least, numerous improvements and bugfixes were committed throughout the stack. Please see the list below for detailed log of all patches that went in.

• OpenSUSE/SUSE

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Out for Raspberry Pi 3, Supports Bluetooth & Wi-Fi

    The release of SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 2 is not the only thing SUSE Linux fans should get excited about today, as a community member published a very informative article about SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for Raspberry Pi.

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP2 Supports ARMv8-A and Intel Omni-Path Architectures

• Red Hat Family

  • Now Available: Red Hat Certificate System 9.1 & Red Hat Directory Server 10.1

    Today we are pleased to announce the release of Red Hat Certificate System 9.1 and Red Hat Directory Server 10.1, both supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3.

    Red Hat Certificate System, based on the open source PKI capabilities of the Dogtag Certificate System, is designed to provide Certificate Life Cycle Management (i.e. to issue, renew, suspend, revoke, archive/recover, and manage the single and dual-key X.509v3 certificates needed to handle strong authentication, single sign-on, and secure communications).

  • Red Hat Named a Leader in Gartner’s 2016 Magic Quadrant for Full Life Cycle API Management

  • Is Red Hat’s channel strategy paying off in Australia?

    Red Hat’s Australian operation is aiming to see a 50/50 split between direct and indirect revenues by the end of the company’s current financial year.

    If the company’s local business does, indeed, reach this equilibrium between channel and non-channel sales, it will have been helped along by the local team’s ongoing efforts to invest time and money into the Australian IT channel.

    “The channel business has been growing consistently now,” Red Hat Australia’s sales and channel director, Colin Garro, told ARN. “From a go-to-market perspective, we’ve deliberately set out to grow our channel business.”

    When Garro began working at Red Hat Australia in 2012, a large part of the open source software vendor’s local revenue was from direct sales, rather than channel-based activities.

  • Fedora

    • Your Last Chance To Test Out Fedora 25

      Fedora 25 is currently scheduled for release next week on 15 November. The Go/No-Go meeting for it is tomorrow so there’s still the chance it could be delayed but a (hopefully) final release candidate is now available for last minute testing.

    • Factory 2.0, Sprint 3 Report

      This was our first full sprint with the new team! Welcome, Jan Kaluza, Courtney Pacheco, Vera Karas, and Stanislav Ochotnicky. We’re glad to have Filip Valder join us in sprint 4 starting today.

      Our top priority in sprint 3 was making sure that the base runtime team isn’t blocked. They have a big job ahead of themselves to curate and build a collection of base modules at the core of the distro, and they need to use our prototype build tooling to do it. Anytime they’re blocked, the Factory 2.0 team is trying to chase down the solution — fixing tracebacks and developing new features. Cheers to Matt Prahl and Jan Kaluza for staying on top of this.

      Meanwhile, we’re continuing apace with the Dependency Chain and Deserialization epics that we originally scheduled for work this quarter. Mike Bonnet has been chasing down difficult technical pre-requisites for the later (message bus enablement), Matt Prahl demoed his dependency chain web UI, and Courtney Pacheco is giving shape to our metrics project (so we can have some confidence that future pipeline changes we make actually improve the state of affairs).

• Debian Family

  • A few impressions of DebConf 16 in Cape Town

    Firstly, thanks to everyone who came out and added their own uniqueness and expertise to the pool. The feedback received so far has been very positive and I feel that the few problems we did experience was dealt with very efficiently. Having a DebConf in your hometown is a great experience, consider a bid for hosting a DebConf in your city!

  • Derivatives

    • Univention Corporate Server 4.1-4 Simplifies the Migration to Dockerize Apps

      Softpedia was informed today, November 8, 2016, by Univention’s Maren Abatielos about the release and general availability of the fourth point release of Univention Corporate Server (UCS) 4.1.

      Shipping with the latest security updates from the Debian Stable (Jessie) software repositories, Univention Corporate Server (UCS) 4.1-4 adds a bunch of interesting improvements and new features to the Linux-based, server-oriented operating system from Univention. Among these, we can mention the implementation of Samba 4.5.1 for better Active Directory compatibility and DRS replication.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Embedded PC runs Ubuntu on Tegra TX1

        Connect Tech’s “Rudi” mini-PC runs Ubuntu on an Nvidia Jetson TX1 COM with 4GB LPDDR4, eMMC and mSATA, 5x USB, 2x GbE, mini-PCIe, and -20 to 80°C support.

        Like many recent embedded computers. Connect Tech’s 135 x 105 x 50mm Rudi Embedded System fudges the line between mini-PC and a full-fledged industrial PC. Aimed at “deployable computer vision and deep learning applications,” the system ships with a Linux For Tegra R24.2 distribution based on 64-bit Ubuntu 16.04 pre-installed on 16GB of eMMC. Like Connect Tech’s Rosie embedded computer, the Rudi runs Nvidia’s quad-core, 64-bit Tegra TX1 SoC on Nvidia’s Jetson TX1 computer-on-module.

      • Ubuntu Budgie Is Now an Official Ubuntu Flavor

        Just a few moments ago, Softpedia was informed by budgie-remix developers David Mohammed and Udara Madubhashana that their GNU/Linux distribution built around the Budgie desktop environment is now an official Ubuntu flavor.

      • Ubuntu Budgie Becomes An Official Flavor

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Lubuntu 16.10 – enjoyable motley lightness

          Lubuntu is one flavour of the Ubuntu operating system that Linux notes from DarkDuck ignored for quite some time. The blog exists for 6 years now, but the first review of Lubuntu 16.04 was only written in September 2016, 2 months ago.

          Lubuntu 16.10 was released since then, so let’s have a look on this new release now. I have also written a review of Kubuntu 16.10 recently, so I will compare Lubuntu and Kubuntu here and there as we go.

Devices/Embedded

• Linux-driven COM/carrier offers mid-range Zynq

  MYIR has launched a COM that runs Linux on a Zynq-7015 ARM/FPGA SoC, and mounts on a carrier with USB, GbE, HDMI, PMOD, and FMC I/O.

  MYIR’s MYC-C7Z015 computer-on-module and MYD-C7Z015 development board are variations on the MYC-C7Z010/20 COM with accompanying MYD-C7Z010/20 baseboard. Instead of offering a Xilinx Zynq-7010 or -7020 SoC, the MYC-C7Z015 provides the Zynq-7015, which has the same dual 667MHz to 866MHz Cortex-A9 subsystem, but offers an Artik 7 FPGA variant that falls in between the -7010 and -7020. The Zynq-7015 features 74k logic cells, 160 DSP slices, 380KB block RAM, and four 6.25Gbps transceivers.

• First 3.5-inch Apollo Lake single board computers appear

  Aaeon and Avalue each unveiled 3.5-inch SBCs using Intel’s Apollo Lake processors, providing triple display support, wide-range power, and up to 8GB of RAM.

  Aaeon’s GENE-APL5 and Avalue’s ECM-APL are the first 3.5-inch (146 x 101mm) form factor single board computers we’ve seen that support Intel’s 14nm-fabricated “Apollo Lake” Atom E3900 SoCs. The Avalue model is the only one with optional industrial temperature support.

• Orange Pi PC 2 Is A Cheap Quad Core Linux Computer For $20 That Runs Ubuntu

  A new addition to the community of single board computers is the Orange Pi PC 2. It is a Linux computer which packs a 64-bit quad-core CPU. It can run various Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Debian, Raspbian, and Android. The tiny computer is available for $20.

• Phones

  • Tizen

    • Samsung hopeful of Tizen to make big with Home Appliances

      Recently we reported that Samsung are developing a version of Tizen for the IoT. With, Android and iOS having the lion’s share on the smartphone business, Tizen OS for smartphones is certainly not going to earn Samsung huge numbers in terms of profit to run the Global Brand. They hence recently announced that they find Tizen’s potential to go big with IoT and more specifically with Home Appliances.

  • Android

    • Monetizing Freemium Apps on Google Play

      In this video from a session at Droidcon NYC 2015, Yash Prabhu, a senior software engineer and Android team Lead at DramaFever, explains the ins and outs for developers to monetize their apps using the freemium model through Google Play.

    • Google Patches 83 Android Flaws in November Update

      Vulnerabilities related to Qualcomm and the Android mediaserver continue to account for many flaws. Google fixed dozens of vulnerabilities in its November update.
      Google on Nov. 7 released its November Android patches, which provide 83 fixes for vulnerabilities across three patch levels.

      Across the patch levels—a complete patch level identified as 2016-11-05, a partial patch level identified as 2016-11-01 and the 2016-11-06 supplementary patch level—Google is patching a total of 13 vulnerabilities rated as having critical impact. Among the critical flaws being patched is CVE-2016-5195, also known as the so-called “Dirty COW” vulnerability in Linux.

    • Android’s latest update doesn’t patch major security flaw

    • Android Patch For High-Severity ‘Dirty COW’ Linux Kernel Flaw Delayed For At Least Another Month

    • Google is making Android Auto available in any car

    • Snapchat 9.43 adds augmented-reality World Lenses, sending snaps to other users, and more [APK Download]

    • Google stops AdSense attack that forced banking trojan on Android phones

    • Best affordable Android smartphones you can buy [November 2016]

      There are new smartphones hitting the market constantly, but which is the best to pick up when you’re trying to save a buck or two? We’ve seen some great launches this summer and we’re only expecting more over the coming months, but for now, let’s go over the best affordable Android smartphones you can go pick up today…

      Read more

    • Latest AndEX Update Brings Linux Kernel 4.4.27 LTS to Android 7.0 Nougat

      Today, November 8, 2016, GNU/Linux developer Arne Exton announced the release of a new version of his commercial AndEX Android-x86-based operating system for personal computers.

    • Google Pixel review: Android at its best

      For years, Google chose to partner with manufacturers to create handsets showing off the purest form of Android, with the latest innovations highlighted by the best hardware. This was what the Nexus range was all about. But this lead to at least a few compromises.

      With the arrival of Daydream VR, and with so many hardware makers falling on financial hard times, Google couldn’t afford any compromises. The Pixel is the company’s first home-made smartphone. It offers the latest version of Android, with a few Pixel-specific features, and support for the as-yet-unreleased VR system.

Top 3 questions job seekers ask in open source

As a recruiter working in the open source world, I love that I interact every day with some of the smartest people around. I get to hear about the cool projects they’re working on and what they think about the industry, and when they are ready for a new challenge. I get to connect them to companies that are quietly changing the world.

But one thing I enjoy most about working with them is their curiosity: they ask questions, and in my conversations, I hear a lot of inquiries about the job search and application process. That makes sense; it’s often opaque, never the same for any two people, and we are bombarded daily with new advice on every platform. So I asked my colleague at Greythorn, Mary Kypreos, to help me determine which questions we get the most often. With her assistance, I’ve answered the three most common questions we get.

Open source FIWARE platform creates new IoT business opportunities

The European-funded IoT open source platform FIWARE has matured significantly in the past two years according to developers, and is now being used in industrial production cases, pilot smart city, and utilities projects. Two projects using the FIWARE platform include a city water quality pilot and an early warning system to identify and prevent pest risks to agricultural crops.

To further support industry uptake, FIWARE has recently formalized a foundation to lead community efforts. The Foundation is expected to see a new wave of community participation in the open source platform, which already has significant links with other open source projects. For example, FIWARE’s testbed environment—FIWARE Labs—uses a multi-region cloud environment built on OpenStack.

Open source needs to deliver diversity

Tech’s gender gap is no secret. It has been widely discussed for a decade, yet little progress has been made. In the five years between 2010 and 2015, the percentage of women in tech jobs in the UK increased from 17% to just 18%. This figure is underwhelming to say the least, but there is one critical area of technology where the gender gap is even wider.

Analysis conducted last year by the co-founder of freelance software developer network Toptal found that just 5.4% of GitHub users with over 10 contributions from their sample were female. This indicates that open source software development teams are even less diverse than typical corporate software development teams.

Google unveils ‘Code-in 2016′ open source mentor organizations

Open source software and ideology is critical to the future of technology. As more and more people demand transparency in the programs and applications they use, companies will have to take notice.

To keep the open source movement going, it must be handed down to incoming developers. In other words, the children are our future, and education is key. Google’s “Code-In” contest is a great program that invites teen students to directly contribute to quality open source projects. Now, the search giant finally announces the projects that will be participating as “mentors”.

4 open source initiatives that need your help

What makes open source projects special isn’t the software or even the licensing, it’s the pooling of talents and the spirit of free giving around these projects.

But not all open source initiatives become the object of corporate sponsorship or widespread devotion. And some that get such support don’t always keep it.

Another Old Intel Motherboard Gets Picked Up By Coreboot

If you still are running Intel i945 era hardware, you may be happy to know another motherboard from this time is now supported by mainline Coreboot.

The newest motherboard supported by Coreboot is the Gigabyte GA-945GCM-S2L. This micro-ATX i945 motherboard from the Core 2 Extreme / Core 2 Duo days has DDR2-667 support, Intel GMA 950 graphics, SATA 2.0, Gigabit LAN, and Intel HD Audio.

Events

• Learn The Future of Node.js From Industry and Community Experts at Node.js Interactive

Healthcare

• Two Regenstrief innovators win AMIA’s Lindberg Award for open source EHR work in developing countries

  Burke Mamlin, MD, and Paul Biondich, MD, of the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Medicine, will receive the 2016 Donald A.B. Lindberg Award for Innovation in Informatics from the American Medical Informatics Association for their work on open source software.

  AMIA’s Lindberg award recognizes individuals for technological, research, or educational contribution that advances biomedical informatics.

  Mamlin, an internist, and Biondich, a pediatrician, are pioneers in the development, testing, and use of open source software to support the delivery of healthcare in developing countries.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• Why keep Open States going?

  After the closure of Sunlight Labs, the Open States project is heading in a new direction.

• Open Data

  • “500,000 data scientists needed in European open research data”

    There is an alarming shortage of data experts both globally and in the European Union. This is partly based on an archaic reward and funding system for science and innovation, sustaining the article culture and preventing effective data publishing and re-use. A lack of core intermediary expertise has created a chasm between e-infrastructure providers and scientific domain specialists.

Programming/Development

• GStreamer and Synchronisation Made Easy

  A lesser known, but particularly powerful feature of GStreamer is our ability to play media synchronised across devices with fairly good accuracy.

  The way things stand right now, though, achieving this requires some amount of fiddling and a reasonably thorough knowledge of how GStreamer’s synchronisation mechanisms work. While we have had some excellent talks about these at previous GStreamer conferences, getting things to work is still a fair amount of effort for someone not well-versed with GStreamer.

BSA settles Australian software piracy cases

Software industry advocacy group, the BSA|The Software Alliance, has settled three court cases in Australia, awarded a total of $58,000 in damages following the unlicensed use of software programmes owned by its members – Adobe, Autodesk and Microsoft – in breach of copyright law.

The first case, Meldan (Vic) Pty Ltd, trading as Granvue Homes, a project home builder, paid $35,000 in damages for the use of unlicensed software, following an audit which revealed use of unlicensed product keys for Adobe Acrobat, Autodesk, AutoCAD and and Microsoft Office software.

BSA says the Victorian settlement is the first for the state in 2016, following a record number of settlements for Victoria in 2014 and 2015 above any other state, “indicating an increase in Victorian business accountability in 2016 for software compliance”.

In another case, Sosan Pty Ltd, an architectural model maker in Brisbane, was found to be using Autodesk Building Design Suite in excess of their license entitlements. In addition to paying damages of $18,000, Sosan has purchased the necessary licenses to legalise ongoing software deployments.

Croydon tram overturns: ‘Some loss of life’ and two trapped

There has been “some loss of life” and dozens of people have been injured after a tram overturned in south London, police have said.

British Transport Police said it was “too early to confirm numbers” following the derailment in Croydon just after 06:00 GMT.

A number of people were freed but it is believed two people remain trapped.

The cause of the crash is unclear, with investigators from the Rail Accident Investigation Branch on the way.

Science

• Gus Grissom taught NASA a hard lesson: “You can hurt yourself in the ocean”

  Gus Grissom had just entered the history books. A mere 10 weeks after Alan Shepard made America’s first human flight into space, Grissom followed with the second one, a 15-minute suborbital hop that took him to an altitude of 189km above the blue planet. After the small Mercury capsule’s parachutes deployed, Grissom splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, seemingly bringing a flawless mission to a close.

  Only it wasn’t flawless, nor was it closed. At that moment, Gus Grissom almost drowned.

Security

• Security, Cyber, and Elections (part 1)

  The US election cycle has been quite heavily dominated by cyber security issues. A number of cyber security experts have even stepped forward to offer their solutions to how to keep safe. Everyone has problems with their proposals, that fundamentally they all stem from not understanding the actual threat.

  Achieving security is possible using counterintelligence principles, but it requires knowing what you want to protect, who you want to protect it from, and then implementing that plan. I expect this post to be deeply unpopular with everyone, but I’ll explain my position anyway.

• DDoS attack halts heating in Finland amidst winter

  A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack halted heating distribution at least in two properties in the city of Lappeenranta, located in eastern finland. In both of the events the attacks disabled the computers that were controlling heating in the buildings.

  Both of the buildings where managed by Valtia. The company who is in charge of managing the buildings overall operation and maintenance. According to Valtia CEO, Simo Rounela, in both cases the systems that controlled the central heating and warm water circulation were temporarily disabled.

  In the city of Lappeenranta, there were at least two buildings whose systems were knocked down by the network attack. In a DDoS attack the network is overloaded by traffic from multiple locations with the aim of causing the system to fail.

• Communications watchdog: Criminals behind home automation system cyber attack

  The Finnish communications regulator Ficora said it suspects criminal entities of coordinating a web attack that disrupted home automation systems in the southeastern city of Lappeenranta. However the agency said that the real target of the attack may not have been in Finland.

  “According to our information, the systems in question are not the intended targets in this case, but they were compromised in a cyber attack that focused on European entities. In other words, it seems that there was some criminal group behind it,” said Jarkko Saarimäki, head of Ficora’s cyber security centre.

  Officials said that the event bore the hallmark of a denial of service (DoS) strike, which floods a service which so much web traffic that it is unable to provide services normally.

• Researchers hack Philips Hue smart bulbs from the sky

  Security researchers in Canada and Israel have discovered a way to take over the Internet of Things (IoT) from the sky.

  Okay, that’s a little dramatic, but the researchers were able to take control of some Philips Hue lights using a drone. Based on an exploit for the ZigBee Light Link Touchlink system, white hat hackers were able to remotely control the Hue lights via drone and cause them to blink S-O-S in Morse code.

• IoTSeeker Scanner Finds Smart Devices With Dumb Credentials

  The IoTSeeker tool from Rapid7 is designed to comb through users’ networks and identify common IoT devices with default usernames and passwords enabled. Those are the devices upon which botnets such as Mirai feed, especially those with telnet exposed on default ports. Mirai searches for devices with telnet enabled and using default credentials and then compromises them and begins scanning again.

• DDoS Attack and Resiliency Measures

  Recently DDoS has come into the news because of recent attack (by IoT devices) on Twitter. Although DDoS is not a new kind of attack, because of the advent of IoT, the “smart” devices are new victims for web-based attacks, and as per the predictions it is more likely to grow. What makes this situation even more perilous is the rapid growth of IoT devices out there on the market. As per the estimate, there would be around 50 billion connected devices by the year 2020.

  The DDoS attacks cannot be mitigated completely but by taking some measures the effect can be minimized. This is the theme of this article. Let’s first understand…

• Donald Trump’s campaign website ‘hacked’ by little poop emoji

  For a few hours the banner of Donald Trump’s website contained a familar face. The poop emoji.

  Perhaps foreshadowing the state in which we’re in, the little character appeared in the banner of donaldjtrump.com on Tuesday afternoon.

  This was a bug rather than a hack, and it allowed users to write in whatever they wished by adding it into the URL.

Defence/Aggression

• 1 dead, multiple people shot near Azusa polling station as heavily armed man opens fire

  One person was killed and at least three others were wounded Tuesday in an active shooting near a polling place in Azusa.

  Authorities said police were dealing with at least one female suspect who was heavily armed. But several witnesses interviewed by The Times said the shooter was a man.

  “This is an active situation,” said Azusa Police Chief Steve Hunt, adding it’s too early to determine whether the violence was in any way related to the election.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• WikiLeaks published 300 more emails from Clinton’s campaign chief

  Although the US presidential election is over, WikiLeaks is continuing to publish the emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta, who remains a major player in Washington. This is the 36th batch of emails, released in a constant drip over the past month.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• Environmentalists Target Bankers Behind Pipeline

  In early August, just as protesters from across the country descended on North Dakota to rally against an oil pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, some of the world’s biggest banks signed off on a $2.5 billion loan to help complete the sprawling project.

  Now, those banks — which include Citigroup and Wells Fargo of the United States, TD Bank of Canada and Mizuho of Japan — have come under fire for their role in bankrolling the pipeline. In an open letter on Monday, 26 environmental groups urged those banks to halt further loan payments to the project, which the Sioux say threatens their sacred lands and water supply.

  In campaigning to reduce the world’s carbon emissions, environmentalists have increasingly focused on the financiers behind the fossil fuel industry — highlighting their role in financing coal, oil and gas projects. It is an expansion of traditional protest efforts, and it has met with some early success.

  Environmental groups have also criticized the Dakota Access pipeline as outdated infrastructure with no place in a world racing to stave off the worst effects of climate change. The 1,172-mile pipeline is expected to carry nearly half a million barrels of crude oil daily out of the Bakken fields of North Dakota, according to the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners.

• Ecological Impact Assessments Aren’t Protecting Bats from Wind Farms

  Nothing is free in nature and this includes wind power. A particular concern with wind turbines is their effects on bats, which may often be found darting among treetops en masse while on the hunt for bugs to eat. When those treetops turn out to be spinning turbine blades, bad things happen: a bat might be hit directly, or it might wind up with bleeding lungs courtesy of abrupt changes in air pressure around turbines. Dozens of bats may be killed in a single night, only to be found the next morning littered underneath 30-foot turbine blades spinning at up to 80 miles per hour.

  The global standard for predicting such impacts from wind farms—and impacts from energy projects, generally—is the ecological impact assessment (EIA). In North America and Europe, bats are protected species (by the Endangered Species Act and EUROBATS, respectively), which means that such assessments are taken very seriously and are prepared at often great cost to wind farm developers. And, given this cost, we would hope that wind farm EIAs are actually doing something to protect bat populations. Alas, this does not seem to be the case, according to a study published Monday in Current Biology from the University of Exeter in the UK. Simply, the perception of risk revealed in the EIA process was not enough to predict actual bat casualties following construction of wind turbines. Bats are just too random.

• Iran is back: Total signs $2 billion gas deal

  Foreign oil firms are returning to Iran for the first time since sanctions were eased early this year.

  France’s Total signed an agreement in principle on Tuesday to help Iran develop its giant South Pars gas field, together with Chinese state oil company CNPC.

  “Following Total’s successful development of phases 2 and 3 of South Pars in the 2000s, the group is back to Iran to develop and produce another phase of this giant gas field,” said Total CEO Patrick Pouyanné in a statement.

  Total (TOT) will operate the South Pars project with a stake of 50.1%. CNPC will own 30% and Iran’s Petropars 19.9%.

  The first phase will consist of 30 wells and two platforms connected to existing onshore treatment facilities by two pipelines at a cost of about $2 billion.

Finance

• Taxpayers are still bailing out Wall Street, eight years later

  Eight-years after taxpayers rescued the U.S. financial system, some of the country’s largest banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, continue to receive billions in bailout money, according to government data.

  Wells Fargo is eligible for up to $1.5 billion in bailout funds over the next seven years. JPMorgan and Bank of America could receive $1.1 billion and $964 million respectively.

  The continuous flow of funds is a remnant of the $700 billion bailout effort, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP, put in place during the financial crisis. Some of that money, about $28 billion, was carved out to help distressed homeowners by paying banks to lower their interest rates and monthly payments.

  The program, the Home Affordable Modification Program, has undergone several revamps over the last few years and fallen short of helping the 3 million to 4 million homeowners the Obama administration initially hoped. But it continues to operate — HAMP will accept its last homeowner application at the end of this year — and big banks continue to be paid based on how many homeowners they help.

• TPP ratification down to the wire in waning Obama White House

  No matter who prevails in Tuesday’s presidential election, the U.S. ambassador to Canada says President Barack Obama is determined to win an uphill fight to get congressional approval of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership deal during the lame-duck session.

  Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican challenger Donald Trump are opposed to the 12-country global trade deal, which includes Canada but excludes countries such as China and India. Both candidates have criticized the TPP for not being strong enough to provide more jobs to the U.S. economy.

  The intensely debated trade pact goes to a congressional vote at the end of the 2016 session. Congress has granted Mr. Obama “fast-track” authority over the deal, which allows lawmakers only to either reject or ratify it.

• Obama will push for TPP trade deal in last days of term: ambassador

  President Barack Obama will use every remaining day of his term to win congressional approval for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, says the U.S. ambassador to Canada.

  Envoy Bruce Heyman says that remains the position of the current administration as Americans head to the polls today to select a new president from two protectionist candidates.

  Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump both oppose the 12-country Pacific Rim trade deal that would encompass 40 per cent of the world’s economy.

  Heyman had no comment on the two candidates’ positions on trade, but he made it clear in an interview that Obama will use the remaining time he has left in office to push the pact through Congress.

  There has been much speculation that Obama would use the period between the Nov. 8 election and the Jan. 20 inauguration of his successor to finalize the deal.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Hillary concedes in purple, color of pain, suffering, Last Rites, royalty

  Defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton conceded Wednesday while dressed in purple, the liturgical color of pain, suffering, royalty and even death.

  Her black and purple suit matched the tie wore by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and others on the New York hotel stage including running mate Sen. Tim Kaine, his wife Anne Holton, and daughter Chelsea.

  During her much applauded address, Clinton talked about the pain she felt, quoted scripture, and encouraged her younger supporters to carry on her fight.

• WikiLeaks not letting up on Clinton, Podesta

  WikiLeaks on Wednesday published a 36th batch of emails from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, just hours after the presidential election concluded with Donald Trump’s victory over Clinton.

  The release, which includes 225 emails obtained from Podesta’s personal Gmail account, brings the total released by WikiLeaks to 58,660. The organization began releasing the messages in early October, and claimed at the time to have around 50,000 on hand. It isn’t clear how many more the website holds, or how long the releases will continue, but they seemed timed to hurt Clinton’s chances of becoming the next president.

• WikiLeaks mocks Dems after election loss

  “By biasing its internal electoral market the DNC selected the less competitive candidate defeating the purpose of running a primary,” the official account tweeted near midnight.

• White House doesn’t take potential Clinton pardon off the table

  The White House on Wednesday refused to say whether President Barack Obama would consider pardoning Hillary Clinton for her email scandal, but appeared to issue a warning to President-elect Donald Trump, saying powerful people should not exploit the criminal justice system for “political revenge.”

  As the Republican nominee, Trump has repeatedly suggested that Clinton could be thrown in jail during his presidency for mishandling classified materials through the private email server she used as secretary of state. Now that Trump is president-elect, Obama faces the delicate question of whether to issue a pardon to protect his preferred successor.

• White House open to a Clinton pardon

  The White House isn’t ruling out the possibility of Hillary Clinton receiving a last-minute pardon from President Obama — even though she hasn’t been charged with a crime.

  Asked at Wednesday’s press briefing whether Obama had considered utilizing his unique executive power, press secretary Josh Earnest was cryptic.

  “The president has offered clemency to a substantial number of Americans who were previously serving time in federal prisons,” Earnest said.

  “And we didn’t talk in advance about the president’s plans to offer clemency to any of those individuals and that’s because we don’t talk about the president’s thinking, particularly with respect to any specific cases that may apply to pardons or commutations,” he added.

• Jill Stein Files Complaint with FEC over Trump & Clinton Super PAC Coordination

  In more election news, Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission in Washington, D.C., against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, alleging illegal coordination with their super PACs. These so-called dark money groups are allowed to raise unlimited amounts of funds for candidates, but they are not allowed to coordinate directly with the campaigns. In the complaint, however, Stein argues both Clinton and Trump have illegally coordinated with a handful of their super PACs.

• Intelligence community is already feeling a sense of dread about Trump

  A palpable sense of dread settled on the intelligence community on Wednesday as Hillary Clinton, the candidate many expected to win, conceded the race to a GOP upstart who has dismissed U.S. spy agencies’ views on Russia and Syria, and even threatened to order the CIA to resume the use of interrogation methods condemned as torture.

• What does a Donald Trump win mean for UK politics?

  It is 20 January 2017 and a cold wind is blowing across Washington’s Capitol as Donald John Trump raises his right hand and proclaims that he will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States.

  As he looks the chief justice in the eye, hundreds of millions of people around the world are wondering what his four-year term will bring.

  Among them are UK civil servants and politicians, pondering – with negotiations for leaving the European Union also soon to begin – what all this means for their country.

  So, how well prepared is the UK for dealing with Mr Trump, who has never previously held elected office, and how is the future looking?

• WikiLeaks founder Assange writes: ‘The real victor is the US public’

  WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange defended the decision to publish electronic messages showing “what the Clinton campaign says about itself to itself,” saying his anti-secrecy group was not trying to influence the outcome of the election.

  The hacked emails, he said, were a matter of public interest.

  “The right to receive and impart true information is the guiding principle of WikiLeaks,” Assange said in a statement, adding: “Our organization defends the public’s right to be informed.”

  Regardless of who wins the presidential election, he said, “the real victor is the US public which is better informed as a result of our work.”

  WikiLeaks published a trove of emails that revealed embarrassing and sometimes damaging information from within the Clinton campaign. The emails showed that Clinton’s aides struggled to get past the controversy over her use of a private email server and expressed frustration at their candidate.

• Greg Palast in Ohio on GOP Effort to Remove African Americans from Voter Rolls in Battleground State

  In an on-the-ground report from the battleground state of Ohio, investigative reporter Greg Palast has uncovered the latest in vote suppression tactics led by Republicans that could threaten the integrity of the vote in Ohio and North Carolina. On some polling machines, audit protection functions have been shut off, and African Americans and Hispanics are being scrubbed from the voter rolls through a system called Crosscheck. “It’s a brand-new Jim Crow,” Palast says. “Today, on Election Day, they’re not going to use white sheets to keep way black voters. Today, they’re using spreadsheets.”

• Revealed: Bill Clinton says Jeremy Corbyn is ‘the maddest person in the room’ in private speech

  Bill Clinton described Jeremy Corbyn as the “maddest person in the room” in a private speech revealed by Wikileaks.

  The former US president, who could be returning to the White House as the husband of the next president, reportedly discussed the appointment of the Labour leader in a private speech at a Hillary for America fundraiser in Maryland in October 2015.

• “Don’t boo, vote”: This election could be democracy’s last stop

  When I grow up, I want to be Charlie Pierce, who covers politics for Esquire and has toiled in our scrivener’s trade, as far as I can tell, since the late 1970s.

  I know, technically, he’s a couple of years younger than I am, but he writes with the fierce wit and well-aimed anger to which I aspire, and as this wheezing milk train of a presidential campaign clanks into the final station, few have been as perceptive when it comes to trying to figure out just what the hell has happened to America this year.

  Charlie Pierce has done so with great style throughout, but now, thanks to Donald Trump and just before Election Day, he has come to the end of his watchdog rope. He wrote on Saturday that Trump — to whom he refers as El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago — had “managed to exceed even my admittedly expansive limits for political obscenity.”

• 4chan may have brought down pro-Clinton phone lines the day before the election

  Yesterday, as groups across the country hit the final stretch of their get-out-the-vote campaigns, workers at NextGen Climate noticed some problems with their automated dialer program. As the team started its morning hours, the program used to initiate and monitor voter calls was suddenly clunky, and cut out entirely for crucial hours in the afternoon.

  “It was slower in the morning, and then went down for hours at a time,” says NextGen’s Suzanne Henkels. The tool suffered intermittent downtime throughout the rest of the day. The campaign still made calls throughout the weekend, and was able to switch to backup methods of calling and texting to reach the remaining voters. Still, the attack caused significant trouble for the operation on the eve of Election Day.

  The downtime wasn’t a coincidence. Just after midnight on Sunday night, a post on 4chan’s /pol/ board announced an impending denial-of-service attack on any tools used by the Clinton campaign, employing the same Mirai botnet code that blocked access to Twitter and Spotify last month. One of those targets was TCN, the Utah-based call center company that runs NextGen’s dialer. According to the post’s author, the company was also providing phone services to Hillary Clinton’s offices in Nevada.

• Understanding what lies behind Trump and Brexit

  As the US elections finish, many people are scratching their heads wondering what it all means. For example, is Trump serious about the things he has been saying, or is he simply saying whatever was most likely to make a whole bunch of really stupid people crawl out from under their rocks to vote for him? Was he serious about winning at all, or was it just the ultimate reality TV experiment? Will he show up for work in 2017, or like Australia’s billionaire Clive Palmer, will he set a new absence record for an elected official? Ironically, Palmer and Trump have both been dogged by questions over their business dealings, will Palmer’s descent towards bankruptcy be replicated in the ongoing fraud trial against Trump University and similar scandals?

  While the answer to those questions may not be clear for some time, some interesting observations can be made at this point.

  The world has been going racist. In the UK, for example, authorities have started putting up anti-Muslim posters with an eery resemblance to Hitler’s anti-Jew propaganda. It makes you wonder if the Brexit result was really the “will of the people”, or were the people deliberately whipped up into a state of irrational fear by a bunch of thugs seeking political power?

• Trump’s tech plan: tariffs on electronics, ban on skilled tech migrants, cyber-weapons

  The United States Presidential Election has been run and at the time of writing looks almost certainly to have been won by Donald Trump.

  Which means we now have a decent idea of what’s in store for the global technology industry in the next four years. And it looks like a wild ride: Trump’s policies include a clamp down on H-1B visas, which will make it hard for US-based businesses to bring in skilled tech talent from abroad. H-1B critics argue the visas are a way to keep wages low by bringing in foreigners who work for less than American citizens. Supporters say the technology industries have a shortage of workers and therefore need foreigners to both fill seats and keep innovation humming along.

  Trump has also promised tariffs on imported products, especially from China, as part of a plan to ensure more companies manufacture in the USA. Apple shareholders beware: Trump once singled out the company as he feels it should “start building their damn computers and things in this country, instead of in other countries.”

• It’s Full-Bore Ahead For FBI’s Clinton Foundation Probe

  FBI agents across the country are continuing to actively pursue a broad political corruption investigation of the Clinton Foundation, a probe that is consuming the resources in the FBI’s Little Rock, Ark., field office where every agent assigned to public corruption matters now is working on the case, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned.

  “Everybody’s working the foundation in Little Rock,” a former senior FBI official told TheDCNF. There at least 10 agents involved, but it’s possible the Little Rock field office is “pulling bodies from other programs.”

• Canada’s immigration website just crashed

  The Government of Canada’s immigration website crashed on Tuesday night as the US election results were rolling in.

  The site went down about 10:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, and there was intermittent accessibility after that.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Turks Are Flocking to Tor After Government Orders Block of Anti-Censorship Tools

  Turkish internet users are flocking to Tor, the anonymizing and censorship-circumvention tool, after Turkey’s government blocked Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

  Usage of Tor inside of Turkey went up from around 18,000 users to 25,000 users on Friday, when the government started blocking the popular social media networks, according to Tor’s official metrics. To prevent Turks from doing exactly that and connecting to the blocked sites through censorship-circumvention tools such as Tor and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), the government took a step further and ordered internet providers to block those too.

Privacy/Surveillance

• China adopts cyber security law in face of overseas opposition

  China adopted a controversial cyber security law on Monday to counter what Beijing says are growing threats such as hacking and terrorism, but the law triggered concerns among foreign business and rights groups.

  The legislation, passed by China’s largely rubber-stamp parliament and set to take effect in June 2017, is an “objective need” of China as a major internet power, a parliament official said.

  Overseas critics of the law say it threatens to shut foreign technology companies out of various sectors deemed “critical”, and includes contentious requirements for security reviews and for data to be stored on servers in China.

  Rights advocates also say the law will enhance restrictions on China’s Internet, already subject to the world’s most sophisticated online censorship mechanism, known outside China as the Great Firewall.

• Tim Berners-Lee warns of danger of chaos in unprotected public data

  Hackers could use open data such as the information that powers transport apps to create chaos, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, has said.

  “If you disrupted traffic data for example, to tell everybody that all the roads south of the river are closed, so everybody would go north of the river, that would gridlock you [and] disable the city,” he said.

• “DRM is Used to Lock in, Control and Spy on Users”

  In a scathing critique, the Free Software Foundation is urging the U.S. Government to drop the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions which protect DRM. The foundation argues that DRM is a violation of users’ rights, which under the guise of copyright protection is used to harm, control and spy on people.

• Tor 0.2.9.5-alpha is released

  Hi, all! There is a new alpha release of the Tor source code, with numerous bugfixes. We’re getting closer to stable, but we still need testing!

  You can download the source from the usual place on the website. Packages should be up within a few days.

  Please remember to check the signature. Please also note that the signature may be with a key you aren’t familiar with. That’s because my PGP key changed a couple of months ago: see https://people.torproject.org/~nickm/key-transition-statement-2.txt.asc for more information.

• Spyware routinely installed by UK schools to snoop on kids’ Web habits

  Over two-thirds of schools installed special software on school computers to spy on their pupils, responses to Freedom of Information requests have revealed.

  According to a report by Big Brother Watch, “classroom management software” is running on over 800,000 computers, laptops, and mobile phones found in 1,000 secondary schools across England and Wales. A whopping £2.5 million has been spent on the programs.

• Spain publishes two guides on data protection in re-use of government information

  The Spanish Agency for Data Protection (Agencia Española de Protección de Dato, AEPD) has published two guides that should help Spanish institutions to publish public sector information (PSI) as open data.

Civil Rights/Policing

• A Liberal Mother of Six Jailed for Challenging Saudi Taboos

  When Souad al-Shammary posted a series of tweets about the thick beards worn by Saudi clerics, she never imagined she would land in jail.

  She put up images of several men with beards: An Orthodox Jew, a hipster, a communist, an Ottoman Caliph, a Sikh, and a Muslim. She wrote that having a beard was not what made a man holy or a Muslim. And she pointed out that one of Islam’s staunchest critics during the time of Prophet Muhammad had an even longer beard than him.

  The frank comments are typical of this twice-divorced mother of six and graduate of Islamic law, who is in many ways a walking challenge to taboos in deeply conservative Saudi Arabia. Raised a devout girl in a large tribe where she tended sheep, al-Shammary is now a 42-year-old liberal feminist who roots her arguments in Islam, taking on Saudi Arabia’s powerful religious establishment.

  She has paid a price for her opinions. She spent three months in prison without charge for “agitating public opinion.” She has been barred by the government from traveling abroad. Her co-founder of the online forum Free Saudi Liberals Network, blogger Raif Badawi, is serving a 10-year prison sentence and was publicly lashed 50 times. Her father disowned her in public.

• Russia orders inquiry into claims of FGM in Dagestan

  Russia has launched an investigation into claims that tens of thousands of girls in remote mountain areas, some as young as three months’ old, have been forced to undergo female genital mutilation.

  The general prosecutor’s office has acted following allegations that the life-threatening practice has been taking place “unchecked by the authorities” in the republic of Dagestan, Russia’s state-run news agency Tass reported.

• Islamist ‘Morality Police’ Lurk in Troubled Swedish Suburbs

  Islamic “morality police” have become more active in vulnerable suburban areas across Sweden, which are in effect ghettoes where real police are hardly welcome. Girls’ rights have become heavily restricted when it comes to sporting activities, hanging out with guys or choosing partners, associations working against “honor crimes” stated.

• These anti-terrorism posters echo Nazi propaganda

  My daily commute takes me through London’s Liverpool Street station. Most days I walk by a tiny touching statue, a bronze of two small children with a suitcase. A sign reads: “Für Das Kind”, meaning for the children. The statue commemorates the Kindertransport that rescued 10,000 child refugees and brought them by train to safety in Britain, escaping the persecution of Jews in Nazi Europe. Few of those children ever saw their families again. Most who could not leave were exterminated.

  Last week, just yards away from the statue, appeared a poster that fills me with horror. A looming, dark, hook-nosed figure dominates the foreground. This man is an object of suspicion, watched apprehensively by a pretty, pale-skinned young woman. This man is instantly identifiable – at least to anyone who knows world war two history – as the caricature Jew of Nazi propaganda posters.

  However inadvertently, the designers have used a horribly familiar antisemitic image. The impact goes far beyond these associations, serious as those are. A friend who was unaware of Nazi iconography revealingly said that she saw on the poster an “evil-looking dark-skinned man”. The image plays on people’s fears of “the other”, and creates anxiety about a suspicious “they” who may be hiding something, in the words of the poster.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• China’s Internet Controls Will Get Stricter, to Dismay of Foreign Business

  In August, business groups around the world petitioned China to rethink a proposed cybersecurity law that they said would hurt foreign companies and further separate the country from the internet.

  On Monday, China passed that law — a sign that when it comes to the internet, China will go its own way.

  The new rules, which were approved by the country’s rubber-stamp Parliament and will go into effect next summer, are part of a broader effort to better define how the internet is managed inside China’s borders.

  Officials say the rules will help stop cyberattacks and help prevent acts of terrorism, while critics say they will further erode internet freedom. Business groups worry that parts of the law — such as required security checks on companies in industries like finance and communications, and mandatory in-country data storage — will make foreign operations more expensive or lock them out altogether. Individual users will have to register their real names to use messaging services in China.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Trademarks

  • 9th Circuit en banc follows others and adopts Octane for Trademark Fee Shifting

    In SunEarth, Inc. v . Sun Earth Solar Power Co., (9th Cir. Oct. 24, 2016), the court held that the same interpretation given to the patent act’s fee shifting statute, 35 U.S.C. § 285, applies to the trademark statute, 15 U.S.C. § 1117(a).

• Copyrights

  • Bulk block of pirate streaming sites ordered by Italian court

    A court in Rome has ordered that 152 sites involved in the unauthorised streaming of sporting events and films should be blocked by Italian ISPs.

    The request was made by the Guardia di Finanza, the country’s financial police force that has become increasingly involved in tackling online piracy.

  • CBC threatens podcast app makers, argues that RSS readers violate copyright

    The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation publishes several excellent podcasts, notably the As It Happens feed; like every podcast in the world, these podcasts are available via any podcast app in the same way that all web pages can be fetched with all web browsers — this being the entire point of podcasts.

    In a move of breathtaking, lawless ignorance, the CBC has begun to send legal threats to podcast app-makers, arguing that making an app that pulls down public RSS feeds is a “commercial use” and a violation of the public broadcaster’s copyrights.

    This is a revival of an old, dark era in the web’s history, when linking policies prevailed, through which publishes argued that they had the right to control who could make a link to their sites — that is, who could state the public, true fact that “a page exists at this address.”

    But the CBC is going one worse here: their argument is that making a tool that allows someone to load a public URL without permission is violating copyright law — it’s the same thing as saying, “Because Google is a for-profit corporation, any time a Chrome user loads a CBC page in the Chrome browser without the CBC’s permission, Google is violating CBC’s copyright.”

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Techrights Turns 10 Years Old

The site Techrights is turning 10 years old. Though now called Techrights, it was best known as Boycott Novell until 2010. It has become an internationally recognized site whose aim has been advocacy of digital rights with the goal of maximizing freedom, reducing surveillance, and generally promoting the sharing of knowledge. This, in turn, requires transparent systems, open licensing terms, no censorship, and active collaboration among parties. Its focus has always included the fight against software patents and in recent years it pays special attention to the goings on and intrigues within the European Patent Office and their attempt to bring by hook or crook software patents into Europe.

Desktop

• Lenovo releases BIOS for loading Linux on Yoga 900, IdeaPad 710S BIOS

  Lenovo took some heat from Linux users a few months ago when it was discovered that some of the company’s recent Windows laptops were configured in a way that blocked them from running Linux or other operating systems.

  Some saw a conspiracy, while others pointed out that it had to do with the lack of Linux drivers for the storage configuration in those laptops. Either way, the end result was that it was difficult, if not impossible to install Linux on a Lenovo Yoga 900 or IdeaPad 710 notebook.

• After protest, Lenovo brings Linux compatibility to Yoga 900 and 900S [Ed: Techrights started the protest]

  Lenovo created a stir when it said the Yoga 900 and 900S hybrids would work only with Windows, not Linux. The company has now changed its stance, bringing Linux support to those PCs.

  The PC maker earlier this month issued a BIOS update so Linux can be loaded on Yoga 900, 900S and IdeaPad 710 models.

  The BIOS update adds an AHCI (Advance Host Controller Interface) SATA controller mode so users can load Linux on the laptops.

  This is a Linux-only BIOS, meaning it should be used only by those who want to load the OS. If you want to continue with Windows, do not load the firmware.

• New Laptop / Problems with Windows part 896,324

  I had mentioned previously that I had been forced to purchase a new laptop. I decided that I didn’t want another Thinkpad. The Lenovo ones no longer have the high quality they had in the IBM days and while support is still pretty good by todays dismal standards it’s not worth the premium price. (If I’m buying it with my own money that is.) I had heard good thing about Dells’ Linux support so I looked into their offerings and ended up buying a Precision 7510. Mind you this model came with Windows 7 installed but I didn’t mind. As I wanted to install Debian according to my own specs anyway, I was ok with just knowing that the hardware would be compatible. So I prepared a Jessie USB installation stick (This model doesn’t have a CD/DVD drive.) and shrunk down the Windows installation (but not deleted it altogether for reasons to be explained below.)

Server

• Mitchell Hashimoto talks about new technologies and DevOp tools

  A few weeks earlier, when I’d talked with him to kick off IT Pro’s coverage of ATO, I purposefully didn’t ask him about his upcoming conference talks because I didn’t want to spoil it for him or his audience. That he would talk about DevOps tools was a given. After all, HashiCorp, the company he co-founded and where he’s CTO, is known for tools like Vagrant, Packer, Terraform, Consul and Vault, which are designed to help DevOps secure and operate distributed application infrastructures. In this keynote he would be talking about automation tools in general. Later in the day, he’d conduct a workshop that would focus specifically on his company’s products.

Kernel Space

• Linux Foundation Certified Engineer: Alexandre Krispin

  Back in 2005, when I was 18, I met someone from Germany who used SUSE. In 2007 I bought my first computer from Apple, with Mac OS X. When I had to change my computer—maybe 2 years later—I did not have a lot of money and heard that those using Linux had to pay less to get the same quality offered by Unix systems like Mac OS X. I say “quality” because I read at the time that it was hassle-free because there were no viruses, etc. That’s what initially hooked me on Linux (that and Apple products were too expensive). When I finally started using Linux, I experienced the joy of being free to do whatever I wanted with my own computer—the desktop was completely customizable.

• The Linux Foundation Launches its 2016 Guide to the Open Cloud

  The Linux Foundation has announced the release of its 2016 report “Guide to the Open Cloud: Current Trends and Open Source Projects.” This third annual report provides a comprehensive look at the state of open cloud computing. The foundation originally created the guide in response to market and industry confusion about which projects really stand out.

