• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Kernel Space

• LinuxCon + ContainerCon North America Videos

  Thank you for your interest in the recorded sessions from LinuxCon + ContainerCon North America 2016! View more than 40+ sessions from the event below.

• Linux Security Summit Videos

  Thank you for your interest in the recorded sessions from Linux Security Summit 2016! View all 19 sessions from the event below.

• Linux scholarship winner aims to preserve ancient languages

  One of the winners of a scholarship from the Linux Foundation is involved in a project to preserve endangered South American languages, according to the Foundation.

  Luis Camacho Caballero is aiming to port these languages to computer systems using automatic speech recognition. He will use Linux-based systems for the project.

  Caballero, a Peruvian, was one of 14 It professionals to receive one of the 2016 scholarships.

  He hopes to complete work on the first language, Quechua, which his grandparents spoke, by the end of 2017 and then begin work on other languages.

• Linux Kernel 4.7.3 Released with Btrfs and AMDGPU Improvements, Bugfixes

  Today, September 7, 2016, renowned Linux kernel developer and maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the release of three new kernel versions, namely Linux kernel 4.7.3, Linux kernel 4.4.20 LTS, and Linux kernel 3.14.78 LTS.

  In this article, we will tell you about the third maintenance update to the Linux 4.7 kernel series, which is the latest stable and most advanced kernel version that you can put in a GNU/Linux operating system, and, according to the appended shortlog and the diff from the previous build, Linux kernel 4.7.2, the Linux 4.7.3 kernel is a beefy one bringing changes to a total of 141 files, with 1101 insertions and 539 deletions.

• ext4 encryption incompatible with grub

Applications

• Samba 4.5 Released

  Samba 4.5 is now available as the latest release of this major open-source project for improving Windows interoperability (i.e. SMB/CIFS) on Linux and other platforms.

• Samba 4.5.0 Available for Download

• Wireshark 2.2 Released

  Wireshark 2.2 features “Decode As” improvements, the various UIs now support exporting packets as JSON, there is new file format decoding support, and a wide range of new protocol support. New protocol coverage includes Apache Cassandra, USB3 Vision Protocol, USIP protocol, UserLog protocol, Zigbee Protocol Clusters, Cisco ttag, and much more.

• Wireshark 2.2.0 Is Out as the World’s Most Popular Network Vulnerability Scanner

  Today, September 7, 2016, the development team behind the world’s most popular network protocol analyzer, Wireshark, proudly announced the release of a new major stable version, namely Wireshark 2.2.

  After being in development for the past couple of months, Wireshark 2.2.0 has finally hit the stable channel, bringing with it a huge number of improvements and updated protocols. For those of you who never heard of Wireshark, we want to remind them that it’s an open-source network vulnerability scanner used by security researchers and network administrators for development, analysis, troubleshooting, as well as education purposes.

• 10 reasons to use Flowblade on Linux as your video editor

  The software racket is like anything else: there are loud projects that get a lot of attention but don’t actually get much done, there are heavyweights that move in and make sure things get done, and there are the quiet ones that work with their head down, diligently, only to turn up at the finish line with a work of art. In this analogy, Kdenlive is my personal heavyweight, but Flowblade has lingered in the background, developing and improving into a surprisingly effective and efficient video editor for Linux.

  So why use Flowblade over other options? I have several good reasons; here are ten of them.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Listing active signal handlers (or dispositions) with GDB

  • Setting up a Mesos/Marathon cluster on RHEL 7.1 little endian

  • Install LEMP Stack (Nginx, MariaDB, php, phpMyAdmin) on Arch Linux & Manjaro

  • How to Create and Run New Service Units in Systemd Using Shell Script

  • Ubuntu Server Secure – A script to secure and harden Ubuntu

• Games

  • X-Plane 10.50 Flight Simulator Released

    A new version of the X-Plane desktop flight simulator, which is arguably the world’s most advanced flight simulator, is now available. The Linux version remains in-step with the Windows and OS X builds.

    X-Plane 10.50 is the new release available today and it features new city auto-gen, ATC improvements, better AI aircraft, updated airport scenery and more. In total X-Plane 10.50 has 3D scenery for 3,102 different airports.

  • Remembering Loki’s Linux games from the ’90s

    Linux gamers who go back as far as the 90s might remember Loki Software. The company was responsible for porting some great games to Linux long before anybody thought Linux gaming was viable. Loki’s games included Tribes 2, Rune: Halls of Valhalla, Descent3, Unreal Tournament, SimCity 3000 Unlimited and various other titles. You can find out more about the company’s history on Loki’s Wikipedia page.

  • Windscape, a first-person exploration adventure where you play a young girl will come to Linux

    The game is currently in Early Access, but it has fully positive reviews as of right now which is a lovely sign of what’s to come for us.

    The developer mentions they don’t want it to become a stat-based RPG and exploration game, so it’s much more about the adventure aspect which sounds nice for people who want a change of pace.

  • Got of case of the mid week blues? Try ‘Iron Snout’, a free action game for Linux that was recently updated

    I gave it a quick try and it’s actually surprisingly engaging. It seems like an extremely simple game at first, but it relies on some really quick reaction times when it heats up a bit so it might actually surprise you.

  • Infinium Strike, the rather cool tower defence game in space is to gain a DLC

    Infinium Strike is one Tower Defence game that actually impressed me somewhat. It was like being in command of the Battlestar Galactica, and it seems it has sold well enough to warrant a DLC.

  • Morning Men, an episodic story driven RPG will launch on Steam with Linux support this November

    After a successful Steam Greenlight campaign, Pixel Federation has announced the release date for its episodic story-driven adventure game with RPG elements. Morning Men will launch on Steam on November 22, 2016.

  • Refunct, the short and peaceful first-person platformer is now on Linux, I have some free keys for you

  • CD PROJEKT RED replied to me about The Witcher 3 and Linux, flat-out denying to answer any questions

Desktop Environments/WMs

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • I can’t stop thinking big. In a world where I feel so small.

    Returned from GUADEC and again it was a wonderful time. Big kudos to the organizing team putting together a great conference! For me to meet everyone is such a adrenaline rush, and I always feel so pumped when I come back.

    Speaking of conferences, I spent a lot of time volunteering to understand the mechanics of running a local conference since you know, I have one of my own that is coming up in a few short weeks. Libre Application Summit presented by GNOME or LAS GNOME conference.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • CoreOS Linux Is Now Based on Kernel 4.7, Build 1122.2.0 Ships with Docker 1.10.3

    The CoreOS development team released a new stable build of their security-oriented Linux kernel-based operating systems designed for creating and maintaining open source projects for Linux Containers (LXC).

  • AryaLinux 2016.08 Distro Is the First to Ship with MATE 1.15 Desktop, VLC 3.0

    AryaLinux developer Chandrakant Singh today, September 7, 2016, announced the release and immediate availability for download of the AryaLinux 2016.08 GNU/Linux distribution.

  • Solus 1.2.0.5 Updated ISO Launches with Budgie Fixes, Newest Software Releases

    Joshua Strobl from the Solus Project is happy to announce today, September 7, 2016, the release of an updated ISO image for the Solus operating system based on the Linux kernel.

  • AV Linux 2016.8.30 Audio Production OS Ships with Linux 4.4.6 Real-Time Kernel

    A new stable version of the AV Linux open-source and free GNU/Linux distribution designed for audio production has been released recently, version 2016.8.30, bringing an updated real-time kernel and many other improvements.

    Powered by the Linux 4.4.6 real-time kernel that has been patched to support 32-bit applications and VirtualBox kernel module building, AV Linux 2016.8.30 adds the Ardour 5.3.0 and Mixbus 3.6.0 digital audio workstations, replaces VLC Media Player and Audacious with MPV, and improves AAC encoding in WinFF.

• Screenshots/Screencasts

  • Frugalware Linux 2.1 KDE Screenshot Tour

• OpenSUSE/SUSE

  • openSUSE Tumbleweed Linux Users Get Firefox 48.0.2, Thunderbird 45.3 & GCC 6.2.1

    Today, September 7, 2016, Douglas DeMaio published yet another informative bulletin to keep users of the openSUSE Tumbleweed Linux operating system up to date with the latest changes and software versions that landed lately.

    openSUSE Tumbleweed is a rolling release GNU/Linux distribution, so it’s always getting new components via so-called snapshots. Just last week we told you the Tumbleweed is based on Linux kernel 4.7.2, and now one more snapshot arrive in the repositories this week, and it’s the first for the month of September, bringing updates for some of the most important applications.

  • Highlights of YaST development sprint 24

  • HP Enterprise Names SUSE (Not Red Hat) Preferred Linux Partner

    Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is playing favorites in the Linux market, selecting SUSE rather than Red Hat and Canonical Ubuntu as the company’s preferred Linux distribution partner. The move, in theory, could potentially trigger a ripple effect across corporate data centers worldwide — especially for customers that are deploying OpenStack private clouds.

• Red Hat Family

  • Finance

    • Stock-research Ratings: Liberty Broadband Corporation (NASDAQ:LBRDK), Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Analyze the Analyst’s Considerable Ratings: Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) , Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

  • Fedora

    • Akinsola Akinwale: How Do You Fedora?

      Akinsola Akinwale is a software developer with experience writing programs for mobile subscription platforms. The subscription platforms integrate with the Ericsson billing platform. He is also a Red Hat and CentOS systems administrator. Akinwale works for VAS Consulting as a Blackberry Developer Consultant to IBM Africa. In this capacity he works with odoo and SugarCRM.

      Despite reading books about Linux, Akinwale didn’t know how to obtain the operating system. To learn more, he attended a Linux boot camp in 2010. There a friend gave him a copy of Fedora, which he quickly installed in VirtualBox. He says he left Windows for good when he “realized that 99% of the things I do were Linux related.”

    • Heroes of Fedora (HoF) – F24 Alpha

      As is usual with the release of a new version of Fedora, it’s time to reflect on the stats revolving around what it took to get the latest-and-greatest out the door. With the recent push of F24, the numbers are in, so without further delay, let’s check ’em out!

• Debian Family

  • Debian CI updates for September 2016

    That is it for now. If you want to contribute to the Debian CI project and want to get in touch, you can pop up on the #debci channel on the OFTC IRC network, or mail the autopkgtest-devel mailing list.