  According to Libby Clark, writing on Linux.com: “The report aggregates and analyzes industry research to provide insights on how trends in containers, microservices, and more shape cloud computing today. It also defines the open source cloud and cloud native computing and discusses why the open cloud is important to just about every industry.”

• Linux Foundation Appoints Jeff Garzik to Board of Directors

  Garzik, formerly a 10-year employee at Red Hat, brings a wealth of Bitcoin Core development experience back to the leading open-source software development foundation. The Linux Foundation is spearheading a conglomerate of organizations involved with the Hyperledger Project, of which Bloq is a member. Garzik’s presence on the Linux Foundation’s board should hopefully help to bridge ongoing efforts in the open source, Linux world with advancements in the cryptocurrency space.

• Move over Bitcoin, the blockchain is only just getting started

  It’s easy to think we’ve reached peak Bitcoin, but the blockchain at the heart of cryptocurrencies contains the seeds of something revolutionary.

  The blockchain is a decentralised electronic ledger with duplicate copies on thousands of computers around the world. It cannot be altered retrospectively, allowing asset ownership and transfer to be recorded without external verification.

  Investors have now realised the blockchain is bigger than Bitcoin. In the first quarter of 2016, venture-capital investment in blockchain startups overtook that in pure-play Bitcoin companies for the first time, according to industry researcher CoinDesk, which has tallied $1.1 billion (£840m) in deals to date.

  Even governments have taken an interest. Sir Mark Walport, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, published a report on the blockchain in January this year, outlining how the massively distributed shared ledger is “a database that tracks who owns a financial, physical or electronic asset”. But it could also, say, monitor driverless cars.

• Linux Foundation Fumbles

  FLASH? LF webinars depend on FLASH!? This is the 21st century. Folks are using HTML5 and lots of other popular standards. Why is LF trying to hold the world back to a deprecated technology, one that only awkwardly works with their kernel?

• Linux Foundation ‘Fails’ Linux Mint: Suggests Upgrade to Windows or Mac

  Excuse me if I have a little fun at the Linux Foundation’s expense.

  Linux Foundation failed textThis morning while perusing the day’s tech news, I ran across an article on Linux.com about a free webinar, “Open Source Automotive: How Shared Development Will Drive the Industry Forward,” being hosted on Wednesday by the Linux Foundation. This sounded like something I wouldn’t mind spending an hour watching, so I registered. Afterwards, I clicked a “Test Your System” link, just to make sure that I’d have no problems using the good ol’ FOSS Force machine.

  The results were a big surprise, and hearkened back to the bad ol’ days when open source and the rest of the world usually didn’t work and play well together. Browser, cookies, bandwidth and “Flash Test Video” all passed with flying colors. What didn’t pass? Our Linux Mint operating system.

  “We have detected that your operating system does not meet the optimal webinar specifications for listening to and/or viewing webinars,” the test automation said. “We recommend the following operating systems: Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, and the latest Mac OS X.”

  For an online event being hosted by the Linux Foundation? Really? I understand that the foundation isn’t very interested in desktop Linux, but…

• Graphics Stack

  • Intel Beignet Advances On More OpenCL 2.0 Support

  • Radeon Pro WX Graphics Cards Ship This Week

  • Initial NVIDIA GP102 Support In Nouveau DRM

    Ben Skeggs of Red Hat has added initial support for the GP102 Pascal GPU to the Nouveau DRM driver.

    With a commit last night to the Nouveau kernel development repository there was initial support for the GP102, “From visual inspection of traces, what we currently implement appears to be identical to GP104. Seems to work well enough too.”

• Benchmarks

  • OpenGL vs. Vulkan With AMDGPU-PRO 16.40, Compared To NVIDIA On Linux

    At the end of October AMD released the long-awaited AMDGPU-PRO 16.40 update. For some birthday benchmarking fun today, I finished up a comparison of the AMDGPU-PRO 16.40 stack with its proprietary OpenGL and Vulkan components on various AMD GPUs compared to NVIDIA results using the 375.10 binary driver.

Applications

• SMPlayer 16.11 Video Player Brings Media Info in OSD, Adds New Playlist Options

  The open-source, free, and cross-platform SMPlayer video player application was updated on November 6, 2016, to version 16.11, a release that introduces two new features and fixes various bugs reported by users since the 16.9 stable update.

• anytime 0.1.0: New features, some fixes

  A new release of anytime is now on CRAN following the four releases in September and October.

  anytime aims to convert anything in integer, numeric, character, factor, ordered, … format to POSIXct (or Date) objects — and does so without requiring a format string. See the anytime page for a few examples.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How to Dual-boot Manjaro 16.10, Windows 10 on a computer with UEFI firmware

  • How to quickly audit a Linux system from the command line

  • Configure software repositories in Fedora

  • Configure software repositories in Fedora

  • 4 steps to better documentation: How to get users the exact answer to the problem

  • Here’s How You Can Install Cinnamon 3.2 on Ubuntu, Right Now

  • Python Lists

  • nginx and WordPress

• Games

  • Transport Fever released with day-1 Linux support, some thoughts

    I love simulation games and I have been eagerly waiting on Transport Fever to have a different take on the genre compared to say, Cities Skylines, which focuses on building the actual city, whereas Transport Fever is more about dealing with the vehicles, aircrafts, boats and so on directly. With you setting where buses pick up and drop off and purchasing the actual vehicles and carriages themselves. You have a lot more direct control in this game, and in general it does feel a lot like Cities Skylines. The interface is even quite similar too, so you will feel at home with Transport Fever if you played Cities.

    The game has a pretty decent tutorial, one that I certainly recommend you play, as there’s a few bits you will need to get your head around, but it’s all relatively simple. Then you have two different campaigns and a free mode to do whatever the heck you want.

  • Steam store updated, Valve still haven’t fixed filtering to only Linux games on the homepage

    Valve have updated Steam as promised with a fresh homepage, but they still haven’t fixed it so when you select to only see Linux games, that you really do only see Linux games.

  • Enter the Gungeon has another patch, it no longer screws up the audio if you switch to another app

  • Super Blue Fighter, a casual arcade survival game now has Linux support

  • ‘Devil Daggers’ is one of my biggest surprises this year for Linux gaming

    I’m not kidding when I talk about how evil the atmosphere is, you’re essentially in some form of Hell. When I play it I start to sweat, my heart beats faster and faster as my time in the game increases.

  • Developer of ‘Steam Marines’ talks sales, Linux represented 2% over the lifetime of it

    It’s worth noting that Mac only hit 3%, considering their marketshare on Steam is a lot higher than ours, that’s surprising.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • KaOS 2016.11 Distro Gets KDE Plasma 5.8.3 & Linux Kernel 4.8, AMDGPU by Default

    Today, November 7, 2016, the developers of the KaOS rolling GNU/Linux distribution were pleased to announce the release and immediate availability for download of KaOS 2016.11.

  • KaOS 2016.11

    KaOS is pleased to announce the 2016.11 release. As always with this rolling distribution, you will find the very latest packages for the Plasma Desktop, this includes Frameworks 5.27.0, Plasma 5.8.3, KDE Applications 16.08.2 & not yet released ports of KDE Applications. All built on Qt 5.7.0.

  • Krita 3.1 Digital Painting App Gets Closer, Beta 3 Is Out with More Improvements

    Today, November 7, 2016, the developers of the popular, open-source and cross-platform Krita digital painting software have released the third Beta milestone towards the major 3.1 update of the application.

    Krita 3.1 Beta 3 is here exactly two weeks after the announcement of the second Beta development snapshot, in an attempt to polish the upcoming release by patching various annoyances and adding some minor improvements. For examples, several crashes were addresses, and it’s possible to load swatch names in ACO files again.

  • digiKam 5.3.0 Open-Source Image Editor Released for Linux as an AppImage Bundle

    In the last minutes of November 7, 2016, the development team behind the open-source and cross-platform digiKam image editor, viewer and organizer software was proud to announce the release of digiKam 5.3.0.

    digiKam 5.3.0 is the third maintenance update to the stable 5.x series of the software project, bringing a month’s worth of bug fixes and general improvements. However, the biggest new change in digiKam 5.3.0 is the availability of an AppImage bundle that allows Linux users to install the application in virtually any GNU/Linux distribution.

  • digiKam 5.3.0 is published…

    After a 3rd release 5.2.0 published more than one month ago, the digiKam team is proud to announce the new release 5.3.0 of digiKam Software Collection. This version introduces an important common solution to deploy the application under Linux using AppImage bundle.

    AppImage is an open-source project dedicated to provide a simple way to distribute portable software as compressed binary file, that standard user can run as well, without to install special dependencies. All is included into the bundle, as last Qt5 and KF5 frameworks. AppImage use Fuse file-system, which is de-compressed into a temporary directory to start the application. You don’t need to install digiKam on your system to be able to use it. Better, you can use the official digiKam from your Linux distribution in parallel, and test the new version without any conflict with one used in production. This permit to quickly test a new release without to wait an official package dedicated for your Linux box. Another AppImage advantage is to be able to provide quickly a pre-release bundle to test last patches applied to source code, outside the releases plan.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Epiphany 3.22.2 Web Browser Improves Password Form Autofill Handling, Adblocker

    As reported earlier, the GNOME development team is hard at work these days to bring us the second and last point release of the GNOME 3.22 desktop environment, versioned 3.22.2.

  • Evolution 3.22.2 Groupware Client Released for GNOME 3.22.2 with Many Fixes

    The GNOME Project is preparing to unleash the second and last maintenance update of the GNOME 3.22 desktop environment, which already started to land in the stable repositories of various GNU/Linux distributions.

  • Cinnamon 3.2 Desktop Environment Now Available with Support for Vertical Panels

    Today, November 7, 2016, Linux Mint leader Clement Lefebvre tagged the final release of the Cinnamon 3.2.0 desktop environment on the GitHub page of the project, from where users can download the source archive if they want an early taste.

  • Cinnamon 3.2 Desktop Arrives

  • Reaching more FEDORA and GNOME newcomers at UTP

    With Hack Space permitting on November 11, the next Friday at UTP (Universidad Tecnológica del Perú – Technology University of Perú), I am going to present the Free Software Projects: FEDORA and GNOME. The workshop will be focused in installation of FEDORA and then build the jhbuild of GNOME as a challenge for more than 8 hours. Then, the journey will start at 10:00 p.m. and it will finish at 7:00 a.m.

  • GXml 0.13.1 Released

    Now you can convert your GObject classes in XML nodes. This is, you can read and write XML trees directly to object classes’ properties, from basic types to complex like object properties, representing XML element’s attributes, to other child elements, while you can use collection of child nodes.

    This has been easiest to implement than GXml.SerializableObjectModel, which requires you to read an XML tree and then translate to your object properties. This should be slower than new GOM implementation included in this release.

  • About internet comments and aggressive communication

    That made me think about how we usually run conversations through internet. Because I work with GNOME, a thick skin naturally grew. I eventually have people yelling me “y u keep breaking stuff?” or “stop making this piece of crap” or even “ur product is bad, u offend me by releasing it” (and yes, they’re all real comments). After some time, this kind of thing becomes just background noise which we have to work with every day. I can only think that other contributors faced the same kind of top-notch treatment.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • SparkyLinux 4.5 Enters Development with Linux Kernel 4.7, Debian Testing Goodies

    The development team of the Debian-based SparkyLinux distribution announced the other day that a new development ISO image of the upcoming OS is available for public testing.

• OpenSUSE/SUSE

  • SUSE: Unleash the Tiger!

  • SUSE’s enterprise Linux gets a big upgrade

  • SUSE announces first acquisition

  • SUSE Enterprise Storage 4 Solves Large Data Storage Dilemma for Customers

  • SUSE Poised for Greater Growth in Software-Defined Storage Market by Acquiring openATTIC Storage Management Assets from it-novum

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP2 Released, Supports ARMv8-A

    SUSECon is happening this week and timed with this event is the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 2.

  • SUSECON 2016 Open Source and Linux Conference Is Taking Place November 7-11

    November 7 was the first day of the SUSECON 2016 Open Source conference for Linux, Docker, OpenStack, NFV, and Cloud Foundry enthusiasts and professionals.

    Initially announced earlier this year, the annual global end-user conference is being held for five days, between November 7 and November 11, in Washington, D.C., USA, at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park hotel, where big names will attend to showcase their latest technologies.

    “We are excited to be hosting SUSECON 2016 in Washington, D.C.,” said Michael Miller, president of strategy, alliances, and marketing for SUSE. “Our conference in Amsterdam last year was the largest SUSECON ever, and we’re looking forward to continued growth in 2016.

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP2

  • New SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 2 Speeds Innovation with Reliability

    As enterprises worldwide seek greater competitive advantage and growth via open source technologies, SUSE® today unveiled SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 2 to power physical, virtual and cloud-based mission-critical workloads. The newest version of the world-class SUSE Linux Enterprise Server open source operating system, SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP2 will help customers accelerate innovation, improve system reliability, meet tough security requirements and adapt to new technologies. More than two-thirds of the Fortune Global 100 use SUSE Linux Enterprise.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat releases Enterprise Linux 7.3

    Red Hat has announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3, the latest version of the enterprise Linux platform.

    According to the company, the update to its flagship Linux operating system includes new features and enhancements built around performance, security, and reliability. The release also introduces new capabilities around Linux containers and the Internet of Things (IoT), designed to help early enterprise adopters use existing investments as they scale to meet new business demands

  • Redhat Goes Live with AtlasFX to Improve FX Currency Risk Management Program

  • Red Hat implements AtlasFX’s currency risk management platform

  • Finance

    • Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Pops 2.98% for November 07

    • Taking AIM at EPS for Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT): Sell-side’s Perspective

    • Can Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Meet Analysts Expectations This Quarter? A look at the consensus

    • Taking AIM at EPS for Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT): Sell-side’s Perspective

    • Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB publ sells partial stakes of Red Hat Inc. (RHT)

      Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB publ cut its position in Red Hat Inc. (NYSE:RHT) by 44.8% during the second quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 100,248 shares of the open-source software company’s stock after selling 81,300 shares during the period. Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB publ owned approximately 0.06% of Red Hat worth $7,278,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

    • Identifying Analyst Research Reports To Consider: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT), Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU)

    • Analyst Coverage: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Smith Asset Management Group Lp Lowers stake in Red Hat Inc (RHT)

  • Fedora

    • All Hail ResultsDB

      This post is primarily about taking some of the lessons we learned in Fedora QA infrastructure and applying them to some internal Red Hat pipelines as well as generalizing the pattern to other parts of Fedora’s infrastructure.

    • Fedora Join meeting 7 November 2016 – Summary

    • OpenAlt 2016

    • Submit a Fedora talk to DevConf.cz 2017 — by Friday, Nov. 11

    • Fedora 25: Let’s have an awesome release party!

      Fedora 25 is currently in Beta status. With another Fedora release not so far away, it’s time for the Ambassadors to plan their activities around the release. The most common activity for Ambassadors to do around a release is organize release parties. A release party is also a great way for other contributors in the community to get involved with advocacy in their local regions. Learn how to organize a release party and get a badge for it in this article.

• Debian Family

  • Debian Stretch preview

    I should point out that Stretch artwork has not being finalised yet: the background is just one of several candidates- it’s just my favourite.

    The update was pleasantly painless with no issues.

    I did soon find one bug- the mouse pointer will disappear after the screen blanks out and is reawakened.

    However, Gnome now works with Wayland, and using Wayland, this bug is not an issue, so I’ll be trying out Wayland for the time being. An issue with Wayland is that Synaptic does not start. I expect that may be true of other applications.

  • Quickstart SDR with gqrx, GNU Radio and the RTL-SDR dongle

    Software Defined Radio (SDR) provides many opportunities for both experimentation and solving real-world problems. It is not exactly a new technology but it has become significantly more accessible due to the increases in desktop computing power (for performing the DSP functions) and simultaneous reduction in the cost of SDR hardware.

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Latest Ubuntu Core release aims to enable millions of IoT devices

      • Ubuntu Releases IoT Core Platform

        Canonical last week released Ubuntu Core 16 for the Internet of Things to provide enhanced security and app store support for connected devices.

      • Yakkety Yak

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Mythbuntu Quits, Xubuntu Fresh Air, Stretch Preview

          Today in Linux news, upcoming Debian 9.0 got a bit of a test run by blogger FreewheelinFrank who liked what he saw. Elsewhere, Dedoimedo said Xubuntu 16.10 is “a breath of fresh air” and the Mythbuntu project is no more. Canonical released Yakkety Yak animal arkwork in a single handy download, if the link just worked and Linux Foundation web software told FOSS Force’s Christine Hall to upgrade her Mint to Windows or Mac.

Devices/Embedded

• Raspberry Pi VC4 Works On ETC1 Support, Power Management Tweaks

  Eric Anholt at Broadcom continues to be busy hacking on the open-source VC4 DRM+Gallium3D stack for providing fully open-source Raspberry Pi graphics stack support.

• Nintendo makes its NES emulator the same way everyone else does

  Nintendo’s NES Classic is, at its core essence, a Nintendo-approved NES emulator that comes with 30 ROMs. It feels very similar to the sort of thing people have been building for ages by running Linux on a Raspberry Pi — with the main difference from a conceptual standpoint being that the NES Classic is considerably less legally questionable.

• The NES Classic Mini Is Actually a Tiny Linux PC

  There’s a very good chance that if you’re reading Geek.com you were already excited about the launch of the NES Classic Mini. Here’s some more exciting news: it’s actually a Linux PC, and it may also be hackable.

  Gamespot’s Peter Brown took apart the Classic Mini to see what made it tick. He was a more than a little disappointed by what he found — that the Mini’s flash memory was soldered directly to the mainboard. That seemed like bad news since it meant that unless you had a fairly light touch with a soldering iron that you wouldn’t be augmenting the Mini’s default stash of 30 games.

• Man transforms rare talking fish into Amazon Echo rival to see if it’s wet

  He was a late nineties phenomenon, a mounted animatronic latex fish that sang songs while jiggling itself about and turning to face you. The early ones were motion activated, so when you walked past you’d be frightened so much you’d need a heart sturgeon. It was only later that you could trigger Bobby McFerrin and Al Green covers by pressing a button.

  [...]

  We already knew that Amazon’s AI assistant was open source, and was available as a Raspberry Pi project long before Echo reached this country. So what’s the next logical step? Apparently this.

• Orange Pi PC2 Is a $20 Quad-Core Computer for Android, Linux

  Orange Pi might not be a big name in the computer industry but the company seems to be doing all things right to get noticed. The computer manufacturer has come up with a 64-bit quad-core computer that can easily find its utility in several projects. However, the most lucrative aspect about this compact-sized computer is its price, as it costs just $20 (roughly Rs. 1,300).

• Phones

  • Tizen

    • Samsung Pay is Samsung’s vision of money for millennials – and it’s gaining traction

      One year, three months and 100 million transactions later the service is about to make a quantum leap in user experience as it’s becoming available in three new countries at once and is about to start supporting online and in-app purchase as well as location-based deals and stuff. You wouldn’t expect this from a company who’s coming off such “burning” issues, yet we are.

  • Android

    • Android 7.0 CDD says Google may soon require OEMs to stop screwing with USB-C charging standards

    • Google Releases Android’s Distribution Numbers for November

      Google just released the November security update and around that time we also see the platform’s official distribution numbers as well. This data was recorded during the 7-day period between November 1st and November 7th, and Google reminds us that any version of Android that doesn’t make up at least 0.1% of the platform is not represented here in this graph. Yet, we’re still seeing Android 2.2 Froyo being used by 0.1% of the people who are accessing the Play Store.

    • Nougat has been installed on just 0.3 per cent of Android devices

    • Sony’s Xperia X “Concept for Android” gives a sneak peek at upcoming Nougat features

    • Sony’s ‘Concept for Android’ brings Nougat to the Xperia X

    • Android 7.0 Nougat smartphone rollouts begin as LG updates G5

    • Fix for critical Android rooting bug is a no-show in November patch release [Ed: Dan Goodin continues to rely on silly branding of LOCALLY-exploitable bugs to write this]

    • Over 318,000 Android Users Affected by Auto-Downloading Malvertising Attack [Ed: No, this is not a security issue but a case of users installing bad software only to suffer from it]

    • Samsung’s unwinnable Android AI dilemma [Ed: The anti-Linux writers try to create a rift where there is none]

    • Android 7.1 feature spotlight: A closer look at seamless updates, partition changes, and new fastboot commands

      During the I/O 2016 Keynote presentation, and again at the October 4th Pixel announcement, Google made brief references to newly added support for seamless updates in Nougat. To make this work, many changes had to be made to the structure of Android and its assorted system partitions. As a result, there have also been some changes to the fastboot utility many of us use when new factory images become available. This post covers a few of the technical details and also demonstrates some of the ways to use the new features.

    • Android Auto is now available for all drivers and cars

      Android Auto, Google’s in-car software, has been upgraded to allow anyone with an Android phone to access the features, regardless of which model of car they drive.

      The system was launched in 2014 with the goal of better integrating phones and cars, giving drivers an easier way to access information. Since the launch, more than 200 car models have launched with support for Android Auto, from the likes of Audi, Fiat and Land Rover. However, the software was only compatible in new cars, with touchscreen capability.

    • “Android Extensions” could be Google’s plan to make Android updates suck less

      Finally, a whopping two-and-a-half months after the release of Android 7.0 Nougat, the Android 7.0 Compatibility Definition Document (CDD) has been published. The CDD is Google’s list of rules for Android OEMs that want to ship devices with the Google Play Store and other Google apps. While Android is open source, most of Google’s apps are not, and licensing Google’s apps means agreeing to a contract called the Mobile Application Distribution Agreement (MADA) and passing Google’s “compatibility” tests, which ensure the device can properly run Android apps.

    • Android’s Hover feature is a data HOOVER

      That took a while: Android’s had Hover since Ice Cream, but boffins have taken until now to work out how to attack it.

      Hover is a set of interface calls that let application designers imitate mouse-over behaviours people know from PCs, and it only needs to be implemented on a phone or tablet to be vulnerable – whether or not a particular app supports it.

    • The Balkanization of Android [Ed: Another one of those. Same FUD pattern.]

    • Android has a nifty hidden feature that lets you take partial screenshots

      Android is pretty cool, but taking decent screenshots could be painstakingly frustrating – especially when you want to capture only a small part of your screen. Fortunately, things might be about to get a lot easier.

      A resourceful YouTuber going by the name Maxr1998 has come across an intriguing snippet of code hidden inside Android Nougat that hints future versions of Google’s mobile operating system might include a nifty feature that lets you effortlessly take partial screenshots.

    • You no longer have to buy a new car or stereo to use Android Auto

      During Google’s annual developers conference this past spring, the company teased a version of its Android Auto software that would run entirely on an Android phone and not require a new car or aftermarket dashboard display. Now the company is starting to roll this software out to Android phone owners.

    • Android Auto gets major update, now works in every car

      Earlier this year, at the I/O developer conference, Google showed off a few enhancements to its Android Auto platform, the extension to the Android mobile operating system that allows the phone to take over a car’s infotainment system. Today, those updates are available for download.

      If you haven’t used it before, Android Auto is basically a simplified version of Android that displays on a modern car’s central screen. From there, you can use Google Maps for navigation, listen to and respond (by voice) to Hangouts messages and even have your media streamed — so long as you use a compatible app like Spotify or Pandora.

    • New from Google: Use Android Auto on phone in any car

      Two years after Google launching Android Auto to smarten up your car’s dashboard, Google has signed up 50 automotive brands who have made available more than 200 compatible vehicles. Google says that number will exceed 300 models by the end of next year.

      But what about the millions of cars on the road that are not compatible with Android Auto, many of which don’t even have screens? On Monday, Google unleashed an update to Android Auto that works directly on your smartphone screen, specifically devices running Android 5.0 or later.

    • Alleged Nokia Android phone rear panel leaks, jibes with previous renders

      We learned last week that the Finnish company that got licensed the rights to sell Nokia-branded smartphones, will be coming up with a few of those next year. Rumors are that we will see one or two announced come MWC time in early spring, and some more will follow throughout 2017.

      There was a render of an alleged Nokia Android phone, codenamed D1C, which depicted a rectangular slab with tapered sides and a center-middle camera setup. Well, today we get the alleged back plate of an upcoming Nokia phone, and it pretty much looks like what we saw in the render.

    • LeapDroid creators join Google, abandons Android PC emulator

    • No Further Updates For LeapDroid Android Emulator For PC As Google Acquires Team Behind It

      The team behind LeapDroid, a fast and powerful Android emulator for PC, is joining Google. Though this is good news for the team, this is actually bad news for users who enjoyed using the software to run Android games on their PC.

      AndroidAuthority has learned that LeapDroid users can still rely on the software to run Android apps, but they should not expect further updates from now on. Furthermore, interested users will not be able to download the software anymore because official downloads have been removed from the Internet.

    • [Update: LeEco responds] Days after US launch, LeEco’s CEO sends bizarre letter claiming company has over-expanded

    • Android 7.0 Nougat beta test for the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge kicks off from Nov 9

    • Google rolls out next-generation SMS to Android phones on Sprint

    • Android 7.0 Beta for Galaxy S7 Edge Starts November 9th

    • Android Nougat update coming to Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge – How to be first in line

    • Twitter now lets you tweet straight from the Android home screen

    • LG starts rolling out Android 7.0 Nougat to the G5

    • LG V20 review: The Android phone for hardcore enthusiasts

      LG hired Joseph Gordon-Levitt to market its V20 phablet, but I think a better pitchman would have been Stefon from Saturday Night Live: “2016’s hottest phone is the LG V20. It’s got everything. A removable battery, two displays, three microphones, knock knock codes, and don’t worry about about shooting videos, because with a wide-angle lens and electronic image stabilization, you can capture an entire breakdance crew of Shetland ponies wearing hazmat suits.”

      OK, I kid the V20. But the phone is packed with a ridiculous amount of features, the bulk of which are focused on content creation. LG promises pixel-perfect photos, action videos free of camera shake, and music recordings with pristine sound. It sounds awesome on paper, but I’ve been testing the V20 for several weeks, and found the phone falls short in some key content-creation areas.

Six big projects that went open-source

Making big software and hardware projects open-source is an increasingly popular thing to do, whether you’re a big company, a small company, or even the government. Here’s a sampling of the latest major projects to hit the open-source realm. Enjoy.

Using Apache Hadoop to Turn Big Data Into Insights

The Apache Hadoop framework for distributed processing of large data sets is supported and used by a wide-ranging community — including businesses, governments, academia, and technology vendors. According to John Mertic, Director of ODPi and the Open Mainframe Project at The Linux Foundation, Apache Hadoop provides these diverse users with a solid base and allows them to add on different pieces depending on what they want to accomplish.

AMD Stoney Ridge Support Lands In Coreboot

It has been a long time since last seeing any new AMD support in Coreboot while that changed this past week with the arrival of the mainline Stoney Ridge support.

How to create an internal innersource community

In recent years, we have seen more and more interest in a variance of open source known as innersource. Put simply, innersource is taking the principles of open source and bringing them inside the walls of an organization. As such, you build collaboration and community that may look and taste like open source, but in which all code and community is private within the walls of the organization.

As a community strategy and leadership consultant, I work with many companies to help build their innersource communities. As such, I thought it could be fun to share some of the most important principles that map to most of my clients and beyond. This could be a helpful primer if you are considering exploring innersource inside your organization.

Open is a means, not a movement

In the humble beginnings of the GNU and Linux projects, open source was a primitive and narrowly-defined idea. It applied only to programming, and was a largely legal designation that sought to guarantee that source code remained available to users even as others augmented it through subsequent contributions.

Now, thirty years later, “open” is sweeping the enterprise. On top of “open source,” we also have “open data,” “open management,” “open design,” “open organizations,”—and even just “open,” which we often take to imply something vague about a progressive policy.

Showing Code

Which goes to show that terseness is a demanding constraint; I did not adequately state what I was trying to state in my attempt to limit it to a single tweet. And of course, that meant it became a discussion back and forth.

Open-source Sesame! Alibaba promises super-size magic for Java

Online commerce giant Alibaba is among a crop of “new world” Java users seeking to shape the direction of both language and platform.

Alibaba, one the world’s largest users of Java, has entered the race for election to the ruling executive committee (EC) of the Java Community Process (JCP). Jack Ma’s ecommerce giant joined the JCP only three months ago – in August.

Also running for election to Java’s steering group are representatives of end user groups from China, Africa and Germany. One, the GreenTea Java User Group (JUG) in Shanghai, was founded and sponsored by technical staff from Alibaba.

Events

• OpenZFS Developer Summit 2016 Slides/Videos Posted

SaaS/Back End

• Apache Spark on OpenShift

Kubernetes

• CoreOS Debuts Tectonic 1.4 for Enterprise Kubernetes

  The open-source Kubernetes 1.4 release became generally available on October 26, bringing new security and container orchestration capabilities. On November 1, CoreOS, one of the leading contributors to Kubernetes, officially debuted its commercially supported version of Kubernetes with the Tectonic 1.4 release.

• Microsoft open sources its Azure Container Service Engine and launches deeper Kubernetes integration [Ed: In almost 40 years of existence Microsoft never had a partnership that worked out for the partner.]

• Microsoft Azure integrates open-source container manager Kubernetes, born inside Google [Ed: Microsoft EEE in Kubernetes]

• Microsoft Open Sources the Container Engine Central to Azure

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• The Sorcerer’s Code

  Richard Stallman, a software advocate affiliated with MIT, doesn’t really wear hats, but he’s been known to don tinfoil. In 2005, while attending a U.N. technology summit in Tunisia, he received a photo badge with a radio-frequency identification chip. Disgusted, he purchased a roll of aluminum foil, covered his badge, and handed sheets out to others. Tunisian security nearly blocked him from giving his talk. “By covering our badges,” he later noted, “we could prevent our movements within the summit, and our movements outside, from being scanned; we could also make a visible protest against the surveillance society that many governments are trying to impose.” A fellow delegate blogged that Stallman had “a legitimate gripe, handled with Richard’s usual highly visible, guileless, and absolutely unsubtle style of nonviolent protest.”

Public Services/Government

• US launches website to share open-source software code

  The US government has just launched its latest website, Code.gov with the aim of preventing the replication of code across government agencies in order to conserve valuable time and resources.

  The site, which was launched on Thursday, already contains almost 50 open-source projects from a number of government agencies. Code.gov is the product of the Federal Source Code policy that was first announced in August by the White House.

  The site’s goal is to provide new custom source code that can be reused across government agencies to cut down on replicating code which is a waste of government expenses and time. The public will also benefit as a result of Code.gov since government agencies are required to make some of the software they create available under an open-source license.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• Open-source tool to put optogenetics in more labs

  The first low-cost, easy-to-use optogenetics hardware platform will let biologists who have little or no training in engineering or software design incorporate optogenetics testing in their labs.

  The Light Plate Apparatus (LPA), which researchers created in the lab of Jeffrey Tabor, assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University, uses open-source hardware and software. The apparatus can deliver two independent light signals to each well in a standard 24-well plate and has sockets that accept LEDs of wavelengths ranging from blue to far red.

• Open Data

  • Identify-org launched to better identify organisations through Open Data

    A group of Open Data standard bodies have launched Identify-org, a new initiative whose goal is to create an open codelist in Open Data to better identify organisations in the world.

    International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), Open Contracting Partnership, 360Giving, Joined Up Data Standards (JUDS) and the Initiative for Open Ag Funding presented the initiative at the Open Data International Conference in Madrid in October.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Lab creates open-source optogenetics hardware, software

    Nobody likes a cheater, but Rice University bioengineering graduate student Karl Gerhardt wants people to copy his answers. That’s the whole point.

    Gerhardt and Rice colleagues have created the first low-cost, easy-to-use optogenetics hardware platform that biologists who have little or no training in engineering or software design can use to incorporate optogenetics testing in their labs.

Programming/Development

• Building code faster and why recursive Make is so slow

  One of the most common reactions to Meson we have gotten has been that build time is dominated by the compiler, thus trying to make the build system faster is pointless. After all, Make just launches subproject processes and waits for them to finish, so there’s nothing to be gained.

Standards/Consortia

• Why didn’t PDF die like Flash?

  The British government’s Accessibility department has just published the results of a six-week online survey, quizzing users of assistive technology about what aspects of government publishing might need addressing. Many of the users, according to the section’s blog, find the government’s widespread use of the semi-open Adobe PDF format ‘hard to use’, asking for alternative content in HTML. The government is considering these complaints, but civil and municipal retrenchment into PDF-dependence does seem to make change unlikely…

Security

• Security updates for Tuesday

• Security advisories for Monday

• Reproducible Builds: week 80 in Stretch cycle

  Patches to GCC to generate reproducible output independently of the build-path were submitted by Ximin Luo.

• Security considerations with github continuous integration

  Continuous integration (CI) support in github is a very useful addition. Not only can you utilize existing services like Travis CI, you can utilize the github API and roll your own, which is exactly what we did for libStorageMgmt. LibStorageMgmt needs to run tests for hardware specific plugins, so we created our own tooling to hook up github and our hardware which is geographically located across the US. However, shortly after getting all this in place and working it became pretty obvious that we provided a nice attack vector…

• The perfect cybercrime: selling fake followers to fake people

  Hackers are recruiting the internet of things into a botnet. But this time they’re not trying to take down the internet. They’re just using them to make fake social media accounts – which they can then sell to online narcissists to make an easy buck.

  Masarah-Cynthia Paquet-Clouston, a criminologist with the University of Montreal, and Olivier Bilodeau, a cybersecurity researcher at Montreal-based company GoSecure, have uncovered a large botnet that recruits everyday devices such as connected toasters, fridges or even your grandmother’s router to help commit social media fraud. They think that this stealthy, lucrative scheme is a glimpse into the future of low-level cybercrime.

• Yet Another E-voting Machine Vulnerability Found

  We’ve been talking about the ridiculousness of e-voting machines for well over a decade. If a machine doesn’t include a paper trail for backup, it’s suspect. That’s been the case since e-voting machines have been on the market, and many of us have been pointing this out all along. And the big e-voting companies have a long history of not really caring, even as their machines are shown to be vulnerable in a variety of ways. So it come as little to no surprise to find out that security firm Cylance has announced that it’s found yet another set of e-voting vulnerabilities in the Sequoia AVC Edge Mk1 voting machine. Sequoia especially has a long history of buggy, faulty machines.

Defence/Aggression

• Pundits think Islamic State’s Baghdadi is smart because he’s cruel. That’s nonsense

  Is Abu Bakr Baghdadi, the infamously cruel Islamic State leader, an unusually smart terrorist?

  Terrorism pundits seem to think the answer is “yes” — precisely because he’s turned cruelty into a sort of brand. He gained notoriety in the West for indiscriminately killing civilians and then directing his followers to brag about wanton bloodshed in “Jihadi John” beheading videos. Many would argue that, by leaving a photographic trail of bloodshed in his wake, Baghdadi has surpassed Osama bin Laden, the former Al Qaeda leader. In a Politico article from last year, for example, a prominent Brookings analyst exclaimed that Baghdadi “out-terrorized bin Laden,” who never fully grasped how well “violence and gore work.”

  I see things differently. I think the Islamic State CEO is an unusually stupid terrorist — precisely because he’s turned cruelty into a sort of brand.

  For a decade, political scientists have known that terrorist groups suffer when they exercise too little restraint by attacking civilians. Civilian attacks carry substantial downside risks by strengthening the resolve of target countries, eroding their confidence in negotiations, lowering the odds of government concessions, reducing popular support for the group and, all in all, expediting its demise.

• Long-range projectiles for Navy’s newest ship too expensive to shoot

  …Navy is canceling production of the LRLAP because of an $800,000-per-shot price tag — more than 10 times the original projected cost. By comparison, the nuclear-capable Tomahawk cruise missile costs approximately $1 million per shot, while the M712 Copperhead laser-guided 155-millimeter projectile and M982 Excalibur GPS-guided rounds cost less than $70,000 per shot. Traditional Navy 5-inch shells cost no more than a few hundred dollars each.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• Vancouver Considers Abandoning Parts of the Coast Because of Climate Change

  Vancouver prides itself on being a coastal city, nestled between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific. Like every other part of the world, it’s under threat from climate change, as warming temperatures cause sea levels to creep ever-higher. The city is looking at many options to hold back the rising water—and for the first time, retreat from the coast is one of them.

  This week, Vancouver officials put out a report laying out plenty of options to deal with sea level rise, including barriers, dykes, and seawalls. But it also suggests that, at least in some parts of the city, they may want to consider just getting people out of the way. The option of retreat from the coast is on the table in Vancouver, and other cities might soon follow.

• Palm oil’s green body comes under fire from activists

  Some activist groups are withdrawing support for the palm oil body that provides sustainability certificates for the industry, saying it is biased toward producers and its complaints panel is flawed.

  Aidenvironment, an Amsterdam-based green group, could become the latest to cut ties with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) over what it calls poor handling of a complaint against major palm producer IOI Group.

  RSPO — a body of palm producers, consumer companies, and activist groups — has long faced criticism for weak enforcement standards. Some faith was restored earlier this year when RSPO suspended IOI’s certificates, which then dissipated when RSPO revoked the suspension four months later.

  A withdrawal by green groups, long seen as the conscience of the RSPO, could undermine the credibility of the industry body, especially for consumer manufacturing companies under pressure globally to ensure they have a sustainable supply chain.

• Poaching is on the rise — most illegal ivory comes from recently killed elephants

  Almost all the world’s illegal ivory comes from elephants that have been recently killed, researchers say. The new study shows that seized ivory isn’t coming from old stockpiles, but from African elephants that have been poached less than three years before the tusks were seized. That means that poaching — one of the biggest threats to elephants — is widespread and may be a bigger problem than we think.

• Elephant poachers are hard at work in Africa, and carbon dating proves it

  Elephant poaching is alive and well — and the elephants are not. A team of scientists examining seized shipments of elephant tusks from Africa have found that the vast majority of the ivory came from elephants that died within the last three years.

  The sobering results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that the killing of elephants for their ivory is continuing at a disturbing pace — even as elephant populations across the continent are in sharp decline.

  While poaching had been easing for several years, it has returned with a vengeance in the last decade or so, said lead author Thure Cerling, a geochemist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Central African forest elephants have fallen by an estimated 62% from 2002 to 2011. At the Selous Wildlife Reserve in Tanzania, savanna elephants have declined 66% from 2009 to 2013.

  “There’s been a staggering rate of elephant loss every year,” Cerling said.

• Dakota Access Pipeline CEO Kelcy Warren Should Face the Music

  President Barack Obama foreshadowed more complications for the Dakota Access pipeline this week, as he told an interviewer that “right now the Army Corps is examining whether there are ways to reroute this pipeline.” With hundreds arrested in recent weeks at the Standoff at Standing Rock, North Dakota, the movement to halt construction of this 1,200-mile, $3.8 billion oil pipeline only builds. Musicians are increasingly joining the fray, striking an unexpected chord: pressuring oil billionaire Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, which owns the pipeline. Warren also owns a small music label and recording company, and is the founder and driving force behind the Cherokee Creek Music Festival in Texas. Many musicians, including folk/rock legend Jackson Browne, are banding together to confront Warren and help stop the pipeline.

  In a statement published in September by Indian Country Today Media Network, Jackson Browne wrote: “I met Kelcy Warren on one occasion, when I played at the Cherokee Creek Music Festival, held at his ranch. Later his company, Music Road Records, produced an album of my songs. Though I was honored by the ‘tribute’ and think highly of the versions—which were done by some of my favorite singers and songwriters, I had nothing to do with producing the recordings or deciding who would be on it.”

Finance

• We need a Brexit deal that heals the north-south divide

  It’s official. The north-south divide in Britain is now wider than at any time since the beginning of the industrial revolution – wider than when Charles Dickens was writing about Victorian squalor, and wider than in the depression years of the 1930s, when George Orwell exposed the grinding poverty of northern England in The Road to Wigan Pier.

  Remarkable new evidence from a study by the academic Philip McCann, The UK Regional-National Economic Problem, shows that while economic output per head, measured by gross value added, is near £43,000 a year in London – and as high as £135,000 in inner west London – almost half the UK population lives, in regions where output per head is below £22,325.

  Indeed the regional divide is so vast that, at £13,500 per person, economic output in Gwent, Wales, is a tenth that of one of the wealthiest part of London; and in the Tees and Welsh valleys it has now fallen below that of Lithuania, Slovenia and Slovakia.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Affinity Interviews Jill Stein!

• Voters Express Disgust Over U.S. Politics in New Times/CBS Poll

  An overwhelming majority of voters are disgusted by the state of American politics, and many harbor doubts that either major-party nominee can unite the country after a historically ugly presidential campaign, according to the final pre-election New York Times/CBS News Poll.

  In a grim preview of the discontent that may cloud at least the outset of the next president’s term, Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump are seen by a majority of voters as unlikely to bring the country back together after this bitter election season.

  With more than eight in 10 voters saying the campaign has left them repulsed rather than excited, the rising toxicity threatens the ultimate victor. Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic candidate, and Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee, are seen as dishonest and viewed unfavorably by a majority of voters.

• Wikileaks releases second batch on Election Eve

• As Our Revolution’s Former Electoral Manager, This Is How We Keep President Clinton Accountable

  With the right combination of strategies, we can make Bernie Sanders the most powerful senator in the country and keep President Hillary Clinton accountable to the progressive movement. Our best opportunity to accomplish this is right around the corner.

  The Huffington Post points out that Clinton leads in a greater proportion of polls than Obama did in 2008 and 2012. Their model gives Clinton an overwhelming 98.2 percent chance of victory. Clinton’s lead is so substantial that she could lose all seven swing states, a highly improbable outcome, and still have enough electoral votes tucked away in safe states to win the election. In short, Hillary Clinton will be our next president.

  Instead of staying home or turning Clinton’s big lead into a landslide, we should invest our votes into getting the most progressive candidate in the race, Dr. Jill Stein, to the major electoral threshold of 5 percent. Success will qualify the Green Party for official national party status, along with a simplified path to ballot access and about $10 million dollars in federal campaign funds for the next presidential election.

• EMAILS: Clinton Sent Classified Info To Chelsea After UN Climate Talks

  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent her daughter an email after the conclusion of a United Nations climate summit that had information later deemed classified by the Department of State.

  Clinton sent an email to her daughter, Chelsea, two days after she and President Barack Obama tried to negotiate an international global warming agreement at Copenhagen in 2009. The email was sent to Chelsea’s alias email account under the name, “Diane Reynolds.”

  Clinton forwarded Chelsea a Dec. 19, 2009 email from top State Department officials and Obama’s global warming “czar” Carol Browner — a long-time Clinton ally — according to emails released by the State Department Friday.

• WikiLeaks releases election day batch from Clinton campaign chair

  WikiLeaks has released its 35th batch of emails from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta, as Americans go to the polls in the presidential election.

• The 44 Most Damning Stories From WikiLeaks

  WikiLeaks has published tens of thousands of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails. This is what The Daily Caller believes are the most important findings from them.

  They expose a corrupt press, Clinton Foundation play for play, cronyism, and the Clintons’ real thoughts on the issues.

• Bill Clinton branded Jeremy Corbyn ‘maddest person in the room’, leaked speech reveals

  Bill Clinton branded Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn the “maddest person in the room” in a speech he gave explaining the resurgence of left-wing politics in Europe and America.

  Documents released by Wikileaks show the former President joked that when Mr Corbyn won his leadership contest, it appeared Labour had just “got a guy off the street” to run the party.

• WikiLeaks: Mook Frantic Over Appearance of TPP Support

  It likely will not make a difference in the outcome of today’s presidential election, but WikiLeaks offered more evidence Tuesday that even campaign staff for Democrat Hillary Clinton couldn’t follow her shifting position on trade.

  Clinton had studiously avoided taking a public position on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, which her Democratic primary opponents had been bashing with gusto. On June 14 of last year, at a campaign rally in Iowa, she dipped her toe in the water.

• Statement by Julian Assange on U.S. Presidential Election

  In recent months, WikiLeaks and I personally have come under enormous pressure to stop publishing what the Clinton campaign says about itself to itself. That pressure has come from the campaign’s allies, including the Obama administration, and from liberals who are anxious about who will be elected U.S. president.

• The Stakes Are Higher Than You Realize

  In one of the more memorable riffs of the 2016 election, President Barack Obama recently said “My name may not be on the ballot, but our progress is on the ballot. Tolerance is on the ballot. Democracy is on the ballot. Justice is on the ballot. Good schools are on the ballot. Ending mass incarceration – that’s on the ballot right now!”

  I increasingly fear that The West is on the ballot too.

• THE SECRETS OF THE US ELECTION: JULIAN ASSANGE TALKS TO JOHN PILGER

  What’s the significance of the FBI’s intervention in these last days of the U.S. election campaign, in the case against Hillary Clinton?

• A Tale of Three Foundations: Carter, Clinton and Trump

  Seen the latest front-page Jimmy Carter Center scandal? Hear about the six figure fees speaking former president Jimmy Carter pulls in from shady companies and foreign governments? An oil painting of himself he bought with charity money? Maybe not.

  Take a moment to Google Jimmy Carter. Now do the same for Bill Clinton. The search results tell the tale of two former presidents, one determined to use his status honorably, the other seeking exploitation for personal benefit. And then throw in Donald Trump, who of course wants to someday be a former president. Each man has his own charitable foundation. Let’s compare them.

  Three charitable organizations enter, only one emerges with honor. Let’s do this!

Censorship/Free Speech

• Following scare at Trump rally, life is now different for protester

  Life was fairly normal for Austyn Crites until Saturday night.

  The 33-year-old, Eagle Scout and high-altitude balloon inventor was by his own account a fairly average guy. He wasn’t famous — or infamous — and his face certainly wasn’t plastered all over international media.

  That is, until the Donald Trump rally on Saturday in Reno.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Thinking Like an Intelligence Officer: Anthony Weiner and Russian Spies

  There are many reasons why Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey is interested in the emails on Anthony Weiner’s home computer, emails which may include United States government information pertinent to Hillary Clinton or those communicating with her.

  The majority of those reasons for Comey’s involvement, for good or for bad depending on your political position, have been laid out across the media spectrum.

  But there may be one more reason not yet discussed. Since we seem to be spending so much time this election cycle on the Russians this year, let’s think like Russian intelligence officers. Comey may be looking at an intelligence operation.

• If GCHQ says it then it must be right, right?

  What happens if GCHQ advice is questionable or goes directly against the direction the majority of industry is heading?

• France wants a ‘monster’ database of citizens’ info

  The French government’s fairly discreet plan to create a massive database containing personal information of the country’s population has encountered gremlins in the form of growing opposition.

  French government plans to create a new database containing details of almost the entire population suffered fresh blows on
  Monday as criticism grew of the controversial project.

  The Socialist government announced a decree to create the database, which would contain personal information of 60 million people, on a public holiday weekend at the end of October.

  It has led to fears that hackers might target the information as well as anxiety that so much personal data could be misused in the future by the security forces or other government agencies.

• Can FBI review 650,000 emails in nine days? Absolutely, says Edward Snowden

  GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and his supporters are questioning whether the FBI could have sifted through 650,000 emails quickly enough to clear his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, just nine days after they were discovered.

  But the FBI and cybersecurity experts say it can be done with database scanning software – and one of those experts is none other than Edward Snowden, the fugitive whistleblower who’s hoping to get a presidential pardon.

  The debate unfolded today in the wake of FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that a search through a laptop used by Clinton aide Huma Abedin turned up nothing to change “our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton.”

• Disable Nvidia Telemetry tracking on Windows

  Telemetry — read tracking — seems to be everywhere these days. Microsoft pushes it on Windows, and web and software companies use it as well.

  While there is certainly some benefit to it on a larger scale, as it may enable these companies to identify broader issues, it is undesirable from a user perspective.

  Part of that comes from the fact that companies fail to disclose what is being collected and how data is stored and handled once it leaves the user system.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Indonesia Police Question Christian Politician in Blasphemy Case

  Police questioned the most prominent Christian politician in this predominantly Muslim country on Monday as they consider a blasphemy charge against him, just three months ahead of an election where he is the leading candidate.

• ‘Persecuted’ family forced to flee Manningham home as threats escalate

  Mr Hussain converted to Christianity 20 years ago, but says in recent years he has been subjected to harassment and violence by sections of the Islamic community.

  “This extreme persecution by certain people in the Muslim community because we are converts has broken us as a family,” he said.

  “We are fragmented and I do not know how we will recover from this. We haven’t functioned properly for years.”

  He said “serious questions” needed to be answered.

  Last year, Mr Hussain was hospitalised after his kneecap was smashed and his hand broken during an attack outside his home in St Paul’s Road, Manningham.

  Two hooded men, one armed with a pick-axe handle, assaulted him in a vicious attack caught on CCTV.

• Officials: SA cop fired for attempting to feed fecal sandwich to homeless person

  An officer from the San Antonio Police Department has been fired for allegedly attempting to feed a fecal sandwich to a homeless person, several sources have confirmed.

  The City Council was briefed on the matter during a private session Thursday, sources said. The officer reportedly placed fecal matter between two pieces of bread and gave it to a homeless person.

  “This was a vile and disgusting act that violates our guiding principles of ‘treating all with integrity, compassion, fairness and respect,’ Chief William McManus said in a prepared statement. “The fact that his fellow officers were so disgusted with his actions that they reported him to Internal Affairs demonstrates that this type of behavior will never be tolerated. The action of this one former officer in no way reflects the actions of all the other good men and women who respectfully serve this community.”

• One woman’s brush with Sharia courts in the UK: “It ruined my life forever”

  The UK government is conducting an inquiry into the operation of Sharia courts which is being boycotted by a number of women’s organisations because its remit is too narrow, and the panel of judges is not seen as ‘independent’ enough.

  Parallel to this, the Home Affairs Committee has also launched an inquiry into whether the principles of Sharia are compatible with British law.

  On 7 November, there will be a public seminar on “Sharia Law, Legal Pluralism and Access to Justice” 7-9pm at Committee Room 12 at the Houses of Parliament. Below, we publish the story of a woman Shagufta (not her real name) who spoke to the campaign group, One Law for All, and described how a brush with the Sharia courts ruined her life forever.

  I am a practising Muslim. My faith is central to who I am. I was born in 1947 in Pakistan and joined my husband in the UK in 1965. I am from a middle-class Pakistani family and found life in England hard. It was a huge culture shock. We settled in the north of England. I supported my husband with his business interests and eventually had my own business running a cookery school and a halal food company. I had six daughters and a son.

• Hong Kong pro-democracy politicians banned by China as crisis grows

  Hong Kong is facing a severe political crisis after China barred two pro-independence politicians from the city’s legislature.

  In a highly controversial move, Beijing said Yau Wai-ching and Sixtus “Baggio” Leung would not be able to hold office, striking a blow to the burgeoning movement calling for greater autonomy from the mainland.

  The ruling, which amounts to Beijing’s most direct intervention in the territory’s legal system since the 1997 handover to Chinese rule, is expected to spark renewed street protests in the former British colony.

• Sweden now allowing US Homeland Security officers at Stockholm airport, permanently and with access to own weapons

  In brief: Sweden is now allowing US Homeland Security to station officers at Stockholm airport on a permanent basis, and with access to their own weapons. The US “custom and security controls” in Swedish soil are supposed to stop suspected terrorists, which include “cyber-terrorists”, and other individuals suspected of criminal-behaviour – who appear on lists which may also include whistle-blowers and their publicists, who may be considered to have “stolen information”. The Department of Homeland Security declared in 2013 that “the unlawful disclosure of classified information by WikiLeaks in the summer of 2010 has rightfully renewed the Department’s focus on risk management.”

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Server

• Agile, DevOps and the algorithmic enterprise [Ed: Buzzword, buzzword, and more buzzwords; what happened to technology journalism?]

  Mike Mason, technology activist and adviser to the CTO at ThoughtWorks, discusses the next big thing in technology, and how business and tech leaders should prepare

Kernel Space

• The Linux Foundation Issues 2016 Guide to Open Source Cloud Projects

  The Linux Foundation today released its third annual “Guide to the Open Cloud” report on current trends and open source projects in cloud computing.

  The report aggregates and analyzes industry research to provide insights on how trends in containers, microservices, and more shape cloud computing today. It also defines the open source cloud and cloud native computing and discusses why the open cloud is important to just about every industry.

• 2016 Guide to the Open Cloud

• Linux Foundation Releases 2016 Guide to the Open Cloud

• ‘F*cking crap’ aside, Linus Torvalds says Linux 4.9 is coming along nicely

  Linux 4.9 is coming along nicely, with Linus Torvalds emitting the fourth release candidate on Saturday evening.

  But before he got there, he offered a minor kernel mailing list explosion when developer Miklos Szeredi proposed “the concept of feature flags to allow backward incompatible changes to the overlay format” in overlayfs. Szeredi opined that the feature was long overdue.

  Torvalds disagreed that the feature was needed, never mind overdue. Another poster to the Linux Kernel Mailing List, Amir Goldstein, asked for clarification of Linus’ thinking.

• Graphics Stack

  • OpenGL Overload: Implementing OpenGL Over Vulkan

  • Don’t Expect AMDGPU To Enable SI/CIK Support By Default Anytime Soon

  • ZTE ZX DRM Driver Proposed For Linux 4.10

  • Nouveau Atomic + DP MST Support Already Staged For Linux 4.10 Via DRM-Next

• Benchmarks

  • Fresh OpenCL + CUDA 8.0 Benchmarks On Kepler/Maxwell/Pascal With NVIDIA 375.10 On Ubuntu Linux

    For those more interested in Linux GPU performance for CUDA/OpenCL GPGPU computing than Linux gaming, this article is for you with a fresh round of results across my available GeForce Kepler/Maxwell/Pascal cards using the latest NVIDIA 375.10 binary driver paired with CUDA 8.0 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Linux.

Applications

• Claws Mail 3.14.1 Adds Notification Support for Ubuntu’s Unity Messaging Menu

  The free, GTK+ based, open-source, fast, user-friendly and lightweight Claws Mail email client has been updated today, November 6, 2017, to version 3.14.1 for GNU/Linux distributions.

• 5 Best Linux PDF Editors

  For probably the better part of 15 years, PDF has been the de facto standard for sharing, e-mailing, and printing documents. It is a well-supported format, and Linux distributions have been able to read them since, well, since forever! The only problem is, while Windows and MacOS machines can easily buy and install Adobe Acrobat Pro, there is no native Linux version. Still, there are a few good Linux PDF editors available, and I had a go at testing them for you.

• Calamares 2.4.4 GUI Installer Improves Flag Management of EFI System Partitions

  The development team behind the open source Calamares universal installer framework used in various GNU/Linux distributions, including Chakra, KaOS, and Netrunner, announced the release of version 2.4.4.

  Calamares 2.4.4 is the fourth maintenance update to the stable 2.4 series, adding a bunch of improvements and new features. Among these, we can mention improvements to the flag management of EFI system partitions, which deprecates the use of the sgdisk program, and better parsing of SDDM display manager configuration.

  Furthermore, there’s now support for selecting visible groups in the netinstall module by default, a new option that allows updating of the database of packages before running any other package management operation, and support for the “try_remove” and “try_install” parameters in the packages module configuration.

• NetworkManager 1.6 to Support the systemd-resolved Local DNS Forwarder Backend

  NetworkManager developer Lubomir Rintel announced today, November 6, 2016, the availability for download of the first development snapshot towards the major NetworkManager 1.6 release of the widely-used network connection manager.

  NetworkManager 1.6 will probably launch next year and promises exciting new features, including Vala bindings for the libnm library, the ability to keep most network connection up during system shutdown, except Wi-Fi and VPN, and support for removing new connections or disconnect devices to the checkpoint/restore connection functionality.

• PeaZip 6.2.0 Open-Source Archiving App Released with Revamped File Browser, More

  PeaZip, a free and cross-platform graphical file archiver that supports extracting and compressing of over 180 archive types, including 7-Zip, FreeArc, RAR, LHA, PAQ, ISO, UPX, 7Z, ACE, CAB, ZIP, XZ, ARJ, BZ2, and TAR was recently updated to version 6.2.0.

  PeaZip 6.2.0 appears to be a major release that updates the 7z backend to version 16.04 for Windows platforms, and introduces real-time display of cumulative progress when running simultaneous jobs to the GUI (Graphical User Interface) for the archiving and extraction operations.

• Introducting GPS Ami

  Once upon a time, I started geotagging my photos. For that I bought a GPS logger, an Holux M-1200E. The device works great with gpsbabel, and since my photography workflow was stuck on MacOS, I used Houdah GPS (which uses gpsbabel behind the scene, BTW). Also I have been working for too long on moving that workflow to Linux and GNOME. At one point I even started to write an app I called “Magellan” to do what that MacOS tool did, as a part of my other project, Niepce. I didn’t really get motivated so it went nowhere. It was written in C++ like the rest of Niepce. The technology isn’t the problem here.

• Proprietary

  • Spotify is testing a new layout for its desktop player

    As part of updates to its Windows and web desktop apps, the official Spotify for Linux client has picked up a minor redesign. Well, sort of. The company is testing a small redesign of the main player control UI in its desktop app with a sub-section of Spotify desktop users.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • 5 terminal commands every Linux newbie should know

  • How to Install Security Updates Automatically on Debian and Ubuntu

  • From Blender to FIrefox: Free Guides to Open Source Gems

  • Kali Linux – Fresh Installation Guide

  • Python String Basics

  • dpkg commands to manage packages on Debian Based Systems

  • Verification switching to routable ctlplane 192.168.24.0/24 on TripleO Quickstart

  • Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Vim

  • Create a bootable USB drive from an ISO image using dd command on Linux

  • How to install Budgie Desktop on Linux

  • Budgie Desktop Picks Up Indicator Applet Support

  • How To Install Adobe Flash on Ubuntu

  • How To Install Linux Mint From USB?

• Games

  • Control a scared little alien in ‘Scary Humans’, now on Linux

    Scary Humans [Steam, Official Site] is a small and difficult survival game where you are constantly being chased by those pesky Humans. Is it worth your bucks?

  • ‘CAYNE’, a free isometric horror game from the makers of ‘STASIS’ will support Linux

    The developers of ‘STASIS’ have been unable to bring the game officially to Linux, but their next game ‘CAYNE’ [Steam, Official Site] will have Linux support from Day-1. It will also be free, so that’s really awesome considering how high-quality it looks.

  • Wine allowed me to re-live a gaming experience I had from when I was a child on Linux

    Wine [Official Site] is a rather heated topic at the best of times, but I think we can all agree what the Wine developers have been able to achieve is nothing short of extraordinary. Wine enabled me to re-live an experience I had with a game as a child, and I felt the need to share it.

    I’m never one to advocate the use of Wine really, in fact, in the past I have been rather against it. My tune changed and cooled down a lot during the years I’ve been running GOL, as it really is such an awesome bit of software I don’t think anyone should turn their nose up at it.

    I should state for the record that I don’t particularly think it’s a great idea to use it for new games, since there’s always a chance they could come to Linux natively, but when it comes down to either using Windows, or using Wine on Linux. The answer should be obvious really, Wine it is. Not everyone is willing to give up certain Windows games they love, and I don’t think we should speak out against anyone who does. It brings them a step closer to being a fully-native Linux gamer, so that’s awesome really isn’t it? A Windows user coming to Linux, using Wine and possibly buying future native Linux games further growing us as a platform can only be a great thing.

  • GOG Connect has new games for you to grab from Steam for free if you already own them

    GOG Connect is the ability to own games on GOG, that you already have on Steam. Alongside the currently sale going on at GOG, the team have added in new titles for you to bring over to GOG for free.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Turn Your Smartphone Into An Open Source Hacking Device With KDE Plasma Mobile OS

  • KDE Plasma Mobile — The Linux Phone You’ve Been Waiting For?

    While Ubuntu Phone continues to stew, bereft of new devices and little developer interest, other efforts to create a fully-fledged Linux* smartphone are picking up pace. Chief among them is KDE Plasma Mobile. KDE itself needs little introduction. It’s one of the most popular Linux desktop environments around, and recently celebrated its 20th birthday.

  • Qt 5.8 Enters Beta, Implements New Configuration System, Graphics Architecture

    The Qt Company, through Tuukka Turunen, was pleased to announce that the upcoming Qt 5.8 major update of the popular, open-source and cross-platform GUI toolkit for building Qt apps for mobile and desktop platforms entered Beta stages of development.

    And a first Beta build is now available for download, and testing, for early adopters, bringing a bunch of exciting new features, among which we can mention a brand-new configuration system, an all-new graphics architecture containing Qt Quick 2D Renderer for devices without OpenGL support. For improved startup, Qt 5.8 Beta ships with built-in QML (Qt Meta Language or Qt Modeling Language) cache.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • GXml: Objects and Collections to XML and back

    If your GObject class implements GomProperty interface, and is a property in your object, it will be translated to an Element attributes with a name and a text value.

    For simple types, this means you can control if an attribute is written or not, depending if it is not null. Standard properties, not GObject classes implementing GomProperty, they will be always written with its default value. This is, for example, a boolean will always use false by default.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • New Parabola GNU/Linux Release Enables Parabola Community Repository by Default

    It’s been more than three months since the free, lightweight, open-source and simple Parabola GNU/Linux-libre operating system received an updated install medium, so the development team recently announced Parabola GNU/Linux-libre 2016.11.03.

  • Netrunner Desktop 16.09 “Avalon” Linux OS Is Out with Kernel 4.7, KDE Plasma 5.7

    Two weeks after the release of Netrunner Core 16.09 “Avalon,” the development team behind the Debian-based operating system proudly announced the availability of the Desktop Edition of the Netrunner 16.09 “Avalon” series.

• Arch Family

  • Review: Manjaro Linux 16.10 “Fringilla” Cinnamon

    I was going to make this post a review of the SpaceFM file manager (RAS syndrome, I know) upon recommendation by a commenter in a previous post. Then I checked it out for a bit, and realized that while it has a lot of potential for graphical customization, I still wouldn’t feel particularly compelled to write a full review about that one application. Instead, I’m reviewing the Cinnamon edition of the latest version of Manjaro Linux. Last year, when I reviewed it, it was still relatively tied to Arch Linux. Since then, it has become much more independent, using its own repositories and maintaining a semi-rolling release model (though maintaining ties via the Arch User Repository (AUR)). Given that, I figured it might be time for a new review to see what has changed. I tried it using a live USB made with UnetBootin. Follow the jump to see what it’s like.

• OpenSUSE/SUSE

  • New Framework Lets openSUSE Tumbleweed Users Enjoy Latest Flatpak Releases

    openSUSE Project’s Douglas DeMaio reports the availability of a new framework in the openSUSE Tumbleweed rolling release operating system that promises to let users enjoy the latest Flatpak software releases.

  • SUSE an open open-source company, says CEO

    As the company that holds number two rank among open source outfits, SUSE Linux isn’t normally the kind of entity that tends to indulge in name calling.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat will provide PHP 7.0 for RHEL

    Stability addicts can keep quiet, PHP 5.3.3 is still the standard version provided with RHEL-6, and PHP 5.4.16 the one in RHEL-7

  • EdLogics Addresses Health Literacy Gap with Linux Container and Cloud Solutions from Red Hat

    Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that EdLogics, a health education-based consumer engagement company and innovator in game-based learning, has built its digital health literacy platform on container and cloud solutions from Red Hat, including Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, Red Hat JBoss Middleware, and Ansible by Red Hat. EdLogics’ Education-as-a-Service offering, based on Red Hat technology, is aiming to transform the way consumers learn about health and improve health literacy while simultaneously cutting consumer costs.

  • Linux Top 3: RHEL 7.3, Ubuntu Core 16 and 4MLinux 20.0

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 was officially released on November 3, and now represent the leading edge of Red Hat’s Linux enterprise efforts.

    Among the improvements that have landed in RHEL 7.3 are ease-of-use enhancements to SELinux as well as security compliance checking for container via the OpenSCAP protocol.

  • Finance

    • Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Receives Consensus Rating of “Buy” from Analysts

    • Large Cap Key Stocks of the Day: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Ashfield Capital Partners LLC Reached $1,120,000 position of Red Hat Inc. (RHT)

• Debian Family

  • Parsix GNU/Linux 8.15 and 8.10 Get Linux Kernel 4.4.30 LTS, New Security Updates

    Users of the Debian-based Parsix GNU/Linux 8.15 “Nev” and Parsix GNU/Linux 8.10 “Erik” distributions are in for a treat this weekend, as a new kernel update and latest Debian Stable security updates landed in the software repositories.

  • Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch” May Land Early 2017, Full Freeze Set for February 5

    On November 5, 2016, Debian developers Emilio Pozuelo Monfort and Niels Thykier were proud to announce that the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch” operating system entered the Transition Freeze development stage.

  • The long tail in a common’s man journey to debconf16

    Came to the check-in counter at around 02:00 hrs, did the security thing and just had to wait as the flight was of 0400 hrs (from my limited search experience, the cheapest flights are at such times when nobody else (i.e.civilized people) wants to fly). Entered Doha around 5:15 Doha time and saw a much much bigger airport than either the Mumbai International Airport or/and the Delhi International Airport . While I have written some negative stuff about Doha, there were two positives that I am sure, I had forgotten to share –

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Vorke V2 Skylake Ubuntu Mini PC Now Available To Preorder From $350

        If you are in the market for a new mini PC you might be interested to know that a new version of the popular Vorke V1 small form-factor desktop computer is now available to preorder with prices starting from $350.

        For that price the system comes equipped with a Intel Core i5 processor 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and Ubuntu Linux software, with other offerings equipped with a Core i7 Skylake processor if your budget will stretch.

      • Applications Missing From Ubuntu

        I’ll be the first person to admit that there are applications missing from Ubuntu. This is also true of other Linux distributions, as well. But I think this is a larger issue with distributions like Ubuntu simply due to its popularity.

        This article will share some of the most commonly missed applications that Linux users have expressed interest in seeing ported over.

      • What you missed in tech last week: Ubuntu Core 16, ZX Spectrum Vega+

        LAST WEEK was an exciting one for us at INQ as we went hands-on with the eagerly awaited ZX Spectrum Vega+, a handheld version of the popular 1980s computer.

        We got our mitts on a production model of the long-awaited device, which raised nearly half a million quid on Indiegogo earlier this year. The company has taken a lot of flack in the past few months, but the joy of the finished device has made it all worthwhile.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Mythbuntu busted as last two devs working on media centre distro quit

        • Linux & Open Source News Of The Week: 25 Years Of Vim, Death of Mythbuntu, And Code.gov

Devices/Embedded

• Raspberry Pi continues to blaze new trails

  In 2006, the Raspberry Pi Foundation was founded at Cambridge University with the humble goal of getting more people to study computer science. The proposed solution, a small and cheap Linux computer, was immediately popular with a large number of people. Since 2012 educators, hobbyists, and industrial users have been making the most of our range of devices, and funding our education programs. All profits made by our trading subsidiary go to the Foundation.

• Rugged SBCs come in i.MX6, Tegra 3, and Tegra TK1 flavors

  Diamond’s “Eagle” and “Eaglet” carrier boards turn Toradex’s Apalis i.MX6, Tegra 3, and Tegra TK1 COMs into rugged, Linux-ready SBCs.

  Longtime embedded boards vendor Diamond Systems has released its first ARM-based single board computers, in a solution that serves up multiple versions of Toradex Apalis modules in sandwich-style SBC designs. The new ARM SBCs are based on Diamond’s new Eagle and smaller Eaglet carrier boards, which are either available barebones, or combined with a choice of three Apalis COMs plus a customized Linux OS on a microSD card, a full cable kit, and long lifecycle support.

• ARM-based IoT gateway kit includes PLC and demo board

  Eurotech’s Linux-based EDCK 4001 dev kit is built around its ReliaGate 10-11 IoT gateway and middleware, adding a PLC and demo board to mimic sensor I/O.

  The EDCK 4001 Everyware Device Cloud Development Kit simulates typical IoT sensor data sources and receivers on a demo board panel controlled by a PLC. This setup is in turn controlled by Eurotech’s ReliaGate 10-11 industrial computer running Yocto Linux and Eurotech’s Everyware Software Framework (ESF) IoT device middleware.

• NES Classic Is a Quad-Core Linux Computer

  On Nov. 11 Nintendo is set to launch the NES Classic Edition. This tiny console ships with 30 NES games preloaded, an NES controller just like the original, and the ability to output at 1080p complete with a number of screen filters.

  On the outside there’s nothing too surprising—it’s just a tiny NES. However, on the inside is a surprisingly powerful single-board computer that’s running Linux.

• The New Mini NES’ Guts Are Just a Tiny Linux Computer

• Nintendo’s NES Classic Edition runs Linux

• Nintendo’s $60 NES Classic Runs Linux

  Chances are you’ve seen (and cooed over) the Nintendo NES Classic, a $60 re-version of the 1980s gaming console legend. It’s cute, cheap and comes with 30 NES games pre-loaded. You also get everything you need right in the box, including a control pad and a HDMI cable.

• Orange Pi PC 2 Is a $20 Quad-Core Ubuntu PC

  If I told you that you could buy a 64-bit quad-core PC that runs Ubuntu for just $20 you’d presumably ask me what the reward tiers are, cos it sounds like a crowd-funding pitch. But it’s not. Meet the Orange Pi PC 2, a 64-bit quad-core single-board computer from Shenzhen Xunlong. And it only costs $20.

• First 64-bit Orange Pi slips in under $20

  The open spec Orange Pi PC 2 runs Linux or Android on a quad-core -A53 Allwinner H5 SoC, and offers GbE, a 40-pin RPi interface, and three USB host ports.

  Shenzhen Xunlong is keeping up its prolific pace in spinning off new Allwinner SoCs into open source SBCs, and now it has released its first 64-bit ARM model, and one of the cheapest quad-core -A53 boards around. The Orange Pi PC 2 runs Linux or Android on a new Allwinner H5 SoC featuring four Cortex-A53 cores and a more powerful Mali-450 GPU.

• VoCore2 Lite: A $4 Open Source Coin-sized Linux Computer

  The creators of VoCore coin-sized computer are back with VoCore2 which is an advanced version of the tiny Linux computer. It also comes in a VoCore2 Lite variant which is low on hardware and priced at $4. The VoCore is accompanied by a bunch of docks to enhance its capabilities.

• Phones

  • Tizen

    • Pre-orders for Samsung Gear S3 on Amazon Germany are still Live

      The latest wearable tech from Samsung, the Gear S3, has been rolling out to various markets over the last week, one of those markets being Germany. Now lots of the other countries have had stock come in and then a couple of days later run out of it again, like what we have seen happening in the UK and US. We hate people not being able to get Samsung’s latest Tizen wearable device, but we can’t help being happy their is some good demand there 😉

    • Game: Daruma-San is Coming, Japanese horror Game is available for Samsung Z1, Z2 and Z3

      Hi-Clay Studio brings you a Japanese horror game called Daruma-San is Coming, minions of “Daruma doll”, the master of all minions, are used to bring destruction. You start on a street where Daruma Doll’s minion is waiting for you and 5 other AI characters. After ‘go’ you need to tap the left and right feet consecutively until the minion finishes his sentence ‘Daruma-San is coming!’ By the time he has finished speaking he will immediately turn around, you will need to watch his speech bubble very carefully to know your timing. If you move whilst the minion is watching, you will EXPLODE!!!

    • Live Streaming Native Hotstar App is available on the Samsung Z2 in India

    • App: Line Messenger for Samsung Z2 Now Available in India

      The Line messenger app for Tizen smartphones was first launched on the Samsung Z2 in Indonesia as it came pre-installed as part of the Operating System (OS) in version Z200FDDU0API2. The good news now is that it has been released in the Tizen Store for Z2 users based in India.

    • ARTIK wants you in the comfort zone, over the clouds

      When you think about development boards they’re all about enabling creators to invent new, amazing stuff. But who are these creators? According to the Hackster Maker Survey 2016, 45.05% of hardware creators are startups. And when you look at startups, those who are more prone to actually build such new, amazing stuff, few platforms can tell to support them as SAMSUNG ARTIK does.

  • Android

    • Nokia D1C Android Smartphone Image Renders Leak Design Details

      Nokia is tipped to return to the smartphone market in 2017, and the company is expected to unveil two to three devices in the upcoming year. One of them is the rumoured Nokia D1C, whose specification details have been cropping up recently. Now, fresh images have been leaked giving us a glimpse of what the smartphone looks like, and cementing the fact that indeed a Nokia mobile device is up for resurrection.

    • Nokia Android Smartphone Launch During Holidays? QHD Display, Snapdragon 820, Android 5.0 Lollipop Integrated; More Launches In 2017

    • Samsung confirms new AI assistant for Galaxy S8

    • General Mobile GM 5 brings 7.0 Nougat to Android One

    • This is the first Android One smartphone with Nougat, the General Mobile GM 5

      Google’s Android One program has been pretty quiet over the past couple months. The last device released, the Sharp 507SH, landed in Japan but with Android Marshmallow out of the box. Since then Nougat has been released and now General Mobile has announced the GM 5, the first Android One device to launch with the latest version of Google’s mobile OS…

    • Android Nougat has the ability to take partial screenshots, but it’s currently hidden

    • Hidden “Partial Screenshots” Demoed on Android 7.1 Nougat

    • Rovo89 Gives Update on Current Status of Xposed for Android Nougat

    • This or That: Android vs. iPhone

    • Latest Google Play services update restores the ‘Check for updates’ button on Nexus and Pixel devices

    • Xiaomi Mi Box review: A great entry point for Android TV and 4K streaming

      When Android TV was introduced to the world back in 2014, the new TV-focused operating system wasn’t packaged as a new entertainment platform as such, but more of an upgrade to its old (failed) Google TV initiative. It sought to bring cohesion to Android content across devices.

      “We’re simply giving TVs the same level of attention phones and tablets have had,” explained Android director of engineering David Singleton at the launch.

      Over the past couple of years, Android TV has arrived on a number of smart TVs and set-top boxes — including the now-discontinued Google Nexus Player — as Google strives to ensure its presence extends beyond your mobile devices into the centerpiece of your living room.

Stop searching for projects and start searching for bugs

GitHub has a powerful search engine where you can customize your search in a variety of ways. The easiest way to search is by issue label.

A lot of open source projects label their issues to conveniently track them, using labels like beginner, easy, starter, good first bug, low hanging fruit, bitesize, trivial, easy fix, and new contributor.

You can further narrow down your search based on the programming language you’re comfortable with, by adding language: name to your search query. For example, here are all issues labeled as “beginner” in JavaScript.

‘Open source’ is not ‘free software’

In the open source universe, using terms such as FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software) is common and represents a casual conflation of the terms open source and free software, which are often used interchangeably. I would be remiss if I didn’t also admit that I have been guilty of same. I won’t be doing that anymore—or at least I’ll try not to—for a simple reason: Using the terms interchangeably is dangerous to the goals of free software and open media advocates (read “anti-DRM”). To continue this practice is to undermine beliefs that are fundamental to free software and associated movement.

RPG Open Source Horse Pulls IBM i Community Plow

The RPG development community is shrinking. I don’t mean because old programmers are riding into the sunset. I’m talking about collaboration and its ability to guide development that benefits the community by addressing the challenges of next generation applications for IBM midrange shops. Not that a collaborative open source culture is thriving here. But it could and it should. There are efforts to get this under way. And that will figuratively shrink the community.

Events

• Free Webinar: How Shared Development Is Driving the Automotive Industry

• Keynote: A Fireside Chat with Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux Foundation Fellow

• How We Built a Metering & Chargeback System to Incentivize Higher Resource Utilization -Michael Benedict & Vinu Charanya, Twitter

  This talk by Vinu Charanya and Michael Benedict at LinuxCon North America goes into fascinating detail on the metering and chargeback system Twitter engineers built to solve this problem, using both a technical and social approach.

• Twitter’s Chargeback System Measures Resource Use and Sends Out a Bill

  Twitter runs on a massively complex infrastructure running thousands of services, so small efficiencies result in large gains. But figuring out how to measure performance is a giant problem in a system this complex, as is giving Twitter’s teams the incentive and tools to improve resource allocation. Vinu Charanya and Michael Benedict’s talk at LinuxCon North America goes into fascinating detail on the metering and chargeback system Twitter engineers built to solve this problem, using both a technical and social approach.

• Eben Moglen, Software Freedom Through Diplomacy, SFLC 16

  Software Freedom Law Center president and executive director Eben Moglen speaks about the most effective ways to approach open source license compliance at the SFLC fall conference on Oct. 28, 2016.

• First OpenPGP.conf 2016 in Cologne, Germany

  Recently, I’ve attended the first ever OpenPGP conference in Cologne, Germany. It’s amazing how 25 years of OpenPGP have passed without any conference for bringing various OpenPGP people together. I attended rather spontaneously, but I’m happy to have gone. It’s been very insightful and I’m really glad to have met many interesting people.

Web Browsers

• Chrome Crushing It In The Browser Wars While Edge Continues To Sputter

  Despite all the effort Microsoft is expending in getting Internet users to try out and stick with its Edge browser, Chrome continues to the popular choice. Even worse for Microsoft, Chrome’s popularity is growing—it now accounts for more than half of all desktop browser usage and has nearly double the market share of Edge and Internet Explorer combined.

  Market research firm Net Applications has Chrome sitting pretty with a 54.99 percent share of the desktop browser market, up from 31.12 percent at this moment a year ago, while Internet Explorer and Edge combine for 28.39 percent and Firefox stuck at around 11 percent. Even more interesting is that when Windows 10 launched to the public at the end of July 2015, Chrome had a 27.82 percent share of the market while Internet Explorer still dominated the landscape with a 54 percent share. Now the script has flipped.

• Chrome

  • Google’s Chrome Hackers Are About to Upend Your Idea of Web Security

    In a show of hacker team spirit in August of last year, Parisa Tabriz ordered hoodies for the staff she leads at Google, a group devoted to the security of the company’s Chrome browser. The sweatshirts were emblazoned with the words “Department of Chromeland Security,” along with Chrome’s warning to users when they visit insecure websites that leave them open to surveillance or sabotage: a red padlock crossed out with an X.

  • Gopass, a Chrome extension for Pass

    Last week I treated myself to some hardware upgrades for my desktop, which will be my main workstation from now on. After installing Ubuntu Gnome, I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of my favorite applications from OSX have a Linux version.

    One application that does not have a native Linux client is 1Password, my (now ex-) password manager. Luckily, there’s Pass.

SaaS/Back End

• Becoming an engineer, completing the stack, and more OpenStack news

  Are you interested in keeping track of what is happening in the open source cloud? Opensource.com is your source for news in OpenStack, the open source cloud infrastructure project.

• Cloudera’s Bill Sullivan: Open-Source Platforms Key to Big Data Analysis at Agencies

  Bill Sullivan, vice president for public sector at Cloudera, has said government agencies should implement an open-source technology platform to process and analyze large data sets in order to facilitate operations and delivery of services to citizens.

  Sullivan wrote that agencies can implement security measures when it comes to the adoption of commercial-based or hybrid open-source software.

Databases

• Open-source database PostgreSQL powering GOV.UK portal

  The UK Government Digital Service (GDS) has been running PostgreSQL for one year now to power the GOV.UK portal. This open-source database system hosts the central content store underlying the portal, its Content Management System (CMS), and its internal publishing API.

Education

• Hungary seeks nationwide, open source eLearning tool

  Municipalities in Hungary should be able to use modern, web based eLearning tools to train their staff. To make this possible, Hungary’s State Treasury is looking for a service provider to help them run the open source Moodle eLearning solution.

BSD

• FreeBSD 11.0

  There were definitely some attractive features in FreeBSD 11.0. I especially enjoyed the changes to the system installer. The ability to set up UFS and ZFS through a series of guided steps was a welcome feature. I also really appreciate that the installer will allow us to enable certain security features like PID randomization and hiding the processes of other users. Linux distributions allow the administrator to set these options, but they often require digging through documentation and setting cryptic variables from the command line. FreeBSD makes enabling these features as straight forward as checking a box during the initial installation.

  I also like how pkg has progressed. I think it has become faster in the past year or two and handled dependencies better than it did when the new package manager was introduced. In addition, FreeBSD’s documentation is as good as ever, though I feel it has become more scattered. There were times I would find what I wanted in the Handbook, but other times I had to switch to the wiki or dig through a man page. The information is out there, but it can take some searching to find.

  Other aspects of running FreeBSD were more disappointing. For example, I had hoped to find boot environments working and accessible from the boot menu. However, progress seems to have reversed in this area as switching boot environments prevented the system from loading. There were some other issues, for example I was unable to login from the graphical login screen, but I could access the Lumina desktop by signing into my account from the command line and launching an X session.

  Hardware was a weak point in my experiment. FreeBSD did not work on my desktop machine at all in BIOS mode and failed to boot from installation media in UEFI mode. When running in a VirtualBox environment, the operating system did much better. FreeBSD was able to boot, play sound and run smoothly, but screen resolution was limited, even after VirtualBox modules had been installed and enabled.

  Perhaps my biggest concern though while using FreeBSD 11.0 was that I could not update the base operating system, meaning it would be difficult to keep the system patched against security updates. Even once I had manually created a /boot directory to fix the boot environment creation issue, freebsd-update and freebsd-version continued to fail to detect the running kernel. This leaves the system vulnerable and means our best chance for keeping up with security updates is to manually install them from source code, not an ideal situation.

  All in all, FreeBSD 11.0 does have some interesting new features, but it also has several bugs which make me want to hold off on using the operating system until a point release has been made available to fix the existing issues.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GCC ASAN Now Supports Sanitize-Address-Use-After-Scope

  The latest feature landing in mainline GCC for next year’s GCC 7 stable release is -fsanitize-address-use-after-scope.

Public Services/Government

• The People’s Code – Now on Code.gov

  Over the past few years, we’ve taken unprecedented action to help Americans engage with their Government in new and meaningful ways.

  Using Vote.gov, citizens can now quickly navigate their state’s voter registration process through an easy-to-use site. Veterans can go to Vets.gov to discover, apply for, track and manage their benefits in one, user-friendly place. And for the first time ever, citizens can send a note to President Obama simply by messaging the White House on Facebook.

  By harnessing 21st Century technology and innovation, we’re improving the Federal Government’s ability to provide better citizen-centered services and are making the Federal Government smarter, savvier, and more effective for the American people. At the same time, we’re building many of these new digital tools, such as We the People, the White House Facebook bot, and Data.gov, in the open so that as the Government uses technology to re-imagine and improve the way people interact with it, others can too.

• People’s Code: The U.S. Government Delivers Numerous Open Source Projects

  When it comes to the U.S. government, most people’s eyes are trained on the Presidential race, and if yours are, you may have missed the substantial work promoting open source software that the government is doing. For example, The Office of Management and Budget recently mandated in a lengthy memo that under the final Federal Source Code policy, federal agencies will have to share internally developed code with each other and release at least 20 percent of their code to the public.

  Now, the government has launched an update of its website, Code.gov, aimed at housing key open source projects.

• Code.gov is the US government’s open-source software hub

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• Open Access/Content

  • Deep Dive: Open Access and Transforming the Future of Research

    EFF works to inform the world about breaking issues in the world of technology policy and civil liberties. And one of our best ways of communicating with our friends and members is through our nearly-weekly newsletter, EFFector. Last week, we sent out a very special EFFector: a deep dive, single-issue edition that got into the nitty-gritty of open access and research. To keep the conversation going, we are publishing it here on the Deeplinks blog as well.

Health/Nutrition

• East African Nations Agree Declaration Promoting Regional Pharma Sector Investment

  The three-day conference brings together key stakeholders from EAC Partner States including Ministries of Health, Finance and Industry, National Medicines Regulatory Agencies (NMRAs), National Procurement Agencies (NMPAs), AU-NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency, World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the private sector (local and international pharmaceutical manufacturers) as well as international development partners and investors among others.

• Indian Generic Pharma Warns Against Government Caving To US Pressure On Data Exclusivity

  The Indian Drug Technical Advisory Board meeting on 7 November is expected to discuss a measure that could lead to opening the way to a 10-year data exclusivity period for originator pharmaceutical companies in India, according to the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance. The alliance submitted a letter to the advisory board to warn against consequences on public health of data exclusivity if the Indian government “succumbs to” pressure by the United States.

  In a letter to the Indian Drug Technical Advisory Board dated 27 October, D G Shah, secretary general of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA), explained why data exclusivity, which extends market exclusivity, would delay access to cheaper versions of the medicines.

• WHO Makes Headway In Hepatitis C Treatment Access Campaign

  A leading cause of liver cancer and cirrhosis, chronic infection by hepatitis C virus (HCV) affects more than 80 million people worldwide, 85% of whom live in low (13%) and middle (72%) income countries. Around 15% of Egypt’s population, for example, is infected – one of the world’s highest prevalence rate – while it is estimated that 12 million people in India have hepatitis C.

  Nearly 700 000 people are killed by hepatitis C yearly, where preventive vaccines are lacking.

  And this occurs at a time when at least 1.2 million people in Japan and three million Americans suffer from hepatitis C, while the infection is a major European public-health challenge (between 0.4% and 3.5% of the population in different EU Member States), as the most common single cause of liver transplantation.

Security

• Free security is the only security that really works

  There are certain things people want and will pay for. There are things they want and won’t. If we look at security it’s pretty clear now that security is one of those things people want, but most won’t pay for. The insane success of Let’s Encrypt is where this thought came from. Certificates aren’t new, they used to even be really cheap (there were free providers, but there was a time cost of jumping through hoops). Let’s Encrypt make the time and actual cost basically zero, now it’s deployed all over. Depending who you ask, they’re one of the biggest CAs around now, and that took them a year? That’s crazy.

• SQLi, XSS zero-days expose Belkin IoT devices, Android smartphones

  Research director Scott Tenaglia and lead research engineer Joe Tanen detailed the vulnerabilities during their ‘Breaking BHAD: Abusing Belkin Home Automation devices’ talk at the Black Hat Europe conference in London last Friday.

  The zero-day flaws specifically relate to Belkin’s smart home products and accompanying Android mobile application, which is used to wirelessly control the home automation devices.

  The first flaw, a SQL injection vulnerability, enables would-be hackers to inject malicious code into the paired Android WeMo smartphone app, and thus take root control of the connected home automation device.

Defence/Aggression

• Evil Russian Propaganda from the Evil Russian Invaders

  The BBC World Service was founded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and funded by them directly for six decades, until a cosmetic change last year. Its specific purpose is to spread British values and the British view of the world abroad. It specifically, on its dozens of different national services, gives an opportunity to dissident voices who cannot get on their mainstream media. The Americans spend hundreds of millions annually on outfits like RFE/RL to do the same. Yet when the Russians do precisely the same thing on a much smaller scale, for example by enabling you to listen to me, this is portrayed as evil propaganda.

  Fortunately we have the Henry Jackson Society to defend you from it. The Henry Jackson Society, supported by Liam Fox, Jim Murphy and pretty well every other right wing enthusiast you can name, is of course a great believer in free markets. And its sense of the market has detected that its old product of a constant stream of Islamophobia is becoming dated, and currently buyers want Russophobia. Whatever your phobia, the Henry Jackson Society will have some to sell you, so here we have their new Manual of Russophobia.

• Do Wars Make Us Safer? The People Aren’t Feeling It

  A new poll from an unlikely source suggests that the US public and the US media have very little in common when it comes to matters of war and peace.

  This poll was commissioned by that notorious left-wing hotbed of peaceniks, the Charles Koch Institute, along with the Center for the National Interest (previously the Nixon Center, and before that the humorously named Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom). The poll was conducted by Survey Sampling International.

• Yemen: The man who lost 27 family members in an air strike

  The war in Yemen had been going on for just two months when Abdullah al-Ibbi sat down for a late-night meal with his two wives, their children and grandchildren. It was then, in an instant, that his world shattered.

  The air strike that hit Abdullah’s home killed 27 members of his family. He survived, but only learnt about their deaths six weeks later when he woke up in a hospital bed.

  “If I didn’t fear God, I would have committed suicide at that moment,” he recalls. “I would have jumped off a building… but God gave me patience.”

  The family had lived in the Houthi rebel stronghold of Saada, which has come under intense aerial bombardment by the Saudi-led coalition supporting the exiled President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.

  The air strike hit their home at around midnight, says Abdullah. Rescuers with bulldozers worked until morning to retrieve the bodies buried under the rubble. Seventeen were children – the youngest, Abdullah’s granddaughter, Inas, was one month old.

  Three of his adult sons also made it out alive.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• NOAA 2017 Tide Tables are Available

  NOAA 2017 tide tables are now available. NOAA tide tables have been in production for 150 years and are used by both commercial and recreational mariners for safe navigation. Printed tide tables provide users with tide and tidal current predictions in an easy-to-read format for particular locations. NOAA’s Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services produce these tide tables on an annual basis.

• Rose Aguilar on Standing Rock Reporting, Michelle Chen on Samsung Labor and Environmental Abuses

  This week on CounterSpin: In their feature “What to Know About the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests,” Time magazine told readers that “environmental activists say” the pipeline would contribute to man-made climate change; “they insist that fossil fuels—including the vast reserves in the Bakken Shale—need to be kept in the ground to protect the world from the worst effects of climate change.”

• Adidas is making a million pairs of its much-anticipated sneakers created from recycled ocean plastic

  For more than a year, Adidas has been teasing the release of a shoe made almost entirely from discarded plastic fished out of the oceans. It revealed its first prototype of the sustainable sneaker, created in collaboration with environmental organization Parley for the Oceans, in June 2015. Finally, in mid-November, the first mass-produced quantity—7,000 pairs, to be exact—will go on sale, and according to Adidas, that’s just the start.

  “We will make one million pairs of shoes using Parley Ocean Plastic in 2017—and our ultimate ambition is to eliminate virgin plastic from our supply chain,” Eric Liedtke, an Adidas executive board member responsible for global brands, said in a Nov. 4 statement.

• Green Party Candidate In 33rd Senate Race Feels Real Issues Have Been Ignored By Major Parties

  Colin Bennett is no stranger to running as a Green Party candidate in the 33rd Senate District. He ran and lost in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2014. The only race he missed in the past decade was in 2012, when he ran for Congress.

  Bennett believes that the issue of climate change is too important not to keep trying to find a way to awaken people to the dangers involved, and if that involves running for office, then so be it, he says.

  “Literally, I feel the world is on the precipice of disaster,” said Bennett. “I’m doing everything in my power to turn that around.”

  Bennett, 37, lives in Westbrook, runs a small used bookstore in Deep River called Bennett’s Books, and has other jobs to make ends meet. In the summer, Bennett works for Sail Connecticut Access, a nonprofit operation that gives people with special needs the opportunity to go sailing.

  The campaign across the 33rd Senate District, which stretches down the Connecticut River Valley from Portland to Old Saybrook, has been dominated by disputes between Republicans and Democrats over Donald Trump and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

• French Greens pick MEP Jadot for 2017 presidential race

  French MEP Yannick Jadot will be the Green candidate for French president next year after winning a second-round party primary Monday.

  Jadot won 54 percent of the vote against Michèle Rivasi, who also sits in the Greens/European Free Alliance group in the European Parliament.

  Jadot, a 49-year-old former Greenpeace activist, won the most votes in the primary’s first round in late October with support of 36 percent. Around 13,000 party members and supporters cast their ballot either by mail or online (for French nationals abroad) last week in the second-round of voting.

Finance

• NYT’s Kristof Blames Poverty on Too Many TVs, Not Too Little Money

  Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for giving “voice to the voiceless” on international social justice issues, wrote an op-ed in yesterday’s Times (10/30/16) arguing for increased government action on poverty. His calls for heightened attention to economic deprivation, though, were buried in a larger message that was familiar to longtime Kristof-watchers: that the poor aren’t actually poor because they lack enough money, but because of their own moral failings.

• CEO’s message a jolt to IT workers facing layoffs

  IT workers in the infrastructure team at Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) were notified recently of their layoff. They expect to be training replacements from India-based contractor HCL. The layoff affects more than 500 IT workers, according to the insurance firm.

  This familiar IT story began a little differently. A few days before employees were notified in mid-October of their layoff, HCSC CEO Paula Steiner talked about future goals in an internal, company-wide video.

  Steiner’s comments weren’t IT-department-specific, but the takeaway quote by one IT employee was this: “As full-time retiring baby boomers move on to their next chapter, the makeup of our organization will consist more of young and non-traditional workers, such as part-time workers or contractors,” said Steiner in the video.

  What Steiner didn’t say in the employee broadcast is that some of the baby boomers moving “on to the next chapter” are being pushed out the door.

• What is a blockchain, and why is it growing in popularity?

  Last year, Ripple Labs, creator of the virtual currency XRP, was fined $0.7 million (~£540,000) by the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network for violating regulations concerning money laundering.

  Some observers cite this as the moment cryptocurrencies shaved off their startup hipster beards, put on a tie, and went mainstream. Being fined by a regulator means that you’re part of the financial services industry at last.

  Given that the first and most famous cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, was launched back in 2009, it has taken the wider industry a relatively long time to warm to it. But now suddenly everyone is talking about Bitcoin’s underlying blockchain technology as a disruptor of potentially massive proportions: Sweden is trialling a new land registry that uses a blockchain, dozens of startups spanning numerous sectors are poking around at possible uses, and importantly policy makers such as the European Parliament have voted in favour of a more hands-off approach towards blockchain tech regulation.

• Dutch campaigners gather signatures to derail EU-Canada trade deal

  Activists in the Netherlands have gathered almost two-thirds of the signatures needed to lay the groundwork for a referendum on Europe’s free trade deal with Canada, which they say overly favours the interests of multinational companies.

  The Dutch have twice voted down European Union initiatives in referendums, scuppering a proposed EU constitution in 2005 and in April throwing into disarray plans for closer EU relations with Ukraine.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The Art of Spin

  How Hillary Clinton backers deployed faux feminism and privilege politics to divert attention from her destructive policies.

• Front-Page Election News: More Horserace, More Trump, More Presidency

  Most, but not all campaign stories featured these sorts of empty calories; some dealt with important questions of candidates’ leadership, demeanor and conflicts of interest. One piece (Washington Post, 8/30/16) highlighted Trump’s “us vs. them” strategy, often blaming US problems on minority groups. Another (New York Times, 9/3/16) detailed Clinton’s cozy relationship with and frequent courting of the ultrarich.