  • Derivatives

    • Elive 2.7.6 Beta Linux OS Lands with Amazing Speedup Improvements for Some Apps

      Today, September 7, 2016, the Elive development team announced the release and immediate availability of yet another Beta milestone of the Elive Linux operating system.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu Phone Now Has a Nifty, Native Photo Editing App

        Ubuntu Phone finally has a photo editing app. Although early alpha quality, Instant FX for Ubuntu is already looking like an impressive app. And with so few native Ubuntu apps around, each one is truly appreciated. Now, obvious things first: InstantFX is very obviously styled around the Instagram Android & iOS app’s editing interface.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • You Can Now Download a Single ISO Image with All the Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS Flavors – Exclusive

          Softpedia was informed today, September 8, 2016, by Željko Popivoda from the Linux AIO team about the availability of an updated Linux AIO Ubuntu Live ISO image, based on Canonical’s recently released Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS (Xenial Xerus) OS.

          Yes, you’re reading it right, Linux AIO Ubuntu 16.04.1 Live ISO images are now available for download in 64-bit and 32-bit variants, based on the Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS Live ISO images, which were officially released on July 21, 2016, and they include all the essential Ubuntu Linux flavors.

Devices/Embedded

• Camera/sensor kit adds obstacle avoidance to drones

  Parrot’s Ubuntu- and ROS-driven, Tegra K1 based “S.L.A.M.dunk” development kit has a stereo camera and sensors that adds obstacle avoidance to drones.

  Parrot’s S.L.A.M.dunk, which is named for its integrated Simultaneous Localization and Mapping algorithm, can be added to any Linux-driven drone to help it navigate indoors or in other barrier-rich outdoor environments where GPS signals are not available. Assuming obstacle avoidance technology can be sufficiently refined, indoor package delivery may be the next big application for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). There are also many outdoor environments such as wooded and urban areas where drones struggle to navigate by GPS and standard imaging alone.

• This drone development kit can also be an Ubuntu PC

• Parrot announces a dev kit that helps drones see and avoid obstacles

• MinnowBoard Turbot jumps to quad-core Atom E3845

  ADI has opened pre-orders on a $190, open-spec “MinnowBoard Turbo Quad” SBC that advances to a 1.91GHz, 10W TDP quad-core Atom E3845.

  In late June, ADI Engineering, which built the latest MinnowBoard Turbot version of the MinnowBoard single-board computer for the MinnowBoard.org community, announced an unpriced MinnowBoard Turbot Dual-E SBC. The Dual-E, which was scheduled to ship later this month, offers a quad-core Atom E3845 option in addition to the standard dual-core E3826.

  Now, ADI has now opened $190 pre-orders on a simpler, quad-core E3845 only board called the MinnowBoard Turbot Quad, with shipments due in December.

• Phones

  • Tizen

    • Samsung Z2 Tizen 4G/ LTE Smartphone Released in South Africa – Z200Y

  • Android

    • Google given more time to reply to EU antitrust charge on Android [Ed: Microsoft started this attack. This is well documented.]

      Alphabet’s Google has been given two more weeks to counter EU antitrust charges that it uses its dominant Android mobile operating system to block competitors, the European Commission said on Thursday.

      The EU competition enforcer in April accused the U.S. technology giant of harming consumers because of its demand that mobile phone makers pre-install Google Search and the Google Chrome browser on their smartphones to access other Google apps.

      Google was initially given until July 27 to respond to the charges but asked for an extension to Sept. 7.

    • Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 Gets Android Marshmallow

    • Google squashes another Mediaserver bug in Android

    • Android Pay is coming to the mobile web ‘soon,’ available first on Chrome

    • New YouTube UI with navigation bar on bottom rolling out server-side on Android

    • Don’t worry, ‘Super Mario Run’ is coming to Android too

    • Google Patches 55 Android Vulnerabilities in September Update

    • Google’s 3-level Android patch could cause confusion

    • Google’s Russian Android Appeal Falls Flat

      A Russian appeals court recently rejected Google’s appeal of a $6.75 million fine regulators imposed on it for anticompetitive behavior — that is, for forcing mobile device vendors to put Google Play apps on the main screens of devices using the Android operating system. The Ninth Arbitration Appeal Court’s ruling, handed down last month, means that the court considered the decision of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service to be reasonable and legitimate. Google therefore would have to pay the fine and take steps to remedy the situation.

    • The Android Runtime On Chrome OS Makes Use Of Wayland

      With Google’s Android Runtime for Chrome (ARC) it turns out that this technology for letting Android apps run on Chrome OS is making use of the Wayland protocol and could open up other Wayland clients to running on Chrome OS.

      Readers in the Phoronix Forums pointed out that the ARC++ runtime makes use of Wayland, per a session description for this month’s XDC2016 conference in Helsinki.

    • How the new iPhone 7 compares to the best Android phones

      Apple announced the latest iterations of the iPhone today, with what the company claims are its best iPhones yet. The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus bring faster processors, new cameras, and some minor visual updates to antenna placement and color choices from last year’s iPhone 6S — but these improvements come at the cost of the 3.5mm headphone jack.

      And while Apple has always been coy about the actual specifications of their devices, hard numbers for processor speed, RAM, and battery life are less important than ever nowadays. With phones like the Galaxy Note 7 leading the pack despite claims of “underpowered” hardware, it’s clear that a good experience in using a smartphone is far more crucial than necessarily having the fastest processor, most megapixels, or highest screen resolution. Which, to be fair, is more or less the strategy Apple’s been betting on for the last few years with its previous iPhones, and there’s no reason to suspect why the new models won’t continue to live up to that.

    • LG launches V20 smartphone with Android 7.0 Nougat

      LG took the wraps off the V20, its latest Android flagship, at an event in San Francisco this evening. The phone, a successor to last year’s V10, is the first to ship with Google’s latest Android 7.0 Nougat. Like it’s predecessor. the V20 contains a dual-camera system and a second display located at the top of the phone. Both have been upgraded in this year’s model; the cameras are more capable and the second display is now brighter with bigger font. More importantly, the V20 not only retains the headphone jack some phone makers are trying to phase out, but it also packs in some audiophile-grade features for music lovers who like lossless file formats and expensive headphones.

    • Seven features the iPhone 7 ‘borrows’ from Android

      If you were watching the Apple live stream and shouting at your computer, “hey, Android already has that!” over and over, you weren’t alone.

      Apple certainly took some “inspiration” from many of the hardware innovations brought about by Android phone makers. Here’s a recap of the features that Apple ballyhooed on stage, but aren’t exactly news to those of us who have been using Android phones for the past few years.

Christine Hall: FOSS Force’s Grandmama Frump

Yes, that Christine Hall. The one whose byline you often see on this very site. Recorded under lousy lighting with a 10-year-old (or older) webcam that was probably lousy new, this video is about information, not cinematography. So meet Christine Hall. Listen to what she says about looking for contributing writers. Does she mean you? It’s possible. If you have a story idea, please send it to her. We could see [YOUR NAME] in lights right here on FOSS Force!

Meanwhile, sit back, relax, and listen as Christine tells you how FOSS Force got started, what the site is up to, and what she hopes to see in its future. And please feel free to razz her (or the interviewer) in the comments section below this paragraph. We promise not to jump through the Internet, out of your screen, and bite your head off. Well… we probably won’t, anyway.

GNU Libreboot Adds Support For Another (Outdated) Intel Motherboard

A mini-ITX board running the GNU Libreboot downstream of Coreboot sounds interesting for a fully free software HTPC/media center PC, right? Too bad this new motherboard port is for an i945 board released back in 2008 and has integrated a painfully slow original, single-core Atom chip.

If you happen to have the Intel D945GCLF2 motherboard, it’s now supported by GNU Libreboot eight years after the product was launched with the i945GC Express chipset. The port landed with this commit.

How to Eliminate Foundation Fatigue in Open Source Networking

Dave Ward, CTO of engineering and chief architect at Cisco, says the OpenDaylight Project really propelled the Linux Foundation as the go-to host for open source projects related to network virtualization. But, he adds, people working in open source networking are now experiencing “foundation fatigue.”

Keeping DOS alive and kicking with open source

No, I don’t run FreeDOS as my primary system. That would really be impressive!

I run Linux at home. My laptop is a Lenovo X1 Carbon (first gen) running Fedora 24 with GNOME 3.

The tools I use every day include: Google Chrome, Firefox, and GNOMEWeb to browse the web; Gedit to edit text or simple code (such as Bash); GNU Emacs to edit program code (I prefer C); GNOME Terminal to SSH to my personal server and to the FreeDOS website; RhythmBox to listen to music.

I run FreeDOS in a virtual machine. I use DOSEmu if I’m writingFreeDOS code, so I can use GNU Emacs on Linux to write code and immediately compile it in FreeDOS via DOSEmu. That’s really convenient because DOSEmu maps a folder in your home directory as the C: drive.

If I need to run FreeDOS as though it’s running on hardware, such as testing the upcoming FreeDOS 1.2 release, I use qemu.

Has open source gone mainstream?

Open source has officially made it. While open source advocates may have faced an uphill battle to convince their colleagues in the past, the technology has now become a legitimate component of the mainstream technological scene.

That’s according to GitHub’s senior director of infrastructure engineering Sam Lambert, who told IT Pro that open source software is no longer the niche field it once was.

“I feel like we’re not selling open source any more,” he said. He pointed out that not only are major companies in multiple sectors using open source technologies, they’re even starting and contributing to open source projects themselves.

“A lot of large enterprises [view] being open source as an essential way of propagating the use of their technologies,” he said, “and they’re open sourcing stuff quickly.”

Yahoo open-sources Pulsar, a low-latency alternative to Apache Kafka

Yahoo! Inc. has open-sourced a new distributed “publish and subscribe” messaging system called Pulsar that’s capable of scaling out while maintaining low latencies. Yahoo has long used Pulsar to back some of its own critical applications, and now wants the open-source community to help further its development.

The CORD Project: Unforeseen Efficiencies – A Truly Unified Access Architecture

The CORD Project, according to ON.Lab, is a vision, an architecture and a reference implementation. It’s also “a concept car” according to Tom Anschutz, distinguished member of tech staff at AT&T. What you see today is only the beginning of a fundamental evolution of the legacy telecommunication central office (CO).