  Another 12 percent of front-page election stories were focused on voters. Over half of these stories featured straightforward polling reports, while the others were more detailed looks at voter mood and logic. The New York Times covered voters particularly well; giving voice to their doubts and hopes for the candidates (9/14/16, 9/9/16). The Washington Post (8/22/16) and USA Today (9/13/16) both published some illuminating voter pieces, but many merely regurgitated poll data.

• Podesta Congratulated on Nevada Fraud

  Nevada was of course one of the most blatant examples of all of the Democratic National Committee rigging the election against Sanders. Firstly the caucuses featured casino owners bussing in coachloads of employees with firm instructions to vote for Hillary. Even with this, Hillary was struggling. Next the Democratic party machine announced to the media on 21 February that Hillary had won, despite it being by no means clear if that were true.

  Finally at the delegate conference, Hillary acolyte and DNC member Roberta Lange in the chair called the state for Clinton on the basis of the most dubious delegate vote imaginable – and denying any recount. What is more, the Clinton camp scored a double whammy by portraying, throughout the controlled corporate media, the precise scenes you see in this video as a violent riot by Sanders supporters. I do ask you to watch this video through and see what you think. It may just change your entire mind on what is really happening in US “democracy”.

• Clintons Are Under Multiple FBI Investigations as Agents Are Stymied

  Current and former FBI officials have launched a media counter-offensive to engage head to head with the Clinton media machine and to throw off the shackles the Loretta Lynch Justice Department has used to stymie their multiple investigations into the Clinton pay-to-play network.

• Franken: FBI’s Comey should face Senate hearings

  Sen. Al Franken called Sunday for the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold hearings on FBI Director James Comey’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private server. And the Minnesota senator said he thinks Hillary Clinton can rely on his state’s voters despite a last-minute visit from Donald Trump, though he said he’s always “nervous.”

  “I think that there should be hearings, and I’m certain there will be hearings in the Judiciary Committee on this matter,” the Franken told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

  His comments reflected the Democratic frustration with Comey telling lawmakers 11 days before the November 8 election that the FBI was reviewing new emails potentially connected to its investigation into whether Clinton mishandled classified information.

  [...]

  Franken also defended the Clinton Foundation as Tapper pressed him on whether it should be shuttered if Clinton wins the election.

• Can The Oligarchy Still Steal The Presidential Election?

  At this point, I would think that the Oligarchy would prefer to steal the election for Trump, instead of from him, rather than allow insouciant Americans to destroy America’s reputation by choosing a person under felony investigations for president of the United States.

• Not all Americans are Barking Nutters

  The journalists of course attempt to say that to vote for Stein is to let Trump in. Stein sticks strongly to the argument that the “Queen of Corruption” and “Warmonger” Clinton is not in fact a real choice from Trump. This is of course absolutely true, Clinton is a dangerous extremist – she just happens to support the extremism of the right wing establishment and its poodle media.

  I have been fascinated by the apoplexy generated in the pretend left by the notion that people ought not to vote for Clinton. The go-to argument is that not to vote for her is in itself an act of misogyny. I wonder if they will argue the same for Marine Le Pen. The second argument is that a corrupt warmonger is better than the racist bigot Trump. The interesting thing is, close examination reveals an almost 100% correlation between those apoplectic at any lack of support for Clinton, and those who supported Tony Blair. The idea that being an ultra-corrupt warmonger is not a big problem is obviously a fixed principle with these people.

• Defying the Politics of Fear

  Our only chance to overthrow corporate power comes from those who will not surrender to it, who will hold fast to the causes of the oppressed no matter what the price, who are willing to be dismissed and reviled by a bankrupt liberal establishment, who have found within themselves the courage to say no, to refuse to cooperate. The most important issue in this election does not revolve around the personal traits of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. It revolves around the destructive dynamic of unfettered and unregulated global capitalism, the crimes of imperialism and the security and surveillance apparatus. These forces are where real power lies. Trump and Clinton will do nothing to restrict them.

  It is up to us to resist. We must refuse to be complicit, even in the act of voting, with the fossil fuel industry’s savaging of our ecosystem, endless wars, oppression of the poor, including the one in five children in this country who is hungry, the evisceration of constitutional rights and civil liberties, the cruel and inhumane system of mass incarceration and the state-sponsored execution of unarmed poor people of color in our marginal communities.

  [...]

  The rise of Donald Trump is the product of the disenchantment, despair and anger caused by neoliberalism and the collapse of institutions that once offered a counterweight to the powerful. Trump gives vent to the legitimate rage and betrayal of the white underclass and working poor. His right-wing populism, which will grow in virulence and sophistication under a Clinton presidency, mirrors the right-wing populism rippling across much of Europe including Poland, Hungary, France and Great Britain. If Clinton wins, Trump becomes the dress rehearsal for fascism.

• US election poll tracker: Who is ahead – Clinton or Trump?

  Americans will vote on 8 November to choose their next president.

  The numbers have begun to tighten as we approach election day amid crises affecting both Democratic contender Hillary Clinton and her Republican rival Donald Trump.

  Use our tracker to follow the contest and scroll down to find some explanation on what the polls show.

• WikiLeaks Show Washington Post Writer Asked DNC For Anti-Trump Research

  Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank appears to have asked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to do the majority of the research for a negative column he wrote about Donald Trump in April 2016.

  Milbank’s column was titled, “The Ten Plagues of Trump,” and featured a list of “outrageous things” said by Trump. One of the “plagues” listed by Milbank, for example, was “Blood” and centered around a quote from Trump about Megyn Kelly: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”

• WikiLeaks: Chicago mayor used private domain to communicate with officials

  Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel used personal email accounts and a personal email domain to communicate with government officials and political figures, according to a published report based on hacked emails posted by WikiLeaks.

  Emanuel’s personal account information turned up among the thousands of emails from John Podesta, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, the Chicago Tribune reported. Clinton has come under fire for her use of a private email server because doing so potentially jeopardized classified information.

  Emanuel registered his personal email domain, “rahmemail.com,” on May 16, 2011, the day he was sworn into office. The hacked emails also turned up evidence of Emanuel’s personal Gmail account.

• Chelsea’s husband allegedly used foundation ties to boost hedge fund

  Chelsea Clinton’s husband used his connections to the Clinton family and their charitable foundation to raise money for his hedge fund, according to an allegation by a longtime Clinton aide made public Sunday in hacked documents released by WikiLeaks.

  Marc Mezvinsky extended invitations to a Clinton Foundation poker event to rich Clinton supporters he was courting as investors in his hedge fund, and he also relied on a billionaire foundation donor to raise money for the fund, according to the WikiLeaks documents. They also assert that he had his wife Chelsea Clinton make calls to set up meetings with potential investors who support her family’s political and charitable endeavors.

  The documents — a memo and an email — were written in late 2011 and early 2012, respectively, by ex-Clinton aide Doug Band. They were sent to family confidants including John Podesta, who is now serving as Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, and Cheryl Mills, who was Clinton’s State Department chief of staff.

• Why Historians Must Use Wikileaks To Write The History Of The 2016 Election

  Wikileaks is playing a prominent, if under reported, role, in the 2016 American presidential election. Few understand the importance of Wikileaks in the eventual writing of the history of presidential politics.

  The media write and talk about events as they happen, usually without historical background or context. A good historian writes with retrospection about past events that explain historical outcomes. U.S. Presidential elections leave behind a clutter of accounts of those who were (or claim to have been) eyewitnesses to history – campaign insiders, journalists, pundits, and hangers-on. The best insider accounts pierce some of the veil of campaign rhetoric, PR, talking points, and smoke and mirrors to explain what was really happening behind the scenes.

• Viggo Mortensen will be voting for Jill Stein on Tuesday, says it’s not a protest vote

  Like most of Hollywood, Viggo Mortensen is solidly anti-Trump in this election, but he’s also no fan of Hillary Clinton.

  Instead the “Lord of the Rings” star — a Bernie Sanders supporter until he dropped out of the race — will be casting his vote for Jill Stein.

  “I don’t want to get to the end of my life and look back and go, ‘You know, I never voted my conscience,’ ” he said at a luncheon for his movie “Captain Fantastic” at the Explorer’s Club.

  “Not really, when it mattered. I don’t want to do that. And I don’t look at it as a protest vote. I’m not voting against something, I’m voting for something. I’m voting my conscience. It’s not a protest, it’s an affirmation.”

• WikiLeaks: DNC and CNN colluded on questions for Trump, Cruz

  Newly released emails from WikiLeaks suggest that the Democratic National Committee colluded with CNN in devising questions in April to be asked of then-Republican primary candidate Donald Trump in an upcoming interview.

  In an email to DNC colleagues on April 25 with the headline “Trump Questions for CNN,” a DNC official with the email username DillonL@dnc.org asked for ideas for an interview to be conducted by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.

  “Wolf Blitzer is interviewing Trump on Tues ahead of his foreign policy address on Wed. … Please send me thoughts by 10:30 AM tomorrow.”

  The sender of the email would seem to be DNC Research Director Lauren Dillon, who was identified in previous reports of DNC emails released by WikiLeaks in July.

• Chelsea Clinton ‘used Foundation resources to fund her 2010 wedding to Marc Mezvinsky’, according to new Wikileaks emails

  Hillary Clinton’s daughter Chelsea allegedly used resources from the Clinton Foundation for her wedding, a new dump of Wikileaks emails appear to reveal.

  In several emails, Doug Band, a former top aide to president Bill Clinton and a former Clinton Global Initiative board member, complains about Chelsea Clinton (writing ‘cvc’ for Chelsea Victoria Clinton).

  In one email, dated January 1, 2012, Band emails John Podesta, Chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, and says Chelsea Clinton was conducting an internal investigation into CGI and the Clinton Foundation, which posed a conflict of interest.

  It is unclear why Chelsea Clinton was investigating her family’s foundation and its dealings with money.

• DNC staffers prepared CNN anchors Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper for interviews with Trump, new batch of 8,000 WikiLeaks emails reveals

  The Democratic National Committee helped CNN anchors Wolf Blizter and Jake Tapper prepare for interviews with Donald Trump, the latest WikiLeaks email dump has revealed.

  Among the batch of 8,263 emails released on Sunday night, one shows that staff working for the network hosts asked DNC staffers what questions they should put to the Republican candidate.

  They also asked for advice when it came to an appearance from former candidate, Ted Cruz.

  An email dated April 28 entitled ‘Cruz on CNN’ reads ‘CNN is looking for questions. Please send some topical/interesting ones.’

• Vote Your Conscience, Vote for WikiLeaks and Vote for Dr. Jill Stein

  With Hillary Clinton circumventing yet another FBI investigation, progressives have an alternative to establishment Democrats. If your conscience won’t allow you to side with a person who is advised by Henry Kissinger and neoconservatives like Robert Kagan, then you have a choice on November 8, 2016. You can vote for a future without a media beholden to John Podesta’s dinner parties. You can choose a future without Wolf Blitzer or Donna Brazile colluding with the DNC, and without a Democratic nominee accepting Foundation contributions from countries that fund ISIS. If you envision a world without wars for oil, fracking, the prison industrial complex, and severe breaches in campaign finance laws, then you certainly don’t have to pick Clinton or Donald Trump.

  You can vote for WikiLeaks.

  You can vote for WikiLeaks, and appease your conscience by championing Dr. Jill Stein and the Green Party.

  Every movement has a beginning, and although Jill Stein has been active in politics for years, this year marks a turning point in American history. Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have allowed voters to see the inner workings of the Clinton campaign; countering an American media serving essentially as Hillary Clinton’s public relations machine. Instead of a 2005 hot mic audio of Donald Trump (considered to be Pulitzer Prize winning journalism by the The Washington Post) Assange and WikiLeaks have published enough Podesta emails to highlight the long-term implications of a Clinton presidency.

• Meme warfare: how the power of mass replication has poisoned the US election

  If you use Facebook, or Twitter, have a Wi-Fi connection, watch television or have been to an office Halloween party, you’ve probably encountered them: internet memes.

  These shareable, sometimes pithy and often puerile units of culture have emerged as the lingua franca of the 2016 election, and have given the American people an entirely new way of articulating their beliefs. Clinton’s top tweet is a meme. Trump’s taco bowl became one. Through memes, Ted Cruz was “unmasked” as the Zodiac killer. Jeb Bush’s limp plea for applause got him Vined into oblivion. Bernie Sanders shared a moment with a bird that blossomed into something out of Walt Disney’s long-lost Marxist phase.

  Memes can be fun, or they can be dumb – but as an emerging medium, they haven’t provoked a lot of debate or analysis. In fact, they seem to defy scrutiny.

  And slowly, before anyone can even take note, memes are ruining democracy.

• WikiLeaks releases latest batch of emails from Clinton campaign chair

  WikiLeaks has published its 33rd tranche of emails from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.
  Trends

  The whistleblowing organization has now published more than 55,600 emails in a series of daily online releases which it said were building towards the November 8 presidential election.

• Democrats advised CNN on interview questions for Donald Trump, according to new WikiLeaks release

  The Democratic National Committee (DNC) apparently helped CNN anchors prepare for interviews with Donald Trump, according to the latest WikiLeaks email dump.

  Included in some 8,263 emails released by WikiLeaks is an exchange that shows DNC staff discussing how to advise CNN on what questions to ask Mr Trump in a scheduled interview ahead of his foreign policy address.

  However CNN defended the practice, saying it had sought the Republicans’ opinions about questions to ask Hillary Clinton in order to “ensure a tough and fair interview”.

  Although the interview with Mr Trump was ultimately cancelled, the emails showed numerous questions were submitted by the DNC.

• Campaign collusion: Is CNBC’s John Harwood too close to the Clinton operation?

  The following question was asked on Sept. 21, 2015, via email, to the chairman of a major presidential campaign, John Podesta: “What should I ask Jeb?”

  At the time, Jeb Bush was still a leading candidate to challenge Hillary Clinton for the White House — and had more money behind him.

  The question didn’t come from a campaign surrogate or an opinion host — it came from the chief Washington correspondent at CNBC, John Harwood. And just to make sure he hit Bush where the Clinton campaign — which still viewed the former Florida governor as its most likely opponent for 2016 — wanted him to most, Harwood went to Clinton’s campaign chief to do all the thinking for him.

  It should be noted that the title “chief Washington correspondent” means Harwood is not an opinion host or a partisan pundit — he’s one who represents the network as objective and nonpartisan. It also means he cannot consult with opposition campaigns for advice — nor can he provide advice back to a campaign, which Harwood has on several occasions via recent WikiLeaks dumps.

• Husband Of CNN Exec Tipped Clinton Campaign Off To Network’s Polls Prior To Release

  An email released by WikiLeaks on Sunday shows that the husband of CNN vice president and Washington bureau chief Virginia Moseley tipped the Clinton campaign off to a favorable poll just before its release last September.

  “Good CNN poll coming,” Thomas Nides, Moseley’s husband, wrote to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta in a Sept. 20, 2015 email.

  Nides served as deputy secretary of state under Clinton and is currently vice president at Morgan Stanley. His name has been floated for a possible high-level spot in a Clinton White House.

• A call to progressives: Help build and own the Green Party

  It hasn’t been an easy election year for progressives. Many were crushed when Bernie Sanders failed to pull off a historic upset of establishment pick Hillary Clinton, then outraged when leaked emails proved what they already knew — that the Democratic Party elite had conspired against Sanders’ political revolution the whole time.

  But with the racist, sexist billionaire buffoon Donald Trump leading the GOP, many progressives have resigned themselves to pulling the lever for Clinton in an attempt to keep Trumpismo at bay. But before you accept yet another election year of “lesser evilism,” allow yourself to consider investing your vote in the Green Party

  In a 2006 interview with the editorial board of the Jewish Press in Brooklyn, then-Senator Hillary Clinton shared her opinion on the recent election in Palestine: “I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,” said Sen. Clinton. “And if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.”

• Clinton aide says Foundation paid for Chelsea’s wedding, WikiLeaks emails show

• Don’t Move To Canada If Your Candidate Loses, Read This

  Regardless of who wins this election, around half of the country is going to have to learn to live under the rule of someone they’ve vilified for the entire election cycle. (That’s two and a half years, but with a RealFeel of untold centuries trapped in the Phantom Zone.) In order to help people from both sides, we’ve put together a few tips in case the other side wins.

• New WikiLeaks email suggests possible ‘collusion’ between CNBC, Clinton campaign

  CNBC host John Harwood in September 2015 asked Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, what he should ask then-Republican presidential candidate former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in an upcoming interview, according to new emails published by WikiLeaks.

  Harwood, who faced harsh criticism for his performance as a debate moderator in the third Republican presidential primary debate in October 2015, sent Podesta an email on Sept. 21, 2015, with the subject line, “What should I ask Jeb…” The body of the email read, “…in Speakeasy interview tomorrow.”

• Chris Hedges: The End of the Election Will Not Mean the End of Public Anger

  It’s impossible to tell you, because it really will depend on the mood, on the emotions of the voters on election day. That’s all these campaigns are about, because they both essentially are neo-liberal candidates who will do nothing to impede imperial expansion and corporate power. The whole campaign has descended to, you know, not surprisingly, to the level of a reality TV show, with presidential debates featuring women who have accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual assault being brought in by Donald Trump; videos – I’ll go back to the primaries – of the size of people’s genitals. I mean, it’s just appalling, but all of that is emblematic of a political system in deep decay and one that no longer revolves around fundamental issues. We know from the Wikileaks emails, the John Podesta emails that were leaked from Hillary Clinton, that there was a calculated effort on a part of a Clinton campaign to promote these fringe candidates – like Trump, and they particularly wanted Trump, because the difference between Hillary Clinton and a more mainstream Republican candidate, like Jeb Bush, is so marginal. So if you had to ask me, I don’t think Trump will win, but I don’t rule out the possibility that he will win – we have to look at the Brexit polls in Britain…

• Jill Stein: ‘We Have Crossed the Rubicon in This Election’

  Jill Stein is already looking past tomorrow’s election.

  The Green Party candidate, who is has a polling average of about 2% heading into Election Day, chuckled at the prospect of an outright win Tuesday. She said she’s hoping for 5% in election returns, and beyond that, she’s planning to push for reforms in the presidential debate commission and to help pave the way for future third party candidates with a rank choice voting initiative.

  Stein spoke to TIME on the eve of the election about what she’s seem from voters this year, how women were talked about in the race and why she never takes vacations.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Serbia’s censorship debate

  Is the Serbian government using underhanded censorship methods to control the media narrative or are critics too harsh?

• FOSS Friendly IBM is Attempting to Destroy OpenLava

  Several years ago Platform Computing (now owned by IBM) released an open source version of LSF (Platform Load Sharing Facility) — their premier software product. LSF is a workload management platform and job scheduler for distributed HPC environments. In recent years that open source product has begun to flourish, and now IBM is using the DMCA in an attempt to erase all progress made on the project since it was first released. I guess if you can’t compete, you call your legal team…

• Internet Pioneers Slam $750,000 Settlement for the ‘Man Who Invented Email’

  Two early internet pioneers are expressing sadness and disbelief at the fact that Shiva Ayyadurai, a self-described “world-renowned scientist, inventor, lecturer, philanthropist and entrepreneur” who says he invented “email: the electronic mail system as we know it today,” will receive a $750,000 settlement from Gawker Media, the bankrupt publisher that he sued for defamation earlier this year over a series of stories that, his lawsuit claims, “falsely trace the origin of email and call Dr. Ayyadurai a liar.”

  Computer programmer Ray Tomlinson is credited by many experts and historians with developing the technology that we understand today as email. Dave Crocker, who helped write several foundational standards documents about messaging over the internet, told Gizmodo that Ayyadurai’s settlement with Gawker Media represents a victory for a version of the history of email’s development that isn’t supported by evidence. “I grew up being taught that the truth is always a sufficient defense against claims of defamation,” Crocker said upon hearing about the settlement. “Given the extensive documentation about the history of email, I’m sorry to find that that the adage no longer holds true.”

  John Vittal, one of Crocker’s co-authors, seconded his frustration. Vittal is best known in the traditional history of email for being the first person to implement “reply” and “forward” functions. “What’s true is true, and you can’t hide from it, and shouldn’t be able to capitalize on thwarting it,” said Vittal. “To me, it’s a sad day.”

• Clinton Campaign Also Not A Fan Of Free Speech: Sends Legal Threat Letters Over Trump Ads

  If there’s one thing that the two major Presidential candidates seem to agree on it’s that we have too much free speech and all you First Amendment whiners should quiet down. Just this morning, we wrote about Trump threatening a documentary filmmaker with a cease & desist letter (the latest in a fairly long list of defamation threat letters). And it appears that the Clinton campaign is also ramping up its similar legal threat letter business.

  Last week, it sent cease & desist letters to broadcasters in Florida who were airing Trump ads that used some footage of Michelle Obama back in the 2008 campaign taking something of a swipe at Clinton. And, just today, the campaign supposedly sent out cease & desist letters to broadcasters airing new Trump ads claiming that Clinton is “under investigation by the FBI.”

• Facebook Blocks Profiles Of Far-Right Polish Groups, Sparks Protests

  Several far-right Polish groups have protested outside Facebook’s office in Warsaw after the social networking site temporarily blocked their profiles.

  About 120 people demonstrated in the Polish capital Saturday afternoon, denouncing what they said was “censorship.”

• Poland’s far-right groups protest Facebook ‘censorship’ after social accounts removed

• Far-right Polish groups protest Facebook profile blockages

Privacy/Surveillance

• If The FBI Can’t Stop All These Leaks About An Investigation, Why Would it Be Able To Keep Encryption Backdoor Secret?

  In the last 10 days or so, James Comey sent two letters to Congress — the first one notifying Congress of some new information in an “unrelated” investigation that may pertain to Hillary Clinton’s emails. And then the one from yesterday admitting that there was nothing important in those emails. That was effectively all that Comey said officially. Yet, in between all of that a ton of information leaked from the FBI about the investigation. We learned what it pertained to (the Anthony Weiner investigation), heard estimates of the number of emails involved, heard that the FBI found them weeks ago but only told Comey right before he sent the letter, that the FBI didn’t have a warrant to read the emails — and then that it did, and that a whole bunch of people inside both the FBI and DOJ have opinions on both sides of this whole mess.

  Basically, the FBI (and the DOJ) were leaking information like it was the last chance they’d ever have to leak information and their lives depended on who could leak the most.

• The USA threatens to unleash cyber warfare against Russia

• A second Privacy Shield legal challenge increases threat to EU-US data flows

  The Privacy Shield transatlantic data transfer deal is now caught in a pincer action: A week after it emerged that Irish digital rights activists had filed suit to annul the deal come reports that a French campaign group has begun its own legal action.

  French civil liberties campaign group La Quadrature du Net filed suit against the European Commission, the European Union’s executive body, on Oct. 25.

  Although the Court of Justice of the EU has not yet published details of the complaint, Brussels-based news agency Euractiv reported Thursday that La Quadrature’s goal is to annul the Commission’s decision that Privacy Shield provides adequate protection under EU law when the personal information of EU citizens is transferred to the U.S. for processing.

• China Adopts Cybersecurity Law Despite Foreign Opposition

  The Cyber Security Law was passed by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature, and will take effect in June, government officials said Monday. Among other things, it requires internet operators to cooperate with investigations involving crime and national security, and imposes mandatory testing and certification of computer equipment. Companies must also give government investigators full access to their data if wrong-doing is suspected.

  China’s grown increasingly aggressive about safeguarding its IT systems in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations about U.S. spying, and is intent on policing cyberspace as public discourse shifts to online forums such as Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat. The fear among foreign companies is that requirements to store data locally and employ only technology deemed “secure” means local firms gain yet another edge over foreign rivals from Microsoft Corp. to Cisco System Inc.

• A Guy Put Amazon’s ‘Alexa’ In Big Mouth Billy Bass’ Body And People Are Rightly Horrified

  So Big Mouth Billy Bass — you know, that animatronic singing fish that was annoyingly popular at the end of the 1990s — was, frankly, already pretty creepy. But one little modification brought it to new, disturbing heights.

  Brian “Wizard of Terror” Kane posted this lil’ video to Facebook on Oct. 27, which features a Big Mouth Billy Bass configured so that the voice of Alexa — Amazon’s voice assistant similar to Apple’s Siri — emanates from the fish’s mouth.

  The video is simply captioned, “the future” ― and it’s a dystopian vision indeed.

• How to talk with your loved ones in private

  A few days ago I ran a very biased and informal survey to get an idea about what options are being used to communicate with end to end encryption with friends and family. I explicitly asked people not to list options only used in a work setting. The background is the uneasy feeling I get when using Signal, a feeling shared by others as a blog post from Sander Venima about why he do not recommend Signal anymore (with feedback from the Signal author available from ycombinator). I wanted an overview of the options being used, and hope to include those options in a less biased survey later on. So far I have not taken the time to look into the individual proposed systems. They range from text sharing web pages, via file sharing and email to instant messaging, VOIP and video conferencing. For those considering which system to use, it is also useful to have a look at the EFF Secure messaging scorecard which is slightly out of date but still provide valuable information.

• Researchers Matched Images on Tattoo Websites to a German Police Database

  For the last year, EFF has been battling to free records from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) regarding an ethically dubious research program to promote the development of automated tattoo recognition technology. The agency is months delinquent in providing a variety of information, most notably the list of 19 research entities who received a giant set of tattoo images obtained from prisoners in custody. This delay is particularly alarming as NIST is currently recruiting institutional participants for the next stage of its expanded research, scheduled to begin on Dec. 1.

  What we’ve discovered so far about NIST’s approach to tattoo identification raises major concerns for privacy, free speech, the freedom to associate, and the rights of research subjects. We’ve also learned that similar tattoo recognition experiments are being conducted in Germany, a country that is usually sensitive to personal privacy.

• ‘Our Identity Is Often What’s Triggering Surveillance’

  The civil rights director of the Oregon state Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against his employer. It seems the department got a new computer program that lets them search social media, and to test it out, they looked for hash tags related to Black Lives Matter and activism against police violence, turning up a tweet by Erious Johnson, which led his colleagues to start compiling a report on him without his knowledge. Johnson’s lawsuit claims racial discrimination and a hostile work environment for engaging in protected activity.

Civil Rights/Policing

• 25 Years After Junk Science Conviction, Texas Finally Admits Sonia Cacy’s Innocence

  Twenty-five years after she was first accused of the arson-murder of her uncle, 68-year-old Sonia Cacy on November 2 was finally exonerated by Texas’ highest criminal court, a move that clears the way for her to seek compensation from the state for her decades-long ordeal.

  Cacy’s conviction for a crime that never happened is a prime example of the devastating consequences of allowing junk science into the courtroom, of the need for continuing education of forensic practitioners, and for the robust review of convictions that may have been tainted by outdated, or imagined, science.

  In fact, arguably, it was Cacy’s case that set in motion a series of events that would eventually culminate in a unique partnership between the Innocence Project of Texas and the Texas state fire marshal, designed to review old arson-related criminal cases in order to ferret out convictions based on unsupportable fire science. “Sonia’s case is a lesson to the entire criminal justice system of how important it is to keep bad science out of court,” said Gary Udashen, president of the IPTX and Cacy’s longtime attorney.

• Officer fired over feces sandwich

  A San Antonio police officer has been fired after an internal investigation determined he tried to give a homeless man a sandwich with feces inside it.

• Man shot and killed by off-duty officer after ‘road rage incident’ escalated

  A man was shot and killed by an off-duty Chicago police officer Saturday afternoon in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood. The man was riding as part of a funeral procession, his family says, when what officials are calling a “road rage incident” escalated and he was shot and killed.

  During a short press conference, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson described the chaotic scene near 111th and Troy that led to the fatal shooting around 3 p.m. Saturday.

  Johnson said it began as a “road rage incident” between multiple people and a “fire department member.” Then, Johnson said, an off-duty police officer who was in a barbershop across the street saw the fight and headed over, “announcing his office” as he got involved. That’s when “the subject,” identified by his family as 25-year-old Joshua Beal, “displayed a weapon,” according to Johnson.

• Nigeria frees Muslims accused of murder over blasphemy

  A court in northern Nigeria has freed five Muslim men accused of killing an elderly Christian woman for allegedly blaspheming the Prophet Mohammed.

  The court in the city of Kano discharged the five men on Thursday on the legal advise of the prosecution.

  “The legal advice presented to the court, dated June 24, states that there is no case to answer as the suspects are all innocent and orders the court to discharge all the suspects,” the judge said in his ruling.

• Fresh attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, houses torched

  In fresh attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, unidentified miscreants set ablaze some of their houses and damaged two temples in central Brahmanbarhia district where several places of worship of the minority community were vandalised earlier this week, police said.

• Luxembourg’s Asselborn: Turkey is using Nazi-era tactics

  Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, in an interview with Deutschlandfunk Monday, compared the Turkish government’s dismissal of civil servants to methods used by the German Nazi regime, and recommended that the European Union impose economic sanctions.

  Since the failed July 15 coup that killed more than 240 people, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has detained, suspended or dismissed more than 110,000 public servants as part of a wider crackdown on his political opponents.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Despite ESPN Whining, Nielsen Confirms Historic Subscriber Losses For Channel

  Last week, we noted how Disney and ESPN threw a bit of a hissy fit when Nielsen data indicated that ESPN had one of the biggest subscriber losses in company history last month. According to Nielsen’s data, ESPN lost 621,000 homes in a single month, as well as losing 607,000 ESPN2 households and 674,000 ESPNU homes. That’s of course on the heels of losing more than 7 million subscribers over the last three years or so, thanks largely due to the rise of cord cutting, cord trimming (scaling down your TV package) and the rise of some “skinny bundles” that exclude ESPN from the base channel lineup.

  ESPN demanded that Nielsen withdraw its numbers, insisting they represented a “dramatic, unexplainable variation” that didn’t match ESPN’s own numbers. Nielsen obliged, but after conducting an “extensive” review of the numbers found them to be “accurate as originally released.” Of course, this shouldn’t be a surprise; we’ve noted how everybody but ESPN appears to have seen the writing on the wall. But instead of adapting to the changing times, ESPN responded by denying that cord cutting was real, and suing companies like Verizon for trying to bring some flexibility to the traditional cable bundle.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Clinton v. Trump on copyrights and patents: Reading the platform and the tea leaves

  The hot-button issues this election can be counted on one’s fingers—and for most voters, things like copyright and patent policy don’t make the list. Assigned to a wonkish zone far from the Sunday morning talk shows, intellectual property issues aren’t near the heart of our deeply polarized political discourse.

  Of the two major party candidates in 2016, only the Democratic candidate has a platform that even addresses copyright and patent policies. So today, let’s look at what we know about Hillary Clinton’s plan, and make some informed speculation about what could happen to these areas under a Donald Trump presidency.

  Given that the campaign is focused (as always) on a relatively small group of issues, tech policy watchers who spoke to Ars were surprised to see a presidential platform that mentions IP issues at all. Clinton’s briefing paper on technology and innovation addresses both copyright and patent issues directly, and that in itself is something of a surprise. Trump’s website has no such information, so the best clues to his approach lie in his public statements and the people he has surrounded himself with.

• Copyrights

  • Copyright Industries Back Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign

    That said, the copyright industries are not alone in their financial support for Hillary, who has raised more than twice as much money than Trump. Clinton is the favorite in most sectors.

  • Movie Companies Want to Hold Search Engines Liable For Piracy

    Producers of movies and TV shows in Russia say they want companies including Google, Yandex and Microsoft to wipe piracy from their search engines. The rightsholders want the companies to remove links to pirate sites from their search listings on demand, or face being held liable for third party infringement.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• Here we go again: Microsoft’s popping up ads from the Windows 10 toolbar

  When Microsoft’s Windows 10 deadline passed, many heaved a sigh of relief, thinking that Microsoft’s obnoxious popup reminders had finally been laid to rest.

  Surprise! Microsoft’s at it again, reminding users to sign up for Microsoft Rewards (formerly Bing Rewards) by using Edge, Windows 10’s built-in browser. My colleague Brad Chacos was hit by the ad above after hours, reported it, and immediately erased Edge from his toolbar.

  Here’s what we know: The popup doesn’t seem to appear if you use Edge frequently (Brad does not). Personally, I’ve never experienced a similar ad, though I use Edge as well as Microsoft Rewards, meaning there’s no need for such an ad to appear.

• Microsoft: use Edge or Ads

  Windows 10 felt in many regards like an operating system that was not ready for release back when Microsoft released it. This was the case for the new system browser Microsoft Edge as well, as it lacked a lot of features.

  While it was highly optimized, it felt like a browsing shell more than a full browser in many regards. Microsoft worked on improving Edge, and it did so over time by introducing new functionality such as browser extensions.

• Windows 10 Serving Edge Advertisements

  These ads appear over the Edge icon in the Windows 10 taskbar, even when Edge is not open. They do appear only when Edge is not the default system browser but that covers the majority of Windows 10 systems.

• The formula for the perfect Linux desktop

  It does not take much to create a commercial Linux desktop. It’s about hardware and software integration, a full-stack ownership of the product, commercial software plays a critical role, and it all costs money. But would you be willing to pay for a secure, stable, pretty Linux desktop that will be supported for 10 years, it comes with subscriptions to half a dozen multimedia streaming services, you can buy games and videos without ambling about the Web, and it runs on top-notch hardware?

  I know I would. Then, does it matter what the operating system is called? So yes, the commercial birth of Linux is the death of our childish illusions. But after 25 years, maybe it is time for Linux to morph into a new entity, and it will no longer be our playground. Sounds sad, and it is, but I’m also tired of testing Linux distributions, testing and testing and testing and getting a small bit of my soul burned every time. You can only fail to print to an expensive printer so many times before it becomes ridiculous. Food for thought.

• Top 10 Linux Distros for Desktop / Laptop

  From the time when I first started to use Linux as my one and only OS in 2006, I’ve started to believe that Linux gets itself updated every year and offers a lot more than in 2005. It doesn’t disappoint you anytime always got something for everyone. So let’s look into the top 10 Linux Distros for Desktop & laptops based on many factors including customizability, best look and feel, best multimedia options etc.

• I am an artist who loves Linux [Ed: reposted, from last year]

  My father got me a computer for graduation with 512 MB RAM and a Pentium processor. It came with Windows XP, and I used it to do 2D-animation with Adobe Flash. Back in those days, I was looking for my dream job as a 3D artist, and I’d often see job listings that said: “Linux knowledge required.” I had heard of Linux, but had never used it, so I decided to learn more. I didn’t have the time or energy to take a class, so I started exploring on my own.

  The technical jargon was overwhelming at first (GNU, distros, flavors, UNIX, windows managers, GNOME, KDE, Bash, C shell…), but I kept reading articles, e-books, and forums. Finally, one day I bit the bullet and decided to install Linux.

• Turn That Old Tablet Into A Sub-$100 Linux Laptop

  Tiny laptops have always been devices that promise so much, yet fail somehow to deliver. From the Atari Portfolio palmtops through to the recent crop of netbooks they have been either eye-wateringly expensive if they are any good, or so compromised by their size constraints as to be next-to-useless. We’ve seen DOS, EPOC, Windows, WinCE, Palm OS, Linux distros and more in tiny form factors over the years, yet few have made a significant mark.

  The prospect of a “proper” computer in your hand isn’t something to abandon just yet though. We are now reaching the point at which the previous generation of higher-end Android tablets are both acceptably powerful and sufficiently numerous as to be available at a very reasonable price. Perhaps these can provide the tiny laptop seeker with a basis for something useful. [NODE] certainly thinks so, because he’s produced a nice little Ubuntu laptop using a second-hand Nexus 7 tablet and a Bluetooth keyboard case. Android is replaced with an Ubuntu image, and a cardboard cut-out display bezel is held in place with magnetic strips. A step-by-step guide has been put up to help others interested in following the same path.

• Make Your Own Miniature Linux Laptop for Less Than $100

Server

• Docker in Production: A History of Failure

  My first encounter with docker goes back to early 2015. Docker was experimented with to find out whether it could benefit us. At the time it wasn’t possible to run a container [in the background] and there wasn’t any command to see what was running, debug or ssh into the container. The experiment was quick, Docker was useless and closer to an alpha prototype than a release.

  Fast forward to 2016. New job, new company and docker hype is growing like mad. Developers here have pushed docker into production projects, we’re stuck with it. On the bright side, the run command finally works, we can start, stop and see containers. It is functional.

• Plumbing the Cloud for Containers

  Container systems are becoming easier to install, but setting up and managing production container platforms can still be challenging. In his presentation at CloudNativeCon in Seattle, Michael Friis, Product Manager at Docker, will explain what it takes to install and maintain container platforms on public clouds and describe some important considerations for choosing load balancers, logging, and storage solutions. Here, Friis gives us a preview of his talk and shares some recommended practices.

• AWS reveals on-premises Linux test environment

• Keys to NFVI Components Selection

  In this series on network functions virtualization (NFV), we’ve been spending time talking about some of the pitfalls and challenges involved in adopting NFVI components – and how to plan for deployment. This week we’re going to spend some time breaking down what to look for in moving to NFV hardware components.

  The information I have gathered is based on feedback from various service providers and product experts on how to get NFVI ready for prime time. They have identified many of the key areas to look for in NFV hardware components.

• NTP: I Need You to Go Ahead and Love It

  It’s 2016 (almost 2017) why is the time off on your system clocks? It became apparent to me that there are some folks out there that do not realize their clocks are off for a reason. My Twitter buddy Julia Evans recently made a graphic about distributed systems that mentioned clock issues and it made me really sad.

• minideb: a new container base image

  For a general base image it is important that the image be compatible with as much software as possible.

  Some base images reduce size by using components such as musl libc and busybox that are very small, but don’t have some features that are expected by other software.

  To be really useful to developers you want a base image to have a large library of software available to easily integrate into images.

Kernel Space

• Linus Torvalds Announces the Fourth RC of Linux Kernel 4.9, Things Are Still Big

  Just a few minutes ago, Linus Torvalds announced the availability of the fourth RC (Release Candidate) development milestone of the upcoming Linux 4.9 kernel series.

• Linux 4.9-rc4

• Linux 4.9-rc4 Kernel Released

• The 2016 Kernel Summit group photo

• [Older, out of paywall now] Designing better kernel ABIs

  Michael Kerrisk started his 2016 Kernel Recipes talk by noting that the man pages collection, which he maintains, now documents over 2,200 interfaces at the kernel level and above; it adds up to about 2,500 printed pages. In the course of writing and collecting all this documentation, he has seen a lot of ABIs. There are many lessons to be learned from this experience, he said, if we want to create better ABIs in the future.

  There is a whole set of obvious goals that one might want to meet when designing an ABI. It should, naturally, be bug-free and as simple as possible, while being extensible and maintainable. Compliance with existing standards is important as well. Presumably, he said, we all agree on these goals — but we repeatedly fail on all of them.

• Ten years of KVM

  We recently celebrated 25 years of the Linux project. KVM, or Kernel-based Virtual Machine, a part of the Linux kernel, celebrated its 10th anniversary in October. KVM was first announced on 19 October 2006 by its creator, Avi Kivity, in this post to the Linux kernel mailing list.

  That first version of the KVM patch set had support for the VMX instructions found in Intel CPUs that were just being introduced around the time of the announcement. Support for AMD’s SVM instructions followed soon after. The KVM patch set was merged in the upstream kernel in December 2006, and was released as part of the 2.6.20 kernel in February 2007.

• Llew Claasen: Why the Rest of 2016 Will Bring Even More Growth to Bitcoin, Blockchain Focus Being Blessing

• Former Bitcoin Core Developer Jeff Garzik Joins Linux Foundation Board

• Linux Might See Open-Source Support For Plustek Scanners

  After writing a few days ago about Fujitsu SP scanners getting Linux support but being only provided by binary blobs, a Phoronix reader pointed out that the Plustek scanner manufacturer is looking at providing open-source Linux driver support.

• Graphics Stack

  • Vulkan Presentations On Multi-Threading, HPP, Pipeline Cache & More

  • Don’t Keep Dreaming For Linux Video Improvements On Intel’s Old Platforms

  • Nouveau DRM Driver Progressing With Atomic Mode-Setting, DP MST

  • DirectFB Is Still Working On EGL United, Looking Forward To Vulkan

  • Vulkan Graphics

  After writing earlier this week about DirectFB returning online after their project site disappeared, the lead developer has put out an update on the project.

  Since writing that post on Thursday, a “DirectFB returns” message was posted to their new site at DirectFB.net.

  • Nouveau Needs Help Testing Their New Atomic Mode-Setting Support

  • libinput touchpad pointer acceleration – laptop model names needed

• Benchmarks

  • 13-Way NVIDIA OpenGL vs. Vulkan Dota 2 Ubuntu Linux Benchmarks

    With my recent NVIDIA GTX 1050 series Linux tests I included the latest Vulkan performance numbers for NVIDIA’s Pascal card line-up, but if you’re curious how the performance is going back to Maxwell and Kepler, here is a 13-way comparison of GeForce GPUs when running Dota 2 with OpenGL and Vulkan on Ubuntu Linux.

    With swapping through 13 cards for some OpenCL/CUDA fresh benchmarks, I took the opportunity to run some fresh OpenGL vs. Vulkan Dota 2 numbers for the cards too. In the next day or two I’ll complement this with some VLK vs. OGL numbers on the AMDGPU-PRO/RADV side too… So stay tuned for that.

  • Phoronix Tests NVIDIA GPUs OpenGL vs Vulkan on Linux

Applications

• podlators 4.09

  This package contains the Pod::Man and Pod::Text formatters for Perl.

  This is a bug-fix release that fixes a long-standing problem with Pod::Text on EBCDIC systems. The code to handle non-breaking spaces and soft hyphens hard-coded the ASCII code points and deleted the open bracket character on EBCDIC systems.

• gspell and LaTeXila – progress report

  In September I’ve launched two small fundraisings on gspell and LaTeXila. The two goals are now reached, thanks!

  I’ve started working on those two projects, here is a progress report.

• PackPack: Simple Building Of RPMs & Debian Packages From Git Repos

  PackPack is a new open-source (BSD-licensed) project for building RPM and Debian packages from Git repository software sources. PackPack leverages Docker containers, semantic versioning, and can interface with the Travis continuous integration software.

  PackPack was developed by the Mail.Ru Group for automating release management of open-source and closed-source projects. It aims to reduce push-to-package time “from hours to minutes” and supports building packages of OS targets including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and CentOS. Building for these different targets relies upon Docker for using an OS image for that particular target.

• The iconic text editor Vim celebrates 25 years

  Two years later, with the 2.0 release, Vim’s feature set had exceeded that of vi, so the acronym was changed to “Vi IMproved,” Today, having just marked its 25th birthday, Vim is available on a wide array of platforms—Windows, OS/2, OpenVMS, BSD, Android, iOS—and it comes shipped standard with OS X and many Linux distros. It is praised by many, reviled by many, and is a central player in the ongoing conflicts between groups of developers. Interview questions have even been asked: “Emacs or Vim?” Vim is licensed freely, under a charityware license compatible with the GPL.

• ANNOUNCE: libvirt-glib release 1.0.0

• Heads-up on NSS 3.27, Guam

  Many distributions, among which Fedora in 23 & 24, and Arch Linux, have recently shipped NSS 3.27, sometimes packaged as 3.27.0, or even 3.27.1. This release may just have triggered some confusion about disabling, enabling, and defaulting to or not, the NSS implementation of TLS version 1.3 (currently in draft). Fun!

• Update: Ubuntu Yakkety packages, Tox in App Store and Toxcore updates!

• Gimp 2.8.18 Stable Version Released, Available via PPA for Ubuntu/Linux Mint

  GIMP is the multi-platform image manipulation tool stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. GIMP works on many operating systems and it is translated in many languages. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. Both stable and development version is available via 3rd party repositories.

• Collabora Online Development Edition 2.0 released

• issue #53: RHEL 7.3, fpm, kpatch, sshesame, Minoca OS, Lynis & many more!

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Dual-boot Kali Linux Rolling 2016.2, Windows 10 on a PC with UEFI firmware

  • Dual-boot Ubuntu 16.10, Windows 10 on a PC with UEFI firmware

  • The ultimate emacs-based vocabulary-learning environment

  • How to Recover Deleted Files in Linux

  • Make GRUB the default Boot Manager on an HP 250 G5

  • How to share files locally on Linux by using NitroShare

  • How to Install Linux Malware Detect (LMD) and ClamAV on CentOS 7

  • How to Install Django with PostgreSQL and Nginx on Ubuntu 16.04

  • Disable Secure Boot on HP 250 G5 laptop

  • How To Set Reminders in KOrganizer

  • The Samsung Android tablet that will never access the Internet

  • LibreOffice and the Liberate Art of Bullet Lists

  • Solution to freezing SSH sessions on Ubuntu 16.10

  • How to design and add your own font on Linux with Glyphr

  • How To Record Screen + Audio in GNU/Linux with Kazam

  • How To Fix Problem “error while loading shared libraries: libwebp.so.4″ After Upgrading Solus OS

  • How to Find Out List of All Open Ports in Linux

  • sudo rm -rf –no-preserve-root /

  • How to Compress and Decompress a .bz2 File in Linux

  • Building KDE Plasma 5 for CentOS 7

  • Ultimate Command Line To Share Files Across The Internet

  • Pritunl – Easiest way to setup OpenVPN

  • How to Convert Files to UTF-8 Encoding in Linux

  • Announcing the Tor Browser User Manual

  • Installing GNU Radio on CentOS 6.8

  • How to Find a Process Name Using PID Number in Linux

  • EFIDroid Takes Booting To A Completely New Level

  • Learn Kubernetes the Hard Way (the Easy and Cheap Way)

  • Optimizing your linux desktop – ninja level

  • 4 Useful Way to Know Plugged USB Device Name in Linux

  • Linux containers in 500 lines of code

  • Differences between bashrc and profile in Linux

  • How to install PHP 7 on Debian Linux 8.6/7.x [jessie/wheezy]

  • Schrodinger Backups: The condition of any backup is unknown until a restore is attempted

  • How to use curl command with http/2 on MacOS X

  • How to delete KVM VM guest using virsh command

  • How to run commands on Linux Container (LXD) instance at provision launch time

  • How To Install Linux Mint From USB?

    Linux Mint is one of the most popular Linux distribution. Mostly advanced Linux users including LinuxAndUbuntu, it is always suggested to start with Linux Mint. So those who are newbies or thinking to use Linux Mint, here is a complete tutorial on how to install Linux Mint from USB and CD/DVD.

  • PATHspider Plugins

  • How To Install CentOS?

  • Geocorrelating Photos with Google Maps Timeline and ExifTool

  • aria2 (Command Line Downloader) command examples

  • Hackery Overcloud HA&&Ceph Deployment RDO Newton via TripleO QuickStart

  • Elizabeth K. Joseph and Matt Fischer’s Common OpenStack Deployments

  • 4 Easy Ways To Generate A Strong Password In Linux

  • How to Wrestle Control of Sudo With Sudoers

• Wine or Emulation

  • The Times Are a Changing

    When did it hit me that the times were a changin’ at CodeWeavers corporate Headquarters (and no it wasn’t when Bob Dylan got awarded the Noble Peace Prize for Literature)? Maybe it was when we introduced CrossOver on a platform not in our sandbox – ANDROID. Or when we lost our COO of 14 years to a new career opportunity, or rearranged the office (everyone had to move offices and have a new office mate), or chalk painted furniture, or had an office pet for a day, or when the conference room moved, or the standard monthly company meeting date moved after 20 years in existence (revolution). AND we bribed attendance with bagels instead of donuts. Or was it when everyone went from a Linux or macOS to a Windows system?

  • Microsoft Office 2013 Working On CrossOver 16

    CodeWeavers announced this week they’ve hit the milestone in CrossOver 16 development where they have been able to successfully register Microsoft Office 2016 in an internal alpha build of CrossOver 16. With this support in the upcoming CrossOver 2016, Office 2013 is working with all core functionality including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Project.

  • CodeWeavers to Bring Microsoft Office 2013 to CrossOver 16 for Linux and macOS

    On the third day of November 2016, CodeWeavers, the company behind the popular, yet commercial CrossOver graphical user interface (GUI) to Wine, celebrated a major milestone, as they successfully registered Microsoft Office 2013 in the application.

    Yes, you’re reading that right, the next major CrossOver release, versioned 16, will bring support for the Microsoft Office 2013 office suite. What this means for you is that you’ll finally be able to install, register and use Microsoft Office 2013 on your GNU/Linux or macOS operating system using CrossOver 16, due for release later this year.

• Games

  • Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Linux Version Released

  • Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Arrives on Linux Without AMD GPU Support

    Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is now available for Linux computers, port developer Feral Interactive has announced. The Linux port comes a little over 2 months after the game’s original release for Windows PC, PS4 and Xbox One. A Mac port is also under development, as was revealed back in September, but there is no word on when it will be released.

  • Smach Z: Finally Funded. Now What ?

    This is a like a long lasting drama. Some guys wanted to make a handheld and started making promises without having a prototype. It showed and they had to back down after a first disaster Kickstarter campaign. In the meantime, they secured some cash from investors, managed to be at the GamesCom 2016 with a prototype, and they have just relaunched their Kickstarter campaign with success – at the time of writing they already achieved their funding goal of 250k Euros, well ahead of the deadline. Not everyone gets second chances but I think they have learned from their mistakes and have come back with something to show that is more tangible than before.

  • Open gaming roundup for October 23-November 5, 2016

  • Dead Age, an Early Access Zombie survival RPG is now on Linux

    Dead Age [Steam] is a pretty great looking Early Access Zombie survival RPG, it has turn-based battles, and a non-linear story that could set it apart from other Zombie games.

  • Company of Heroes 2 has a new patch available for the Linux version

    Company of Heroes 2 [Steam] has been updated for Linux by Feral Interactive, it brings in some important fixes as well as bring it up to date with the latest Windows-version patches.

  • ‘VCMI’ is an open-source engine for Heroes of Might and Magic 3

    Fans of the classics may be interested to know about ‘VCMI’ [Official Site], an open-source engine for Heroes of Might and Magic 3.

    It needs the original data files, much like other open-source efforts do. You can find it on GOG if interested.

  • Football Manager 2017 released with day-1 Linux & SteamOS support, demo available

  • The unfairly obscure platformer ‘Circa Infinity’ isn’t like anything you’ve seen before, demo available

  • Hold off on buying ‘White Noise 2′, currently broken on Linux

    If you were interested in picking up ‘White Noise 2′ [Steam] from Milkstone Studios, you may want to hold off. It seems to be completely broken on any recent distribution.

    I checked in on it, purchased it myself as it looked and sounded really fun, but it just doesn’t work. The developers claim it works on Ubuntu 14.04, but it seems not many are having any luck, especially since that’s two years old (which in Linux updates, is a long damn time). You can see the bug report here.

  • Steam Dev Days 2016 videos are now up, something to watch over the weekend

Desktop Environments/WMs

• A Preview into Manokwari Desktop Environment from BlankOn X “Tambora”

  Manokwari is a desktop environment from BlankOn GNU/Linux operating system. In this manner, Manokwari is similar with Budgie from Solus OS, or DDE from deepin OS. While the current BlankOn OS is slowly moving into the new 10.0 version (codename “Tambora”), the current Manokwari gets a new feature I want to introduce here. This article is an intro for you who are totally new to Manokwari.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Plasma Mobile is a Fully Open-Source Smartphone OS from KDE e.V.

    If you’ve dabbled with Linux distros in the past, then you’ve likely heard of KDE before. KDE stands for K Desktop Environment and it’s one of the main desktop environment options (next to GNOME) that can be used on Linux distros. KDE e.V. is a registered non-profit organization that represents the KDE community when in legal and financial matters. The team behind this organization has just announced a new, open source smartphone OS called Plasma Mobile.

    The team describes Plasma Mobile as a way to turn your smartphone into a “fully open hacking device, just like a PC.” Those of you who have used KDE in the past might be familiar with the Plasma workspace by the name “KDE Plasma”. KDE Plasma is available for desktops, netbooks, media centers for TVs, tablets and now mobile devices. If offers an adaptable user interface and in the future it will also offer a rapidly-maturing software system that is developed with an open life cycle.

  • An Example in Using KOrganizer (Plus Sample .ics File)

    Just recently, I have been very interested to KOrganizer, a calendar scheduling program from KDE. It is awesome in scheduling my personal tasks, it has calendar with categories and colors, and also it has reminders. This article gives a personal example from my own calendar, with some little reviews, and you can use that calendar file and edit it to suit your needs. And I’d like to say big thanks to Azzam Syauqi Azis to inspire me about how awesome KOrganizer was. Enjoy!

  • KStars Lite 1.0.0 is released on Google Play!

    A couple of days after the release of KStars 2.7, the KStars team is happy to announce the availability of KStars Lite for Android, now available on the Google Play Store.

  • Meet Qt à Lyon – le 1er Décembre

  • KDAB at ECS, Stockholm, Nov 22-23

  • Interview with Laura

    My friend Amelia Hamrick was doing commissions to help raise money to donate to Krita, and I love her work as well, so I thought I’d try it out!

  • San Francisco Bay Area KDE birthday party

    Since several KDE folks were in town for the Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit they decided to come visit us as kind of an impromptu KDE 20th birthday party, and to meet KDE’s newest/youngest disciple. She might still be a bit young to write code, but we’ll see how long it’ll take to change that. One of the reasons neither me nor blauzahl have been very active in KDE lately…

  • Announcing WikiToLearn 1.0

  • Wiki, what’s going on? (Part16 – Where have you been?)

  • Now Dock Panel & Plasmoid v0.4…

  • How to Setup KDE Activities

    The classic Linux desktop — a workspace, a panel, and a menu — remains the most popular design for a graphical interface. Unfortunately, however, modern computers include too many applications to fit on a single desktop. Many users respond by launching applications from the menu, often drilling down several levels and sometimes even relying on incomplete menus to reduce clutter. However, KDE offers a more elegant solution in Activities, or multiple desktops, each with its own set of icons.

    Activities were introduced with the KDE 4 release series. For some reason, they have never caught on, partly because the project has rarely emphasized or explained them, and partly because how they are different from virtual workspaces has never been clear. It doesn’t help, either, that from the virtual workspace pager on the panel, you can set virtual workspaces so that each can have its own icons, widgets and settings, just as Activities can.

    Usually, however virtual workspaces are sub-divisions of a desktop, extending workspace without the trouble of setting up multiple monitors. Using virtual desktops, for example, you can keep your browser or email reader open full-screen all the time.

    By contrast, Activities are usually organized by tasks or project. By setting up different Activities, you can place all the necessary resources for a task or project in the workspace, a single click away. In effect, they make the classic desktop practical again.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • [Video] gtkrc theme editor

  • GTK+ On Windows Finally Supports HiDPI

    While GTK3 on Linux with both X.Org/Wayland has supported HiDPI displays for a long while, only with the latest GTK4 development code should there be usable HiDPI support for those using this tool-kit on Microsoft Windows.

  • GNOME and Rust

    I’ve been keeping an eye on Rust for a while now, so when I read Alberto’s statement of support for more Rust use in GNOME, I couldn’t resist piling on…

    From the perspective of someone who’s quite used to C, it does indeed seem to tick all the boxes. High performance, suitability for low-level tasks and C ABI compatibility tend to be sticking points with new languages — and Rust kills it in those departments. Anyone who needs further convincing should read up on Raph Levien’s font renderer. The usual caveat about details vis-a-vis the Devil applies, but the general idea looks exactly right. Rust’s expressiveness and lack of baggage means it could even outperform C for non-trivial code, on top of all the other advantages.

  • GNOME 3.23.1 RELEASED

Distributions

• Most popular Linux distributions for Hacking and Penetration Testing in 2016

• This Week In Solus – Install #38

• Reviews

  • Xubuntu 16.10 Yakkety Yak – A breath of fresh air

    Xubuntu 16.10 Yakkety Yak is far from perfect. It’s also not the finest Xubuntu release by a long shot, and the streak of awesome in 2014-2015 remains unmatched. Yes, it is very difficult to create successful distros when they are based on stupidity. However, Yakkety Xfce does manage a dose of normalcy and quality in the sea of dross.

    The inconsistency in system behavior compared to Ubuntu is quite worrying, and this is nothing new. It remains Public Enemy No.1 in the Linux world. But if we put this crap aside, all in all, Xubuntu Yak displayed some fairly decent traits. It is fast, good looking, with adequate smartphone and multimedia support, even in the live session, solid results on the network side save for the Realtek card, neat performance, and solid hardware support. Yes, there are problems and glitches, and of course, the unholy Gnome Software needs to be destroyed with photon torpedoes.

    Giving a high score to Xubuntu 16.10 Yakkety Yak may look as if it’s getting credit only because all other Ubuntu releases this year were horrible. But it is not so. If we exclude the hardware-specific issues with the Realtek drivers, which is a big issue across the entire distro world, and the package manager choice, there weren’t any huge, cardinal problems this time. It would seem that Xubuntu is recovering gently. Perhaps it is still too early to tell, but Yak is much, much better than Xerus. And it deserves 8/10. I feel as if a weight has dropped off my chest. After so much torture and pain, we finally get something reasonable. Even likable. Fun perhaps. Well there you go. This is a first Ubuntu release worth testing, after a whole year of failures. Go for it. See you soon.

• New Releases

  • [Netrunner Desktop 16.09 is Out With] Upgrade to Plasma 5.8.2, Frameworks 5.27

    Netrunner features its own backports channels, so anyone can decide if to stay on the installed versions or update to the backport repositories.

    The following is a small tutorial how to get the latest packages from the backports channels.

    These are the default versions that install with Netrunner Desktop 16.09

  • [parabola] New install medium 2016.11.03

• Screenshots/Screencasts

  • Linux-Lite 3.2 Quick-Look

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

  • The November 2016 Issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine

    The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the November 2016 issue. With the exception of a brief period in 2009, The PCLinuxOS Magazine has been published on a monthly basis since September, 2006. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community.

• Arch Family

  • Manjaro 16.10 ‘Fringilla’ Polishes A Near-perfect Linux Desktop Experince

    Earlier this year in September, we told you about the release of Manjaro Linux 16.08 ‘Ellada’. Powered by Linux 4.4, the Xfce edition was released with a new Vertex-Maia theme. On the other hand, the KDE version came with Plasma 5.7 desktop.

    A few days ago, after two months of development, the Manjaro development team announced the latest release in the form of Manjaro 16.10 Fringilla. For those who are new to the world of Manjaro, it’s often called Arch Linux for human beings. In the recent times, it’s climbing up high on different popularity charts.

• OpenSUSE/SUSE

  • GeckoLinux Gets Major Update Across All Editions, Based on openSUSE Tumbleweed

    After a long break, the developer of the GeckoLinux operating system proudly announced today, November 4, 2016, the general availability of a new set of updated editions of his GeckoLinux Rolling distribution.

  • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the Week 2016/44

• Slackware Family

  • Security updates: multilib and flash

  • Chromium 54 packages

    A new release of the Chromium source code was made available earlier this week. For me this is the first Chromium 54 package and unfortunately the SlackBuild script needed a lot of rework. Google is quite “dynamic” when it comes to developing and discarding in-house tools. The change from “gyp” to “gn” to generate the “ninja” makefiles was not trivial to incorporate into my build script. But I think I did it right, and I hope that no functionality has been lost in the new chromium package.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Improves IoT Communications

    The just released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 improves support for IoT by providing enhanced connectivity to IoT devices – better connection of “things” to the Intenet. To give a little context for this, IoT is based on machine to machine communication. IoT devices – sensors and actuators – talk to backend systems, usually in the cloud, using Internet protocols.

    IoT devices are typically low-power, and use local communications. They connect to backend systems in the Cloud through an IoT Gateway. This IoT Gateway has to support both local communications to IoT devices as well as wide area networking connections to the backend systems.

  • Finance

    • Analyst Recommendations On Watch List: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT), The Kraft Heinz Company (NASDAQ:KHC)

    • 2 Stocks Attracting Analyst Attention: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT), Edison International (NYSE:EIX)

    • Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Comprehensive Income At $-74.449 Millions

    • Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) Analyst Estimates

  • Fedora

    • Create a simple wallpaper with Fedora and Inkscape

      In our previous two Inkscape articles, we have covered the basics of using Inkscape, creating objects, and doing some basic manipulations and color changes.

      In this next installment, we are going to put all these new skills together, and create our first composition — a simple wallpaper.

    • Flock Stories 2016, Episode 2: Jonathan Dieter

      It would be pretty amazing if your school ran Fedora for their computer classes, wouldn’t it? Of course it would! And for that, I’m proud to present to you, Jonathan Dieter. Jonathan is an active Fedora Ambassador and a true Fedora evangelist. He is an incredible inspiration to young students at the Lebanon Evangelical School in Beirut, Lebanon, where he has used Fedora for over 10 years! In the interview, Jonathan tells us a bit more about his school and other interesting projects he is following these days.

• Debian Family

  • Improvements in apt-file 3.1.2

    Yesterday, I just uploaded apt-file 3.1.2 into unstable, which comes with a few things I would like to highlight.

  • Applying to Debian for Outreachy 2016

    This year, Outreachy featured internships from organizations such as Debian, Fedora, GNOME, the Linux Kernel, Mozilla, Python, and Wikimedia, just to name a few. Each organization features mentored projects and in order to apply, applicants must contact the mentor, introduce themselves on the appropriate channels and make a small contribution to the project. After that, applicants might be required to fulfill additional tasks to demonstrate their abilities. Successful applicants will make quality contributions, communicate effectively with mentors, ask questions, fulfill tasks, help out their peers via mailing lists, and/or blog about their experience.

  • Maru OS 0.3 Released: Android + Debian

    Maru OS, the open-source operating system providing a Debian desktop from your Android smartphone that’s been making progress since being announced early this year, released version 0.3 of their OS stack this week.

  • [Maru OS] v0.3

    With this release, Maru OS has fully made the transition from Android Lollipop (5.1.1) to Marshmallow (6.0.1). That means intelligent power management, granular app permissions, the latest security patches, and more!

  • Release update: Transition freeze and other upcoming events

    Today is the transition freeze, as we announced in [1]. That means no new library transitions or package transitions that involve a large number of packages.

  • Debian 9 “Stretch” Hits Transition Freeze

    Debian 9 is stepping closer to being released with having hit the transition freeze this weekend. No new library transitions or package transitions on a large-scale will be permitted.

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu Tablet – pre OTA 14 new side stage / split screen

      • I Can’t Find Anything To Write About (Welp, Welp, Welp)

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Mythbuntu Linux Distribution Discontinued

          The Mythbuntu Linux OS that paired the MythTV HTPC software with an Ubuntu Linux base is being disbanded.

          The remaining Mythbuntu crew announced tonight, “It’s been a long and fun ride from 7.10, but it’s time to turn in our badge…Mythbuntu as a separate distribution will cease to exist. We will take the necessary steps to pull Mythbuntu specific packages from the repositories unless someone steps up to take these packages over. MythTV packages in the official repositories and the Mythbuntu PPA will continue to be available and updated at their current rate.”

        • Official Ubuntu Flavor Mythbuntu Linux Is Dead. What About My TV Shows?

        • Mythbuntu Linux Is No More, the Distribution Has Been Officially Discontinued

          Earlier today, November 5, 2016, the team behind the Mythbuntu GNU/Linux distribution sadly announced that the project has been discontinued effective immediately and no new releases will be made.

          Mythbuntu was an operating system based on the widely-used Ubuntu Linux distro and built around the MythTV free and open source digital video recorder (DVR) project. It was an official Ubuntu flavor and used Xfce4 as default desktop environment. The first release of the OS was back when Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) was announced, and the last one was Mythbuntu 16.04.1 LTS (Xenial Xerus).

        • Mythbuntu: So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

          Mythbuntu as a separate distribution will cease to exist. We will take the necessary steps to pull Mythbuntu specific packages from the repositories (17.04 and later) unless someone steps up to take these packages over. MythTV packages in the official repositories and the Mythbuntu PPA will continue to be available and updated at their current rate.

        • Recent Loki Updates

        • Switching from macOS: The Basics

          We’ve been getting a ton of traffic at elementary.io and hearing a lot of chatter from Apple users after the underwhelming MacBook Pro event last week—mainly that Apple has abandoned the “Pro” market for which so many of their products are named. With this week-ish-long series, I’d love to show you how elementary OS is great for both casual computer users and professional developers. Particularly those coming from or more familiar with macOS.

        • Switching from macOS: Developer Environment

          I am a professional web developer working on multiple continuously delivered node apps on GitHub, working alongside a professional back-end developer who manages servers and our Elixir API app (among several other projects), and a quickly growing marketing team with an amazing graphic designer/illustrator who designs everything you see on System76.com.

          I say this because I work in a very fast environment alongside extremely skilled professionals and need my tools to keep up. elementary OS and the tools available to me do so expertly.

Devices/Embedded

• Linux/Android module offers embedded version of Snapdragon 410

  The Inforce 6301 COM expands upon the Snapdragon 410 and new 410E, and offers 1GB RAM, 8GB eMMC, WiFi, BT, and GPS for $85, plus $100 for the carrier.

  Inforce Computing announced its most affordable “Micro SOM” computer-on-module yet with an $85 Inforce 6301 that runs Android or Linaro’s version of Ubuntu Linux on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 410 or recently launched 410E embedded version. The industrial temperature resistant module can be bought as part of a $185 starter kit (see farther below).

• Mentor Embedded Linux adds 3rd Gen AMD G-Series support

  Mentor Graphics has released a version of Mentor Embedded Linux with expanded support for AMD’s 3rd Gen Embedded G-Series SoCs, featuring Qt Creator.

  As promised in February when AMD announced its 3rd Gen, dual-core, Embedded G-Series SoCs, Mentor Graphics has updated its free Mentor Embedded Linux Lite Platform and commercial Mentor Embedded Linux (MEL) distribution for the SoCs. The extended support appears to include both the “Brown Falcon” (G-Series Sleepy and the more power efficient, but less graphics intensive “Prairie Falcon” (G-Series J) 3rd Gen G-Series models.

• Orange Pi Zero is a $7 quad-core dev board/mini PC

  The Raspberry Pi line of single-board computers kicked off a trend of tiny, low-cost, low-power PC devices a few years ago. But a number of other companies have tried to get in on the action, both by offering products with competitive specs and pricing… and by adopting the “fruit + Pi” naming convention.

• VoCore2 is a $12 Linux computer that’s also a Wi-Fi router

• This $4 ‘coin-sized’ Linux computer is the latest Raspberry Pi rival

  The Raspberry Pi has been hugely successful due to its ease of use, affordability, and adaptable nature, but there’s a new rival to the mini-computer that’s causing somewhat of a buzz.

  The VoCore2 is an open-source Linux computer and fully-functional wireless router that happens to be smaller than a coin.

  The Indiegogo campaign for the device has already received 917% of its funding goal, starting with a goal of $6,000 and racking up $55,009 at the time of writing.

• Phones

  • Tizen

    • Samsung is working on a version of Tizen for IoT with an ETA of early 2017

      Samsung has been working on a Tizen Operating System profile that would suit the Internet of Things (IoT), and they could be looking at releasing it “as early as the end of this year”, a source told the Korean Herald. While there are Tizen based smartphones out there in the market, it has a very long way to go before moving away from the shadows of iPhones and Android smartphones and that includes Samsung’s own Galaxy range of smartphones as well.

    • A Few Gear S2 users experiencing email notification problems post-update of Gear Manager

      Recently Samsung have released a sizeable update for the Gear Manager application taking it to version 2.2.16101261. This update brings with it a brand new brighter and sleeker looking User Interface (UI), support for the new Gear S3 smartwatch, Improved stability, and bug fixes.

    • Game: Detective Byomkesh Bakshy for Tizen Smartphones

      More good news for Tizen Users and especially for people Interested in detective type games. Games2Win have added a new interesting detective game named “Detective Byomkesh Bakshy”. All the Indian people may know the film “Detective Byomkesh Bakshy” which starred Sushant Singh Rajput and presented by Yash Raj Films. This game has been created to follow this movie.

  • Android

    • Google snaps up the creators of a game-focused Android emulator

      You can already run Android apps on a Chromebook, but would you run games and other intensive mobile apps on it? Probably not. However, Google might be taking steps to make that practical. The creators of LeapDroid, an Android emulator that specializes in games, have revealed that they’re joining Google just months after releasing it to the public. The team isn’t discussing “specific plans,” but they’re halting both development and support for LeapDroid. You can continue running the latest version, but you won’t get anything more than that.

    • Android Banking Trojans Based on GM Bot Infected Over 200,000 Users in the Past 3 Months

      Over the course of three months, more than 200,000 users have downloaded apps infected with an Android malware derived from the source code of the GM Bot, Czech security firm Avast reports.

      GM Bot is a banking trojan created in 2014 and released for the first time on Russian underground hacking forums in October 2015.

      The trojan was a tremendous success, and many malware authors have bought its source code from its creator, a malware developer named Ganjaman.

      While Ganjaman can take full credit for creating one of the most dangerous Android malware families known to date, he lacked one feature from his service, and that was customer support.

    • Android 7.0 Nougat Set to Rollout in Motorola Handsets; See if Moto E3 Power, Moto G (2015) are Included [VIDEO]

    • Android 7.0 Nougat Update: Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge In Europe & U.S. Next To Get Beta Version After Sony Xperia X Performance

    • Samsung to start Android Nougat beta program for the Galaxy S7 edge

    • GM 5 is a Nougat-powered Android One phone

    • Photoshop Fix is finally here for you Androids out there

    • Everything is fair in love and war; the rivalry continues between the two popular platforms, as iOS lures 10 million Android users

    • General Mobile GM 5 will be the first Android One Nougat-based smartphone

    • Android device updates: Nvidia Shield Tablet and K1 version get several key bug fixes

      There’s no Nougat to be had this week for your Android device, but Shield Tablet users are getting some important patches that should improve their overall use and gaming experience.

      There’s also a strange case of missing Android dashboard numbers and hints the Galaxy S7 Edge may be on track for Nougat.

      Each week, we round up all the major software updates to hit the Android ecosystem, including phones and tablets on U.S. carriers, unlocked phones, smartwatches, and Android TV devices. Making sure your device is running the latest available software is a good housekeeping practice, ensuring you have the latest features with fewer bugs and security holes.

    • Porsche Design Huawei Mate 9 hands on: the dream machine

      What happens when a luxury car manufacturer teams up with a Chinese smartphone maker? You get a phone that’s both very sexy and awfully familiar. Huawei and Porsche Design teamed up to produce a phone that is as desirable as it is expensive. The result is the Porsche Design Mate 9 and if its looks don’t knock your socks off, its price will. Join us for a quick unboxing and first impressions of the Porsche Design Huawei Mate 9.

    • Indus, the startup building an Android OS for India, targets deals with Chinese OEMs

      Indus OS, the startup developing a localized version of Android for India, is now going after international OEMs after it clinched a deal that will local giant Intex sell smartphones powered by its operating system.

      Intex has around 10 percent of sales in India, according to data from Counterpoint Research, so landing the firm as a partner will boost Indus’ coverage of India’s mobile landscape. The partnership also means that Indus has now struck deals with nearly all of India’s top phone brands — including Micromax, Karbonn, Celkon and Swipe but not Lava — meaning it can now focus its attention to the many overseas firms vying for marketshare in India, one of the few regions to buck the global trend of slowing phone sales.

    • Android has captured a record-high share of the smartphone market

    • Google Ends Support for Eclipse Android Developer Tools

    • Sprint will support next-gen texting on Android next year

    • Daily Briefing: Going out in a blaze of glory

Women-Focused Networking Events Can Make a Big Difference, Says Twitter’s Vinu Charanya

During LinuxCon North America in Toronto, The Linux Foundation organized a women’s networking summit that included more than 100 women from different walks of life. What’s most exciting about this event was that instead of having one speaker, or a panel of speakers delivering speeches, each attendee was allowed to introduce herself, which turned all those 100 attendees into speakers and audiences.

Difference Between Freeware and Open Source Software

The word ‘ware’ means an article of merchandise (among other things, but those aren’t the relevant meanings). The word is often combined with another word to describe the product, like in the word silverware. The fact that the word software has the suffix ‘-ware’, shows that it was intended to be sold. We all know how computer people love puns and other jokes in the technical terminology, so now we have software, hardware, firmware, freeware, shareware, malware, spyware, and the list goes on. But the funny thing is, there are a few of them that are oxymoronic, or self-contradictory, like freeware and shareware.

Foreseeing an Open Source Future With FOLIO

Libraries have always been spaces where members of a community can gather to gain knowledge, whether through books or through events and activities. But where can library staffers go to do their own learning? They need designated spaces too, which is why the Open Library Foundation is so important. This new organization encourages everyone in the library and library services communities to share their ideas for an open source future.

The Open Library Foundation was created “as an unbiased, independent not-for-profit organization designed to ensure the availability, accessibility and sustainability of open source and open access projects for and by libraries,” according to its About page. It provides the infrastructure that allows librarians, technologists, designers, service providers, and vendors to work together to develop resources for the library community.

ToaruOS With Kernel Written From Scratch Is Still In Development

Two years ago to the day the most-viewed article was about A Hobby Kernel and User-Space, Runs Mesa and GCC. That hobbyist OS written from scratch seemed promising back then but hadn’t heard anything at all since. When deciding to check on the project today I was anticipating that it had died off, but surprisingly, it’s still under development.

ToaruOS remains under development and has been since late 2011. The most recent Git commits were from 11 days ago according to their GitHub site. For those that don’t remember the article from two years ago, the Toaru kernel provides a Unix-like environment with some similarities to Linux but is written from scratch.

Netrounds Joins the Open Source MANO Initiative

Netrounds has joined the Open Source MANO (OSM) Community, which is focused on delivering an open source management and orchestration (MANO) stack aligned with ETSI NFV.

OSM was launched on 22 February 2016 and has been created under the umbrella of ETSI. It is an operator-led community collaborating to meet the requirements of production NFV networks. Founding members include Telefónica, BT, Canonical, Intel, Mirantis, RIFT.io, Telekom Austria Group, and Telenor, among others.

Open Source MANO’s charter consists of working with the OSM community to deliver a production-quality open source. MANO stack. OSM Release ONE was announced on 4 October 2016 and is available with full documentation today. The initial Release 0 of OSM code was already capable of orchestrating complex NFV use cases using vendor-neutral Information Models capable of capturing all of the significant features of an E2E service and the requirements of its individual Virtual Network Function (VNF) components.

Equinix VP: New Power Models Make Open Source Necessary

The 100 Gbps router and transponder device called Voyager, announced last Tuesday, may be recorded in history as the first such device ever to have been created by a social network and a colocation provider. Facebook’s and Equinix’ joint laboratory are data centers SV3 and SV8 in Silicon Valley, in two of Equinix’ prime locations.

In an exclusive interview with Data Center Knowledge, Dr. Kaladhar Voruganti, Equinix’ vice president for technology innovation and formerly an IBM researcher, told us his company’s participation in Facebook’s Open Compute Project, and its networking offshoot Telecom Infra Project (TIP), is not some little experiment on the side. It’s a campaign necessitated by a perfect storm of conditions: the status of the cloud services market, the architecture of servers, and the laws of physics.

Build Strong Real-Time Streaming Apps with Apache Calcite

The Apache Calcite data management framework contains many pieces of a typical database management system but omits others, such as storage of data and algorithms to process data. In his talk at the upcoming Apache: Big Data conference in Seville, Spain, Atri Sharma, a Software Engineer for Azure Data Lake at Microsoft, will talk about developing applications using Apache Calcite’s advanced query planning capabilities. We spoke with Sharma to learn more about Calcite and how existing applications can take advantage of its functionality.

The Community and Software Development

Central to the development of open source software is the community. This is partly because many open source projects depend on contributions from unpaid volunteers, which makes community ties important. But even large enterprise projects must pay attention to community needs. Large scale projects like Hadoop, OpenStack, Hyperledger, and even Linux, all transcend corporate boundaries, which necessitates communities that span individual corporate cultures.

It’s not surprising, then, that successful open source enterprises take on experts to help them develop, manage and nurture their communities.

Jono Bacon is one of the most visible open source community managers. For nearly eight years he was the community manager for Ubuntu. After that he spent time as the senior director of community at XPRIZE and as GitHub’s community director. These days he heads his own consulting firm, with clients that have included IBM, Deutsche Bank, Intel and SAP.

Events

• Aaron Swartz Day and International Hackathon: Scheduled Speakers

  In San Francisco, we have a hackathon going on, with an upstairs, where speakers are going on, and a downstairs, where code and society are being “hacked” on.

• Keynote: Collaboration Beyond Code by Jilayne Lovejoy, Principal Open Source Counsel, ARM

• Ten dozen Embedded Linux Conference and IoT Summit videos

  Videos of ten dozen talks and keynotes from last month’s Embedded Linux Conference and IoT Summit in Berlin are now available for free streaming on YouTube.

  The videos span a wide range of topics relating to developing, deploying, and maintaining embedded devices and Internet-of-things gizmos that incorporate various forms of embedded Linux, Android. and other open source software. ELCE 2016 and the colocated IoT Summit featured more than 150 conference sessions, and offered “an extended scope to include user-space developers, the people building applications on embedded Linux,” says the Linux Foundation. The LF promotes the annual event as “the preeminent space for kernel, systems and user space developers to collaborate and learn.”

Web Browsers

• Another 40 million people bolt from Microsoft’s browsers as mass exodus continues [iophk: "can only truly leave the browser by leaving that so-called OS, because it is tied into the system"]

  Microsoft’s browsers hemorrhaged another 40 million users last month, according to analytics vendor Net Applications, pushing the year’s total number of deserters near the one third of a billion mark.

  Net Applications pegged the combined user share of Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge at 28.4% for October, a fall of 2.3 percentage points. The month’s decline was the second-largest ever for Microsoft’s browsers, behind only May’s plummet of 2.7 points.

  Unlike in most previous months, Microsoft’s bane was not Google’s boon, but instead Mozilla’s. Firefox’s user share jumped nearly 2 percentage points, to 11.1%. Atop an almost-as-large increase in September, Mozilla’s Firefox has stepped away from a precipice, and in two months recovered almost all the losses it incurred during the past year.

  IE has shed 20.2 percentage points in 2016, and the fall shows no sign of stopping, or even slowing. In the last six months, four have recorded declines of 2 points or more, twice the number of the six months before that.

• Microsoft loses about 40 million Internet Explorer users in one month

  Despite continued updates and improvements to its Edge browser, Microsoft can’t seem to hold on to users as they transition from various versions of Internet Explorer. The latest figures suggest that in October alone, Microsoft shed some 40 million users, with the likes of Chrome and Firefox scooping them up.

  Looking at the latest data from NetMarketShare, Chrome is still the undisputed king of the hill, boasting the kind of percentages Microsoft used to enjoy — with a 55 percent market share at the end of October. It found an extra 0.58 percent from the likes of Internet Explorer, which dropped a surprising 2.5 percent — equivalent to about 40 million users, per ComputerWorld.

• Chrome

  • Chrome/Chromium Now Enabling WebGL 2 By Default On The Desktop

    With the very latest open-source Chromium web-browser development code, WebGL 2.0 support is now being turned on by default for desktop (non-Android) builds.

    With the latest Chromium Git as of yesterday, WebGL 2 is turned on by default for the desktop but isn’t yet ready to be turned on for the Android builds. The WebGL 2 support can be toggled via about:flags.

• Mozilla

  • Firefox disables loophole that allows sites to track users via battery status

    Mozilla Firefox is dropping a feature that lets websites see how much battery life a visitor has left, following research showing that it could be used to track browsers.

    The feature, called the battery status API, allows websites to request information about the capacity of a visitor’s device, such as whether or not it’s plugged in and charging, how long it will last until it is empty, and the percentage of charge remaining.

    It was intended to allow websites to offer less energy-intensive versions of their sites to visitors with little battery power left: for instance, a mapping site could download less information, or a social network could disable autoplaying video.

SaaS/Back End

• OpenStack Puts Interoperability to the Challenge at OpenStack Summit

  Among the major highlights of the OpenStack Summit last week was the live on-stage interoperability challenge. 16 different vendors participated in the challenge, including AT&T, Canonical, Cisco, DreamHost, Deutsche Telekom, Fujitsu, HPE, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Linaro, Mirantis, OSIC, OVH, Rackspace, Red Hat, SUSE and VMware.

  As part of the on-stage interoperability challenge, participants used Ansible to orchestrate an architecture including network, storage and security groups. Jonathan Bryce, Executive Director of the OpenStack Foundation, said that vendors have been testing different workloads over the last several month in advance of the challenge.

• Hortonworks’ Q3 Results Reflect Ongoing Welcome for Hadoop

  Hortonworks, which focuses on the open source Big Data platform Hadoop, has steadily been cementing its reputation as a leader in the Hadoop arena. The company’s third quarter results are now reported, and they provide a window on the momentum that Hortonworks now has.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• The November 2016 Month of LibreOffice begins!

  Back in May we had a Month of LibreOffice, crediting contributions to the software across the entire project. It was fantastic, with hundreds of badges and barnstars awarded to developers, translators, bug reporters, and also to people who help with documentation, the Ask.LibreOffice site and social media.

CMS

• The future of Drupal could be cooking in this lab

  Acquia Labs has no illusions of making self-driving cars or shooting things into space like Google X, but the budding applied research arm of enterprise open-source Drupal provider Acquia does have designs on a slew of new applications for what it anticipates will be an increasingly browserless world.

  Preston So, development manager at Acquia Labs and a 9-year veteran of the Drupal community, shared his vision for Acquia’s skunkworks-plus outfit at the company’s annual Engage event for customers held in Boston this week.

• Newly Redesigned Boston.gov Just Went Open Source

  Boston is open sourcing its municipal website, three months after redesigning Boston.gov.

  Taking the source code public, a move overseen by the city’s Digital Team, will speed the rate at which the site evolves through the addition of new features developed by local software designers, academic institutions and organizations.

• WordPress attacks Wix, and Wix strikes back

• The WordPress-Wix Dispute

• The Price Of GPL [Ed: hatred of the GPL]

  Wix’s CEO, Avishai Abrahami, responded with a round of non-sequiturs that carefully evade the point that his product is built from source code for which they have not paid. One of his engineers equally misses the point, focusing on the circumstances surrounding the violation, rather than taking responsibility for the theft.

  Some will take issue with the use of strong words like “stolen code,” and “theft,” with respect to a GPL violation. But that’s exactly what it is: software has been taken and deployed in Wix’s product, but the price for doing so has not been paid.

  [...]

  Many developers understand, and view the price of GPL as perfectly justified, while others (myself included) find it unacceptable. So what am I supposed to do? Not use any GPL source code at all in any of my proprietary products? Exactly. Because the price of GPL is too much for me, and I don’t steal source code.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

• Linux/IRCTelnet: New Strain Of Malware [Ed: Black Duck attacks FOSS with FUD again]

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Ring Joins The GNU, Aims For Decentralized, Multi-Device Communication

  Ring is now the newest GNU software project. Ring aims to be a universal communication software platform respecting user’s freedoms and privacy. GNU Ring doesn’t rely upon a centralized server and is based upon SFLPhone SIP/IAX2-compatible softphone for communication, far different from Skype.

• ARM Cortex M23 & M33 Now Supported By GCC

  Landing in the GNU Compiler Collection development code yesterday for next year’s GCC 7 release is support for some new ARM processor targets.

  The Cortex-M23 is now formally supported by the latest development code. Similarly, the Cortex-M33 is now also supported.

Licensing/Legal

• Conservancy Promotes Transparency by Publishing Template Agreements for Linux Compliance Program

  Today at the Linux Plumbers Conference, Software Freedom Conservancy hosts its second feedback session on the GPL Compliance Program for Linux Developers. These sessions, which Conservancy is hosting at relevant events over the next year and summarizing for public review, will seek input and ideas from the Linux community about GPL enforcement, answer questions, and plan strategies to deal with GPL enforcement actions that do not follow Conservancy and FSF’s Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement.

• Eben Moglen on GPL Compliance and Building Communities: What Works

  Software Freedom Law Center, the pro-bono law firm led by Eben Moglen, Professor of law at Columbia Law School and the world’s foremost authority on Free and Open Source Software law held its annual fall conference at Columbia Law School, New York on Oct. 28. The full-day program featured technical and legal presentations on Blockchain, FinTech, Automotive FOSS and GPL Compliance by industry and community stalwarts.

  The program culminated in remarks by Moglen that highlighted the roles of engagement and education in building effective, ever-lasting communities. While expressing his gratitude to his colleague, friend and comrade Richard M. Stallman, Moglen emphasized the positive message relayed by Greg Kroah-Hartman and Theodore Ts’o –earlier in the day– for creating win-win solutions and spreading users’ freedom.

• Freedom In Moderation [Ed: Freedom insistence (in software) equated with “extremism”, worse a term than “purism”]

  I must define some terminology in case readers are unfamiliar. Free software is defined by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as software that carries four fundamental freedoms: the freedom to run the program for any purpose, the to study and change it, to redistribute unmodified copies, and to redistribute modified copies. The “free” refers not to price but to freedom, and is sometimes called “libre”, from the same Latin root as “liberate”.

  The Free Software Foundation has been campaigning for “users’ freedom” since 1985. They advocate for the release of software under licenses they approve that give users those freedoms. Some of their notable successes include the GNU project, which develops various low-level and mid-level system tools, and their Defective By Design campaign to oppose digital rights management (DRM).

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• Open-source plastic recycling machine plans allow anyone to convert waste into new products

  Within just a few generations, plastic has already taken over the world, and while this material enabled a revolution in manufacturing and design, plastic has also managed to become one of the biggest menaces on the planet, thanks to its convenience and ease of production. And although commercial collection and recycling of plastics is getting better and more accessible, in many areas plastics end up in the dump instead of the recycling facility, essentially burying this resource, which could be used to great effect if only the machinery were available to do so.

• Germany to create an open education portal

  Germany’s Ministry of Education and Research has earmarkes EUR 1.2 million to finance the creation, over the next two years, of a portal to aggregate open educational resources, the ministry announced this week. The OER portal is to support schools and universities, and will be managed by the country’s Bildungsserver (Education Server).

  The OER was announced by the ministry on Wednesday. “This is a major step towards a pedagogically meaningful and copyrighted use of open educational resources in all fields of education”, Cornelia Quennet-Thielen, Secretary of State is quoted as saying.

• Norway: Communities should share eGovernment services

• Open Data

  • Spain promotes sharing of public sector information

    The Agencia Española de Protección de Dato (AEPD), Spain’s agency for data protection, is encouraging the country’s public administrations to share their information. In October, the agency published a manual intended for managers at public administrations on how to facilitate information sharing, while keeping sensitive data safe.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • My own self balancing Lego Segway

    A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT Mindstorms controller as a birthday present. It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to build a Segway like balancing lego robot. I had already built a simple balancing robot with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well. It could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and would fall over after a short while. I wanted something more robust, and had the gyro sensor from HiTechnic I believed would solve it on my wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my loved ones.

Standards/Consortia

• Our proposal to get the CC logo and icons into Unicode

  We’ve submitted a proposal to get the Creative Commons logo, license, and public domain icons into Unicode (more specifically, the Universal Coded Character Set or UCS). Unicode is the industry standard for encoding characters into text, which means that virtually all text-based editors, or tools with text-based editors, enable those characters and symbols that have been encoded into the standard. Examples of encoded characters range from ancient Greek letters to the current day ©, @, and universal ♲ symbols.

• HTTP-SS: “A New Faster Internet Protocol”

  A German company is promising a new protocol dubbed “HTTP-SS” that “should be able to double Internet speed, decrease data volume almost by 90% and get rid of the other general issues” compared to HTTP/HTTPS, at least that’s what they claim.

  The HTTP-SS is short for HTTP Single Stream and this protocol aims to be faster, implements the Delta Data Algorithm, allow faster downloads, and other benefits. They claim this is a “revolutionary development” with the usual PR garbage mailed over this weekend.

Hardware

• OpenPOWER Summit Europe 2016 Recap

  I was in Barcelona last week for two big events: the OpenStack Summit and the OpenPOWER Summit. Luckily, the events were separated only by a five minute walk. Many of the slides from the OpenPOWER Summit are already available online.

  One of my favorite talks was from Prof. Mateo Valero, the director of the Barcelona Supercomputer Center (Centro Nacional de Supercomputación). He was a great speaker and he talked a lot about how OpenPOWER has given them a new edge. It’s part of what helps them stay on the forefront of supercomputer technology.

• Apple temporarily cuts prices on all USB-C cables and accessories

  Apple is offering an olive branch to new MacBook and MacBook Pro buyers annoyed that their old stuff won’t work with their new laptops. The company is discounting most of the USB-C cables, dongles, and accessories it sells in its online and retail stores. The downside? The discounts only last from now until the end of the year, and prices will presumably go back up after that.

  The USB-C to USB adapter goes from $19 to $9; the Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter drops from $49 to $29; the USB-C to Lightning cable goes from $25 to $19 for one-meter cables and from $35 to $29 for two-meter cables; both the HDMI and VGA versions of Apple’s multi-port dongles drop from $69 to $49; and SanDisk’s Extreme Pro SD card reader drops from $49 to $29. All other third-party USB-C cables and peripherals will be discounted by about 25 percent. The only excluded products are Apple’s USB-C power adapters and the USB-C charge cables sold for use with those power adapters.

• Is a Thinkpad Still Like a Rolls-Royce

  My first Thinkpad was quite underpowered when compared to desktop PCs, it had 32M of RAM and could only be expanded to 96M at a time when desktop PCs could be expanded to 128M easily and 256M with some expense. It had a 800*600 display when my desktop display was 1280*1024 (37% of the pixels). Nowadays laptops usually start at about 8G of RAM (with a small minority that have 4G) and laptop displays start at about 1366*768 resolution (51% of the pixels in a FullHD display). That compares well to desktop systems and also is capable of running most things well. My current Thinkpad is a T420 with 8G of RAM and a 1600*900 display (69% of FullHD), it would be nice to have higher resolution but this works well and it was going cheap when I needed a new laptop.

Health/Nutrition

• Studying marijuana remains a drag

  Whatever happens November 8, marijuana won. It’s hit an all time high in popularity—60 percent of Americans now support legalization. That handily beats both major-party candidates in favorability. Twenty-five states and Washington, DC have already legalized it for medical use. And come election day, nine states will decide whether to loosen laws further (five voting on legalization, four more on medical use).

  The psychoactive plant is no longer the gateway drug of deadbeats and loafers; it’s becoming acceptable socially and politically. And with the public opinion that it’s largely harmless, users have stoked hopes that it can safely and effectively treat a range of medical ailments, from chronic pain and migraines to epilepsy and autism

  Marijuana advocates are delighted by these shifts, of course. But as voters, lawmakers, patients, and doctors look to make informed decisions on legislation and usage, they’re coming up with questions—and some are pretty simple. Are there long term effects? What diseases or symptoms can it really treat? In which patients? And how? What strains and products are best? Is it OK to mix it with prescription meds? What all does marijuana’s 60 or so active cannabinoids do in our brains exactly?

• Flint Michigan Water Crisis Is Still A Crisis

  If you think the water crisis in Flint Michigan has gone away or has improved and been fixed you are sadly mistaken. Unfortunately, they are still using bottled water and water filters to get “clean” water to cook & drink with according to the Washington Post.

  The residents of Flint Michigan who have suffered tremendously through this crisis are now able to file a lawsuit against the state of Michigan and city officials. A judge in the Michigan Court of Claims ruled that Flint residents have the right to sue for negligent decisions made leading to the contamination of the water supply.

  To read more on that story click TheRoot.com.

  Meanwhile, there is another story coming out of Michigan that involves the worlds largest food supply company Nestle. Apparently, the food company asked for more groundwater (from 150 gallons per min. to 400 gallons per min.) to be pumped from Michigan to supply it’s $36 million Ice Mountain bottling plant expansion project.

  All for the cost of a $200 annual paperwork fee. So basically, because Nestle owns the “private property” they get to pump ALL of that water out for FREE.

• Is Flint the Tip of the Iceberg?

  The Flint water crisis has aroused public concern over the quality of our nation’s water infrastructure, leaving many to wonder when and where the next tragedy will occur. After temporarily relying on the Flint River while seeking a lower-cost water provider, locals immediately found themselves in murky waters.[1] Even though the state Department of Environmental Quality knew about the river’s highly corrosive properties, the agency failed to treat the water, in violation of federal law.[2] The untreated water caused service lines to leach lead into public waterlines,[3] exposing thousands to toxic levels of polluted water. Despite obvious warning signs, Flint Mayor Dayne Walling attempted the “come on in, the water’s fine” approach, even drinking Flint water on local TV to encourage citizens to follow suit.[4] Ultimately, Flint residents did just that, filing a class action lawsuit against the State of Michigan and others last November.[5]

  Let’s turn the clock back and examine the evolution of federal standards for the lead content of drinking water. Congress promulgated the Safe Drinking Water Act[6] in 1974 in response to the discovery of contamination in public drinking water and the lack of enforceable national standards. The Act prohibits the use of certain non-lead-free (by statutory standards) materials in potable water systems and the introduction of such materials into commerce.[7] The Act was amended in 2011 with the Reduction of Lead in Drinking Water Act.[8] The amendment redefined the term “lead-free,” previously a weighted lead content of 8 percent or less, as a weighted average of not more than 0.25 percent.[9] In addition to congressional efforts to purify public drinking water, the EPA promulgated the Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) in 1991,[10] requiring local water systems to undertake corrective action where lead concentrations exceed federal standards.

• [Older] EU drops law to limit cancer-linked chemical in food after industry complaint

  The European commission has dropped plans to legally limit a pervasive but naturally occurring chemical found in food, that is linked to cancer, just days after lobbying by industry, the Guardian has learned.

  Campaigners say that leaked documents revealing the legislative retreat show “undue influence” by the food industry over EU law-making and a “permanent scandal”, although the issue is complex.

  Acrylamide is a hazardous substance found in the browned and burned parts of common starchy foods that have been fried, roasted or oven-cooked at temperatures higher than 248C (478F).

  Crisps, potato chips, breakfast cereals and instant coffee all contain high levels of the substance, as do baby foods, biscuits and rusks.