Synacor Launches New Support Program for 400+ Million Zimbra Open Source Users

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• LibOCon 2016 Kicks off with LibreOffice 5.2.1

  The Document Foundation today announced the release of LibreOffice 5.2.1, the first update to the 5.2 branch, to kick off LibOCon in Brno, Czech Republic. LibOCon will run from today, September 7, to September 9, 2016. The conference “is a showcase of the project activity, and will feature over 60 talks in three days, covering development, QA, localization, ODF, marketing, community and documentation.”

• LibreOffice 5.2.1 Office Suite Released with Over 100 Improvements, Download Now

  Today, September 7, 2016, Italo Vignoli from The Document Foundation was happy to inform Softpedia via an email announcement about the general availability of the first point release of the LibreOffice 5.2 open-source and cross-platform office suite.

  LibreOffice 5.2.1 is here one month after the launch of the most advanced LibreOffice release ever, version 5.2, which brought countless improvements to all of the office suite’s components, including Writer, Draw, Math, Calc, etc., along with a bunch of user interface refinements that users will love, especially on GNU/Linux platforms.

CMS

• Getting started with Doctor, the CMS for Markdown documents

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

• Microsoft To Open Source A Key Piece Of Its Search Engine Bing [Ed: the openwashing of truly bad stuff]

• Microsoft on the road to open sourcing the search system used to power Bing

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• Open Data

  • California launches open source data portal

    California has launched a new open source, open data portal with 24 datasets that include information on the economy, transportation, water and other areas of interest for citizens and researchers.

    The portal, data.ca.gov, runs on DKAN, an open-source data management platform built by Nücivic, a New York-based software company. The tool is based on Drupal’s CMS and allows the user to decide what visualizations to show and create groups to organize data. DKAN was chosen after a competitive bidding process, according to Lynda Gledhill, a spokesperson for the California Government Operations Agency.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Open-Source in Action: TOIL Research Team Improves on 3D Printed Prosthetics with Motor Ability, Tactile Feedback & More

Programming/Development

• OCaml compiler brings type safety to JavaScript

  Web developers can use the OCaml language to write JavaScript code through the BuckleScript compiler, which has now gone to a 1.0 release. Open-sourced by news services provider Bloomberg, BuckleScript takes OCaml code and turns out JavaScript.

• Dive Deep Into Python Vs Perl Debate – What Should I Learn Python or Perl?

  Often when a new programming language is introduced, there is a debate which starts amongst some of the genius minds in the industry wherein the language is compared with the one already spreading its roots. A kind of buzz often spreads in the IT industry and the new one is often compared on every aspect may it then be features, syntax or core cpu and memory aspects including GC time and all, with the existing one of its kind.

• perl-Parse-CPAN-Meta merging into perl-CPAN-Meta

Standards/Consortia

• Porn Sites Feel Exposed by Flash, Get It on With HTML5

  Soon, Google Chrome will phase out full support for Flash, meaning that, on most sites, users will have to manually activate the aging software if necessary. The move is largely for security reasons: Researchers regularly find dangerous vulnerabilities in Flash.

  On Tuesday, porn site Pornhub said it would be ditching all Flash content from its site, opting instead for HTML5, the most recent version of the web language that offers more support for multimedia content. Since hackers have had a number of successes at compromising porn sites, it’s notable that one of the largest is taking this step, albeit when Flash is already on its last legs.

  “It was just a matter of time until we switched, as HTML5 is becoming the standard across platforms. Now makes the most sense as Google and Firefox are slowly pushing Flash support out of their browsers. Plus HTML5 has improved security, better power consumption and it’s faster to load,” Corey Price, vice president of Pornhub, told Motherboard in an email.

What the 21st Century Has Done to Our News

Free Isn’t Freedom: How Silicon Valley Tricks Us

Small business owners have long complained of the Google’s frequent and mysterious adjustments to its search algorithm, which effectively punishes them for violating one of the search engine’s mostly obscure criteria.

Even some of the world’s largest companies live in constant “fear of Google”; sudden banishment from search results, YouTube, AdWords, Adsense, or a dozen other Alphabet-owned platforms can be devastating.

Science

• How to Raise a Genius: Lessons from a 45-Year Study of Supersmart Children

  On a summer day in 1968, professor Julian Stanley met a brilliant but bored 12-year-old named Joseph Bates. The Baltimore student was so far ahead of his classmates in mathematics that his parents had arranged for him to take a computer-science course at Johns Hopkins University, where Stanley taught. Even that wasn’t enough. Having leapfrogged ahead of the adults in the class, the child kept himself busy by teaching the FORTRAN programming language to graduate students.

  Unsure of what to do with Bates, his computer instructor introduced him to Stanley, a researcher well known for his work in psychometrics—the study of cognitive performance. To discover more about the young prodigy’s talent, Stanley gave Bates a battery of tests that included the SAT college-admissions exam, normally taken by university-bound 16- to 18-year-olds in the United States.

  Bates’s score was well above the threshold for admission to Johns Hopkins, and prompted Stanley to search for a local high school that would let the child take advanced mathematics and science classes. When that plan failed, Stanley convinced a dean at Johns Hopkins to let Bates, then 13, enrol as an undergraduate.

Health/Nutrition

• Legal Levels of Roundup Pose Risks for Stream Algae

  Even though glyphosate is used to control weeds in agricultural fields, the world’s most commonly used weedkiller has also been detected in streams, rivers and other aquatic systems worldwide due to runoff.

  As we learn more and more about the potential environmental risks of glyphosate runoff, in Brazil—where almost 188,000 tons of glyphosate was sold in 2013 alone—new research published in the peer-reviewed journal Phycologia found that all-important macroalgae is sensitive to glyphosate exposure, even at legal levels. According to the study, the herbicide can alter the photosynthesis, chlorophyll levels and respiration of these key freshwater organisms.

• Education Minister: Three hours a day exercise for kids under 8

  Finnish officials have upgraded their recommendations for the amounts of physical activity that kids should be getting. Children under the age of eight should be physically active for at least three hours per day, according to Ministry of Education and Culture and the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health.

Security

• Data-Stealing Mac OS X Backdoor Uncovered

• What’s behind backdoor #3? Mac version of Mokes malware follows Linux, Windows variants

• Trifecta Complete: Linux and Windows Backdoor Has a Mac Version as Well

• Sophisticated Mac OS X backdoor uncovered

  Security researchers have discovered a sophisticated strain of malware which has shifted across platforms in order to target Mac OS X users.

• New OS X Backdoor Can Scan Computers For Cryptocurrency Wallet Files

  For the longest time, many people assumed Mac OS X was one of the most secure operating systems. But several exploits and backdoors have been uncovered in recent months, which paint a very different picture.

• Windows 10: Microsoft fixes PowerShell borkage and log-in freezing issues [Ed: After this shoddy malware broke itself]

• Congressional Report Slams OPM on Data Breach [Ed: recall the likely Windows connection [1, 2, 3]]

  The massive data breach at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that exposed background investigations and fingerprint data on millions of Americans was the result of a cascading series of cybersecurity blunders from the agency’s senior leadership on down to the outdated technology used to secure the sensitive data, according to a lengthy report released today by a key government oversight panel.

• From Atos to CSC, Universal Credit to E-borders: eight of the worst public sector IT disasters

  Time and again when the public hears of a grandiose new IT scheme from government it’s matched by well-deserved scepticism from the old hands that have seen it all before.

  The arc goes something like this: ambitious project, outsourcing, bloat, disaster, crash, spend, spend.

  To celebrate this familiar pattern we thought we’d round up a few of the most significant public sector IT disasters in the UK in living memory…

Defence/Aggression

• The Hard Message from Brazil’s ‘Soft Coup’

  With little protest from Washington, Brazil’s elected President Dilma Rousseff was ousted in a politically motivated impeachment, a “soft coup” undermining South American democracy, write Hector Perla Jr., Laura Sholtz and Liliana Muscarella.

• The ebbing Latin American tide

  The differences between the richest 10% and the poorest 10%, which was 100, 150, 200 times in the 90s, had been reduced at the end of the first decade of the century to 80, 60, 40, in a way that broadened the contribution – and equality – of the different social sectors.

• Neocon Dilemma: Israeli-Russian Detente

  As Official Washington’s neocons lead the charge into a New Cold War – deeming Russia an implacable enemy – an inconvenient truth is that the neocons’ beloved Israel is warming its relationship with Moscow, writes Stephen J. Sniegoski.

• Old Cold Warriors Cool to New Cold War

  It seems that some who have the ears of U.S. elite decision-makers are at least shifting away from wishing to provoke wars with Russia and China.

  In recent articles, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Thomas Graham, two architects of the U.S. Cold War with Russia, have acknowledged that the era of uncontested U.S. global imperialism is coming to an end. Both analysts urge more cooperation with Russia and China to achieve traditional, still imperial, U.S. aims.

• New York Times and the New McCarthyism

  Traditional U.S. journalism and the American people are facing a crisis as the preeminent American newspaper, The New York Times, has fully lost its professional bearings, transforming itself into a neoconservative propaganda sheet eager for a New Cold War with Russia and imposing a New McCarthyism on public debate.

  The crisis is particularly acute because another top national newspaper, The Washington Post, is also deeply inside the neocon camp.

• Trump’s ‘Cyber’ Policy Against ISIS Is… ‘Hey Look At This New Poll!’

  So, uh, wait. What? Apparently Donald Trump’s “cybersecurity” policy is “Hey, look at this poll that says I’m winning!” And also “How did ISIS get cell phones?” Meanwhile, the brave Philip Bump over at the Washington Post tried to fact check the only clear factual statement in that rambling mess: that the word “cyber” was just created a few years ago. Of course, that’s not true (though I guess that depends on what you consider to be a “short number of years ago”), but I’d argue that the fact that “cyber” predates the birth of one Donald Trump, that the statement isn’t all that accurate.

  But, really, who gives a fuck concerning when Donald Trump thinks the word “cyber” was first coined? The real question should be on what’s the actual policy here, because in those three paragraphs above there’s nothing even remotely resembling a policy, or a coherent idea. Clinton’s tech policy is a hot mess of emptiness, but at least there’s a policy that people can look at and talk about. Trump, on the other hand doesn’t even seem to recognize what cybersecurity means and what a policy would entail.