  Scientists are still trying to quantify the health risks posed, but acrylamide has been judged an “extremely hazardous substance” by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Security

• Security advisories for Friday

• Netherlands to trial Internet voting [Ed: terrible idea, for many reasons.]

  The Dutch government will this year test the possibilities of voting via the Internet. The test will include citizens abroad: the pilot, by the Ministry of the Interior, will involve the city of The Hague, which manages the registration of citizens abroad.

  The city recently invited citizens to take part in the tests – a simulated election. Participants will be able to vote for fictitious political parties and candidates. The pilot is intended to test security measures, and to check if Internet voting reliable.

• U.S. boosting cyber defenses, but not police presence, for election

  Federal and state authorities are beefing up cyber defenses against potential electronic attacks on voting systems ahead of U.S. elections on November 8, but taking few new steps to guard against possible civil unrest or violence.

  The threat of computer hacking and the potential for violent clashes is darkening an already rancorous presidential race between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, amid fears that Russia or other actors could spread political misinformation online or perhaps tamper with voting.

• 10 ways to make sure your remote workers are being safe

  With an ever-expanding mobile workforce, infosec teams are increasingly tasked with extending cybersecurity safeguards beyond the physical and virtual walls of their organizations. With endpoints not only increasing but on the move, the challenge is real. In addition to implementing the appropriate technical defenses, there is an important aspect to protecting corporate data and systems: Asking end-users to get involved.

• Did the Mirai Botnet Really Take Liberia Offline?

  KrebsOnSecurity received many a missive over the past 24 hours from readers who wanted to know why I’d not written about widespread media reports that Mirai — a malware strain made from hacked “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices such as poorly secured routers and IP cameras — was used to knock the entire country of Liberia offline. The trouble is, as far as I can tell no such nationwide outage actually occurred.

  First, a quick recap on Mirai: This blog was taken offline in September following a record 620 Gpbs attack launched by a Mirai botnet. The source code for Mirai was leaked online at the end of September. Since then, the code has been forked several times, resulting in the emergence of several large Mirai-based botnets. In late October, many of the Internet’s top destinations went offline for the better part of a day when Mirai was used to attack Internet infrastructure firm Dyn.

• Admins, update your databases to avoid the MySQL bug

  MySQL, MariaDB, and PerconaDB administrators need to check their database versions, as attackers can chain two critical vulnerabilities and completely take over the server hosting the database.

  The two critical vulnerabilities, which can lead to arbitrary code execution, root privilege escalation, and server compromise, affect MySQL and forks like Percona Server, Percona XtraDB Cluster, and MariaDB, according to security researcher Dawid Golunski, who provided details of the vulnerability on LegalHackers. Administrators should install the latest updates as soon as possible, or in cases where the patches cannot be applied, they should disable symbolic link support within the database server configuration by setting symbolic-links=0 in my.cnf.

• OOPS! MySQL Falls Down…

  While programming, it’s easy to get tunnel-vision or to accept some “tiny” risk that things could go wrong at some point but write the code that way anyway. That’s what happened with MySQL and MariaDB. Creating a database should not create a vulnerability but it does, because a repair operation allows changing permissions of a file with a particular name which a bad guy could substitute with malicious code…

• Talk Recap: Holistic Security for OpenStack Clouds

  Thanks to everyone who attended my talk at the OpenStack Summit in Barcelona! I really enjoyed sharing some tips with the audience and it was great to meet some attendees in person afterwards.

  If you weren’t able to make it, don’t fret! This post will cover some of the main points of the talk and link to the video and slides.

• [Older, out of paywall now] Dirty COW and clean commit messages

• Book Review: PAM Mastery

  Linux, FreeBSD, and Unix-like systems are multi-user and need some way of authenticating individual users. Back in the old days, this was done in different ways. You need to change each Unix application to use different authentication scheme. Also, authentication schemes differed between a variant of Unix systems. Porting was a nightmare. For example to use Windows Server (Active Directory) or LDAP for authentication you need to make changes to an application. Each application had its way of authenticating users. So Open Group lead to the development of PAM for the Unix-like system. Today Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS X and many other Unix-like systems are configured to use a centralized authentication mechanism called Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM). The book “PAM Mastery” deals with the black magic of PAM.

Defence/Aggression

• [Older] Leaked Hillary Clinton emails show U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar supported ISIS

  A recently leaked 2014 email from Hillary Clinton acknowledges, citing Western intelligence sources, that the U.S.-backed regimes in Saudi Arabia and Qatar have supported ISIS.

  “We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region,” the document states.

  This adds to a growing body of evidence that theocratic Gulf monarchies have helped fuel the surge of extremist groups throughout the Middle East.

• Somali militants intensify attacks, death count doubles: experts

  Islamist rebels have intensified their attacks in Somalia, detonating larger, more sophisticated devices, bringing in more foreign expertise and doubling the death toll from last year, experts said.

  The surge in violence threatens an upcoming presidential vote and the reconstruction of a nation whose population is already leaving in droves, swelling a global migrant crisis, analysts and academics told Reuters.

  The findings, some of them also outlined in a coming U.N. report, reveal the challenge facing Somalia’s Western-backed government as it battles militants who want to overthrow it and impose their harsh version of sharia, or Islamic law.

• Indonesian President cancels Australia trip after violent protests

  Indonesian President Joko Widodo has postponed his trip to Australia following the violent protest that erupted Friday in Jakarta.
  Widodo informed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of his decision Saturday and instructed his Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi to reschedule his visit, according to a statement released from the palace.

  Violent clashes erupted in Jakarta on Friday as protesters demanding the ouster of the city’s governor, who has been accused of blasphemy against Muslims, clashed with police, CNN Indonesia reported.
  Gov. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, commonly known as Ahok, is alleged to have insulted Islam by criticizing his opponents’ use of a Quranic verse in a stump speech. Ahok is a member of Indonesia’s Christian minority.

• Indonesia’s Blasphemy Protest Prompts President to Postpone Australia Visit

  President Joko Widodo postponed a state visit to Australia, citing unrest at home after a rally called by hard-line Muslims drew 200,000 people protesting against the capital’s Christian governor.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Has FBI Director Comey Created A ‘Public Interest’ Exception To Its Ban On Investigation Disclosures?

  We noted this towards the end of our post on how the FBI is leaking like a sieve in revealing details about the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails — that Comey seemed to be handing reporters a perfect comeback to the bullshit response the FBI normally gives that it “won’t comment on ongoing investigations.”

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• Clinton Campaign Responds to DAPL Face-Off

  Charlie Galbraith, serving as a Clinton advisor, shared the campaign’s official statement in an e-mail to ICTMN: “We received a letter today from representatives of the tribes protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. From the beginning of this campaign, Secretary Clinton has been clear that she thinks all voices should be heard and all views considered in federal infrastructure projects. Now, all of the parties involved—including the federal government, the pipeline company and contractors, the state of North Dakota, and the tribes—need to find a path forward that serves the broadest public interest. As that happens, it’s important that on the ground in North Dakota, everyone respects demonstrators’ rights to protest peacefully, and workers’ rights to do their jobs safely.”

  As ICTMN contributor Sarah Sunshine Manning reported this afternoon from the Treaty Camp, the newest camp set up by the water protectors directly in the pipeline’s path along Highway 1806. The police massed and pressed the protectors south, using piercing sirens, armored cars, and ATVs, while low flying planes and helicopters circled above. “Within minutes,” Manning said, “a large force of police arrived on both sides of the camp and surrounded about 400 to 500 water protectors.”

• Presidential Race a Choice Between Levels of Climate Catastrophe

  The definition of ‘climate denier’ should include the states and institutions that are not taking necessary steps to avoid dangerous climate change, says professor Chris Williams

• Trump just proposed ending all federal clean energy development

  In the last week, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to zero out all federal spending on clean energy research and development. And the plan he released would also zero out all other spending on anything to do with climate change, including the government’s entire climate science effort.

  You may have missed this bombshell because team Trump did not spell out these cuts overtly. In a campaign where the media has “utterly failed to convey the policy stakes in the election,” as Vox’s Matt Yglesias explained recently, it appears only Bloomberg BNA bothered to follow up with the campaign to get at the truth of Trump’s radical proposal.

  Polling guru Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com fame gives Trump a one in three chance of becoming president. So I agree with Yglesias that we ought to seriously look at the implications of Trump’s proposals — especially since if Trump wins, he’s all but certain to have a GOP-controlled Congress to back him.

• The Election Will Decide if Obama’s Clean Power Plan Lives or Dies

  In February of 2009, during his second month in office, President Barack Obama stepped up to the lectern to deliver his first speech to a joint session of Congress. In it, he lobbied members of the House and Senate to come up with a mandatory cap on carbon emissions, a key tenant of his campaign stump. “I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. That’s what we need,” he said. Not surprisingly, that didn’t happen.

  Five years later, with Congress wallowing in its own motion-stopping muck, he took a different approach. He used existing federal laws to create climate legislation without needing the consent of Congress. The resulting mandate, known as the Clean Power Plan, requires States to significantly cut their carbon emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants within the next 14 years. It was a major victory for environmentalists and gave serious credence to the U.S.’s role in the Paris Climate Agreement.

• Real friends of the Earth vote Green

  In a recent blog, Erich Pica, head of Friends of the Earth, argues against voting for Jill Stein and the Green Party, and tells environmentalists to vote for Hillary Clinton in order to defeat Donald Trump. The call of liberals like Pica to embrace a lesser-of-two-evils strategy is not going to save the planet or humanity.

  Pica admits that Clinton has been bad on key environmental and climate justice issues and recognizes that the Green Party has a much better agenda. Stein’s agenda is in fact much stronger than that of FOE. The Green New Deal, for instance, calls for a transition to 100% clean renewable energy by 2030, a halt to the build-out of fossil fuels, and a full employment program.

Finance

• How A Feeble Joke At A Party Derailed Japan’s Ratification Of TPP At The Last Moment

  Given the government majority, it seems likely that the TPP bill will finally pass at some point in the near future. But the fact that a rather unfunny joke was able to throw a spanner in the works even at this late stage shows that when it comes to trade deals, things aren’t over until they are over, as the recent CETA saga also indicates.

• And you thought the TPP was secret. The RCEP is even worse

  There’s another massive deal you’ve never heard of. The Trans-Pacific Partnership – negotiated in secret between Australia and 11 other nations over 10 years – appears to be dead.

  It would have allowed US corporations to sue Australian governments in offshore tribunals, as they have long wanted to do, effectively trumping our own High Court. Donald Trump himself opposes it (bless him) as does Hillary Clinton, although she once helped to draw it up.

• Black Lives Matter declares its opposition to TPP

  In that year, TPP went from a fringe issue to a central election battle, with Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump (and later, Hillary Clinton), all agreeing that it’s not a “trade deal” — it’s a kind of wishlist from multinational corporations that will allow them to subvert environmental, consumer, labor and safety laws to ensure maximum profits — and uniting in their opposition to it.

  Now, add another name to the list of TPP’s strange bedfellows opponents: Black Lives Matter, who have found a signature plank in Donald Trump’s platform that they can endorse wholeheartedly, as improbable as that may sound. It’s pitting the Congressional black caucus against Obama, who sees TPP as his legacy.

• Democracy needs to know how sausage is made: NO Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki

  Think about the 7 million euros yearly which will be the running price paid by taxes from Helsinki. This means that every one of us who pays taxes in the capital will be paying a membership fee for this museum without having been asked for it. A membership fee of over 30 euros for each one of us every year. On top of that, the museum will charge entrance fees for us, as well as the tourists. By comparison, we have the Amos Anderson [2] museum, which is privately funding its new museum in the city center.

  On top of that comes the construction of the building, which is another 80 million from our taxes (some 200 euros from each one of us for that) and handed over a top land piece just in the heart of Helsinki.

  If approved, I suggest we then have a new optional tax clause for the citizens of Helsinki as we have for religious taxes; we should call it THE STATUS TAX. Whoever wishes to pay for the Guggenheim Museum from their taxes can click on it. If this goes ahead without these providences, I can see the start of a new business model where everyone asks for such a helping hand on the pretext of tourism and prestige! I know I will.
  I suggest that universities apply for such a business model to compensate for the recent budget cuts. For example, the Aalto University with its Alvar Aalto designed buildings, which attracts many tourists to Helsinki, should apply for an equal sum on terms of a fair opportunity clause.

  If Guggenheim wants to open a museum in Helsinki or anywhere else, they should do so at their own costs.

• Accuracy of employees’ overtime records in question

  After yet another long day at work, Matsuri Takahashi was at the end of her rope.

  “It is already 4 a.m. now, and my body is trembling,” an employee of advertising giant Dentsu Inc. wrote on a social media site. “I am dying. It is too much. I am exhausted.”

  Her words were posted on Oct. 21, 2015, after she spent nearly 19 hours–from 8:56 a.m. the previous day to 3:38 a.m.–at work, according to data kept by a flap barrier gate at the Dentsu head office in Tokyo’s Shiodome district.

• Corporate culture fixated on ‘Devil’s 10 principles’

  A Supreme Court ruling in 2000 is described as the “bible” on preventing “karoshi,” or death from overwork.

  The decision, concerning the death of a young and overworked male employee at Dentsu Inc., was supposed to have been a wake-up call for the advertising agency on taking care of its workers’ health.

  However, inside sources say the mind-set at Dentsu remains faithful not to the “bible” ruling, but instead to the “Oni-jussoku” (Devil’s 10 principles) set by a former president.

  One of those principles urges employees to reach their goals, even if it kills them.

  The court case stemmed from the suicide of a second-year employee at Dentsu’s radio division in August 1991, when Japan was nearing the end of its asset-inflated “bubble” economy. He was 24.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Clinton and Cybersecurity: Has She Learned From Hacks and Wikileaks Dumps?

  Surrounded by desert marigold and prickly pear at the Ritz-Carlton’s Dove Mountain resort in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton revealed her greatest fears when facing cyberattacks. “It’s not only what others do to us and what we do to them and how many people are involved in it,” she said, recounting how the U.S State Department was attacked hundreds of times each day while she was secretary of state. “It’s what’s the purpose of it? What is being collected, and how it can be used?”

  It was October 2013, and she was speaking at a private summit of Silicon Valley executives convened by Goldman Sachs, the audience peppered with such high-fliers as Anne Wojcicki, CEO of genomics firm 23andme and former wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson, among other luminaries. Cyberattacks, Clinton told them, whether perpetrated by state-sponsored groups or lone hackers, all tended to be for the same reason: “People were trying to steal information, use it for their own purposes.”

• #PodestaEmails30: Wikileaks releases the second batch of the day

  Included in WikiLeaks’ 30th release of Podesta Emails was a message sent Sunday, December 20, 2015, by Lisa Jackson. She is vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives for Apple and reports directly to CEO Tim Cook.

• Jill Stein: Don’t ‘Throw Your Vote Away’ On Clinton Or Trump

  The Green Party candidate for president is pushing back against those who see her as a spoiler in the race.

  Jill Stein, who is up to 4 percent in the latest CBS News poll, told WBZ NewsRadio 1030 that every vote counts.

  “We encourage people not to throw your vote away on more of a two-party failed political system, but to invest your vote in a real movement for change that our party alone represents,” she said.

• Stop Hoping For a Hillary Landslide

  Will pro-Hillary progressives go along with a belligerent Clinton White House? It’s a fair question, given how quickly the last decade’s anti-war movement fell nearly silent after Barack Obama’s victory in 2008.

  In an Oct. 25 essay, former U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich warned readers of The Nation about the influence of a “bipartisan foreign-policy elite [that] recommends the next president show less restraint than President Obama… As this year’s presidential election comes to a conclusion, the Washington ideologues are regurgitating the same bipartisan consensus that has kept America at war since 9/11 and made the world a decidedly more dangerous place.”

  Ms. Clinton’s own record and the endorsements she has received from Bush-Cheney neocons suggest we’ll see a shift from President Obama’s recent caution back to the war-machine polices of the last decade and even the last century. In 2017, that’ll mean a renewed Cold War with Russia with a possible standoff over Syria, deeper U.S. military involvement in Muslim nations in which civilians will suffer most (including more aid for Saudi Arabia’s assault on Yemen), and unconditional support for Israel’s violent suppression of Palestinian human rights.

• WikiLeaks Founder Assange Refutes Clinton Russia Claims – Feels Sorry For Her

  Julian Assange counters the claims of Hillary Clinton and her media propagandists stating unequivocally that the source of the leaks that WikiLeaks has made a campaign fixture over the last few weeks is not, contrary to her deflective claims, the Russians.

  The Clinton camp picked an impressive, overwhelmingly large and credible sounding number of 17 as the number of agencies that have supported their claims. No evidence has been provided, but we can trust Hillary. She’s not the kind of person to say something if it isn’t true, we all know that. Having 17 intelligence agencies backing up your allegations is the kind of support that would make the claims of Russian interference nearly irrefutable if they are true. “If and true,” here we go again. She could have chosen any number and been equally dishonest, as Mr. Assange explains.

• Julian Assange: Isis and Clinton Foundation are both funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar

  Wealthy officials from Qatar and Saudi Arabia who donated money to Hillary Clinton’s charitable foundation also provided financial support to Isis, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has claimed.

  In an extended interview at the Ecuadorian embassy in London with documentary maker John Pilger for RT, Mr Assange said the same Saudi and Qatari officials could be seen to be supporting both the Clinton Foundation – founded by Mrs Clinton’s husband Bill – and funding the activities of Isis.

  Mr Pilger asked if Mr Assange believed that “this notorious jihadist group, called Isil or Isis, is created largely with money from people who are giving money to the Clinton Foundation”

• Majority of voters think Clinton acted illegally, new poll finds

  A majority of voters believe Hillary Clinton has done something illegal, according to a new McClatchy-Marist Poll days before the presidential election.

  A total of 83 percent of likely voters believe that Clinton did something wrong – 51 percent saying she did something illegal and 32 percent saying she something unethical but not illegal. Just 14 percent said she’s done nothing wrong.

  By comparison, 79 percent think Donald Trump did something wrong, though not nearly as many think he did something illegal. Just 26 percent think he’s done something illegal, while 53 percent think he’s dome something unethical but not illegal. Just 17 percent think he’s done nothing wrong.

• WIKILEAKS: Clinton pal praises Hillary: ‘Eventually she will sound like a human’

  Hillary Clinton is dishonest and robotic, her friend Neera Tanden wrote in an email to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta in August 2015.

  In the email exchange, published by WikiLeaks on Friday, Tanden wrote that Hillary “often says she absolutely won’t do something and then does it.” It is not clear from the context of the email what specifically Tanden was referring to.

  Tanden, president of the left-wing think tank Center for American Progress, urged Podesta to “stay on her” and “lock her in,” because if he did, “eventually [Hillary] will sound like a human.”

• WikiLeaks impact: Clinton Foundation accepts it received $1mn gift from Qatar

  The Clinton Foundation has confirmed it accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar while Hillary Clinton was US secretary of state without informing the State Department, even though she had promised to let the agency review new or significantly increased support from foreign governments.

  Qatari officials pledged the money in 2011 to mark the 65th birthday of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton’s husband, and sought to meet the former US president in person the following year to present him the check, according to an email from a foundation official to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta. The email, among thousands hacked from Podesta’s account, was published last month by WikiLeaks.

  Clinton signed an ethics agreement governing her family’s globe-straddling foundation in order to become secretary of state in 2009. The agreement was designed to increase transparency to avoid appearances that US foreign policy could be swayed by wealthy donors.

• Clinton’s charity confirms Qatar’s $1 million gift while she was at State Dept

  The Clinton Foundation has confirmed it accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar while Hillary Clinton was U.S. secretary of state without informing the State Department, even though she had promised to let the agency review new or significantly increased support from foreign governments.

  Qatari officials pledged the money in 2011 to mark the 65th birthday of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton’s husband, and sought to meet the former U.S. president in person the following year to present him the check, according to an email from a foundation official to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta. The email, among thousands hacked from Podesta’s account, was published last month by WikiLeaks.

  Clinton signed an ethics agreement governing her family’s globe-straddling foundation in order to become secretary of state in 2009. The agreement was designed to increase transparency to avoid appearances that U.S. foreign policy could be swayed by wealthy donors.

• Hillary Deleted Email Showing She Forwarded Classified Information To Her Daughter

  Hillary Clinton deleted a 2009 email in which she forwarded classified information to her daughter, Chelsea.

  The email was released on Friday by the State Department. It is one of thousands of documents recovered by the FBI from Clinton’s private email server.

• Mid East ‘not all bad’ : Bill Clinton’s speeches revealed in WikiLeaks’ #PodestaEmails31

  WikiLeaks has released more emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta, with only four days until the presidential election.

  The latest release contains more than 2500 emails, bringing the total number to over 50,000. WikiLeaks has said it would publish 50,000 emails before election day.

  On Friday, there were two releases of Podesta emails. They revealed further examples of the campaign’s disdain for former Clinton rival Bernie Sanders, and shed light on Bill Clinton’s paid speeches when Clinton was secretary of state. The emails also revealed the campaign’s relationship with Apple and its influential donors.

• Hillary Clinton Email Investigation: Alleged NYPD Source Reportedly Says Clintons Involved In Sex Slavery, Child Sex Crimes, Child Exploitation And More

  The Hillary Clinton email investigation has rocked this year’s election with its timing, but it’s about to be rocked even more, that is if a report by online news source True Pundit is legitimate.

  The right-wing publication claim the new emails have exposed the Clintons for being involved in such atrocities as child sex crimes, child exploitation, sexual slavery, money laundering, perjury and obstruction of justice to name a few.

• How Jill Stein Could Force the Enforcement of Election Laws and Save Us All

  CTR has long been criticized for its announcement that it would engage in coordination with the Clinton Campaign. Citing a legal loophole, CTR enraged campaign finance reformers with what they considered to be illegal activity, announcing AstroTurf efforts over social media to assist Hillary Clinton. In June I wrote a piece about this supposed loophole.

  Under the Code of Federal Regulations, activity is coordinated with a candidate, campaign or committee when it satisfies what is known as the three-pronged analysis: Payment, content, and conduct. When that happens, unless exempted, it is treated as an in-kind contribution or coordinated expenditure. We can spare ourselves the nitty gritty of each of these prongs because CTR has openly acknowledged that its activities meet the requirements to be considered coordinated.

• Jill Stein is polling at four percent. But she says she’s staying in the race

  We met Jill Stein, the Green Candidate for president, outside Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, a two fingers-up at her opponent.

  A week ago this would have been an interesting interview, but it might have felt a bit peripheral to the main election story. Hillary was comfortably ahead in most polls, and no one was discussing Jill Stein and libertarian Gary Johnson as much.

  Then the Great Tightening happened, and the polls narrowed. And suddenly the number of votes accrued by third party candidates feels very relevant indeed.

  Averages have had Jill at about two percent recently, but the latest New York Times/CBS News poll released this week has her at four percent. That’s more than the gap separating Trump and Clinton in the same poll.

  I asked her if she is willing to instruct her voters to back Hillary in key swing states. She said no.

  “It is a race to the bottom with the greater and lesser evil,” she begins. “I urge people not to throw their vote away on the same political system that has thrown you under the bus. It’s very important to invest your vote in a real movement for change.”

• Susan Sarandon: ‘DNC is completely corrupt’

  Actress Susan Sarandon on Thursday tore into the Democratic National Committee (DNC), calling it “completely corrupt.”

  “After my experience in the primary, it’s very clear to me the DNC is gone,” she told CNN’s Carol Costello.

  “Every superdelegate is a lobbyist. The way that the system is set up in terms of trying of having superdelegates — you could win a state and not get the delegates. It’s crazy.”

  Sarandon backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for the Democratic nomination. She said she still respects Sanders even though he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.

• Confused Reporter Doubles Down On Bogus Trump/Russian Server Story With ‘I’m Just Asking Questions’ Non-Apology

• WikiLeaks Emails: Podesta Threatened To Quit Campaign Last Year

  John Podesta threatened to quit his position as Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman late last year over an issue involving campaign contributions from his brother, superlobbyist Tony Podesta.

  Podesta appears to have made the threat in order to protect Tony, who is the elder Podesta, from pressure that the campaign’s finance team gave over donations to the Hillary Victory Fund (HVF), a controversial joint fundraising committee coordinated between the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee and 32 state party committees.

• WikiLeaks: Top Clinton Aides Bemoan Campaign ‘All Tactics,’ No Vision

  A hacked email released Saturday by WikiLeaks provided fresh evidence that top aides were frustrated that Hillary Clinton’s campaign lacked a vision or principles beyond simply acquiring power.

  In the email, sent on Jan. 22, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta responded glumly to a question from Morgan Stanley executive Tom Nides about how things were going.

• ‘Rahmemail.com’: Wikileaks shows Emanuel’s use of personal domain

  The mayor also received an email from Podesta on a separate personal Gmail account that was included in the hacked emails posted by WikiLeaks.

• Clinton Foundation ‘More Like a Political Operation’ Than Charity

  The Clinton Foundation operated “more like a political operation” than a traditional charity, a lawyer warned in a memo marked “confidential” in 2008.

  Bruce Lindsey, chairman of the foundation’s board of directors, sent the memo — an earlier draft of the final report — to Clinton family consiglieri Cheryl Mills in 2011. WikiLeaks released that email Saturday in its latest batch of communications hacked from the Gmail account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.

• “The DNC is gone”: Susan Sarandon defends vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein

  Actress, activist, and former Bern-feeler Susan Sarandon is now going Green in support of Jill Stein.

  Sarandon appeared on CNN Thursday to discuss the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, and the corruption of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. She also condemned the DNC.

  “The DNC is gone and we need a progressive party,” Sarandon said in defense of her support for Jill Stein.

  Sarandon talked to CNN’s Carol Costello as a representative on the side of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe pipeline protesters. She explained that the issue has been largely ignored because neither presidential nominee wants to talk about it.

  “You’re not going to hear anything from her,” Saradon said about Clinton and the pipeline. “Because if you look at who supports their campaign and who’s contributed to Hillary’s campaign, it’s every single one of these corporations and banks.”

• The Left Is Under No Obligation To Support Hillary Clinton

  But if we want to move beyond the cycle of mobilization and retreat that dominates left electoral activity in the US, we have no choice but to build our own political formations, as difficult as that will be. They will have to do what all parties do—run candidates for office, particularly in states and localities where competition between Democrats and Republicans is low. Considering the many institutional barriers to effective independent politics, they will also have to launch fights to change ballot access laws and other measures aimed at maintaining the two-party duopoly.

  Beyond that, they should also focus on building the intellectual and organizational capacities of their base between elections, and raise people’s expectations of what is possible instead of managing them downward. And perhaps most importantly, they must resist the tendency of unions and other social movement organizations to prioritize short-term interests and goals above all other concerns.

  The Sanders campaign and the mini-revival of protest activity shows us that millions of people are fed up with the political order and want an alternative to it. Instead of accepting and working within the limitations of the system they despise, why not begin the hard work of offering one to them?

• Ohio judge warns Trump campaign as voter advocates score court wins

  A U.S. judge in Ohio ordered Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign on Friday not to intimidate voters as voting-rights advocates scored a string of last-minute victories in several politically competitive states.

  The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge James Gwin creates the possibility of fines or jail time for Trump allies who harass voters, a significant victory for Democrats who had worried the real-estate mogul was encouraging supporters to cause mayhem at the polls on Nov. 8.

  The ruling also deals a blow to a Trump-aligned “exit poll” that seeks to mobilize thousands of supporters.

  The Trump campaign appealed the decision.

• Data Wars: Trump Bought Battery-Powered Toy Car for Toddlers; Hillary Runs Up-Engined Race Car (and a TEAM to run it). Perhaps the Biggest Lopsided Advantage of 2016

  The two are night-and-day. The Obama system is 4.5 TIMES BETTER. Not 4.5 PERCENT better (in a year when the election was decided by 5%). It was not 45% better. the Obama machine is 4.5 TIMES BETTER. 350% better. Understand. One side has something that is not 100% better or 200% better than your system. Its something that is 350% better than yours. When you spend a million dollars on a TV ad campaign that boosts your voter turnout by 10,000 votes. And the other side uses their system to run a better TV ad campaign – that also costs 1 million dollars, but they get 45,000 votes!!! 4.5 time better! 350% better!.

  That is what Obama built in 2012. That is what was called ‘Narwhal’. That was using the bleeding-edge tech called Big Data. I wrote several blogs about it then and did a total analysis of the two systems compared head-to-head, written for MARKETING people, in other industries than politics, that I published here in early 2015. This is THE DEFINITIVE article about what is Big Data and why its the new era in databases. Why it makes psychographics like used by Romney (and now Trump) obsolete.

• Southern states have closed down at least 868 polling places for the 2016 election

  Next week, Americans will hold the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act.

  It’s a terrifying fact. The Voting Rights Act targeted policies that purposely kept black voters from the polls. But the US Supreme Court struck down part of the law in 2013, limiting the federal government’s oversight of states with long histories of suppressing minority voters.

  As a result, states have passed more voting restrictions over the past several years — including controversial voter ID laws and cutbacks on early voting days and hours.

• WikiLeaks releases latest batch of emails from Clinton campaign chair

  The whistleblowing site has published more than 50,000 emails in the lead up to the presidential election on Tuesday. Today’s trache contains 2074 new emails.

  Saturday’s release contained transcripts from Bill Clinton’s fundraising speeches, which included the former president attacking UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and discussing the need for a tough leader to “enforce the trigger that will re-impose sanctions” should Iran violate the nuclear deal.

• Paul Ryan: The choice facing America

  This is how Clinton can so casually classify whole groups of people as “deplorables.” And it is how the Clintons can treat transparency like it’s something for other people, not for them.

• Clinton directed her maid to print out classified materials

  As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton routinely asked her maid to print out sensitive government e-mails and documents — including ones containing classified information — from her house in Washington, DC, e-mails and FBI memos show. But the housekeeper lacked the security clearance to handle such material.

  In fact, Marina Santos was called on so frequently to receive e-mails that she may hold the secrets to E-mailgate — if only the FBI and Congress would subpoena her and the equipment she used.

  Clinton entrusted far more than the care of her DC residence, known as Whitehaven, to Santos. She expected the Filipino immigrant to handle state secrets, further opening the Democratic presidential nominee to criticism that she played fast and loose with national security.

• Will the Media Reset After the Election or Are We Stuck With This Tabloid Stuff?

  The venerable New York Times ran a story saying Donald Trump lies about the height of his buildings.

  For no apparent reason, the Times resurrected some information from 1979 saying Trump insisted on counting the basement levels of his signature Trump Tower in the overall count of how many floors the building has. The Times compares this lie to “reports” that Trump adds an inch to his actual body height in his bio materials, and also repeated the gag line that he boasted about how long his penis is (no word on whether it is or is not actually longer than expected.)

  You have to wade down to paragraph 12 to learn other New York developers use the same count-the-basements levels gimmick to be able to advertise their buildings as taller. There is absolutely no news.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Munich court to try Facebook’s Zuckerberg for inciting hatred

  A Munich court has opened a lawsuit against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, German media reported on Friday. News outlet “der Spiegel” wrote on its website, before the main weekly magazine’s Saturday release, that it had obtained court documents charging the social media mogul with incitement to hatred.

  Zuckerberg is reportedly being charged alongside Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg, chief Europe lobbyist Richard Allan, and his Berlin counterpart Eva-Maria Kirschsieper.

  According to Spiegel, the complaint comes from the Würzburg-based attorney Chan-jo Jun. In the suit, he accuses Facebook of tolerating appeals for murder, threats of violence, and Holocaust denial, among other things.

  Laws regulating hate speech in Germany are extremely tight, with most Nazi symbolism and racist propaganda strictly forbidden, a legacy of Germany’s role in World War II. Although Facebook is obliged to remove illegal content from its site, it has repeatedly garnered hefty criticism for the time it takes to do so.

• Israeli Lawmakers Pushing Mandatory, Default ISP Porn Filtering Because That Always Works So Well

  So, because internet porn is easier to access than ice cream, ISPs may be forced to stop allowing ice cream to flow uninterrupted through its lines unless customers of age specifically ask to be “exposed to” ice cream. If customers want porn to burst from every digital orifice connected to their ISP, they would need to opt-in via phone call, letter, or through the ISP’s website.

  Other people, who would just like to have their access to websites less effed up will also have to do the same, considering website filtering/blocking is far from perfect and tends to net a bunch of false positives. Critics of the bill only have to point to all the other times this has happened to provide examples of why this is a bad idea.

  In addition, a list of opt-in users would be created because there’s no way an opt-in “service” doesn’t. I can’t imagine why the government might be interested in the contents of such a list, but the fact that it’s there means it could be obtained without too much paperwork if “needed.” Then there are other outside forces, like malicious hackers, who might find it entertaining to plaster lists of “porn, please!” users all over the internet.

• Bare-chest activist plans to show up on Md. beaches

  This coming summer, Chelsea Covington plans to hit the beach topless.

  She’s is not an exhibitionist or a nudist. Instead, she believes in normalizing the female body and has traveled throughout the mid-Atlantic, blogging about her interactions with people along the way.

  She has taken photos at the Washington Monument, biked along trails in Philadelphia and visited beaches in New Hampshire, Assateague Island and Ocean City.

  The 27-year-old from Maryland’s Eastern Shore advocates for “topfreedom,” the belief that women have the same rights as men to not be obligated by laws cover their chests.

  Covington believes that this type of gender shaming can be associated with “lifelong health concerns.” She uses the term “bare chested,” because she said topless is a gendered term that wouldn’t be used to describe a man.

• Turkey blocks WhatsApp, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter all over again

  THE ANTI-FRIENDLY Turkish government has once again blocked local access to commonly used social networks including WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter.

  We have been here before. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan squats on communications every time anyone starts talking about him, his party, his family, and probably Turkey, in a less than positive way.

  Today it is because some political opposition is getting the spotlight, so the move makes sense if you are someone like Erdogan who shuts down communications at the drop of a hat.

  “The TurkeyBlocks monitoring network has detected restrictions on access to multiple social media services Facebook, Twitter and YouTube throughout Turkey beginning Friday Nov 04 2016 1:20AM local time, ongoing as of Friday noon,” reported Turkey watcher TurkeyBlocks.

• Turkey Doubles Down on Censorship With Block on VPNs, Tor

  In what’s a significant escalation in its censorship efforts, the Turkish government now wants to block the very same tools that tech-savvy citizens use to get around the government-imposed social media blocks.

  On Friday, the Turkish information technologies and communications authority, or BTK, ordered internet providers in the country to block Tor and several other censorship-circumvention Virtual Private Networks or VPNs, such as VPN Master, Hotspot Shield, Psiphon, Zenmate, TunnelBear, Zero, Vypr, Express, according to multiple local reports.

  Earlier in the day, the government had already blocked Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, and restrictions on messaging apps like WhatsApp and Skype were also reported. The independent monitoring organization TurkeyBlocks also reported throttling and other forms of censorship on Friday, linking the disruptions and blocks to the arrests of pro-Kurdish party leaders.

• Tired of people circumventing social media blocks, Turkey calls for VPN ban

  As of a few hours ago, there’s a new VPN ban in Turkey. Turkey’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority has issued an order to Turkish Internet service providers (ISPs) telling them to institute a VPN ban. Many Turkish internet users were using VPNs to access social media platforms after Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube were blocked last night amid ongoing military operations and political unrest, according to Turkey Blocks. In addition to attempting to ban connections to VPN services, Turkish ISPs are also blocking access to VPN homepages as well as the Tor project homepage.

• Turkey blocks access to Twitter, WhatsApp and Facebook

  Ban is reportedly related to 11 arrests of opposition party politicians

  Turkey has blocked Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube, according to censorship monitoring site, Turkey Blocks.

  The group broke the news today around 1am local time, saying the government was throttling these services. This is a method of slowing down websites to the extent that they become difficult to use or unusable.

• Chinese Police Dub Censorship Circumvention Tools As ‘Terrorist Software’

  The Great Firewall of China is pretty well-known these days, as is the fact that it is by no means impenetrable. The Chinese authorities aren’t exactly happy about that, and we have seen a variety of attempts to stop its citizens from using tools to circumvent the national firewall. These have included Chinese ISPs trying to spot and block the use of VPNs; deploying China’s Great Cannon to take out anti-censorship sites using massive DDoS attacks; forcing developers of circumvention tools to shut down their repositories; and pressuring Content Delivery Networks to remove all illegal circumvention, proxy and VPN services hosted on their servers.

  Despite years of clampdown, anti-censorship tools are still being used widely in China — one estimate is that 1-3% of China’s Internet users do so, which would equate to millions of people. However, Global Voices has a report of police action in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, whose indigenous population is Turkic-speaking and Muslim, that may be the harbinger of even tougher measures against circumvention tools.

• Scottish film explores censorship in the GDR

• Deputy Justice Minister slams FB ‘censorship’ of Polish nationalists

  Twitter banner for 5 November protest outside Facebook’s Warsaw HQ reads: Freedom of Speech for Nationalists – Stop Censorship. Photo: Twitter.com/Marsz Niepodległości @StowMarszN

  Deputy Justice Minister Patryk Jaki accused the social media giant of censorship, which he said was “outrageous”.

  Facebook’s reported decision to block the pages comes ahead of Poland’s Independence Day, which falls on 11 November and is typically marked by marches organised by nationalist organizations and others in the country’s capital.

  Tens of thousands annually take to the streets on the day, which has in recent years ended in outbreaks of violence and clashes with police.

  Nationalists are planning a 5 November protest outside the social media site’s Warsaw offices.

• Nielsen Forced To Pull Report Offline After It Shows ESPN Losing More Subscribers Than Ever

  ESPN has been losing hand over fist as consumers shift to streaming alternatives and new “skinny” TV bundles of smaller channels. The company is estimated to have lost roughly 7 million subscribers in just a few years, and a recent survey found that 56% of consumers would drop ESPN in a heartbeat if it meant saving $8 a month on their cable bill (the estimate of how much ESPN costs each subscriber). The losses are largely thanks to ESPN executives failing to see the cord-cutting threat coming. Apparently it’s difficult to identify shifting viewership trends with your head buried squarely in the sand.

  Fast forward to this week, when viewer-monitoring firm Nielsen released a report stating that ESPN lost more subscribers than ever last quarter. According to the original Nielsen report, ESPN lost 621,000 homes in a single month, as well as losing 607,000 ESPN2 households, and 674,000 ESPNU homes.

• Adobe Asked Google To Censor Techdirt’s Story On How Adobe’s DRM Got Cracked

  Another day, another example of copyright being a tool for censorship. MarkMonitor is one of the largest companies out there in the “IP protection” business — and they also have a decently long history of filing bogus DMCA notices. And in one of its recent ones… they targeted a Techdirt news story. You see, three years ago, our own Tim Cushing wrote a little story about how Adobe launched its Creative Cloud subscription offering and had the DRM on it cracked within 24 hours. It was a fun (yet all too predictable) story.

• Govt to block more websites, raising censorship specter

  The government says it will intensify its crackdown on websites accused of spreading hatred based on issues of ethnicity, religion and race (SARA) after receiving more requests to do so, raising the specter of online censorship.

  The move came as religious sentiments over the upcoming Jakarta gubernatorial election escalated and spread online, mainly after Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama was accused of disrespecting Al-Maidah 51, a verse in the Quran.

  The Communications and Information Ministry claimed that since Oct. 31 it had received more requests to block websites allegedly spreading SARA-based hatred from several authorities, including the National Police, the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) and the State Intelligence Agency (BIN)

• Mapplethorpe complaint at Westmount library brings censorship into focus

  In 1990, a Robert Mapplethorpe photography exhibit opened at the Contemporary Arts Centre in Cincinnati, Ohio. Both the centre and its director, Dennis Barrie, were charged with obscenity. The public outcry against censorship was remarkable. Later, the charges were dropped.

  In 2016, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts opens an interesting, if not entirely satisfactory, exhibit of the same Robert Mapplethorpe’s work, this one called Focus: Perfection.

• Comic artists in Vietnam face the tight grip of censorship

  A young generation of Vietnamese comic artists is struggling to get its work published as local publishers hesitate to give the nod to comics targeting older age groups.

  The third volume of popular Vietnamese comic Meo Moc (Musty Mew) by rising 24-year-old artist Dang Quang Dung was recently recalled by publishers after a one month run in local bookstores.

  The artist attributes the recall to a scene featuring the comic’s feline protagonist on the toilet and the word ‘poop’ appearing later in the volume, both of which were deemed ‘offensive’ by book censors.

• CENSORED: 100 years of film censorship in New Zealand

  One hundred years ago, film censorship was introduced to New Zealand, making it illegal to show any film without it first being passed by the Censor.

  The 1916 Cinematograph Film Censorship Act was the government’s first attempt to restrict what New Zealanders could watch and hear in audiovisual media.

• Turkey Doubles Down on Censorship With Block on VPNs, Tor

  In what’s a significant escalation in its censorship efforts, the Turkish government now wants to block the very same tools that tech-savvy citizens use to get around the government-imposed social media blocks.

  On Friday, the Turkish information technologies and communications authority, or BTK, ordered internet providers in the country to block Tor and several other censorship-circumvention Virtual Private Networks or VPNs, such as VPN Master, Hotspot Shield, Psiphon, Zenmate, TunnelBear, Zero, Vypr, Express, according to multiple local reports.

  Earlier in the day, the government had already blocked Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, and restrictions on messaging apps like WhatsApp and Skype were also reported. The independent monitoring organization TurkeyBlocks also reported throttling and other forms of censorship on Friday, linking the disruptions and blocks to the arrests of pro-Kurdish party leaders.

• Ilya Troyanov: ‘Against censorship, for an open discussion’

  There needs to be an open discussion against simplifying the past, says the award-winning author. Troyanov speaks to DW about the dangers of glorifying Communist dictatorship in Eastern European countries.

• YouTube blocks a video…on left wing censorship: Site’s algorithm blacklists educational footage

  Last month, YouTube was accused of censorship after it emerged it has been removing the ability for users to make money from their videos if they express politically incorrect or offensive views.

  And the latest video to fall victim to the site’s new censorship rules is, ironically, one on left wing censorship.

  The video, titled ‘The Dark Art of Political Intimidation’, was placed in ‘restricted mode’, making it inaccessible to schools, libraries and those with a YouTube filter.

• China demands live-streaming censorship

• China Moves to Regulate Live Streaming

• Chinese internet authorities to crack down on ‘threatening’ live-streaming

• China to Censor Online Streaming from December 1st

• Cyberspace Admin Issues New Live-streaming Rules

• China to regulate live streaming

• China rules on live video streaming

• China Censors Online Video Streaming

• China Issues New Rule Requiring Licence for People Live-Streaming News, Entertainment Content

• China formalizes its live-streaming industry rules

• China to regulate online live streaming services

• China tightens screws on live-streaming firms

• China cracks down on growing live streaming industry

• New Chinese Law to Tighten Grip on Live Streaming Services Online

• China to Enforce Stricter Regulations on Chinese Live-Streaming Sites

• China demands live-streaming censorship

• Open Rights Groups slams porn censorship proposal

• Hong Kong lawmakers-elect who called for independence threatened China’s security -state TV

• Hong Kong lawmakers-elect who called for independence threatened China’s security

• If China Meant to Chill Hong Kong Speech, Booksellers’ Case Did the Job

• Report: China Censorship Machine Not the Monolith It Appears to Be

• Researchers reverse-engineer Chinese streaming services to learn how they’re censored

• Researchers uncover hidden censorship on Chinese live-streaming apps

• No censorship at UAE book fairs — NMC [Ed: Puff piece from government media, trying to obscure a culture of overt censorship at UAE]

• DirecTV blackout of Fox News, CNN spurs allegations of censorship plot

• Demystifying Social Media Censorship — in Arabic, Spanish and English

• Here’s The Truth: Shiva Ayyadurai Didn’t Invent Email

• Censorship Kills: Remembering Sattar Behesthi

• Harsh Censorship Like In Emergency: Editors Guild On Action Against NDTV

• Editors Guild Slams Ban on NDTV India, Says it Violates Freedom of Media

• Anger at ‘harsh censorship’ as Indian network silenced

• Indian editors accuse govt of imposing censorship

Privacy/Surveillance

• Why I won’t recommend Signal anymore

  One of the things I do is cryptography and infosec training for investigative journalists who have a need to keep either their sources and communications confidential so they can more safely do their work in the public interest. Often they work in places which are heavily surveilled, like Europe, or the United States. Ed Snowden’s documents explain a thing or two about how the US intelligence apparatus goes about its day-to-day business. They sometimes also work in places in the world where rubber hose cryptanalysis is more common than in say the U.S. or Europe. Which is why crypto tools alone are not the Alpha and the Omega of (personal) security. This requires careful consideration of what to use when, and in what situation. One of the things I have recommended in the past for various cases is the OpenWhisperSystems’ app called Signal, available for Android and iOS. In this article, I want to explain my reasons why I won’t be recommending Signal in the future.

• GCHQ wants internet providers to rewrite systems to block hackers [Ed: GCHQ wants more mass “surveillance” because “HACKERS” (they use to say “TERROR”). The latest routers from BT (not the older ones) already block/break VPNs. This was noticed by the media. Nobody knows why?]

  GCHQ is urging internet providers to change long-standing protocols to stop computers from being used to set off large-scale cyber attacks.

  The Government’s cyber-defence arm said it plans to work with networks such as BT and Virgin Media to rewrite internet standards to restrict “spoofing” – a technique that allows hackers to impersonate other computers and manipulate them to carry out anonymous attacks.

• How to block the ultrasonic signals you didn’t know were tracking you

  Dystopian corporate surveillance threats today come at us from all directions. Companies offer “always-on” devices that listen for our voice commands, and marketers follow us around the web to create personalized user profiles so they can (maybe) show us ads we’ll actually click. Now marketers have been experimenting with combining those web-based and audio approaches to track consumers in another disturbingly science fictional way: with audio signals your phone can hear, but you can’t. And though you probably have no idea that dog whistle marketing is going on, researchers are already offering ways to protect yourself.

  The technology, called ultrasonic cross-device tracking, embeds high-frequency tones that are inaudible to humans in advertisements, web pages, and even physical locations like retail stores. These ultrasound “beacons” emit their audio sequences with speakers, and almost any device microphone—like those accessed by an app on a smartphone or tablet—can detect the signal and start to put together a picture of what ads you’ve seen, what sites you’ve perused, and even where you’ve been. Now that you’re sufficiently concerned, the good news is that at the Black Hat Europe security conference on Thursday, a group based at University of California, Santa Barbara will present an Android patch and a Chrome extension that give consumers more control over the transmission and receipt of ultrasonic pitches on their devices.

• Why do diplomats use this alien WhatsApp emoji for Vladimir Putin? [iophk: "corporate surveillance"]

  When the world’s nations sit down to talk nowadays, there is a distinct difference to the way diplomacy is done. Influence is no longer defined only by special relationships and old alliances, but which WhatsApp group you are invited into.

  The rise of WhatsApp diplomacy is transforming the negotiating chamber. There are countless groups of allies and virtual huddles, exchanges over policy statements and fine print, and fair amounts of banter and even emojis (Vladimir Putin is referred to by widespread use of a grey alien avatar).

  “You can form small groups of like-minded allies, take photos of annotated documents, ask people what they think without the whole room knowing,” a senior western diplomat said.

  The tool is useful for communicating with allies who might not be sitting close to them, diplomats say, as well as for agreeing negotiating tactics during difficult sessions and for organising break-out huddles in a way that avoids offending those left out.

• How Bureaucrats and Spies Turned Canada Into a Surveillance State

  This week, Canadians received a shock to the system when a spate of news items revealed how police and spy agencies flout the law and moral conventions to spy on citizens and journalists, in some cases dating back for many years.

  The largest blow to Canada’s often rosy image came on Thursday when a federal court ruling revealed that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has been operating a secret metadata collection program since 2006, and retained citizens’ identifying information illegally. The question on every Canadian’s mind now is: how, in our supposedly sleepy liberal democracy, did this happen?

  In establishing the domestic spy agency with the CSIS Act, legislators largely left it up to CSIS itself to decide how the law should be interpreted. “It appears that CSIS got their own legal advice that gave them the most favourable spin or interpretation of the law that one could possibly take,” said privacy lawyer David Fraser in an interview. “Really, stretching it almost to the breaking point.”

• Oliver Stone’s Snowden puts the spotlight back on the NSA

  The US election is imminent. It pits a dangerous demagogue in Donald Trump against an establishment candidate in Hillary Clinton. The list of those victimised by Trump is dwarfed only by his detractors.

  On the campaign trail, Trump has managed to insult women, Hispanics and Muslims just to name a few groups. Yet Clinton hardly arouses the enthusiasm of voters. Many feel she has been co-opted by Wall Street and that she is a foreign policy hawk.

  The Wikileaks revelations confirmed that the leadership of the Democratic National Committee worked against Bernie Sanders in order to secure Clinton the nomination. I am wondering what Oliver Stone makes of it all. But, getting hold of Stone, at several removes, proves to be difficult. You could say he is almost as elusive as the subject of his latest movie – Snowden.

• Don’t cyber-mess with Britain, warns UK Chancellor

  Britain’s adversaries want to damage its economy and society and their new weapon of choice is the Internet.

  Thirty years ago this sentence would have read like science fiction. Twenty years ago it would have sounded like technobabble. By 10 years ago it would merely have been dismissed as a bit far-fetched.

  And yet this is what Philip Hammond, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, suggested yesterday in a speech outlining an ambitious UK cyber-security strategy that has been emerging gradually since 2010.

• Inside the NSA’s For-Sale Spy Town

  Operations around Sugar Grove have also been tied to the NSA’s controversial ECHELON surveillance program, according to National Security Archive researchers. The top-secret program was created during the Cold War to monitor Soviet and Eastern Bloc communications, but later evolved into a global interception and data harvesting system.

  After being shut down last year, the spy town can now be yours—for a couple of million dollars.

  Once home to some 400 government employees and their families, Sugar Grove Station’s only residents a year after it was decommissioned appear to be spiders and a particularly brazen groundhog. The spying activities have moved on, some of them to a related nearby base that’s still operational.

• We Can’t Trust Trump With Today’s NSA

  Donald Trump has shown he’ll stop at nothing to humiliate and intimidate his critics. He published Sen. Lindsey Graham’s personal cellphone number so Trump supporters could harass him. He encouraged the Russian government to hack Hillary Clinton (though he later claimed he was joking) and promised to imprison her. He has tweeted false and embarrassing accusations against Sen. Ted Cruz, former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, and many others.

• ‘UK’s censorship & harassment are no solution’: European journalists’ union speaks up for RT

  The General Secretary of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has chastised the UK government for its treatment of RT, in relation to state-owned British bank NatWest’s decision to close its accounts.

• GCHQ recruiting for elite cyber force… but past experience not required

• Big Brotherism, by platform

• Lost in the splinternet

• Britain’s cybersecurity policy needs common sense, not just cash

• Identifying Your Company’s Edward Snowden

• Here’s what happened at the Edward Snowden talk you couldn’t get into

• Edward Snowden speaks on privacy and surveillance at McGill University

• What Snowden Had to Say at the McGill Videoconference

• McGill University: Progress Report on the Strike by Casual Employees

• Edward Snowden gives a virtual conference at McGill University

• Edward Snowden Calls Out Canadian Police for Spying

• Three New Scandals Show How Pervasive and Dangerous Mass Surveillance is in the West, Vindicating Snowden

• Edward Snowden Update: NSA Whistleblower Says Security Agencies Use Your Smartphones To Listen In

  Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden warned that phones can be compromised by security agencies to listen in on the user’s activities even when the device is not programmed to do so.

  Snowden spoke about the surveillance state in an interview with Digits, a series on privacy during the age of the internet. The 33-year-old whistleblower rose to prominence when he leaked classified documents that revealed the NSA spying on U.S. citizens.

  “The TV is a medium that you watch. The internet is a medium that watches you as you watch it,” Snowden reportedly said in the interview. ”Everywhere you go, even when you’re not actively using your phone, it’s still listening.”

• Police surveillance scandal: Quebec minister calls for new probe

  The police spying crisis has gone from bad to worse, with Public Security Minister Martin Coiteux ordering an administrative investigation into the practises of the Sûreté du Québec dating back to 2013.

  Coiteux made the announcement within hours of the provincial police force revealing it had tracked the calls and movements of six journalists that year after news reports based on leaks revealed Michel Arsenault, then president of Quebec’s largest labour federation, had his phone tapped.

  The controversy began Monday after Montreal media outlet La Presse reported that police had tracked columnist Patrick Lagacé’s cellphone to find out if he was being leaked information from police officers.

• Hackers Say They’re Revealing More from Trove of NSA Data

• The US Government and Zero-Day Vulnerabilities: From Pre-Heartbleed to Shadow Brokers

• What we can (and can’t) learn from the latest shadow brokers dump

Civil Rights/Policing

• Why Non-Immigrant Visas are Unconstitutional (H-1B, L-1, etc.)

• Chelsea Manning Tried Committing Suicide a Second Time in October

  Chelsea Manning tried to commit suicide last month at the start of a week of solitary confinement at the prison barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., that was imposed on her as punishment for a previous attempt to end her life in July.

  Ms. Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who is serving a 35-year sentence for leaking archives of secret documents to WikiLeaks, disclosed the attempted suicide, which took place Oct. 4, in a statement she dictated over the phone to a member of her volunteer support network. She asked that it be sent this week to The New York Times, according to members of the network who want to keep their identities private.

  Chase Strangio, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing Ms. Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, said, “I can confirm there was a second suicide attempt.”

  “She asked me to confirm that,” he added.

• ‘There’s So Much Money On The Table’: Hillary Aide Reacts To SCOTUS Ruling

  Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook was only too pleased after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down aggregate limits on individual donations to political candidates, parties, and political action committees (PACs), according to new emails released by WikiLeaks in connection with its dump of campaign chairman John Podesta’s server.

  “Gotta have the state parties in the joint — so much money on the table,” he wrote to colleagues April 3, 2014, shortly after the Court’s ruling in McCutcheon v. FEC. McCutcheon is the spawn of the controversial Citizens United ruling, which authorized independent political expenditures by corporations or labor unions. Clinton denounces the decision regularly and says she will apply Citizens United as a litmus test against her judicial nominees.

• Apple Offers Anti-Trump App Allowing Voters To Trade Votes

  At a time rife with speculation that the presidential vote on Tuesday may be rigged or tampered, we find it troubling – not to mention illegal – that Tim Cook has allowed the Apple store to distribute an app called #NeverTrump created by Trimian, whose mission statement is “Red or Blue, we must all unite to defeat Trump this election. Let’s ensure Hillary wins in swing states, and make sure third-party votes count.”

  The app allows potential voters to trade votes, boosting Hillary’s support in swing or battleground states, while 3rd party candidates get more (meaningless) support in blue states.

• Erik Prince: NYPD Ready to Make Arrests in Anthony Weiner Case

  Blackwater founder and former Navy SEAL Erik Prince told Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM that according to one of his “well-placed sources” in the New York Police Department, “The NYPD wanted to do a press conference announcing the warrants and the additional arrests they were making” in the Anthony Weiner investigation, but received “huge pushback” from the Justice Department.

• Support Whistleblowers at the Aaron Swartz Hackathon This Weekend

  This weekend you have the chance to add to Aaron Swartz’s legacy by boosting tools for whistleblowers.

  The 2016 Aaron Swartz International Hackathon—held in honor of the late Internet and political activist—will take place during the day Saturday and Sunday at the Internet Archive in San Francisco. The hackathon will focus on whistleblower submission system SecureDrop, which was created by Swartz and Kevin Poulsen to connect media organizations and anonymous sources and is managed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

  This weekend’s events—timed to what would have been his 30th birthday on Nov. 8—will also feature a series of speakers on Saturday night, including SecureDrop’s Conor Schaefer, Fight for the Future Co-founder Tiffiniy Cheng, and EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn, as well as a special statement from Chelsea Manning.

• Remember, remember: Liberties are like muscles

  In the spirit of commemoration, I thought we could mark this November the Fifth by taking some time out of our daily lives and consider again where society is going. Where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. It may not be much, yet, but it is there. How did this happen?

• Protest Against Corruption, Censorship Leads to Arrests in London

  British police arrested nearly 50 people in London Saturday during a protest they described as “anti-capitalist,” organized by the computer hacking group known as Anonymous.

  A similar demonstration in Washington, said to be “anti-corruption,” resulted in two arrests for defacing or damaging public property.

• What is the Million Mask March and when is it taking place? Date, map and how to watch

  The marches, which are organised through Facebook groups, call for people to protest against mass government surveillance, internet censorship and ‘corrupt politicians who put capitalism before the people’.

  A post about the marches on the Anonymous website states: “2016 has arguably seen little, to absolutely no improvements, and in fact many situations have worsened tremendously in various regions of the world.

  “It is crucial we stand together now to show our increasing numbers to those who call themselves the ‘elite’ and their political puppets.

  “Join us in November to spread the message to the masses that our worldwide revolution is at hand.

  “Stand with the Anonymous Movement, and together in one voice let us remind our world-dictators that we do not forgive and we do not forgot.

  “They should have expected us.”

• Thousands join Million Mask March in London amid rigorous police restrictions

  Thousands of protesters have descend on central London for the Million Masked March, despite Scotland Yard imposing strict restrictions on the event.

  Supporters of the hacking collective Anonymous began marching on Trafalgar Square on Saturday with scores of police officers maintaining a tight perimeter.

  The group’s agenda is broadly anti-capitalist and pro-civil liberty, with many of the demonstrators wearing Guy Fawkes masks in an effort to recreate the final scene of cult film V For Vendetta. It is one of many similar marches held worldwide on 5 November.

• Million Mask March: police curb protests amid fears of violence

  Thousands of masked protesters have gathered in central London for the annual Million Mask March.

  Wearing trademark Guy Fawkes masks, supporters of the hacking collective Anonymous met in Trafalgar Square in Westminster accompanied by scores of police officers.

  Scotland Yard has imposed stringent restrictions on protesters after clashes with police, incidents of criminal damage and attempts to invade official buildings at previous years’ events.

• Million Mask March ends with dozens arrested in central London

  Thousands of masked protesters descended on central London on Saturday night for the Million Mask March, an annual global anti-capitalism and pro-civil liberties demonstration.

  Wearing characteristic Guy Fawkes masks, supporters of hacking collective Anonymous crowded into Trafalgar Square with scores of police on hand to keep order. The protest passed off without major incident, though by 10.45pm police had made 47 arrests, the majority for drug offences and obstruction of officers.

• Remember, remember, the Fifth of November

  In the spirit of commemoration, I thought we could mark this November the Fifth by taking some time out of our daily lives and consider again where society is going. Where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. It may not be much, yet, but it is there. How did this happen?

• Rolling Stone and journalist found guilty over false Virginia rape story

  Rolling Stone magazine and a journalist have been found guilty of defamation over a false article about a gang rape at the University of Virginia.

  The $7.5m (£6m) lawsuit was brought by Nicole Eramo, an associate dean from the university, who said the article had cast her as the “chief villain”.

  The 2014 article, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, included the rape claim of an unidentified female student.

  The magazine retracted the article in April 2015, citing inconsistencies.

  The 9,000-word article, entitled A Rape on Campus, centred on the testimony of a student, referred to as “Jackie”, who claimed to have been gang raped at a party held at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity’s house in 2012.

• Pope: “It is inhumane to shut our doors to refugees but prudence is needed to integrate them properly”

  During the press conference on the flight from Malmö to Rome, Francis said “there is a political price to pay when imprudent calculations are made” regarding the numbers a country is able to host, resulting in it being unable to offer housing, schooling and jobs. The Pope also praised oratories and volunteers in Italy, that were born “from the apostolic zeal of parish priests” and he once again rejected the possibility of female priests in the Catholic Church

• Why travelling to the US from Sweden is about to get easier

  Travelling to the US from Swedish capital Stockholm is about get much easier, with the two countries signing a ‘preclearance’ agreement on Friday that will allow American customs procedures to take place in Sweden’s Arlanda international airport before passengers board their flight.

  The Swedish government said it hopes the increased ease of travel will have positive consequences like for example making Sweden a more attractive place for international companies to base their headquarters in.

• ERDOGAN THREAT: Give Turkey VISAS BY CHRISTMAS or it will open EU borders to migrants

  Under the current EU agreement, Turkey takes back migrants who have travelled illegally through the country to Greece, but the warning could spark a new wave of migrants trying to use Turkey as a way in to Europe.

  The deal was agreed last year when more than a million people arrived in Europe, most reaching Greek islands by boat and continuing by land to Germany.

  The number of migrants arriving in Greece has fallen dramatically since the agreement, with 2,970 crossing the Aegean from Turkey in October compared with 211,663 in the same month last year.

• Yet another young woman is seen being publicly caned ‘for standing too close to her boyfriend’ as Indonesia becomes the latest country to embrace radical Islamic law

  ANOTHER young woman has been publicly caned in Indonesia after falling foul of the country’s strict Islamic laws.

  The 20-year-old “criminal” was put through the harrowing ordeal after being caught standing too close to her boyfriend in Banda Aceh – the capital of Aceh province.

• Fears over violence in Jakarta as hardline Islamists protest governor’s ‘blasphemy’

  Security forces in the Indonesian capital Jakarta are on high alert in preparation for a Friday rally by hardline Islamist groups against the city’s non-Muslim governor.

  Thousands of people are due to move into the capital to protest against Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic Chinese and Christian nicknamed ‘Ahok’, who has governed the city since 2014.

  They accuse him of blasphemy after he criticised his opponents for referencing a verse in the Koran that warns against allying with Christians and Jews.

  In September, Ahok suggested those who used the passage against him were “lying”, leading to outrage from some hardliners who interpreted his comments as criticism of the Islamic holy text. He later apologised.

• Myanmar police to arm, train non-Muslims in conflict-torn region

  Myanmar police will begin arming and training non-Muslim residents in the troubled north of Rakhine State, where officials say militants from the Rohingya Muslim group pose a growing security threat, police and civilian officials said.

  Human rights monitors and a leader of the mostly stateless Rohingya told Reuters the move risked sharpening intercommunal tensions in a region that has just seen its bloodiest month since 2012, when hundreds of people were killed in clashes between Muslims and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.

  Soldiers have poured into the Maungdaw area along Myanmar’s frontier with Bangladesh, responding to coordinated attacks on three border posts on Oct. 9 in which nine police officers were killed.

  Security forces have locked down the area – shutting out aid workers and independent observers – and conducted sweeps of villages in Maungdaw, where the vast majority are Rohingyas. Official reports say five soldiers and 33 alleged insurgents have been killed.

• Judge orders closure of low-cost Bridge International schools in Uganda [Ed: Articles about Bill Gates in The Guardian are now literally sponsored by Bill Gates. And this is not corrupt journalism? Classic. It's still a mouthpiece for Gates after he paid them millions.]

  Uganda’s high court has ordered the closure of a chain of low-cost private schools backed by Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, respectively the founders of Microsoft and Facebook.

• Dakota Access pipeline protests: UN group investigates human rights abuses

  Native American protesters have reported excessive force, unlawful arrests and mistreatment in jail where activists describe being held in cages

• Speaking from prison, incarcerated reporter maintains innocence

  After having served nearly three months in a federal prison camp in central California, Matthew Keys is making the best of it.

  In August 2016, the 29-year-old journalist began his two-year sentence in Atwater, California, about 120 miles east of San Francisco. Earlier this year, Keys was convicted at trial under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the notorious anti-hacking federal law that dates back to the 1980s. An effort to reform that law has languished in Congress.

  Keys told Ars that, even post-conviction, he did not hand over any login information that led to the 40-minute alteration of a Los Angeles Times headline in 2010.

  Hours before Keys’ sentencing hearing in April 2016, Ars received a letter from someone under the pseudonym “Sam Snow,” who claimed that he, and not Keys, was the one who actually handed over the login details. This new claim by Snow will likely have no impact on Keys’ appeal, which is pending at the 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals.

  Ars has been periodically corresponding with Keys by e-mail through CORRLINKS, the monitored e-mail system set up for federal inmates, and the following interview has been edited for clarity. We hope to be able to visit him in person in the coming months.

• Tunisian PM sacks minister over criticism of Saudi Arabian Islam

  Tunisia’s prime minister sacked the minister of religious affairs on Friday after he accused Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi brand of Islam of being behind “terrorism and extremism”.

  “Prime Minister Youssef Chahed decided to dismiss Salem Abd El Jalil, minister of religious affairs, from his duties due to the lack of respect for government work and his statements that touched principles of Tunisian diplomacy,” the premier’s office said in a statement.

  Tunisian media on Thursday quoted Abd El Jalil as saying in parliament: “I told the Saudi ambassador in Tunisia that terrorism and extremism historically came from you … You should reform your (religious) school.”

  He could not be immediately reached for comment on Friday.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• How the Soviets invented the internet and why it didn’t work

  Consonant with Glushkov’s greater life-work commitments, the network plans reflected a deliberately decentralised design. This meant that, while Moscow could specify who received which authorisations, any authorised user could contact any other user across the pyramid network – without direct permission from the mother node. Glushkov intimately understood the advantages of leveraging local knowledge in network designs, having spent so much of his career working on related mathematical problems while ferrying between his home and the central capital (he jokingly called the Kiev-Moscow train his ‘second home’).

  The OGAS project appeared to many state officials and economic planners, especially in the late 1960s, to be the next best response to an old conundrum: the Soviets were agreed that communism was the way of the future, but no one since Marx and Engels knew how best to get there. For Glushkov, networked computing might just inch the country toward an age of what the author Francis Spufford later called ‘red plenty’. It was the means by which the sluggish pulp-based lifeblood of the command economy – quotas, plans and wrist-bending compendiums of industry standards – would transform into the nation’s neural firings, moving at the sublime speed of electricity. The project signified no less than the ushering in of ‘electronic socialism’.

  Such ambitions require brilliant, committed people willing to throw off the old ways of thinking. In the 1960s, those people could be found in Kiev – a couple of blocks from where the Strugatsky brothers wrote their science fiction by night and worked as physicists by day. There, on the outskirts of Kiev, Glushkov ran the Institute of Cybernetics for 20 years, beginning in 1962. He filled his institute with ambitious young men and women; the average age of researchers was about 25. Glushkov and his youthful staff dedicated themselves to developing the OGAS and other cybernetic projects in the service of the Soviet state, such as a system of electronic receipts for virtualising hard currency into an online ledger of accounts – this in the early 1960s. Glushkov, who was known to talk down Communist Party ideologues by quoting paragraphs of Marx from memory, described his innovation as a faithful fulfilment of Marxist prophecy of a moneyless socialist future. Unfortunately for Glushkov, the idea of Soviet e-currency stirred up unhelpful anxieties and did not receive committee approval in 1962. Fortunately, his grand economic network project did live to see another day.

• Senator Wyden Warns That AT&T’s New Merger Poses A Massive Threat To Net Neutrality

  As AT&T fires up its lobbyists and various policy tendrils to sell the company’s $100 billion (including debt) acquisition of Time Warner, the focus of the conversation has very quickly shifted to net neutrality and zero rating. AT&T already exempts its own content from the company’s usage caps, and its DirecTV Now streaming service, launching later this month, is expected to follow suit. Once AT&T acquires Time Warner and its various properties (HBO, CNN), the worry is that this content will also get a leg up by being cap-exempt, creating an unlevel playing field for competing content and streaming services.

• DOJ Sues DirecTV, Calling It A ‘Ringleader’ of Collusion Over Regional Sports Programming

  Back in 2013, Time Warner Cable (now Charter Communications) struck an $8.35 billion deal with the LA Dodgers to create LA SportsNet, the exclusive home of LA Dodgers games. To recoup that money, Time Warner Cable began demanding exorbitant prices from competing cable providers if they wanted access to the channel. Unsurprisingly, all of Time Warner Cable’s competitors in the region balked at the $5 per subscriber asking price for the channel. As a result, for three years now a massive portion of Los Angeles hasn’t been able to watch their favorite baseball team, since Time Warner Cable’s asking price not only kept competing cable operators from delivering the channel, but prohibited over-the-air broadcasts of the games.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Finally Come The Calls In Major Media To Rethink Canada’s ‘Notice And Notice’ Copyright System

    To be fair to our neighbors to the north, Canada really tried. Amidst calls to implement something like the “notice and takedown” system for copyright infringement claims that we have in the States, Canada instead did what Canada does and tried to implement a nicer version of this, called “notice and notice.” The idea was that ISPs and service providers, rather than simply taking down content or banning people from the internet over copyright violations, would instead notify users that their behavior had been reported as infringing. More specifically, it allowed copyright holders to pass along these messages, with ISPs acting as the go-between. The theory was that when internet users — or in many cases family members of those internet users, such as parents — learned that potentially infringing activity was occurring, the notifications would cause the behavior to cease.

    As our own Karl Bode noted in 2014, this theory was backed by the ISPs, who claimed these notices helped curb a majority of piracy. We also noted in that post that the “notice and notice” system appeared to be preferable to our “notice and takedown” system because it appeared to be a less likely avenue for abuse by copyright holders and trolls. Sadly, that was immediately disproven by Rightscorp, with abuse of the system continuing up to the present. When eighty-year-old women are getting settlement shakedown threats from copyright trolls over video games, the aims of educating the public have clearly been subverted.

  • TED Accused of Using the DMCA to Silence Talk Criticism

    TED, a series of popular conferences, has the motto Ideas Worth Spreading. However, when a YouTuber made a video criticising and featuring content from a recent TED talk, the non-profit filed a DMCA notice with YouTube. Speaking with TorrentFreak, TED says that regardless of content, YouTube videos which violate its usage policy will be removed.

  • Anti-Piracy Group Uses ‘Pirated’ Code on its Website

    The Business Software Alliance, a trade group representing Adobe, Apple and Microsoft, is well known for its aggressive anti-piracy campaigns. The organization actively encourages people to snitch on software pirates, luring them with big cash rewards. Amusingly, however, the page where people can report unlicensed software is using ‘unlicensed’ jQuery code.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• Linux-based personal micro PC Panther Alpha launches on Kickstarter

  We cover a lot of macOS and Windows 10 news here on the site but we don’t always cover Linux as much as we should. Part of that is because we don’t have anyone on staff who uses the OS on a daily basis. There was a time though that I used Linux extensively when I was dead broke. I built my PC’s out of spare parts and installed Linux on them to get things working.

  Back then it was a chore to get just about anything to work properly, finding the proper drivers, or even finding the right programs to open certain files took time to put together. Linux has evolved a lot over the years and many distros offer out of the box functionality that I never knew. Panther is launching a Kickstarter for a personal micro PC that is Linux-based and very affordable. Check out the full press release below and hit the Kickstarter link below to support the project if you find it may fit your needs.

• Panther Alpha Super Mini PC Hits Kickstarter For $79 (video)

  A new Linux powered “super mini PC” has been launched by Kickstarter this week in the form of the Panther Alpha, which is looking to raise $79,000 over the next 45 days to make the jump into production.

  The Panther Alpha is being marketed as the most efficient desktop computer currently available allowing you to do more with less. Watch the promotional video below to learn more about its construction, integrated technology and operating system.

• Lenovo issues fixes for laptop Linux installs [Ed: thanks to Techrights]

  The world’s biggest PC seller Lenovo has announced that it will be releasing a series of updates to the firmware in some of its signature laptops so that Linux can be installed on them.

  Some of the models, as released originally, could only run Windows 10.

  The models in question were unable to see Linux installed on a proprietary RAID mode that was locked by the UEFI of the laptops in question.

Server

• Running MongoDB and Other Open Source Apps on the Mainframe

  Open source software is increasingly becoming available on the mainframe. MongoDB is among the most popular of several programs supporting Linux for mainframe. Yes, the mainframe. Surprisingly to some, mainframe computing is still in heavy use in large organizations. Indeed, 92 of the top 100 banks still run critical data on the mainframe, as do many top retailers, airlines and government organizations.

  But that’s not to say that over all these years, mainframe computing has remained the same. Earlier it was primarily run over IBM’s own z/OS operating system with databases such as DB2 and IMS, but also with a smattering of other vendor products such as CA’s and their IDMS and Datacom offerings. However, over the past several years, there has been a mainstream shift to Linux on the mainframe, and that trend is continuing.

• Apache Mesos users focus on big data, containers

  Mesosphere, the main commercial outfit behind the Apache Mesos datacenter and container orchestration project, has taken a good look at its user base and found that they gravitate toward a few fundamental use cases.

  Survey data released recently by Mesosphere in the “Apache Mesos 2016 Survey Report,” indicates that Mesos users focus on running containers at scale, using Mesos to deploy big data frameworks, and relying heavily on the core tool set that Mesos and DC/OS provide rather than using substitutes.

• AWS launches Linux container image for on-premise

  AWS has launched a new Linux Container Image in response to customer demand, designed for use with cloud and on-premise workloads.

  Linux AMI is a secure environment for firing up applications running on EC2, but due to customer demand, AWS has now made the image available for on-premise as well as cloud infrastructures, addressing more businesses’ needs.

• Secured DevOps for microservices

  Containers and microservices have revolutionized application development and infrastructure management. They have also introduced new security challenges without solving the old ones. What are some of the new security challenges, and what can you do about them?

Kernel Space

• Fujitsu Launches New Proprietary Linux Drivers for Their SP Series of Scanners

  Softpedia was informed by Fujitsu’s Michelle Johal about the general availability of proprietary Linux binary drivers for the company’s Fujitsu SP series of scanner products.

  It appears that the Fujitsu SP scanners are quite popular these days, and now that more and more computer users make the switch to an open source, Linux-based operating systems, the demand for drivers supporting this platform has grown much faster in the past months. Therefore, Fujitsu is proud to announce today the free availability of Image Scanner Driver for Linux 2.0.0.

• Systemd 232 Adds ProtectKernelModules, RemoveIPC, Other New Options

  Systemd 232 adds many new options like RemoveIPC for ensuring IPC objects owned by the user/group get removed on exit, ProtectKernelModules to disable explicit load/unload operations of kernel modules, ProtectSystem now supports a “strict” mode, ProtectControlGroups to disable write access to /sys/fs/cgroup, support for dynamically creating users for the lifetime of a service, a MemorySwapMax option, support for mount/automount units to be created transiently, systemd-mount was added, /efi is now the mount point for EFI boot partition, and dozens of other changes.

• systemd 232 Supports VeraCrypt Encrypted Partitions, Adds 60 Improvements

  Today, November 3, 2016, Lennart Pottering proudly announced the release and general availability of the systemd 232 modern, next-generation init system used in numerous GNU/Linux distributions.

  More than three months have passed since the release of systemd 231, during which Lennart Pottering and his team of over 100 developers managed to added even more exciting new features, as well as to improve existing functionality in the widely-used systemd init system. All these are now available as part of the systemd 232 release, and are coming soon to a distro near you.

• CloudLinux’s KernelCare Live Patching Solution Supports Ubuntu, Debian & CentOS

  Softpedia was informed by CloudLinux about the company’s KernelCare Linux kernel live patching solution, which has been around for the past two years, and loved by the Linux community.

  With customers like Dell and LiquidWeb, which run KernelCare on thousands of their servers, CloudLinux managed to offer users an unmatched kernel live patching solution that offers a no roll-back functionality that offers great flexibility to system administrator, allowing them to test their servers with or without it, as well as to install and uninstall without a reboot.

• Results from the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board election

• Jeff Garzik Joins Linux Foundation Board Of Directors

  Garzik is the first board member with a background in Bitcoin and blockchain, marking a significant development in the maturation of these technologies and the Hyperledger Project.

• The Linux Foundation adds three new members to board of directors

• The Linux Foundation Appoints Three Tech Industry Leaders to Board of Directors

• Graphics Stack

  • RadeonSI Gallium3D Now Exposes GLSL 4.50

  • Intel OpenCL Beignet 1.2.1 Released

Applications

• Collabora’s Devs Add Acoustic Echo Cancellation, Enhanced AC-3 to GStreamer 1.10

  Today, November 3, 2016, Collabora informs us about the contributions done by its multimedia team on the release of the powerful, free, open-source and cross-platform GStreamer 1.10 multimedia framework.

• Collabora Updates Its LibreOffice Online Solution with Collaborative Editing

• Weblate 2.9

  Slightly behind schedule (it should have been released in October), Weblate 2.9 is out today. This release brings Subversion support or improved zen mode.

• libopus 1.2-alpha

• Opus 1.2 Alpha Released With Several Quality Improvements

  With the Opus 1.2 Alpha release there is speed quality improvements, improved VBR encoding for hybrid mode, more aggressive use of wider speed bandwidth, and music quality improvements. Other work in libopus 1.2 alpha includes generic and SSE CELT optimizations, support for directly encoding packets up to 120 ms, DTX support for CELT, SILK CBR improvements. Like most software projects, there is also a lot of bug fixes, including some overflow fixes.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Getting started with Python scripting in Scribus

  • Enable Apple wi-fi adapter on Fedora 25

  • Hatchit puts open source power in developers’ hands

  • Keystone Domains are Projects

  • GXml 0.14 and Serialization

  • Refactoring C to make Rustification easier

• Wine or Emulation

  • Hands-on: Using CrossOver Android to run Windows apps on a Chromebook

    Switching from a Windows laptop to a Chromebook is possible only if you can live without any Windows programs.

    But Chrome OS’s newfound support for Android apps from the Google Play Store has opened up a loophole: A program from Codeweavers called CrossOver Android creates a Windows compatibility layer inside Chrome OS, letting users install and run traditional Win32 software.

    As a proof of concept, this is an exciting development for prospective Chromebook owners. But CrossOver is still early in its development. As I discovered while testing out a preview version, getting your favorite Windows programs to work involves an unfavorable roll of the dice.

• Games

  • Football Manager 2017 Released For Linux

    If you are a Linux gamer and our 13-way GPU comparison of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided made you realize your system isn’t strong enough for this newest AAA Linux game title, perhaps you’ll be interested in the just-released Football Manager 2017 with day-one Linux support.

  • Steam Dev Days 2016 Videos Published: SteamOS/Linux & Vulkan Talks

    For those that couldn’t make it to last month’s Steam Dev Days hosted by Valve, all of the video presentations are now available online.

    Steam Dev Days 2016 saw Linux VR presentations with that Linux support finally coming to fruition, Valve looking to contract more Mesa developers, and more. VR was undoubtedly the most popular topic of Steam Dev Days 2016 while Vulkan and SteamOS/Linux also had some coverage.

  • The latest Steam Client Beta should fix downloads and updates on Linux

  • GOG currently have a big sale on, snap up some cheap DRM free Linux games

    Never a day goes by where there isn’t a sale for you to pick up cheap games from decent stores. Today GOG has started the ‘Monstrous Fall Sale’.

  • Gunmetal Arcadia Zero gets a wide release and brings along generous servings of nostalgia

    It’s a day-1 Linux release, too, which is always a nice touch for those of us who enjoy saving the world on our platform of choice.

  • Deus Ex: Mankind Divided NVIDIA Linux Benchmarks – 13-Way GPU Comparison

    Just a few months after the Windows release of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the Linux port to OpenGL carried out by Feral Interactive was released this morning. Here are many different GPU benchmarks of Deus Ex: Mankind Divded if you are wondering whether or not your system will perform well with this game under Linux, given that the requirements are stiffer than the Windows build. For this launch-day comparison are thirteen NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards tested. The AMD Radeon cards were left to rest this time around since the current open-source Mesa stack struggles currently for this game and is not officially supported yet by Feral.

  • Testing Deus Ex On Linux With RadeonSI Mesa, AMDGPU-PRO

    When it was found out only NVIDIA GPUs are supported by Deus Ex: Mankind Divided on Linux many were disappointed that the Mesa drivers aren’t supported. Now that the game was released a short time ago, I have some details to share about the Radeon support for this AAA game title for Linux.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • WikiToLearn Reaches 1.0

    WikiToLearn is KDE’s project to create textbooks for university and school students. It provides free, collaborative and accessible text books. Academics worldwide contribute in sharing knowledge by creating high quality content.

    One year after founding WikiToLearn, the love for sharing knowledge helped our community to grow stronger. During this year a lot of great things happened, but we also had to face some technical and organizational problems.

  • Qt 5.8 Beta Released

    I am pleased to announce that Qt 5.8 Beta is now released. Containing all-new configuration system, new graphics architecture with integrated Qt Quick 2D Renderer for devices without OpenGL, build in QML cache for improved startup and many other new features, Qt 5.8 will be a very interesting release. I hope many will take the Qt 5.8 Beta release, test it and provide feedback for us to complete Qt 5.8. For the big picture of the release, see the alpha release blog post.

  • Qt 5.8 Now In Beta Form

    Qt 5.8 Beta is now shipping with their new configuration system, their graphics changes for the Qt Quick 2D renderer, built-in QML cache, and much more. As covered previously, some of the other work includes an experimental Direct3D 12 back-end for Qt Quick, new Qt Quick Controls 2 additions, Qt WebEngine upgrades, Bluetooth Low Energy improvements, Qt Network improvements, embedded support improvements, and more. New modules for Qt 5.8 coming are the Qt Wayland Compositor, Qt SCXML, Qt Serial Bus, and new platform support is for Apple tvOS and watchOS. There are also technology previews of Qt Gamepad, Qt Speech, and Qt Network Authentication.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Searching in GNOME Software

    I’ve spent a few days profiling GNOME Software on ARM, mostly for curiosity but also to help our friends at Endless. I’ve merged a few patches that make the existing –profile code more useful to profile start up speed. Already there have been some big gains, over 200ms of startup time and 12Mb of RSS, but there’s plenty more that we want to fix to make GNOME Software run really nicely on resource constrained devices.

Distributions

• Arch Family

  • Top 5 Active Arch derived Linux distributions

    As we know Arch Linux is one of the best Linux Distribution ever because we can customize whatever we want. We can get all the latest software’s because of the rolling release but its very difficult to install & configure for Linux beginners as well as experience too.

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

    There are many, Actively developed Arch derived Linux distributions are available with pre-installed Desktop environment. Today we are going to review/show you, Top 5 Active Arch derived Linux distributions. Whoever want to taste arch Linux give a try, i can assure worth to try.

• OpenSUSE/SUSE

  • New Tumbleweed snapshot 20161102 released!

  • Tumbleweed brings Halloween Treats

    A new framework for desktop applications on Linux has been added to Tumbleweed and now users can enjoy the most up-to-date version of Flatpak.

    Flatpak 0.6.13 arrived in the 20161028 snapshot last week and complements another package updated in the snapshot; OSTree 2016.12, which is a tool that combines a “git-like” model for committing and downloading bootable filesystem trees, along with a layer for deploying them and managing the bootloader configuration.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Virtualization: Bridging the Gap with the Cloud and Hyperconverged Infrastructure

    Red Hat Virtualization offers a flexible technology for high-intensive performance and secure workloads. Red Hat Virtualization 4.0 introduced new features that enable customers to further extend the use case of traditional virtualization in hybrid cloud environments. The platform now easily incorporates third party network providers into the existing environment along with other technologies found in next generation cloud platforms such as Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host. Additionally, new infrastructure models are now supported including selected support for hyperconverged infrastructure; the native integration of compute and storage across a cluster of hosts in a Red Hat Virtualization environment.

  • Macquarie Bank wins Red hat digital innovation award

    Macquarie Bank has received a prestigious award for exemplary technological advancements as well as for displaying exemplary leadership on the matter. Recognised for its work in Australia and New Zealand at Red Hat’s annual Innovation Award APAC, the bank was proud to receive the award.

    Red Hat, a leading global provider of open source solutions, used its ceremony as a forum featuring presentations on industry trends and open source strategies; topics such as big data, mobile and hybrid cloud were also discussed.

  • Red Hat makes its new enterprise OS generally available

  • Red Hat Bolsters Linux Platform Strategy

  • Security, storage improvements claimed in Red Hat release

  • Red Hat releases Enterprise Linux 7.3 into the wild

  • RHEL 7.3 touches up container tools, touches on IoT

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 Boasts Better Security

    The Linux vendor adds news features to its flagship platform, including the beginnings of IoT support.
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 became generally available Nov. 3 after being in beta since September. The new release is the first major update to Red Hat’s flagship platform since RHEL 7.2 debuted a year ago.

    Among the improvements made in RHEL 7.3 are a series of enhancements to Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux). In a bid to help provide better risk mitigation, SELinux provides an additional layer of mandatory access controls to Linux.

    “Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 provides what is really an ease-of-use enhancement to SELinux,” Siddharth Nagar, product manager for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, told eWEEK.

  • RPM 4.13 Adds File Triggers, Boolean Dependencies

    Prominent features to RPM 4.13 include support for file triggers, boolean dependencies, and file signatures in the security.ima xattr. Boolean operators supported in all dependencies (requires, recommends, suggests, supplements, enhances, and conflicts) include and, or, if, and if else. Details on the boolean dependencies support is outlined via this page while file triggers are explained on this page.

  • Finance

    • Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) – Top Stock from Technology Sector

    • Today’s Top Gainers in the Market Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) from Technology

    • Are analysts Bullish on Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Shares? What They Are Predicting for Earnings

    • Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Updated Broker Price Targets

• Debian Family

  • Debian Fun in October 2016

  • Derivatives

    • MaruOS 0.3 released (Android 6.0 smartphone ROM which also includes Debian Linux desktop OS)

      Maru OS is an operating system that lets you run Android software on your phone… and connect the same phone to an external display to run desktop Linux software.

      An early build was unveiled in February. This summer the developer open sourced the project. And now there’s an updated version that makes the move from Android 5.1 to Android 6.0.

      Maru OS 0.3 is ready to go… assuming you have a Google Nexus 5.

    • Debian/TeX Live 2016.20161103-1

      This month’s update falls onto a national holiday in Japan. My recent start as a normal company employee in Japan doesn’t leave me enough time during normal days to work on Debian, so things have to wait for holidays. There have been a few notable changes in the current packages, and above all I wanted to fix an RC bug and on the way fixed also several other (sometimes rather old) bugs.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu Touch OTA-14 to Introduce New Task Manager with Wallpaper and App Icons

        One of our readers informs us that the upcoming Ubuntu Touch OTA-14 software update for supported Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu Tablet devices will introduce a new task manager that supports wallpaper and app icons.

        It’s been one and a half months since Canonical released the OTA-13 version of its Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system, and the development of the OTA-14 update has been rather slow during all this time. Those brave enough to use the rc-proposed channel were fortunate to get an early taste of what’s coming to the Ubuntu mobile OS.

      • Canonical Releases Ubuntu Core 16, a Secure OS for Today’s Woefully Insecure IoT Devices

      • Snappy Ubuntu Core 16 Launched For IoT Devices, Raspberry Pi, And Cloud With A Focus On Security

      • Ubuntu Core 16 IoT-focused Linux distro finally available for PC and Raspberry Pi

      • ​Ubuntu Core 16: Linux for a secure Internet of Things

      • Ubuntu Core 16 lays foundation for securer IoT

      • Canonical Focuses On IoT Security With Ubuntu Core 16

      • Ubuntu wants to fix IoT security fiasco with new dedicated operating system for smart devices

      • Canonical lays out the case for Ubuntu Core as the ideal IoT OS

      • Canonical looks to consolidate grip on IoT’s edge with Ubuntu Core 16

      • Ubuntu Core 16 delivers foundation for secure IoT

      • Ubuntu Core 16 Released

        Ubuntu Core 16 furthers Canonical’s goal of this stack being the “foundation for secure IoT” with its regular updates, Snappy package management, and “provides an app store for every device.”

      • Ubuntu Core Snaps door shut on Linux’s new Dirty COWs

        Canonical has released Ubuntu Core 16 for IoT, featuring Linux self-patching for a generation of users against future Bash or Dirty COWs.

        Ubuntu Core 16 features Snaps, a zip file concept Canonical says will streamline IoT device updates protecting against hackers and data loss. Snaps shipped in Ubuntu 16.10 but Ubuntu Core is the 70Mb edition for devices.

        Alas, this won’t work on existing devices running Linux – just new ones.

Devices/Embedded

• Mentor Graphics Expands Mentor Embedded Linux Support for the latest AMD Embedded G-series Family of Processors

• First Apollo Lake Nano-ITX SBC emerges

  Portwell unveiled a Nano-ITX SBC and COM Express Compact module with dual or quad-core Atom E3900 SoCs, -40 to 85°C support, and up to 32GB on the COM.

  Portwell has announced both a Nano-6062 Nano-ITX single board computer and a PCOM-B641VG COM Express Compact Type 6 module built around Intel’s new Atom E3900 “Apollo Lake” SoCs. Both products offer standard -40 to 85°C industrial temperature support. No OS is listed, but other Apollo Lake based products have all supported Linux, Windows, and usually VxWorks.

• VoCore2: Another Tiny, Inexpensive Linux Device Debuts

  While the Raspberry Pi has grabbed the most headlines as a tiny, ultra-inexpensive, pocketable computer running an open source operating system, it’s actually only one of many tiny LInux computers being heralded as part of a new “Linux punk ethic.” As we’ve noted, there are various pocket-size Android devices selling online for under $100 (see the photo).

  Now, one of the most interesting entries in this space has debuted. VoCore2 is an open source Linux computer and wireless router that is actually smaller than a coin. You can use it as a VPN gateway, or as a private cloud platform. Here are more details.

• Phones

  • Tizen

    • Samsung’s Family Hub Refrigerator makes its way to The UK

      After being the talk of the town at CES 2016, Las Vegas back in January, the Samsung Family Hub Refrigerator is now making its entry officially into the UK. Both the 550 litres and the 356 litres versions of the Refrigerators are going up for sale and are available to buy from popular retailers like Currys, AO.com and John Lewis. The 356 litres version has been priced at £2,999 while the 550 litres version has been priced at £4,499. However, Curry’s are offering a £75 discount to users for a limited time (until Monday) along with five years of guarantee. Meanwhile, John Lewis has listed the 550 litres version at £4,375 but with only two years of guarantee.

    • Amazon USA Begins Pre-order of Gear S3, shipping date November 6 !

      Samsung’s latest wearable devices, the Gear S3 classic and the Gear S3 Frontier, have begun making their appearances in various markets. Demand of the new smartwatch seems pretty good at the moment as Samsung UK and Best Buy USA have had to halt their pre-orders due to them exhausting their initial stock of of the devices. This has left many of our readers disappointed as they want to be first to grab this new bit of wearable tech, but it seems that our readers in the USA might have another option.

  • Android

    • Meet Remix IO+, a More Powerful Remix IO That Doubles as an Android or Gaming PC

      We reported a couple of weeks ago about an upcoming device from the developers of the Android-x86-based Remix OS operating system for PCs and embedded devices, dubbed Remix IO.

      Remix IO launched its Kickstarter campaign on October 20, 2016, with a pledged goal of $250,000 USD, which now strides towards $500,000 USD with 15 days to go, at the moment of writing this article, thanks to over 4,100 backers. And now, Jide Technology is proud to announce a new product tier, Remix IO+.

    • Remix IO+ adds more hardware, price to Jide’s Android mini PC

      It has been barely a two weeks since Jide launched yet another Kickstarter campaign to fund what is perhaps its most ambitious Android device. Aiming to be desktop computer, entertainment center, and gaming console “in one” (hence, “IO”), the Remix IO was welcomed not only with overwhelming support but also an incessant request: offer something better. After polling the crowd, Jide has come up with the Remix IO+, with more RAM, more CPU, more storage, and, of course, more costs.

    • Hands-on with the powerful new Huawei Mate 9

      Huawei has emerged as a serious contender for supremacy in the mobile market. The Chinese giant already sold more than 100 million smartphones in 2016, and it’s hoping to maintain momentum with a strong new release at the high-end of the spectrum, the Mate 9.

      The latest incarnation of the Mate series needs to be a hit in China, but the real prize for Huawei is the lucrative West. That is why Huawei picked Munich, Germany for the introduction of the Mate 9.

    • Huawei Fit hands-on: a sleek fitness-focused smartwatch

      Certainly sporting a more refined design, the Huawei Fit is fashioned from brushed aluminum, which gives it a modern appeal. Well, that depends on what color option you end up choosing, just because the orange one we’re checking out here gives it a slightly odd color scheme. In comparison, the darker color straps provide more unity with the chassis.

    • Android just hit a record 88% market share of all smartphones

    • Google Android hits market share record with nearly 9 in every 10 smartphones using it

      Google’s Android mobile operating system (OS) grabbed a record market share in the third-quarter at the expense of Apple’s iOS which posted a decline, according to new research.

      Android captured 87.5 percent of global smartphone market share in the three months to the end of September, Strategy Analytics said in a report. This means that nearly nine out of 10 smartphones in the world run Google’s OS. Shipments of Android devices hit 328.6 million, up 10.3 percent year-on-year.

      Meanwhile, Apple’s shipped 45.5 million iPhones, down 5.2 percent from the 48 million in the same period last year. This was confirmed in Apple’s latest earnings results, which showed the third straight quarter of declines for iPhone sales. Apple iOS market share stood at 12.1 percent in the third quarter, down from 13.6 percent the year before.

    • Google Ends Support for Eclipse Android Developer Tools

    • Google knifes Eclipse Android Developer Tools

    • Android Studio 2.2 heralds the end for Eclipse ADT support

    • Android Is As Secure As Apple’s iOS, Google Security Director Claims

    • Google’s Android is just as secure as iOS, claims security chief

    • Android for Work’s demo mode lets mere mortals try out the service

    • WeMo devices can hack your Android phone, so attacker can track you, steal photos

    • Off-the-shelf Android spyware targets high level executives

    • How To Update Your Nexus 5 To Android 7.1 Nougat Google Pixel Custom ROM

    • Peter Molyneux’s ‘The Trail’ is out now on Android

    • Samsung high-end Android flip-phone confirmed for China, but you may never get it

      A rumored Samsung Android flip-phone has finally been confirmed as a real product. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the phone, dubbed the Samsung W2017, will likely never be released outside of its main target market of China. It also may be prohibitively expensive even if you live there.

    • Samsung finally makes the W2017 Android flip phone official

      Almost exactly one year after unveiling the W2016 high-end Android-powered flip phone in China, Samsung is back again with another such device. The successor for the W2016 is unsurprisingly called W2017, and it’s been leaking in one form or another since June. And today it’s been announced for the Chinese market.