  Oh, and as for the claims about how ISIS is “recruiting people through the internet” multiple studies on that have suggested that ISIS’s internet recruitment strategy isn’t all that effective — that most recruiting is done through real world networks, rather than virtual ones. But you know which groups really are having success growing their online presence? White nationalists and neo Nazis, with many of them strongly supporting… Donald Trump.

• Britain’s ‘most hated man,’ Anjem Choudary, jailed for ISIS support

  Notorious hate preacher Anjem Choudary, who led a flag-burning demonstration outside the US embassy on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and voiced support for jihad, has been jailed for inviting support for ISIS.
  The former lawyer was sentenced to five years and six months in prison. His supporters shouted “Allahu Akhbar” as he was led away from the dock in London’s Old Bailey court.
  Choudary’s co-defendant Mohammad Mizanur Rahman, 33, was also handed a sentence of five years and six months.

  Choudary has courted controversy over two decades, skirting the edges of the law, backing extremism but with no proof of actually inciting violence. He earned the wrath of Britain’s tabloid newspapers, making him – by his own admission — the country’s “most hated man.”
  In 2014, he pledged allegiance to ISIS and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, bringing him under scrutiny and leading to his arrest.

• Automated systems fight ISIS propaganda, but at what cost?

  The spread of ISIS propaganda online has put social media companies in a tough position. Governments are urging Facebook, Twitter, and Google to more aggressively remove extremist content, in the hopes of reducing the terrorist group’s influence. But the companies’ self-moderation systems have struggled to keep pace, and terrorist material continues to spread online.

  Now, a nonprofit organization has developed an algorithm that it says can automate the removal of terrorist-related content. But there are concerns that it could infringe on freedom of speech, and some question whether automated content removal would mitigate radicalization.

  The algorithm, called eGLYPH, was announced in June by the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), a New York-based nonprofit organization that tracks extremist groups. eGLYPH uses so-called “hashing” technology to assign a unique fingerprint to images, videos, and audio that have already been flagged as extremist, and automatically removes any versions that have been uploaded to a social network. It will also automatically delete other versions as soon as users attempt to upload them.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• New Assange case details expected from Sweden

  New information on the Jullian Assange case could be released today when the Swedish prosecutor holds a media conference before the broadcast of a new documentary on the WikiLeaks founder.

• Showdown in the Assange case?

  The normally so media shy Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny today held a press conference about the Assange case. Nothing new was presented, the prosecutor’s office repeated its talking points and there was mention of yet another half-hearted attempt to interview Mr. Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. (Something Ms. Ny have avoided to do for years, thereby keeping the investigation open and Mr. Assange at bay.)

  It might have been her last chance to play the media by her rules. On prime time Swedish national television tonight, the investigative team at SVT Uppdrag Granskning had an hour-long special about the Assange case. (The program in Swedish » | A summary of some of the findings in English ») It is pretty obvious that Swedish authorities are very interested in getting Mr. Assange to Sweden – even though it has been and still is possible to interview him in London in person, online or over the phone.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• Who’s Banking on the Dakota Access Pipeline?

  When the Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit for the 1,100-mile Dakota Access Pipeline in July, executives at the corporations behind the plan probably thought their path forward was clear. They’d moved easily through the permit process, seemingly dodging the concerns of people affected by the pipeline, and were ready to go ahead with construction.

  But the communities in the pipeline’s path, especially local tribes, had other ideas. Thousands of people, mostly Native Americans, have converged at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota in an effort to stop the pipeline from being built. The Standing Rock Sioux call the pipeline a black snake, and they know that if it were to rupture and spill — a serious risk, given the well-documented history of pipeline leaks in the U.S. — it could poison their drinking water and pollute their sacred land.

Finance

• The Surreal Politics of a Billionaire’s Tax Loophole

  For years, Democratic elected officials in Washington have been wary of going after Wall Street excesses too hard, lest the deep-pocketed financial industry throw all its resources to Republicans.

  This has been especially true of one of the most notorious targets for financial reform: the favorable tax treatment of the outsized compensation earned by partners in private equity firms. Democrats have long spoken out against this so-called “carried-interest loophole,” yet have often not pushed as hard as they could to change the law, which saves some of the very wealthiest people in finance billions of dollars in taxes each year.

  All of this explains why the scenario presented by the 2016 election is so surreal. The Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, has vowed to close the loophole, saying it’s unfair that the highly compensated money managers who benefit from it “pay lower tax rates than nurses or … truckers.” Clinton recently went even further than President Obama on the issue, saying she would close the loophole through executive action if Congress continued to resist a legislative fix, a step that Obama has shied away from taking.

  One might reasonably expect Clinton’s campaign contributions from private equity to suffer as a result of this stance, and for the money to flow overwhelmingly to the Republicans, as it did in the last presidential election.

  That hasn’t happened. In fact, Clinton is receiving all of the industry’s support.

  As of the end of July, the executives and employees of the four biggest private equity firms (the Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group, KKR and Apollo Global Management) had given her campaign a combined $182,295 in direct contributions, according to the database compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

• Silent Tax Foreclosure Auction Is Detroit’s Largest Missed Opportunity

  Back in July, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against Wayne County Treasurer Eric Sabree for foreclosing on owner-occupied homes in the area around Detroit. The lawsuit, which was anticipated for years, could dramatically affect the fate of thousands of families if it is successful. But even so, it will only impact about one-tenth of the properties headed for auction starting this Wednesday, Sept. 7, at 9 a.m. EST.

  The Wayne County Tax Foreclosure auction is seen nationwide as an opportunity to buy Detroit homes on the cheap. But the people who have the most to gain and the most to lose in the auction – the homes’ current residents – in many cases have little access to information in order to take advantage of it.

  In some ways, the greater tragedy of this area’s foreclosure crisis lies in the foreclosures that go unchallenged because certain infractions aren’t deemed technically illegal. There are protections for owners, for example, that simply don’t exist for renters. In last year’s auction, a full 5,000 properties went unsold, even though they could have been bought for the minimum bid of $500. Again, it was not lack of money, but lack of information, that allowed these properties to be swept aside.

• The transatlantic trade deal TTIP may be dead, but something even worse is coming

  Is it over? Can it be true? If so, it’s a victory for a campaign that once looked hopeless, pitched against a fortress of political, corporate and bureaucratic power.

  TTIP – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – appears to be dead. The German economy minister, Sigmar Gabriel, says that “the talks with the United States have de facto failed”. The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, has announced “a clear halt”. Belgian and Austrian ministers have said the same thing. People power wins. For now.

  [...]

  When you are told that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, this is what it means. This struggle will continue throughout your life. We have to succeed every time; they have to succeed only once. Never drop your guard. Never let them win.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Hold Dueling Rallies – But Trump Gets Most of the TV Coverage

  Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton held rallies at nearly the same time on Tuesday, with Trump doing an event in Virginia and Clinton holding one in Florida.

  Trump, in a national-security focused Q-and-A with former Defense Intelligence Agency chief Michael Flynn, described the Iran-Iraq war in flippant terms, saying that the two countries would “fight fight fight. And then Saddam Hussein would do the gas. And somebody else would do something else. And they’d rest.”

  Clinton, on the other hand, focused her remarks on issues like college affordability and small businesses.

  Fox, CNN, and MSNBC responded by giving almost all of their attention to Trump.

• Guccifer 1’s Potentially Russian IP Address

  The passage is appropriately ambiguous. Guccifer (Lazar) successfully hacked Blumenthal on March 14, 2013. The next day — and again on March 19 and 21 — there were unsuccessful probes on Hillary’s server. The FBI suggests those may have been Guccifer, though states it doesn’t know whether it is or not (which is weird, because Guccifer has been in US custody for some time, though I suppose his lawyer advised him against admitting he tried to hack Hillary).

  I find all this interesting because those probes were made from Russian and Ukrainian IPs. That’s not surprising. Lots of hackers use Russian and Ukrainian IPs. What’s surprising is there has been no peep about this from the Russian fear industry.

  That may be because the FBI isn’t leaking wildly about this. Or maybe FBI has less interest to pretend that all IPs in Russia are used exclusively by state agents of Vlad Putin (not least because then they should have been looking for Russians hacking the DNC?).

  It’s just an example of what an attempted hack might look like without that Russian fear industry.

• Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to Talk Policy, Act Presidential in Commander-in-Chief Forum

  On Wednesday at 5 p.m. PDT, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton will face off against her Republican counterpart in New York City for NBC News’ live broadcast of what the network is calling its “Commander-in-Chief Forum.”

  The GOP contender had a much-ballyhooed dress rehearsal as the would-be national security envoy of the United States during his recent visit to Mexico. No doubt the former secretary of state will have something to say about that at their first televised encounter in what has seemed like the longest presidential election cycle in recorded history.

  Another surefire keyword: Benghazi.

• Internet Disinformation Service for Hire

• This Leaked Catalog Offers ‘Weaponized Information’ That Can Flood the Web

  In the summer of 2014, a little known boutique contractor from New Delhi, India, was trying to crack into the lucrative $5 billion a year market of outsourced government surveillance and hacking services.

  To impress potential customers, the company, called Aglaya, outlined an impressive—and shady—series of offerings in a detailed 20-page brochure. The brochure, obtained by Motherboard, offers detailed insight into purveyors of surveillance and hacking tools who advertise their wares at industry and government-only conferences across the world.

  The leaked brochure, which had never been published before, not only exposes Aglaya’s questionable services, but offers a unique glimpse into the shadowy backroom dealings between hacking contractors, infosecurity middlemen, and governments around the world which are rushing to boost their surveillance and hacking capabilities as their targets go online.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Burning doors: a new touring play documents repressions of Russian artists

  The Belarus Free Theatre is no stranger to the difficulties of trying to create art inside a dictatorship. Established in 2005, the theatre has no official premises in its home country, and is forced to stage plays in private apartments and public spaces. Performances have previously been stormed by police, with actors, directors and audience members arrested. The theatre’s founder and co-founder live in the UK with political refugee status. On top of that, the troupe has struggled with securing the funds it needs to survive.

• When Political Censorship Occurs, Rams Must Speak Out

  As a current executive board member of Fordham’s own chapter of College Republicans, we are deeply saddened by the New York Federation’s heavy-handed response towards Cornell’s aversion to political expediency. The state leadership has made it readily apparent that a chapter’s intellectual dissent will be met with punishment. During an unconventional electoral cycle that has challenged what it even means to be a republican, the actions taken by the NYFCR have demonstrated it retains an incredibly superficial understanding of the ideological crisis the party faces.