      Like the W2016, the new W2017 comes with top of the line specs, packed into the clamshell design that was so popular many years ago. The W2017 is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820, aided by 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage expandable via microSD.

Open Source Vs Closed Source

There are many differences between open source operating system and closed source operating system. Here we have written few of them.

Four Node.js Gotchas that Operations Teams Should Know about

There is no doubt that Node.js is one of the fastest growing platforms today. It can be found at start-ups and enterprises throughout all industries from high-tech to healthcare.

A lot of people have written about the reasons for its popularity and why it has made sense in “digital transformation” efforts. But when you implement Node.js, do you have to replace your mainframes and legacy software with a shiny new Node.js-based microservice architecture?

Automating Infrastructure Deployment for Kubernetes

Many organizations run Kubernetes clusters in a single public cloud, such as GCE or AWS, so they have reasonably homogenous infrastructure needs, says Alena Prokharchyk, Principal Software Engineer at Rancher Labs. In these situations, deploying Kubernetes clusters is relatively straightforward. Other organizations, however, may need to deploy Kubernetes across multiple clouds and data centers, which can lead to challenges.

Prokharchyk, who will be speaking along with Brian Scott of The Walt Disney Company at KubeCon in Seattle, shared more about these challenges and how Rancher Labs has worked with various organizations to solve them.

Internet-based and open source: How e-voting works around the globe

I live in one of the most wired parts of the United States—the San Francisco Bay Area—but for the presidential election, I’ve already voted by mail. On a piece of paper. From the comfort of my living room. Between folks like me who vote by mail and everyone else who votes by marking paper in some way, we comprise about two-thirds of all American voters. Approximately 25 percent of all Americans, however, will use paperless and electronic voting machines to cast their ballots on November 6.

Around the world though, these percentages don’t hold. An increasing number of countries are beginning to tackle e-voting with gusto. Estonia, Switzerland, Spain, Brazil, Australia, India, Canada, and a handful of other countries have all held elections through the use of electronic voting machines in recent years.

Events

• EclipseCon Europe 2016

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• LibreOffice 5.2.3 Arrives with over 80 Fixes, LibreOffice 5.3 Lands January 2017

  Today, November 3, 2016, we’ve been informed by Italo Vignoli from The Document Foundation about the general availability of the third maintenance update to the LibreOffice 5.2 “Fresh” office suite series.

• Announcement of LibreOffice 5.2.3

  The Document Foundation (TDF) announces the availability of LibreOffice 5.2.3 “fresh”, the third minor release of the LibreOffice 5.2 family, representing the bleeding edge in term of features and as such targeted at technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users.

  For all other users and especially for enterprise deployments, TDF suggests LibreOffice 5.1.6 “still”, with the backing of professional support by certified people (a list is available at: http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/).

• Red Hat 7.3, LibreOffice 5.2.3 Released

  The Document Foundation today announced the release of LibreOffice 5.2.3, “representing the bleeding edge in term of features and as such targeted at technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users.” This release represents 81 squashed bugs. Some of the more interesting include:

  * some hidden text not imported as hidden correctly
  * unable to undo formatting in master slide placeholder textboxes
  * Deleting all content from a cell changes font formatting
  * copying a single sheet with a chart on it garbles the chart
  * writer cannot save 3d shape inserted from draw
  * opencl: don’t initialize OpenCL when disabled

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

• No, Microsoft does not love open source

  I used to follow Microsoft’s intellectual property Twitter account in order to see exactly how much Microsoft loved open source as it bragged about all the people it had coerced into signing patent agreements. I guess someone realized that crowing about that was not a great idea, because today the feed tweets puff pieces about how great software patents are and how they drive innovation (through litigation).

  The truth is that Microsoft’s principal open source strategy hasn’t changed and probably never will. The point of open source to Microsoft (or any other company) is to give you an on-ramp to its platform. For Microsoft, that platform is morphing from Windows to Azure, so of course Microsoft has dialed back its rhetoric toward Linux. If you read Microsoft hates Linux, then you probably won’t host your VMs on Azure — same deal if you have a choice between two virtual private clouds. Duh, Microsoft loves Linux … on Azure. Why wouldn’t it?

  Microsoft may even be willing to accept open source that’s tied to its technologies, but not directly to its platform. Generally these will be “children’s edition” versions like .Net Core. I’m not saying Visual Studio for Linux isn’t progress, but is anyone really itching to run .Net on Linux? I mean, after the outrageous commercial success of Mono (/sarcasm), are any of you going, “Woo-hoo, I want to write .Net code and run it on Linux”? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

  Now, about those lawsuits — Microsoft likes it both ways: Embrace on one hand, and get tidy patent settlements on the other. People who work at Microsoft say it’s a big company, and as with all big companies, the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Actually, that would be dismal management — if “we love open source” was really part of Microsoft’s strategy.

  As evidence that Microsoft loves open source and Linux, last year Microsoft noted some long-running lawsuits that it wasn’t really winning and dropped them. Repositioning “we cut our losses” to “because we love you” is good PR. Respect! But let’s talk about real change.

• Hard ‘committals’, Microsoft open sources cloud hardware [Ed: Yet more openwashing of Microsoft; this is NOT "Open Source" (as per OSI licences)]

• Microsoft Contributes a Next-Generation Cloud Hardware/Software Concept

Public Services/Government

• U.S. government launches Code.gov to showcase its open-source software

  The White House today is announcing the launch of Code.gov, a website that shows off U.S. government open-source projects and offers relevant resources for government agencies. By launching this site the White House is hoping to improve public access to the government’s software and encourage the reuse of software across government agencies.

  The launch comes four months after the White House introduced the Federal Source Code policy, which specifically mandates that government agencies “make custom-developed code available for Government-wide reuse and make their code inventories discoverable” at Code.gov, with certain exceptions.

  The new site already has almost 50 code repositories from more than 10 agencies, U.S. chief information officer Tony Scott wrote in a blog post.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• Open Data

  • Git for data is here: Announcing FlockerHub and Fli

    We are very excited to announce the upcoming release on November 8th of two major new products designed to make running stateful apps in containers easy–FlockerHub and Fli. FlockerHub will be released in beta on November 8th. During the beta, users can store up to 5GB of data volumes and share with an unlimited number of other users for free. Fli will be released as an Apache 2.0 licensed software project.

    FlockerHub is like GitHub® for data. With FlockerHub, teams can store and share any Docker data volume with access-controlled users or servers.

    Fli is like Git for data. It is command line interface that runs on any Linux server or laptop, and lets developers snapshot, clone, push and pull data volumes to FlockerHub.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Mellanox Open-Sources Its Network Processor Platform

    In a move designed to seed a new ecosystem around its line of NPS line of network processor units (NPU), including its 400 Gbps NPS-400 model, Mellanox Technologies on Wednesday announced its launch of an open source initiative, and the release of an SDK, called OpenNPU. After wallowing in the shallow end of open source development for the past two years with the Open Compute Project, now the company seems ready to dive deeper.

    The NPS series is already programmable using the classic C language, and features a built-in Linux operating system. Mellanox has been pushing NPS as a platform for network functions virtualization (NFV) — for virtualizing the class of functions required to run applications and customer services on networks themselves.

Programming/Development

• The Vulkan Programming Guide Has Begun Shipping

• App developers spend too much time debugging errors in production systems

  According to a new study 43 percent of app developers spend between 10 and 25 percent of their time debugging application errors discovered in production, rather than developing new features.

  The survey carried out by ClusterHQ found that a quarter of respondents report encountering bugs discovered in production one or more times per week.

  Respondents were also asked to identify the most common causes of bugs. These were, inability to fully recreate production environments in testing (33 percent), interdependence on external systems that makes integration testing difficult (27 percent) and testing against unrealistic data before moving into production (26 percent).

  When asked to identify the environment in which bugs are most costly to fix, 62 percent selected production as the most expensive stage of app development to fix errors, followed by development (18 percent), staging (seven percent), QA (seven percent) and testing (six percent).

Hardware

• Design for the present

  The new MacBook Pro is probably great, and most of the initial skepticism probably won’t age well. But I want to pick on one aspect today.

  Having four USB-C ports is awesome.

  Having only four USB-C ports is going to hurt the versatility requirement of pro gear, because there’s a very real chance that you won’t have the right dongle when you need it.

  This is going to happen a lot, because even though USB-C is the future, it’s definitely not the present. We’ve had the standard USB plug (USB-A) in widespread use for 18 years, and it’s going to take a few more years for USB-C to become so ubiquitous that we can get away without USB-A ports most of the time.

Security

• Thursday’s security updates

• Why I don’t Use 2048 or 4096 RSA Key Sizes

  I have used non-standard RSA key size for maybe 15 years. For example, my old OpenPGP key created in 2002. With non-standard key sizes, I mean a RSA key size that is not 2048 or 4096. I do this when I generate OpenPGP/SSH keys (using GnuPG with a smartcard like this) and PKIX certificates (using GnuTLS or OpenSSL, e.g. for XMPP or for HTTPS). People sometimes ask me why. I haven’t seen anyone talk about this, or provide a writeup, that is consistent with my views. So I wanted to write about my motivation, so that it is easy for me to refer to, and hopefully to inspire others to think similarily. Or to provoke discussion and disagreement — that’s fine, and hopefully I will learn something.

• Black Hat Europe: IoT devices can hack phones

  The Internet of things (IoT) has already been used to launch the biggest DDoS attacks ever, but now it represents a potential path for attackers to compromise cell phones.

  Flaws in Belkin WeMo devices – electrical switches, cameras, light bulbs, coffee makers, air purifiers, etc. – enabled Invincea Labs researchers to not only hack into the devices, but to use that access to attack an Android phone running the app that controls the WeMo devices.

  “This is the first instance we’ve seen of IoT hacking something else,” says researcher Scott Tenaglia, who pledges to look for other vulnerable devices that might be abused to carry out similar attacks.

• Why Light Bulbs May Be the Next Hacker Target

  The so-called Internet of Things, its proponents argue, offers many benefits: energy efficiency, technology so convenient it can anticipate what you want, even reduced congestion on the roads.

  Now here’s the bad news: Putting a bunch of wirelessly connected devices in one area could prove irresistible to hackers. And it could allow them to spread malicious code through the air, like a flu virus on an airplane.

  Researchers report in a paper to be made public on Thursday that they have uncovered a flaw in a wireless technology that is often included in smart home devices like lights, switches, locks, thermostats and many of the components of the much-ballyhooed “smart home” of the future.

  The researchers focused on the Philips Hue smart light bulb and found that the wireless flaw could allow hackers to take control of the light bulbs, according to researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science near Tel Aviv and Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.

• Microsoft extends EMET end of life date

  Microsoft will continue to support and provide security patches for its Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit security software for Windows until July 31 2018, after taking customer feedback into account.

  EMET is a security utility software popular with enterprise customers running supported versions of Windows. It uses mitigation techniques to block attackers from exploiting vulnerabilities in software.

• Linux/Moose is loose: Analysis finds IoT botnet malware favors Instagram fraud

• DKIM Verification

  Domain Keys Identified Mail, or DKIM, is a highly regarded email security system that can be used to independently authenticate the contents and sender of an email that uses it.

  DKIM was developed and is widely deployed as an email server anti-spam mechanism, including on Gmail.com and HillaryClinton.com. DKIM-enabled mail servers cryptographically sign the emails they relay so that the recipients’ mail servers can authenticate them. DKIM has the beneficial side-effect of causing messages to become “cryptographically non-repudiable”; that is, after the email has been sent, the sender cannot credibly repudiate the message and say that it is a forgery. A DKIM mail server creates a cryptographically strong proof attesting to the authenticity of the email, which it adds to each of the headers of each email it sends. This cryptographic proof can then be tested by anyone who obtains a copy of the email.

Defence/Aggression

• How Sweden develops cyber war methods at Nato’s centre

  Sweden is developing methods for cyber defence and offence in Nato’s cyber warfare centre, says the Ministry for Defence.

  As hacking and threats of “cyber attacks” play a bigger role in the worsening relations between the USA and Russia, Radio Sweden hears how Sweden is part of the Nato Centre for Cyber Defence Cooperation in Tallinn, and speaks to the Swedish expert who now works there.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• Climate Change Is Already Forcing Americans to Move

  Loraine Helber runs the public housing authority in Punta Gorda, Florida, a city of 18,000 just north of Fort Myers at the mouth of the Peace River. In March, she hopes to celebrate a milestone: the opening of new apartments for the elderly, replacing about 80 units destroyed by the hurricane.

  But the storm that destroyed the original public housing wasn’t Hurricane Matthew; it was Hurricane Charley, 12 years ago. Neither the insurance company nor the federal government provided enough money to rebuild what was lost. Construction could proceed only once Bank of America, through a subsidiary, invested in the new building to get a tax write-off.

  None of the people forced to leave their homes will be there to move back in. Many of them left Punta Gorda altogether; there was nowhere for them to stay. Helber thinks most went to Tampa. Yet she says Punta Gorda fared better than most housing authorities, because the units got rebuilt at all. “We refused to give up,” Helber told me.

• Finland on its way to become world’s first country to ban coal use in energy production

  The Finnish Government has announced that it is mulling over prohibiting the use of coal in energy production by 2030.

  Olli Rehn (Centre), the Minister of Economic Affairs, revealed in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat on Wednesday that the energy and climate strategy currently under preparation recommends that the use of coal be stopped by 2030 – possibly by means of a statutory prohibition.

• You no longer need to own a solar panel to reap the financial benefits of solar energy

  For Americans, solar power can now come without the panel.

  Solar energy isn’t an option for millions of people living in cities—who have no rooftop to call their own—or without reasonable solar prices. There are 113 million homeowners in markets with competitively-priced solar power—but because of poor credit scores, 90% of them can’t get solar panel installation loans at terms favorable enough to make the panels financially viable, reports Greentech Media.

  A startup is now separating solar from the rooftop. Arcadia Power launched a community solar program Nov. 3 that lets customers buy solar panels anywhere in the US—technically, they buy a tiny share of a Power Purchase Agreement from a solar project—and pay their energy bills with sales from its electricity.

• 2 Police Officers Turn In Badges In Support Of Standing Rock Water Protectors

  North Dakota water protector Redhawk reported today at Standing Rock that two police officers just turned in their badges to show their support for the water protectors.

  “There have been at least 2 reports of police officers turning in their badges acknowledging that this battle is not what they signed up for,” Redhawk writes.

  “You can see it in some of them, that they do not support the police actions,” he continues.

  “We must keep reminding them they are welcome to put down their weapons and badge and take a stand against this pipeline as well. Some are waking up.”

  While most of the police officers at the scene of the DAPL protests have been brutal, violent, and unconstitutionally-militarized, it is clear from this recent act of solidarity that some of their hearts can be turned to the cause of justice.

  This recent incident is reminiscent of what happened in Frankfurt, Germany in May of 2012, when police removed their helmets and began marching with the people protesting big banks.

Finance

• Chinese Innovation: Nude Photo Loan Platform Adds Uber-Style Debt Collectors Feature

  Some may applaud Jiedaibao’s idea of creating an Uber-like crowd of private debt collectors, but the scope for abuse is clear. And those suddenly finding themselves on the receiving end of these amateur debt collectors are unlikely to be so enthusiastic about Jiedaibao’s innovative approach.

• Loans secured against nude photos stir debate

  A number of female college students were requested to send their nude photos in exchange for usury loans on an internet lending platform, Beijing Youth Daily reported.

• CETA Implementation Bill Provides Reminder of the IP Cost in the Canada – EU Trade Deal

  The Canadian government moved quickly from signing the trade agreement between Canada and the European Union on Sunday to tabling Bill C-30, the CETA implementing legislation, on Monday. While most of the attention has focused on the political issues surrounding CETA in Europe and the potential gains for Canadian exporters due to tariff reductions, the implementing bill provides a reminder that there are significant costs associated with CETA that have generated far less discussion. In fact, the majority of the 140-page bill features changes to Canada’s intellectual property rules, requiring changes that largely serve European interests.

  Mandated reforms to patent protections (in the form of term restoration provisions) and the expansion of protections for dozens of European geographical indications was always part of the price to be paid for CETA. There were concerns expressed throughout the negotiations on both issues. Geographic indications rules grant protections to foods widely produced around the world and establish new marketing and naming restrictions on Canadian food producers. Meanwhile, the patent term restoration provisions are likely to increase health care costs in Canada by delaying the availability of generic pharmaceuticals due to the extension in the term of protection for patented pharmaceuticals.

• The vicious assault on UK judges by the Brexit press is a threat to democracy

  The Brexit-supporting press has mounted a vicious assault on the three high court judges who ruled in the article 50 case. And it has undermined our constitution in the process. The government appears to be fuelling this attack. Sajid Javid, the local government secretary, described the judges as seeking to “thwart the will of the people”.

  The judiciary is a pillar of our constitution. Allow faith in the judges to be eroded and that pillar is eroded at a huge cost to our freedoms.

  The front page of the Daily Mail labelled the three judges “enemies of the people”. It described Sir Terence Etherton as the first “openly gay” judge, detailed Sir Philip Sales’ earnings when he was a barrister and worked for the government and captioned a photograph of the third judge “The Europhile: Lord Chief Justice Thomas”. The Sun and the Daily Telegraph stooped to spraying abuse with the same lack of concern for the constitutional place of the judiciary in our democracy.

• Sturgeon says Holyrood might join Brexit court case

  Scotland could join the Brexit court battle to make sure Theresa May does not win back the power to trigger Article 50, Nicola Sturgeon has said.

  The First Minister says that Holyrood could join businesswoman Gina Miller and hair dresser Deir Dos Santos as “participants in that case” when it goes to the Supreme Court in early December.

  A High Court ruling on Thursday morning handed victory to campaigners who said the Prime Minister did not have the right to set in motion the official notice of divorce from the European Union without consulting parliament.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Presidential Candidates Dr. Jill Stein & Gov. Gary Johnson [Pt. 2]

  Dr. Jill Stein is a mother, physician and longtime teacher of internal medicine. Also the co-author of two major environmental reports — In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development and Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging — Dr. Stein has dedicated years of public service as an environmental-health advocate. She has testified before numerous legislative panels as well as local and state governmental bodies, playing a key role in the effort to get the Massachusetts fish advisories to better protect women and children from mercury contamination. Her first foray into politics was in 2002, when she ran for Governor of Massachusetts. Dr. Stein is again running to be the Green Party nominee for President in 2016.

• Sweden’s business with Clinton Foundation in a geopolitical context

  Ensuing a brief characterization of ties maintained between Sweden and the Hillary Clinton-led US Department, and summarily reviewing the Swedish political and media consensus on this and related issues, I present a list of Swedish state-owned and private companies contributing in the monetary transactions of the Clinton Foundation. The question being is whether those were always ‘donations’ from the Swedish government, or corporations, or if it was an exchange of favors that resulted in investments for both sides. One illustration of the geopolitical/financial quid pro quo arising between the Swedish donors and the Clinton Foundation (or US State Department at the time) is provided by the deal represented by the giant Swedish company Ericsson. The company Ericsson paid nearly six million dollars to Bill Clinton for one speech, and, coincidentally, the US government excluded Ericsson from the list of companies banned for doing business with Iran. Another main ‘donor’ is the Lundin Foundation (Lundin Oil). The Lundin Oil Company, where Carl Bildt was a board member 2000-2006, operated mining exploitation in South Africa in spite the UN boycott against the apartheid regime [See “A Nigger is a Nigger and a Swede is a Swede…“]. Adolf H. Lundin was once asked if he would have done business with Hitler, he replied, “That I certainly would have done.” Adolf H. and Mrs Lundin were first-row guest at the White House in an older presidential installation.

• The Dallas IRS Office That’s Quietly Determining the Fate of the Clinton Foundation

  The Earle Cabell Federal Building in downtown Dallas is an all purpose office complex, a bastion of federal bureaucracy located at 1100 Commerce St. Most people come for a passport or to get business done in front of a federal judge. But inside, a quiet review is underway that has direct ties to the raging presidential election: The local branch of the IRS’ Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division is reviewing the tax status of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

  This IRS review has not generated similar waves as Department of Justice probes into the foundation, and has largely been forgotten in the campaign’s melee. It’s just not as sexy as private email servers, FBI infighting and charges of political pressure applied to law enforcement.

  But even though this examination is less scrutinized and is harder to conceptualize, it’s impact may be important. The report won’t likely be done in time to influence the presidential campaign — even though the review started more than four months ago — but it could certainly influence the first term of a Hillary Clinton presidency.

  As with anything tax related, the status of the foundation may be determined using rules few understand. And that makes understanding the work at 1100 Commerce St. in Dallas that much more important.

• Trump Versus Clinton: How the Hell Did We End Up Here?

  You hear the expression “lesser of two evils” when people talk about how they will vote in November. Poll after poll shows a growing number of voters saying they will vote negatively – they’re against Hillary, so they’ll hold their nose and vote Trump, and vice-a-versa.

• Hillary unfiltered

  “We view this not as a ‘clever game’ of wiki leaks [sic] but rather as a ‘criminal act’ against the United States of America,” Abedin wrote in a previously unreleased December 2, 2010 email to Clinton that laid out a suggestion for how to respond to the leak. “He might think this is a clever game today but when he is prosecuted and if convicted he will move from being a clever cyber thief to a convicted criminal and -will find out that’s a whole different kind of game.”

• FBI Clinton Foundation probe finds ‘avalanche’ of corruption evidence against her – but agents fear Justice Department will stop her going on trial

  An FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation is likely to lead to an indictment unless the Justice Department interferes, two sources familiar with the probe told Fox News.

  The Clintons are accused of running a pay-for-play operation out of the State Department that favored donors to their charity – a charge they have denied.

  But the feds are ‘actively and aggressively pursuing this case,’ Fox’s Brit Hume said Wednesday, and they have an ‘avalanche’ of evidence.

  A Wall Street Journal report says the FBI’s pursuit of the case is rooted in recordings of a suspect in a different corruption case who spoke about the Clinton Foundation’s alleged dirty dealings.

• Inside the Clintons’ Moroccan money ‘mess’

  Hillary Clinton’s top advisers downplayed her involvement in arranging a lavish Clinton Foundation conference in Marrakech last year, but behind the scenes they acknowledged her pivotal role and worked to minimize fallout from it.

  After media inquiries about the role of Clinton and the king of Morocco in setting the stage for the conference, Clinton confidants, including her husband, Bill, scrambled to craft a new foreign contribution policy that looked tougher but still let them accept the Moroccan cash, according to hacked emails released by WikiLeaks.

• The Most Revealing Emails from the #PodestaFiles, Separated By Category (Parts 1 – 28)

  John Podesta is Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign Chairman. Podesta previously served as Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton and Counselor to President Barack Obama.

  On October 7th, 2016, WikiLeaks publish thousands of emails belonging to Podesta’s private email archives. More emails were released in the days that followed. Below is a compilation of some of the most revealing and damaging emails discovered:

• Former British military chief: Trump presidency might make the world safer

  David Richards, an independent member of the British House of Lords and former head of the British military, said a Donald Trump presidency might make the world safer.

• Spirit Cooking: The Most Disturbing Podesta Email Yet? (Warning: Graphic Content)

  In perhaps the most disturbing Wikileaks release to date, Tony Podesta (John Podesta’s brother) is invited to a “Spirit Cooking” dinner with performance artist Marina Abramovic.

  Dinner with a famous artist might sound deeply mundane, but there is far more to this story.

  Abramovic, 69, is a fairly famous Serbian performance artist, who now lives in New York.

• Leaked email: “Bernie needs to be ground to a pulp,” Clinton adviser and lobbyist wrote to John Podesta

  A Clinton adviser and longtime Democratic Party operative stressed in an email to the Hillary Clinton campaign, “Bernie needs to be ground to a pulp. . . . Crush him as hard as you can.”

  The email was leaked by the whistleblowing journalism organization WikiLeaks, which has released thousands of emails to and from John Podesta, the chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

  Joel Johnson, an influential lobbyist with powerful corporate ties and a former senior adviser for President Bill Clinton, sent Podesta a brief message in February titled “Friendly advice. No mercy.”

  He wrote, “Bernie needs to be ground to a pulp. We can’t start believing our own primary bullshit. This is no time to run the general. Crush him as hard as you can.”

  In a sudden lighter note, Johnson then added, “Other than that, hope all is well and congrats on Nevada!” Hillary Clinton had just won the Nevada Democratic caucus against Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont who ran an insurgent leftist grassroots campaign.

  Joel Johnson is an influential political operative with a long history in Democratic circles.

• Sorting Through the Clinton Email Case and What the F.B.I.’s Options Are

  The F.B.I. needed custom software to allow them to read Mr. Weiner’s emails without viewing hers. But building that program took two weeks, causing the delay. The program ultimately showed that there were thousands of Ms. Abedin’s emails on the laptop.

• Julian Assange Denies Russia Fed Clinton Emails to Wikileaks

  The founder of whistleblowing website Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has denied that emails leaked from the U.S. Democratic Party (DNC) came with the help of the Russian government.

• What the WikiLeaks emails tell us about Hillary Clinton’s campaign (and what they don’t)

  It’s one of the greatest ironies of the 2016 presidential campaign: Hillary Clinton — long averse to public scrutiny — forced to deal with the theft and disclosure of thousands of private emails exchanged by her campaign aides and advisors.

  The hacked emails of campaign chairman John Podesta, being released daily by WikiLeaks, have offered unprecedented insight into the way the Democratic nominee and her team grappled with unexpected developments and self-inflicted setbacks.

  The Clinton campaign has refused to validate the emails, noting that U.S. intelligence agencies say they were stolen by Russian government hackers in an effort to affect the election.

• Wikileaks Has Chilling Effect on Hollywood Ambassadorships

  Whether it was raising a few million for a super PAC or taking to social media, super bundlers including Peter and Megan Chernin and Tom Rothman have been there for Hillary Clinton — support that typically might be rewarded with an ambassadorial posting. But “if and when [Clinton] wins, I do think they will be extremely careful,” says Adam J. Schiff, senior vp of Strategies 360 (Schi previously worked with L.A. operative and fundraiser Noah Mamet, who once served as an adviser to the Wasserman Family Foundation and now is ambassador to Argentina).

  “Sure, donors will be considered, but the vetting process will be more intensive than ever.” Says one political strategist at a major studio: “Some [President Obama appointees] weren’t the most well versed on issues they were expected to be, and that was embarrassing for the administration. The Clinton machine will work hard to avoid that experience, especially as a former secretary of state, so a lot of the top posts will be off the table for the new players.”

  With a Republican-controlled Senate, confirmation for Obama appointees was grueling: Mamet’s took almost 18 months. And that was before the specter of WikiLeaks. Nicole Avant, the wife of Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos, was given the Bahamas posting by Obama in 2009; a State Department inspector general’s report that criticized her tenure recently made its way into a WikiLeaks dump.

• A True November Surprise: The Clinton Campaign at Obama Justice: Emails on WikiLeaks Show a Top Federal Lawyer Giving Hillary a Quiet Heads Up

  Don’t let Mr. Kadzik’s fancy title fool you: He is a Clinton partisan. Before joining the Justice Department in 2013, Mr. Kadzik spent 30 years at the (now-closed) law firm Dickstein Shapiro, engaging Democratic causes—and Clinton causes. Mr. Kadzik’s wife, Amy Weiss, was deputy press secretary in Bill Clinton’s White House and a communications director for the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Kadzik also represented the DNC. Campaign-finance records show the two variously donated to Hillary’s Senate leadership PAC, to her 2008 presidential campaign and to her current campaign.

• WikiLeaks: Podesta invited to ‘Spirit’ dinner; host’s known ‘recipes’ demand breast milk, sperm

  A new WikiLeaks release of stolen emails belonging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta reveal an invitation by his brother to a “Spirit Cooking dinner” at the home of artist Marina Abramovic.

  “Spirit Cooking with Essential Aphrodisiac Recipes” was released by Ms. Abramovic in 1996, but the “ingredients” call for “fresh breast milk with fresh sperm milk” to be consumed “on earthquake nights.”

  New York’s Museum of Modern Art called it a “cookbook” for “evocative instructions for actions or thoughts.” Another recipe calls for “fresh morning urine.”

  “Are you in NYC Thursday July 9 Marina wants you to come to dinner Mary?” Tony Podesta says in an email forwarded to his brother June 28, 2015.

  “Dear Tony, I am so looking forward to the Spirit Cooking dinner at my place,” Ms. Abramovic says in a June 25 email sent at 2:35 a.m. GMT +2. “Do you think you will be able to let me know if your brother is joining? All my love, Marina.”

  Ms. Abramovic is a well-known artist who has performed since the early 1970s. Her latest memoir, “Walk Through Walls,” was reviewed by The New York Times Nov. 1.

  “You will need to be able to withstand a great deal of conversation about clairvoyants and tarot cards and didgeridoos and kundalini life forces and monks and gurus and ‘how the soul can leave the body through the center of the fontanel of the head’ to make it very far in this memoir,” the Times wrote.

• Susan Sarandon on why she is not voting for Hillary Clinton: ‘I don’t vote with my vagina’

  Susan Sarandon has said she will not be voting for Hillary Clinton in the forthcoming presidential elections because she does not vote with her “vagina”.

  The 70-year-old oscar-award-winning actor, who is known for her roles in Thelma & Louise and Dead Man Walking, said she wanted the “right woman” to become President.

  Sarandon, who has formally endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein, explained she would not be voting for either Ms Clinton or Donald Trump. She argued it is imperative to get independent candidates up to the five per cent mark in order to start a new party.

  “I want the right woman. There are great women that I admire that have headed nations,” the actor and activist, who was an outspoken Bernie Sanders supporter, told BBC Newsnight on Wednesday.

• WikiLeaks: Podesta agrees Sanders needs to be ‘ground to a pulp’

  Sanders endorsed Clinton after she clinched the nomination and has been campaigning for her in recent weeks.

  Other leaked emails have also shown Clinton campaign officials talking negatively about the Vermont senator.

• WikiLeaks: Bill Clinton had ‘real serious conflicts’ with foundation work

  Justin Cooper, a longtime staffer who managed Hillary Clinton’s private server at the State Department, told other high-level aides in Nov. 2011 that he shared the concerns of Doug Band, another longtime staffer, over the possibility that Bill Clinton might soon be asked to sign a disclosure form.

  “I think there [sic] WJC may have some real serious conflicts if we start to make too many rules,” Cooper wrote, using Bill Clinton’s initials, in an email made public Friday by WikiLeaks. “It may be time to update some procedures but we can not ignore the nexus of WJC’s life.”

  Cooper’s warning came at a time when the Clinton Foundation was undergoing a corporate review given the conflicts and bureaucratic excess that had begun to plague its operations.

• Getting a grip of Bill: #PodestaEmails29 reveals concerns over rogue ex-president

• ‘Not for this channel’: Podesta was wary of sending intel over Clinton server

  John Podesta was willing to discuss sensitive information with future boss Hillary Clinton while he worked for President Obama and she was a private citizen in August 2014 – but he knew better than to send the intel over Clinton’s private server from his Gmail account, emails released Thursday by WikiLeaks show.

  In the exchange, Clinton, who had resigned as secretary of state 18 months earlier, asked then-Obama counselor Podesta if he knew who was responsible for an Aug. 18 airstrike in Tripoli, in which unidentified bombers blew up an Islamist-controlled arms depot in the Libyan capital.

• Political Medicine – An Interview With Dr. Jill Stein

  I recently had the privilege of interviewing one of the brightest lights of our times, Dr. Jill Stein. Over the course of our discussion I was profoundly humbled, deeply impressed, educated and surprised, and I even picked up a few vocabulary words while transcribing this interview along the way. Here at Inquisitr I’ve often spoken about the way the press has treated Dr. Stein, so for our interview, I thought it would be nice to give her a chance to freely discuss the things America wants to hear about, without any interruption, badgering or gotcha journalism. So here she is, in her own words.

• ‘The FBI is Trumpland’: anti-Clinton atmosphere spurred leaking, sources say

  A political firestorm erupted, with Comey and the bureau coming under withering criticism, including a rebuke on Wednesday from Barack Obama. Even some congressional Republicans, no friends to Clinton, have expressed discomfort with Comey’s last-minute insertion of the bureau into the election.

  The relevance of the communications to the Clinton inquiry has yet to be established, as Comey issued his letter before obtaining a warrant to evaluate them. Clinton surrogates contend that Comey has issued innuendo rather than evidence, preventing them from mounting a public defense.

• FBI examining fake documents targeting Clinton campaign: sources

  The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are examining faked documents aimed at discrediting the Hillary Clinton campaign as part of a broader investigation into what U.S. officials believe has been an attempt by Russia to disrupt the presidential election, people with knowledge of the matter said.

  U.S. Senator Tom Carper, a Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, has referred one of the documents to the FBI for investigation on the grounds that his name and stationery were forged to appear authentic, some of the sources who had knowledge of that discussion said.

  In the letter identified as fake, Carper is quoted as writing to Clinton, “We will not let you lose this election,” a person who saw the document told Reuters.

  The fake Carper letter, which was described to Reuters, is one of several documents presented to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice for review in recent weeks, the sources said.

• Congress: Shut Down Government Until the New President Restores the Republic

  Whoever wins the presidency on November 8, Congress should shut down the government, except for essential military or law enforcement personnel, on the first day after the 2017 inaugural unless and until the new President restores the Republic by doing the following:

  1. Immediately end multi-trillion dollar presidential wars that have not been declared by Congress as required by Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution. That means, among other things, ceasing the offensive use of the military to fight wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

  All United States military personnel should be withdrawn from these war zones for redeployment back home to protect Americans against foreign aggression as the Constitution envisions. To demonstrate that fighting wars only in self-defense does not subtract from our respect for the military, all rank-and-file soldiers should be given pay raises concurrently with the ending of all presidential wars.

• WikiLeaks: Clinton Camp Brags about Hiding Hillary and Still Getting Positive Media Coverage

  The latest WikiLeaks dump reveals Team Clinton boasting about hiding Hillary for months and still getting positive stories from the media.

• WikiLeaks: Clinton Campaign Chair Participated in Occult Magic

  While powerful political insiders partaking in ceremonies that have been described as Satanic may seem like something that could exist only in a Dennis Wheatley novel, a June 2015 conversation between Podesta and famed performance artist and occultist Marina Abramović proves such scenarios are chillingly real.

• Clinton Aides: ‘Definitely’ Not Releasing Some HRC

• The Clinton Campaign at Obama Justice

  The most obnoxious spin of the 2016 campaign came this week, as Democrats, their media allies and even President Obama accused the FBI of stacking the election. It’s an extraordinary claim, coming as it does from the same crew that has—we now know—been stacking the election all along in the corridors of the Justice Department.

• What I learned from visualizing Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails

  It all started early last week. Kevin Hu, one of my senior grad students, told me that a friend of him asked if we could use Immersion — an email visualization tool we had released in 2013 — to visualize Clinton’s Wikileaks email dataset.

  The timing was not ideal for us. Kevin asked me this question when the Media Lab member’s event was getting started, which is a particularly busy time of the year. So my first question to Kevin was: “Can we?”

  [...]

  For years I have created teams that embody a unique capacity to make large datasets easy to understand. Earlier this year we released DataUSA, the most comprehensive visualization of US public data. In 2013, we released a project visualizing the entire formal sector economy of Brazil (dataviva.info). My group also has been hosting the world’s most popular tool to visualize international trade data (atlas.media.mit.edu) since 2011 (see chidalgo.com for a full list of projects). So in this environment, where I command groups with a unique capacity to make data easily digestible, and have a commitment to make data accessible so that people can explore it directly, and make their own decisions, I decided that improving people’s ability to navigate a politically relevant dataset that was already publicly available was the right choice. My intuition was that, if you were going to spend 1, 5, or 10 minutes looking directly at these emails, you would get a slightly deeper understanding of what was in them if you used our interface than the ones that were presently available. I believe that these potential increases in depth, together with the creation of tools that allow people to explore primary sources of data directly, are a contribution. You may disagree with my choice, but I hope you at least understand it.

  So what did I learn by making this dataset accessible?

  [...]

  Later, a friend of one of my students posted the news on Reddit where it went viral. And I mean really viral. It became the top story of the Internetisbeautiful subreddit, and made it to Reddit’s frontpage. It collected more than 3000 upvotes and 700 comments. But as the story peaked, a moderator single handedly removed it in an authoritarian move, and justified his unilateral silencing of the post by adding a rule banning “sites that serve a political agenda or that otherwise induce drama.” Of course, the rule was added AFTER the post was removed.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Leftist Group: Saying Islam Has Problems Makes You A Terrorist

  Last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a list of 15 anti-Muslim extremists, including writers, intellectuals, and activists. This “Field Guide” is meant to help journalists tell the “good guys” from the “bad guys” by providing them with ammunition against outspoken critics of Islam.

  The people on this list are lambasted for talking about violence in Islam, unequal treatment of women, the increasing number of Islamist advisors to our government—including Muslim Brotherhood-backed groups like the Islamic Society of North America and the Center for American-Islamic Relations—and the growing treatment of Islam as a protected class, mostly at the behest of the aforementioned Islamist groups.

• Alibaba’s use of ‘pig’ for new web name angers Muslims

  Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba changed the name of its travel website to cater to the younger generation, its primary customer group, the company announced on Tuesday.

  The group announced last week that it was rebranding its travel portal, changing the name of the website from Alitrip.com to Fliggy.com. The new name is feizhu, or “flying pig” in Chinese. The company also introduced a cartoon-like image of a pig as its new logo.

  “A key goal of the rebranding is to appeal to a younger demographic that accounts for more than 80 percent of our customer base,” Alibaba said in a statement.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Head of MI5 goes public

  For the first time a serving head of a major intelligence service in the UK, Andrew Parker the Director General of the UK domestic Security Service, has given an interview to a national newspaper.

  Interestingly, he gave this interview to The Guardian, the paper that has won awards for publishing a number of the Edward Snowden disclosures about endemic illegal spying and, for its pains, had its computers ritually smashed up by the powers that be.

  The timing was also interesting – only two weeks ago the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (the only legal body that can actually investigate allegations of spy crime in the UK and which has so far been an unexceptional champion of their probity) broke ranks to assert that the UK spies have been illegally conducting mass surveillance for 17 years – from 1998 to 2015.

• Mass surveillance: First it was for terrorism, then it was for drug trade, and now it’s for unlicensed driving

  As mass surveillance was introduced, we were promised it was only for combating terrorism and violent uprisings. Then, it was used mostly to combat illegal drug trade. As the surveillance is outsourced to private actors, and they’re seeking additional revenue streams, it’s now an option on the table – today – for insurance companies to access mass surveillance data to price a car insurance.

  The ACLU has a long feature article on how aerial mass surveillance footage in Baltimore is being retained far beyond specifications, but the real bombshell comes toward the end: mass surveillance data is being now offered to private clients on purely commercial grounds. It’s certainly bad enough when cities are videofilmed from above in gigapixel resolution and the footage kept forever, despite promises and assurances of the opposite, but letting the surveillance contractors re-sell the same surveillance data to anybody interested opens up a can of worms not previously imagined.

  (Did you get that? There are now aircraft with gigapixel cameras just videorecording how people move across the city, because they can.)

  It all started out with the necessity to defend against terrorism, when mass surveillance laws like the US Patriot Act were being rushed through. Then, it turned out that these anti-terrorism laws were mostly used to fight contraband substances (“narcotics”) and practically not used at all against shady people with an explosive suitcase of plutonium. And so now, we learn that the private contractors doing the actual surveillance have decided they can also sell the data to insurance companies.

• ‘Operation Hyperion’ Targets Suspected Dark Web Users Around the World

  Earlier this week, law enforcement agencies from across the world announced an operation targeting vendors and users of dark web marketplaces. Codenamed Operation Hyperion, the move is one of the most dramatic police coordinations around the dark web yet, with thousands of people allegedly being identified.

  But how exactly these arrests or interviews were connected to one another, if they were at all, remains unclear, and a large part of the operation seems to be geared toward intimidating current and potential sellers and buyers, and dissuading others from participating in the online drug trade, rather than leading to a substantial number of actual arrests.

• How much money does Facebook make from you?

  Facebook is making more money than ever: On Wednesday night the company revealed that between July and September it made $7bn (£5.7bn) in revenue – a 59 per cent increase on a year ago.

  This means that each user is increasingly valuable to Facebook. The average revenue per user in the third quarter was $4.01.

• Facebook’s mobile ad boom ride is almost done, and Wall Street wants to see its next trick

  But Facebook execs have warned that the meteoric revenue growth rates are due for a slowdown next year as the company reaches the limit on how many ads it can squeeze into the News Feed.

• In scathing ruling, Federal Court says CSIS bulk data collection illegal

  The Federal Court of Canada has faulted Canada’s domestic spy agency for unlawfully retaining data and for not being truthful with judges who authorize its intelligence programs. Separately, the court also revealed that the spy agency no longer needs warrants to collect Canadians’ tax records.

  All this has been exposed in a rare ruling about the growing scope of Canadian intelligence collection disclosed by the court on Thursday. At issue is how the federal domestic spy service has been pushing past its legal boundaries in the name of collecting data, in hopes of rounding out the holdings of a little-known Canadian intelligence facility dubbed the “operational data analysis centre.”

  Many corporations and government agencies are now gravitating toward so-called big data computer analytics that can predict patterns of future behaviour based upon records about what has happened in the past. Spy agencies are no different, and the centre in question appears to be the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s equivalent of a crystal ball – a place where intelligence analysts attempt to deduce future threats by examining, and re-examining, volumes of data.

Civil Rights/Policing

• A journalist at Standing Rock was shot by police for no reason—and caught the awful moment on video

  As peaceful protests over the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline again turn violent, one journalist near the Standing Rock Sioux Indian reservation in North Dakota captured shocking video showing herself being shot by police out of nowhere as she conducted an interview.

  Erin Schrode, an activist and journalist, was doing an interview at the edge of the Cantapeta Creek when police shot her with a rubber bullet. In her video of the incident, Schrode can be heard screaming, “Ow!” before crumbling to the ground.

• On Anniversary of the Patriot Act, Artist Passes Out Pocket Knives at the Airport

  Last week, performance artist Michele Pred handed out small pocket knives passengers arriving at San Francisco’s International Airport to replace those that have been confiscated since the passage of the Patriot Act 15 years ago.

• Artist celebrates Patriot Act’s anniversary by handing out “Official Air Travel Replacement Knives” to arriving SFO passengers

  Last week, artist Michelle Pred celebrated the anniversary of the Patriot Act by dressing up as an old-timey Pan Am flight attendant (she wore her mother’s old Pan Am hat!) and handing out “Official Air Travel Replacement Knives” to people waiting for their bags at SFO (she had 50 knives, but it took more than 50 tries to give them away, as more than half of the people she approached refused to engage with her).

  She had to get a “Free Speech and Expressive Activities Permit” for her performance, and the lengthy application process gave her time to figure out which knives she’d pass out: she chose 2.25″ red pocket knives, these being the kind of knife most often seized by the TSA. The people who took the knives often share stories lamenting the beloved tools, knives and other items they’d had taken away by airport security since the Patroit Act was passed.

  Pred is part of a large, multi-artist show in San Francisco’s Presidio called “Home Land Security,” which features works that critically examine “the human dimensions and increasing complexity of national security, including the physical and psychological borders we create, protect, and cross in its name.”

• Defense tries to exclude video from trial of cop shooting man in back

  Michael Slager, a white North Charleston officer, is accused of killing Walter Scott, 50, a black man who was pulled over in April 2015 for a routine traffic stop. Scott had a warrant for his arrest, fled the Mercedes-Benz he was driving, was chased into a field, and was then shot and killed as a passerby secretly captured the shooting on video.

  For the most part, those are the general undisputed facts in a case that likely would have been swept under the rug without video evidence. Before the video surfaced, the police defended the officer’s actions. As reported by the Post and Courier, the police said that “…a man ran on foot from the traffic stop and an officer deployed his department-issued Taser in an attempt to stop him. That did not work, police said, and an altercation ensued as the men struggled over the device. Police allege that during the struggle the man gained control of the Taser and attempted to use it against the officer. The officer then resorted to his service weapon and shot him…”

• How Video Games Unwittingly Train the Brain to Justify Killing

  Would you be surprised to learn that the first statement, suggesting remorse, comes from the American mass murderer David Alan Gore, while the second, of cool acceptance, was made by Andy Wilson, a soldier in the SAS, Britain’s elite special forces? In one view, the two men are separated by the thinnest filament of morality: justification. One killed because he wanted to, the other because he was acting on behalf of his country, as part of his job.

  While most psychologically normal individuals agree that inflicting pain on others is wrong, killing others appears socially sanctioned in specific contexts such as war or self-defence. Or revenge. Or military dictatorships. Or human sacrifice. In fact, justification for murder is so pliant that the TV series Dexter (2006-13) flirted exquisitely with the concept: a sociopath who kills villainous people as a vehicle for satisfying his own dark urges.

  Operating under strict ‘guidelines’ that target only the guilty, Dexter (a forensics technician) and the viewer come to believe that the kill is justified. He forces the audience to question their own moral compass by asking them to justify murder in their minds in the split second prior to the kill. Usually when we imagine directly harming someone, the image is preventive: envision a man hitting a woman; or an owner abusing her dog. Yet, sometimes, the opposite happens: a switch is flipped with aggressive, even violent consequences. How can an otherwise normal person override the moral code and commit cold-blooded murder?

• ‘Go away, you shouldn’t be here. Don’t come back’: The corner of Yorkshire that has almost no white residents

  From the window of her flat overlooking the canal path in a suburb of Dewsbury in Yorkshire, a blonde woman watches two female figures walking past as they chatter in a foreign tongue.

  Both the passers-by are covered in black Islamic gowns, only a glimpse of their eyes show from the 2 in gap in the veils across their faces.

  They, like many Muslim women who live here, speak little or no English. Lots of them will have no contact with any person from another religion or culture. Almost all have been brought to the UK to wed the British men of south Asian heritage who have made this area their home.

• The UN is morally corrupt

  A majority of the members of the United Nations Human Rights Council are non-democratic. Obviously, this is a problem – if we presume human rights to have anything to do with fundamental democratic principles such as free speech, a free press and free and fair elections.

  With countries such as China, Cuba, Iraq and Saudi Arabia in the council – one must also doubt what it will and can do when it comes to the right to fair trials, the issue of cruel and unusual punishments and the death penalty.

• REVEALED: Rahm Emanuel Used A Private Email Server

  Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel used a private email server to communicate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta, leaked emails reveal.

  Emanuel, a former House lawmaker who served early on in the Obama administration, sent an email to Podesta asking him to consider Brian DeSplinter for a position with Clinton’s campaign. Emnauel sent the email from the address [email protected]

  The email address is still active, according to Mailtester.com, and is run through Google’s Gmail service. This is unlike Clinton who used a private email server based out of her Chappaqua, New York home.

• Police Union Joins Rights Groups In Criticizing Police Chief For Snooping On Journalists

  Police unions are best known for creating distance. They carve out space between police officers and accountability. They widen the gap between fiction and reality. They often act like the loudmouthed relative with the missing brain/mouth filter you always hope won’t insert themselves into discussions about current events.

  On rare, rare occasions, they come across misconduct even they can’t condone. Every so often, police union heads act like normal, decent human beings.