• NYS GOP Group Kicks Out Cornell Group for Endorsing Libertarian Ticket

• College Republicans Speak Out Against Trump

• Cornell Republicans criticized for endorsing Libertarian over Donald Trump

• Melissa Holzberg: College Republicans need to take a stand on Trump

• The “alt-right” is anything but alternative

• Cornell GOP chapter endorses Libertarian, loses charter

• Cornell College Republicans Endorse Johnson, Are Stripped Of Credentials

• NY College Republicans Rally Behind Cornell Chapter, Say Revocation Violated Federation’s Constitution

• RUBASHKIN | Make Cornell Republican Again

• Cornell College Republicans Decertified After Endorsing Gary Johnson

• Angered by Mobile App Censorship, Saudis Ask: ‘What’s the Point of Having Internet?’

  Residents of Saudi Arabia can no longer make calls using the messaging and voice calling app LINE. Authorities blocked LINE’s calling feature over the weekend of September 3, adding it to the long list of VoIP services and messaging apps entirely or partially blocked in Saudi Arabia.

• Asia Pacific|China Censors Critic’s Discussion of Family Planning Policies

  A girl with a bronze Buddha in Hangzhou, China. Despite the easing of family planning policies, China’s birthrate remains low, and scholars such as Fuxian Yi have warned that this will slow economic growth.

• Censors Hit Family Planning Debate, Real Estate Rumors

  On Aug. 8, cutesy graphics and laconic messages of blocked content replaced 12 years of flourishing conversation about China’s intrusive family planning policies on the home pages of Fuxian Yi’s social media accounts

• CNN: The Censoring News Network

  For years now, CNN has been dubbed the Clinton News Network and even the Communist News Network, with a disturbing amount of truth for the former and a much more hyperbole for the latter.

  But last week, CNN emerged as the Censoring News Network. Is anyone surprised?

  There are certainly some fine reporters at CNN who strive to be balanced and fair in their work, and when compared to Fox and MSNBC, there have been times when CNN appears to be less biased then their cable competitors.

  But as the presidential campaigns wear on, CNN’s pro-Hillary, anti-Trump reporting is becoming even more glaring to the point of blatant censorship. Shades of the old Communist Party playbook!

• Court asked to ban parliamentary censorship

  Parliament engaged in censorship when its live television feed stopped showing scuffles between the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the police during the state of the nation address last year, instead focusing on Speaker Baleka Mbete’s face.

• ‘Signal jamming is to stop MPs behaving badly’

  Primedia, the SA National Editors’ Forum, NGOs Right to Know and the Open Democracy Centre asked the Supreme Court of Appeal yesterday to declare parliamentary rules that stop incidents of “grave disorder” being broadcast live “unconstitutional”. Their advocate, Steven Budlender SC, said parliament’s broadcasting policy infringed on the right of the public to see what happens there.

  In National Assembly sittings the media rely on the single feed provided by parliament.

  Jeremy Gauntlett SC, acting for parliament and the speaker, argued that the rule stopping the live feed of disorderly conduct did not stop people learning about the business of parliament as journalists were not ejected and could report on whatever had not been shown live.

  He said parliament’s rules were reasonable and were made to “protect the dignity of parliament and limit [MPs'] bad behaviour”.

• Algeria: 3-Year Sentence for Insulting Islam

  An Algerian appeals court sentenced a man to three years in prison for Facebook posts “insulting Islam.” Slimane Bouhafs, a Christian convert, has been detained in Bel Air prison in the province of Sétif since August 1. He was convicted by a lower court on August 7, who initially sentenced him to five years in prison.

  The Algerian authorities should immediately release Bouhafs. Algerian prosecutors should stop bringing charges against people for their peaceful expression of religious, political, or other views.

  “Algerian courts have no business judging people’s religious beliefs and opinions,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director. “Algeria should urgently revise its penal code to stop criminalizing peaceful free expression, including views that may insult Islam and the prophet,” she said.

Privacy/Surveillance

• Microsoft will reportedly gun for Slack with Skype Teams [Ed: proprietary crap gunning for other proprietary crap]

  MICROSOFT IS rumoured to be attempting to beat Slack with a new feature in messaging app Skype.

• Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority recommends Tor

  The Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority recommends using encryption and privacy tools, such as OpenPGP, Signal and Tor Also full disk encryption tools are mentioned.

• Internet Tracking Has Moved Beyond Cookies

  Chances are you know you’re being tracked online. Most of us are at the point where we’re not surprised when an ad for something we searched for on one site appears on the next site we visit. We know that many pages (yes, this one you’re reading, too) drop cookies and other scripts into our browser to keep tabs on our activity and sell us stuff.

  A new survey from a group of Princeton researchers of one million websites sheds some light on the cutting-edge tricks being used to follow your digital trail. Rather than placing a tracker on your browser, many sites are now “fingerprinting” — using information about your computer such as battery status or browser window size to identify your presence.

• How surveillance capitalism tracks you without cookies

  Princeton computer science researchers Steven Englehardt and Arvind Narayanan (previously) have just published a new paper, Online tracking: A 1-million-site measurement and analysis, which documents the state of online tracking beyond mere cookies — sneaky and often illegal techniques used to “fingerprint” your browsers and devices as you move from site to site, tracking you even when you explicitly demand not to be track and take countermeasures to prevent this.

• From hot war to Cold War: GCHQ comes of age [Ed: Yet another glorious puff piece]

  When the second world war ended, what we now know as GCHQ was part of MI6, under whose wing it had been since the early 1920s. But such was the success of signals intelligence during the war that the cuckoo outgrew the nest and became a sister organisation, answerable, like MI6, to the Foreign Office.

• Hong Kong refugees helped hide Edward Snowden after NSA leak

• Snowden hid in slums for asylum seekers

• How Edward Snowden hid among refugees in Hong Kong to evade authorities

• Edward Snowden lived alongside poverty-stricken asylum seekers while he was hiding

• Snowden sought refuge among Hong Kong’s refugees

• After Snowden fled US, asylum seekers in Hong Kong took him in

• Edward Snowden got out of Hong Kong by hiding in the one place the government would never think to look

• Edward Snowden hid in the homes of Hong Kong asylum seekers for 2 weeks after his explosive NSA leaks

• In Hong Kong, Snowden Hid ‘Where No One Would Look’

• Snowden reveals how he evaded capture in Hong Kong

• How Edward Snowden evaded US authorities: whistleblower disguised in dark hat and glasses, placed in hiding with Hong Kong’s ‘reviled’ asylum seekers

• Edward Snowden lauds ‘courageous’ asylum seekers who sheltered him: ‘They had a hundred chances to betray me’

• Edward Snowden ‘hid in homes of Hong Kong asylum seekers’

• The untold story of the two weeks when Snowden was the world’s most wanted man

• Edward Snowden reveals how he hid with refugees in Hong Kong while on the run

• After Edward Snowden Fled US, Asylum Seekers in Hong Kong Took Him In

• Fugitive Snowden hid amongst Hong Kong refugees: report

• Snowden sought refuge with asylum-seekers

• Edward Snowden hid in the homes of Hong Kong asylum seekers for 2 weeks after his explosive NSA leaks

• In Hong Kong, Snowden Hid ‘Where No One Would Look’

• Refugees sheltered Snowden in Hong Kong

• Snowden hid in slums for asylum seekers

• The Hong Kong pit stop in Snowden’s getaway

• New Snowden leaks reveal “collect it all” surveillance was born in the UK

  The radical shift in the NSA’s surveillance strategy to “collect it all” began in the UK, according to new revelations in the latest cache of documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

  During a June 2008 visit to the Menwith Hill monitoring station in North Yorkshire, then-director of the NSA Keith Alexander asked: “Why can’t we collect all the signals, all the time?” He went on: “Sounds like a good summer homework project for Menwith!”

Civil Rights/Policing

• Arrest warrant issued for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein

  Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein is facing criminal charges in connection with vandalism at the Dakota Access Pipeline construction site near Cannon Ball, ND.

  Stein and her running mate, Ajamu Baraka, have each been charged with misdemeanor criminal trespass and criminal mischief.

• Arrest warrant issued for Jill Stein in vandalism investigation

  North Dakota police have reportedly issued a warrant for the arrest of Green Party nominee Jill Stein.

  Stein was spotted in the wrong place at the wrong time. And this time, it wasn’t because she flew to the wrong city for a campaign event, as she did last week when traveling to Cincinnati instead of Columbus, Ohio.

• Green Party Candidates Charged for Activism at Dakota Pipeline

  The arrest warrants issued are for criminal trespass and criminal mischief for spray painting construction equipment.

  North Dakota pressed charges Wednesday against presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running partner Ajamu Baraka for spray painting Dakota pipeline equipment, issuing warrants for their arrests.

• Jill Stein, Green Party Candidate, Is Charged Over Role in Pipeline Protest

  Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate, is facing misdemeanor criminal charges in North Dakota after she spray-painted a bulldozer at a rally protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, law enforcement officials said on Wednesday.

  Warrants charging Ms. Stein, 66, and her running mate, Ajamu Baraka, with criminal trespass and criminal mischief were issued after several Caterpillar bulldozers were found to have been defaced at the protest, which was held on Tuesday, according to an affidavit prepared by the Morton County Sheriff’s Department.

  “Officers were alerted to video that displayed presidential candidate Jill Stein painting the front of one of the Caterpillars with the message ‘I approve this message,’ ” the affidavit said.

  The warrants are valid only in North Dakota, said Rob Keller, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department, adding that Ms. Stein and Mr. Baraka would be arrested only if they returned to the state.

• Sheriff issues arrest warrant for Green Party’s Jill Stein after North Dakota oil pipeline protest

  Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has faced obstacle after obstacle. First the Commission on Presidential Debates refused to let her participate in the presidential debates; now a warrant has been issued for her arrest.

  The sheriff’s department in Morton County, North Dakota announced on Wednesday that it had issued arrest warrants for Stein and her vice presidential candidate, Ajamu Baraka.

  Both have been charged with criminal trespass and criminal mischief, class-B misdemeanors, after participating in protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

• ICE Denies FOIA Request From Lawyer Because It Might Help Her Better Defend Her Client

  The government doesn’t care much for a level judicial playing field. That whole checks and balances thing? It’s just getting in the way of speedy prosecutions. Federal and state prosecutors have engaged in routine Brady violations — the withholding of exculpatory evidence from defendants.

  Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is taking this to a whole new level. It’s refusing to turn over FOIAed records to a defendant’s lawyer expressly because they could be used to mount a defense against the government’s charges. Of course, ICE doesn’t say so in those exact words, but the words it does use leave that distinct impression.

• Police Union’s Proposed Contract Looks To Whitewash Officers’ Disciplinary Records

  Touched on briefly during our rundown of police unions demanding better pay for better behavior and accountability was the San Antonio Police Officers Association’s (SAPOA) demand that the city should be willing to raise wages if it really expected its officers to perform their duties without veering into abuse or misconduct.

  Part of what’s keeping a deal from being struck between the city and the union is the amount of money on the table. This gives the union the appearance of holding the city’s safety hostage until its demands are met. That may not be an entirely fair characterization (there’s some “hostage-taking” on the other side as well), but there’s something far more worrying in the proposed contract that’s keeping this from being resolved.

  The San Antonio police union wants changes to disciplinary procedures that would effectively whitewash past misconduct by officers. Michael Barajas, writing for the San Antonio Current, takes a close look at the controversial clause, and how it’s likely to allow bad officers to not only stay employed longer, but possibly rise through the ranks as well.

• Police Union President Says He Couldn’t Change Contract Even if He Wanted To (Also: He Doesn’t Want To)

  Neal received a 14 month state jail sentence and had to surrender his peace officer certification, so it’s hard to know exactly what his case says about the department’s disciplinary procedures—due to the criminal charges, he never made it to a disciplinary hearing or arbitration. But Neal’s case does beg the question: if, for whatever reason, prosecutors couldn’t have charged him with rape, what would have happened to him? Would officials taking any disciplinary action against him have been required to ignore the fact that he’d previously been reprimanded for having sex with a high school student he was supposed to be supervising?

• Ferguson activist Darren Seals dies at 29

  A locally known Ferguson activist who protested in the streets seeking justice for Michael Brown Jr.’s death was killed early Tuesday, September 6 in North St. Louis County.

  Darren Seals, 29, was a factory line worker and hip-hop musician. Following the death of Mike Brown – an unarmed black teenager who was fatally shot by a white Ferguson police officer – Seals protested in the streets of Ferguson.

  Seals was extremely vocal about issues surrounding Brown’s death and the St. Louis region. He was featured in national news outlets such as The Washington Post and Al Jazeera.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Thanks, Google, For Fucking Over A Bunch Of Media Websites

  So… yeah. For what it’s worth, we received absolutely no notifications from Google about this. No explanation of how we had “violated” their policy. And it was doubly nice of them to do this over a long weekend when we were all off and away, so that nothing worked for multiple days before we had a chance to dump their RSS feed system completely.

  And… apparently we were not alone. A bunch of other sites had the exact same experience and there are a bunch of people asking what the hell happened. With no explanation, no notification, Google just made a lot of websites’ RSS and Twitter feeds break completely. And this includes some other high-profile bloggers as well, like Violet Blue.

  The leading theory that I’ve seen going around is that Google is actually blocking all links in any FeedBurner feed, because it’s a violation of its own terms of service. Seriously.

• What Net Neutrality? While The FCC Naps, AT&T Now Exempting DirecTV Content From Wireless Usage Caps

  When the FCC crafted its new net neutrality rules, we noted that the agency’s failure to ban “zero rating” (exempting your own company’s content from usage caps) was going to be a problem. And lo and behold, with the FCC AWOL on the subject, companies are starting to take full advantage. Verizon and Comcast now exempt their own streaming video services from usage caps without penalty, while companies like T-Mobile and Sprint have launched new confusing and punitive data plans that throttle games, music and video content — unless users pay a premium.

  [...]

  Much like T-Mobile’s Binge On efforts (which zero rate only the biggest video services) the idea of getting something for “free” sounds wonderful upon superficial inspection. At least until you realize that AT&T’s decision to give its own content an unfair leg up in this fashion puts its competitors, like Netflix and Amazon, at a distinct disadvantage. That’s why so many people had urged the FCC to follow India, Japan, Finland, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia, Norway, The Netherlands, and Chile’s approach to net neutrality rules and ban zero rating entirely.

  The FCC didn’t, and thanks to its failure, we now face a scenario where net neutrality can be trampled without repercussion — and may even be celebrated by the press and public — provided you just use the right shade of public relations paint.

  And there’s every indication AT&T’s just getting started. This particular announcement (made on Apple product announcement day to capitalize on the tech media’s distraction) was just AT&T dipping its toe into the zero rating water. The company plans to launch three different streaming services under the DirecTV brand later this year, and you can be fairly sure that AT&T intends to use zero rating to give all of them a distinct, and notably unfair, market advantage.

• EU free roaming to be restricted by ‘fair use’ clause

  THE EU’S PLANS to impose Europe-wide free roaming on mobile operators contain a number of restrictions intended to prevent mobile phone users shopping around for the best deal.

  The draft law released this week shows that the European Commission plans to include a ‘fair use’ clause that would limit the amount of free roaming to 90 days a year and a maximum 30 consecutive days before regulated roaming charges apply.

  However, anyone commuting from London to Paris via the Channel Tunnel, for example, won’t be subject to the new limits if they return to their home network every day.

  Moreover, anyone busting their limits will have their roaming surcharges capped at 4c per minute for calls, 1c for every text message and just 0.85c per megabyte of data.

  Operators will also be able to impose restrictions on call and data volumes, and will be allowed to require subscribers to pay for a certain volume of services on their home network before the contract can be used for roaming.

DRM

• Apple defends decision to remove 3.5mm headphone jack, cites “courage” [Ed: expect DRM]

  Apple Senior VP Phil Schiller took the stage at Wednesday’s iPhone event to announce the news most tech geeks had been expecting: the iPhone will leave the 3.5mm headphone jack behind. It was Schiller’s job to justify why Apple was doing so, and he defended the company’s decision by citing three reasons to move on—and one word: “courage.”

  Schiller explained to the San Francisco event crowd that Apple would push the Lightning port standard for wired headphones and push a new proprietary wireless standard, driven by the new “W1 chip” in iOS devices, which Schiller called Apple’s first wireless chip.

• Apple ‘AirPods’ to target high end of headphone market with custom ‘Bluetooth-like’ low-power tech [Ed: Apple wants headphones that emit radiation near brain, require batteries and possibly (we shall see) explode inside your eardrums sometimes]

  Apple’s new wireless earbuds, expected to be announced this week as “AirPods,” are said to feature a custom-designed wireless chip that will be “Bluetooth-like,” carving out a share of the high-end headphone market and potentially paving the way for new smart home and smart car accessories.

• iPhone 7 launch: Apple gambles on headphone jack and introduces new Apple Watch

• Hands on with the iPhone 7: A brief peek at the wireless future [iophk: "DRM is a kick the crotch for consumers. Why are all the mainstream media ignoring the most significant issue dropping the analog jack represents?"]

Intellectual Monopolies

• WIPO Human Resources Report A “Whitewash” [Ed: officials there are thugs and crooks]

  The HRMD report from which this article is lifted presents a whitewashed and totally unrealistic picture of the current situation at WIPO.

  The International Federation of Civil Servants (FICSA) recently stated that « staff-management relations have deteriorated further as the WIPO Director General continues to push forward with his intended elections of a ‘new Staff Council’ even though members of the WIPO Staff Association recently (re)elected their representatives to serve on the Staff Council ». FICSA also went on to say that the Director General’s « new interpretation» of the relevant WIPO Staff Regulation allowing non-members to vote is « in total contradiction with the Organization’s interpretation and practice which has been in place since the conception of the Staff Association ».

  Convinced that this intervention by the executive head of the Organization is a violation of freedom of assembly and free speech, the WIPO Staff Council has filed an internal appeal and intends to take the matter to the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization if necessary. The WIPO Staff Association has the support of staff associations from all over the UN system. A recently issued Labourstart petition entitled « Stop union-busting and stop retaliation against whistleblowers at WIPO », has already obtained more than 5,400 signatures in support.

• Copyrights

  • Scary Torrent Site Blocking Message Has to Change, Judge Rules

    The High Court of Bombay has clarified that simply viewing a pirated file won’t land people in jail. This question was raised after a blocking message shown by many Indian ISPs made this claim. The court ordered ISPs to show an updated message. In addition, providers should consider an ombudsman to prevent overblocking and other problems that may arise.

  • Anti-Piracy Groups Petition Clinton & Trump for Tough Copyright Laws

    Two leading anti-piracy groups have penned an open letter and Change.org petition calling on Clinton and Trump to adopt a tough approach to copyright law. Copyright Alliance and CreativeFuture, which count dozens of major studios and record labels among their members, say that protecting content is vital, no matter which party is in power.

  • Megaupload: Court Copy-Pasted U.S. Lawyers, Made Glaring Errors

    A New Zealand District Court made several major errors when it decided to grant the extradition of Kim Dotcom and his Megaupload colleagues, Dotcom’s lawyer said today. Noting that the judge copy-pasted extensively from lawyers working for the U.S. Government, he argues that there is absolutely no legal ground to extradite Megaupload’s founder.

  • SUPER-BREAKING: (Liberal) CJEU says that linking to unauthorised content is NOT a communication to the public unless one seeks financial gain and has knowledge of illegality

    This was a reference for a preliminary ruling from the Dutch Supreme Court. It had been made in the context of proceedings between Sanoma (the publisher of Playboy magazine) and GS Media, concerning the publication by the latter on a website that it operates (GeenStijl.nl) of hyperlinks to other websites hosting unpublished photographs of Dutch starlet Britt Dekker. These photographs were due for publication in a forthcoming issue of Playboy.

  • When ISPs Become Anti-Troll Advocates: Bahnhof Turns The IP Tables On A Copyright Troll

    Copyright trolls still plague the world, unfortunately. While many are the group and individuals that advocate against this form of legal extortion, nearly always built upon shaky evidence at best, too silent have been the ISPs that copyright trolls utilize to send out their settlement letters. For whatever reason, ISPs en masse have decided that it isn’t prudent to advocate for their clients. But not all ISPs behave this way. In Sweden, ISP Bahnhof, which we have written about previously for its client-friendly practices, is fighting back against one copyright troll on behalf of its customers in the best way possible: by turning the intellectual property tables back upon them.

    Sweden has recently become something of a target for copyright trolls, with Spridningskollen leading the charge. This group, the name of which translates into English as “Distribution Check,” uses data gathered by anti-piracy groups to send out the typical threat letters and settlement requests to people who have IP addresses accused of infringing on copyrighted material. A spokesman for Spridningskollen, Gordon Odenbark, insisted that his group’s work was necessary for both providing revenue to rights holders and, more importantly, to deter the general public from violating the intellectual property rights of others.

  • Austrian Courts Uphold Creative Commons License Terms — For Now

    Last week, Mike wrote about an important case involving one of the Creative Commons licenses. The fact that some 15 years after the CC movement started and the courts are still trying to bring legal clarity to the use of CC licenses is further proof that the law tends to lag far behind technology. Given their rarity, it’s interesting to see another recent case involving a CC license, this time in Austria, pointed out by Alan Toner on his blog.

    As the timeline (in German) of the events indicates, the story began in January 2014, when thousands of left-wing protesters demonstrated against a ball organized by the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), held annually in Vienna. Following attacks on property and the police during the protest, one person was arrested, and in June 2014 his trial began.

    The left-wing film collective Filmpiraten published a couple of short videos relating to the person involved. Shortly afterwards, the FPÖ used excerpts from the two Filmpiraten videos as part of a report published on its YouTube channel. The FPÖ video was released under the standard YouTube license, which claims full copyright in the material. However, both the Filmpiraten videos used a Creative Commons license — specifically, the BY-NC-SA license. Under its terms, others may use the material free of charge, but are required to release the resulting work under the same CC license.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• Sony wins battle over preinstalled Windows in Europe’s top court [more comments]

  The sale of a computer equipped with pre-installed software isn’t an unfair commercial practice because most customers prefer to buy a laptop they can use straight away, Europe’s top court has ruled in a victory for Sony.

  “Failure to indicate the price of each item of pre-installed software” isn’t misleading, the Court of Justice of the European Union added in its ruling (PDF) on Wednesday.

Server

• Spark Comparison: AWS vs. GCP [Ed: False dichotomy, as if giving all your processing, bandwidth data etc. to the US government is inevitable]

  There’s little doubt that cloud computing will play an important role in data science for the foreseeable future. The flexible, scalable, on-demand computing power available is an important resource, and as a result, there’s a lot of competition between the providers of this service. Two of the biggest players in the space are Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Kernel Space

• Linux 4.9 To Begin Landing Nouveau “Boost” Support For Faster Performance

  Great news for users of the open-source NVIDIA “Nouveau” graphics driver: the long-awaited boost patches are now queued up to land with Linux 4.9.

  The boost patches are about allowing the Kepler and newer graphics cards to achieve their “boost” frequencies, rather than their highest standard clock frequencies. With being able to hit these upper frequency thresholds, the performance should be more competitive with the proprietary driver. I tested the earlier version of these patches months ago and found great improvements: Nouveau “Boost” Patches Show Much Performance Potential.

  Ben Skeggs finally began pulling the work and is now in the Nouveau repository for then being sent into Linux 4.9 via DRM-Next.

• Linux 4.9 Planned As The Next LTS Kernel

  Greg Kroah-Hartman announced he’s planning on Linux 4.9 to be the next long-term supported kernel that he will maintain for a period two years.

• 2016 LiFT Scholarship Winner Luis Camacho Caballero: Preserving Amazon Languages with Linux

  Luis Camacho Caballero is working on a project to preserve endangered South American languages by porting them to computational systems through automatic speech recognition using Linux-based systems. He was one of 14 aspiring IT professionals to receive a 2016 Linux Foundation Training (LiFT) scholarship, announced last month.

  Luis, who is from Peru, has been using Linux since 1998, and appreciates that it is built and maintained by a large number of individuals working together to increase knowledge. Through his language preservation project, he hopes to have the first language, Quechua, the language of his grandparents, completed by the end of 2017, and then plans to expand to other Amazonian languages.

• Next steps for Gmane

  We’ve rebuilt the storage system using ElasticSearch as the document store. We have used it for many projects and have nothing but a good. The site is currently a mixture of Python and PHP, the priority has been given to get the original functionality back in place; then work with the community to decide which of the Gmane interfaces are relevant and what we need to change to bring it up-to-date.

  We’ll do our utmost to continue in Lars’ footsteps, his hardwork and dedication to maintain this valuable Internet resource.

  Thank you Lars for the hardwork that you’ve put into Gmane over the past nearly two decades, all of the Gmane users are greatful to you!

• Audio workshop accepted for Linux Plumbers Conference and Kernel Summit

  Audio is an increasingly important component of the Linux plumbing, given increased use of Linux for media workloads and of the Linux kernel for smartphones. Topics include low-latency audio, use of the clock API, propagating digital configuration through dynamic audio power management (DAPM), integration of HDA and ASoC, SoundWire ALSA use-case managemer (UCM) scalability, standardizing HDMI and DisplayPort interfaces, Media Controller API integration, and a number of topics relating to the multiple userspace users of Linux-kernel audio, including Android and ChromeOS as well as the various desktop-oriented Linux distributions.

• Mainline Explicit Fencing – part 1

• Linux Kernel 3.12.63 LTS Has MIPS and Radeon Improvements, EXT4 and CIFS Fixes

  Today, September 6, 2015, Linux kernel developer Jiri Slaby announced the release and immediate availability of the sixty-third maintenance update to the long-term supported Linux 3.12 kernel series.

• Linux 4.7.3

  I’m announcing the release of the 4.7.3 kernel.

  All users of the 4.7 kernel series must upgrade.

• Linux 4.4.20

• Linux 3.14.78

• Linus Torvalds won’t apply ‘sh*t-for-brains stupid patch’

  Add another Linus Torvalds swearing incident to his long list of linguistic indiscretions. The Linux lord has unloaded on proposed new code in typically robust language.

  “I call BS”, Torvalds’ post opens. “Let me be very clear. I’m not applying that shit-for-brains stupid patch, and will not be pulling it unless somebody tricks me into it.”

  He’s got a point: his post goes on to ask why Andersson is asking him to approve code when it would mean “… a distribution is distributing the driver without the firmware”.

  Torvalds asks “what the hell is the point of such a thing” and concludes the post by saying “Stop pushing this shit.”

• Linux creator Torvalds has another expletive-filled rant at the community

  LINUX FOUNDER Linus Torvalds has unleashed a foul-mouthed rant at a contributor over a piece of code with which he fundamentally disagrees.

  Torvalds, usually a complete wallflower who never uses colourful language or sarcasm in any way shape or form, has repeatedly told the community that he is not willing to consider tying firmware and driver modules together in a single unit.

  He was pushed on the issue yesterday with this comment: “Nobody has actually answered the ‘why don’t we just tie the firmware and module together?’ question.

• Limited number of LPC registrations available starting September 8

• New Members Strengthen Automotive Grade Linux Security and Software Capabilities

  Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a collaborative open source project developing a Linux-based, open platform for the connected car, today announced that AutoIO Technology, Irdeto, Link Motion, Pocket Soft, sdtech and Synopsys have joined The Linux Foundation and Automotive Grade Linux.

• How blockchain will disrupt your business

  Like mobile and cloud, blockchain — first implemented in the original source code of bitcoin in 2009 — stands poised to profoundly disrupt business. If it lives up to its promise, it won’t just be financial institutions that are disrupted.

  “If you can transfer money or something of value through the internet just like another form of data, what else can you do with it? It provides a way to establish trust in the digital world,” says Angus Champion de Crespigny, Financial Services Blockchain and Distributed Infrastructure Strategy Leader, Ernst & Young. “How do you ensure something is the original copy of something on the internet? Prior to blockchain technology, you couldn’t.”

  “If you want to prove something happened in the digital world, there is no more secure place to do that,” he adds. “Once information is recorded on there, it is, for all intents and purposes, impossible to go back and retroactively change that. When there are such drastic new technologies that emerge, it isn’t just a matter of looking at your business and thinking how this technology is going to make your business more effective. What you should be doing is considering that maybe your business isn’t structured correctly for this new world.”

• Graphics Stack

  • Improved Tear-Free Rendering For Radeon DDX With PRIME

    For those making use of the xf86-video-ati DDX driver in a PRIME-capable system with Radeon GPU, there’s more effective tear-free rendering support with the latest development code.

  • A Mesa Fix Lands To Take Care Of The R9 290 Issue, Intel/Radeon Performance Problems

    A fix landed in Mesa Git today that should address various performance issues people have been seeing in different rare setups. The fix mostly seems to be for Radeon/Intel users seeing low performance recently with glxgears but also appears to help those affected by the much talked about R9 290 regression.

    The fix by Michel Dänzer is loader/dri3: Always use at least two back buffers. Michel commented on the simple change, “This can make a significant difference for performance with some extreme test cases such as vblank_mode=0 glxgears.”

  • Arcan Open-Source Display Server Continues Progressing As Alternative To Wayland, Mir

    A few months back I wrote about Arcan: A New Open-Source Display Server Built Atop A Game Engine.

  • Wayland/Weston 1.12 Release Candidate Arrives

    Bryce Harrington announced the release candidates on Tuesday for the upcoming Wayland 1.12 and Weston 1.12 compositor releases.

    Over the earlier development builds, Wayland 1.11.93 simply has a documentation fix and a test case fix. Weston 1.11.93 meanwhile has just a handful of fixes to different parts of that compositor playground.

  • Vulkan 1.0.26 Released

• Benchmarks

  • 7-Way Linux Distribution Benchmarks To Kick Off September

    In testing out a new Broadwell-EP system as well as for final validation of the new Phoronix Test Suite 6.6, I carried out a fresh Linux OS distribution comparison last week. Here are those results from Ubuntu, Clear Linux, Scientific Linux, openSUSE Tumbleweed, Fedora, Antergos, and Sabayon Linux.

Applications

• Getting Ready for VLC 3.0

  VideoLAN (also called VLC) is a very popular media player available for all major technology platforms. Work is progressing towards a 3.0 release and in this new video you can meet some of the developers working to make that happen.

• Phoronix Test Suite 6.6 Officially Released For Open-Source Cross-Platform Benchmarking

• Nylas N1 – A Premium Email Client For Linux

  One of the things that are quite essential in life is reliable email, and as such one needs to get a fast, stable, feature-rich email client that is both easy to use and intuitive in functionality, Nylas N1.

• Git v2.10.0

• Proprietary

  • Spotify Web Player for Linux Blurs Web and Desktop

    You don’t need to tell me. I know it already: you’re sick of hearing about Spotify on this site. But be a champ and suck it up, cos I’m back with another app, one that lets the world’s most popular (citation needed) music streaming service play nice on Ubuntu.

  • Adobe Goes Back to Linux for Flash Player Approval – New Beta Released

  • Yes, Adobe, GNU/Linux Will Not Go Away

  • Adobe revives Flash for Firefox on Linux after four-year lag

  • The new and brave Skype for Linux … calls, too

    You may not like the modern, minimalistic interface, but I say, look beyond that. The software works fine, we get new features that were lacking previously, the alpha version is actually stable enough for testing, you have been warned, and you can even have a bit of fun with the bots.

  • Google Earth For Linux Update Brings Fixes For Panoramio Pictures And Various Linux Crashes

    Google Earth had quite a few issues on recent Linux distributions. Back when Ubuntu 16.04 was released, Google Earth wasn’t installable at all, and this was later fixed, but the app would still crash after a few seconds of usage, for many users. Furthermore, Panoramio pictures weren’t working.

    These issues should be fixed with the latest Google Earth 7.1.7.2600 for Linux. Furthermore, the update also brings support for the OAuth2, as well as updated Google and Google Earth logos.

  • Harmony is an iTunes-Inspired Music Player with Soundcloud and Spotify Integration

    Harmony is a sleek desktop music player for Linux (and macOS & Windows) that can play your regular music files and online streaming services like Spotify and Soundcloud.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How to Install Django 1.10 on Ubuntu 16.04

  • How to migrate from ownCloud to Nextcloud

  • Dig Into DNS: Part 1

  • A bite of Python

  • How to change default Gnome Screenshot savings folder

  • Installing files for other applications with autotools

  • How to find out the connected state of a network cable in Linux

  • Run Apache on Fedora Atomic Host

  • [Short Tip] Fix mount problems in RHV during GlusterFS mounts

  • The practical benefits of network namespaces

  • How To Install Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana (ELK Stack) on CentOS/RHEL 7

  • LibreOffice Math: Writing Matrix with Examples

• Games

  • Rocket League Launches on Linux This Week

    Oh boy, have you been patiently waiting for it — and now it’s finally coming. Yes, Rocket League for Linux will launch in beta on September 8. Developer’s Psyonix say they will only support SteamOS “officially”, though the game should be able to run on any modern Linux distro that Steam does, including Ubuntu.

  • Rocket League coming to OS X and Linux this week

    Rocket League, the race car-football (soccer) game fusion, will receive a new update on Thursday, September 8th. One of the biggest components of the update is the included OS X and SteamOS (including Linux distributions) support. The update also comes with a new Rumble mode, updates to classic Rocket Trails, and other changes.

  • Unigine-Powered Sci-Fi MMORPG Turn

    Earlier this year we heard of a science fiction MMORPG game making use of Unigine 2 after switching from Unreal Engine 4.

  • SteamOS 2.91 Beta Updates Linux Kernel to Improve ath10k Wireless Support

    Valve released a new Beta version of the next stable branch of its SteamOS gaming distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux, SteamOS 2.91, which was pushed to the brewmaster_beta channel on August 31, 2016.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • KDE is 20, Flash Lives, Deep Web Distros

    It was twenty years ago in 1996 that KDE was first announced. The project is celebrating with a new book. Elsewhere, Abode announced they’ve updated the old Netscape Flash plugin and said that development would continue. JP Buntinx recommended some distributions for the “darknet” and a new Linux usermode rootkit was described by anti-virus company Trend Micro.

  • Advanced Search and Replace with the Kate Text Editor

    The powerhouse Kate text editor has advanced search-and-replace, including support for escape sequences and regular expressions, so you can make complex corrections without leaving your document.

    The Kate text editor is my favorite and has been my main workhorse for years. Kate has a lot of great features and is friendly to both touch-typing and pointy-clicky. It doesn’t quite have the eleventy-million features of Vim or Emacs, but then you don’t need the dexterity of a concert pianist to use it, either. I think it is the most user-friendly of the powerhouse text editors.

  • KDE Neon dev/unstable switching to Wayland by default

    During this year’s Akademy we had a few discussions about Wayland, and the Plasma and Neon team decided to switch Neon developer unstable edition to Wayland by default soonish.

    There are still a few things in the stack which need to be shaken out – we need a newer Xwayland in Neon, we want to wait for Plasma 5.8 to be released, we need to get the latest QtWayland 5.7 build, etc. etc.

  • KDE Neon Developer OS Switches To Plasma Wayland By Default

    KDE developers have decided to switch to Wayland by default for KDE Neon’s unstable/developer OS.

    KDE Neon, of course, is the project providing daily spins of the bleeding-edge Ubuntu packages atop Ubuntu. Now moving forward with the new developer/unstable packages is the usage of KDE Plasma on Wayland by default.

  • Plasma 5.8: More efficient Pager and Activity Pager widgets

    On the heels of the Plasma 5.7′s new Task Manager backend, the upcoming Plasma 5.8 LTS release will sport substantially rewritten Pager and Activity Pager widgets, aimed at improving efficiency and conserving resources in a typical Plasma Desktop setup.

  • The Past and the Immediate of the Future, For Your Perusal

    Finally, things were moving again, and store.kde.org was born!

  • From Br-Print3D to Atelier

    Soon, it will be set up the KDE repositories for this project and more news is coming.

  • Wiki, what’s going on? (Part 12-Akademy Day1)

  • Wiki, what’s going on? (Part 13-Akademy Day2)

  • Gsoc 2016 Final

  • Day 4 at Akademy / QtCon 2016

  • Day 5 at Akademy 2016

  • KDE Neon Linux Developer Edition to Use Wayland by Default for KDE Plasma 5.8

    The revolution has started, and it looks like the next-generation display server, Wayland, is here to stay, being adopted by more and more GNU/Linux distributions every month.

  • Krita 3.0.1: new features and bug fixes

    Krita 3.0.1 is the first release after Krita 3.0. With the new release schedule we’re trying to release every six weeks, with a combination of new features and bug fixes. This release already contains the first results of the 2016 Google Summer of Code projects, as well as kickstarter-funded features, the work of new contributors Eugene Ingerman, Nishant Rodrigues, Miroslav Talasek and Laurent Jospin and the work from students mentored by Dmitry: Grigory Tantsev and Alexey Kapustin.

  • Krita 3.0.1 Digital Painting App Arrives with New Threshold Filter, Many Changes

    Today, September 6, 2016, a new version of the Krita open-source digital painting software has been released, build 3.0.1, and it’s the first bugfix and feature release for the major Krita 3.0 series.

    Release highlights of Krita 3.0.1 include the ability to tweak the Brush settings in the pop-up palette, soft proofing support, which lets you see how your artwork will look like when its converted to CMYK (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black), as well as various improvements to the mirror tools by adding extra options.

  • Trying Out The FreeBSD-Powered TrueOS With Its Custom Qt Desktop

    While I’ve been running PC-BSD on some systems for years I hadn’t tried out any of its rolling-release FreeBSD 11.0-based spins under the new TrueOS brand nor had I tried out the project’s Qt-based Lumina Desktop Environment since it reached 1.0.

  • KDE neon Goes Wayland, Kubuntu Still Alive, Dev Distros

    Martin Gräßlin, KDE’s KWin expert, today blogged that KDE Plasma show-horse neon would soon be defaulting to Wayland in the unstable branch. Folks using the unstable will probably need to be aware of the change. What’s unstable today will be stable tomorrow, so some folks wondered how this decision might affect NVIDIA users. Gräßlin said in the comments that NVIDIA hardware will still default to X. He added in another comment that Wayland will be the default, but not exclusive, graphic server. Another asked if NVIDIA is planning on supporting Wayland and a discussion at Phoronix several weeks ago indicated that NVIDIA has been mum on the subject for quite a while. The general consensus was NVIDIA has lost interest in supporting Wayland.

  • Kubuntu Alive and Thriving at KDE Akademy

    Having come a quarter away around the world in part to meet up with my Kubuntu colleagues, it was surprising to hear that some people thought (at a KDE meeting?) that Kubuntu is dead.

    Not a chance. We’re having elections right now for some Kubuntu Council positions that end this year. We have four candidates for three positions, which seems very healthy to me. By the way, if you are a Kubuntu Member and have not gotten your ballot, please contact Aaron Honeycutt, since the vote closes on the 12th of September.

    We ended up meeting for more than 4 hours plus lunch yesterday, the first day of BoF meetings. Then Phil had to leave, which still seems sad, as we all miss his gentle, kind wisdom and humor.

    During the meeting, we accomplished a great deal, mostly cleaning out the Trello. We now have one and only one board, which has been mostly evaluated card by card, commented, and tagged. We hope that this will make it much easier to find a task to work on when you have a bit of spare time. If you have a login to Trello, but need inviting to the board, please check with someone in #kubuntu-devel Freenode IRC. Feel free to create cards when needed, and assign yourself and someone else to it. Many of the items on our Wishlist contain things we really do want, but do not have the time or skills to do. So pitch in as you can.

  • KDE Store presentation video online

    The QtCon / Akademy organizers have published the videos of last weekend’s conference presentations.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Orca Screen Reader App Updated for GNOME 3.22 with More LibreOffice Improvements

    The Orca open-source screen reader and magnifier utility used by default in many GNU/Linux distributions, especially those running the GNOME desktop environment, has received a major update recently.

    The fact of the matter is that we’re talking about Orca 3.22, which is currently under massive development as part of the upcoming GNOME 3.22 desktop environment, due for release on September 21, 2016, and it a Beta 2 milestone had been pushed to public testers a few days ago.

  • Wrapping up user experience testing

    This is a follow-up to my other item about wrapping up Outreachy. Diana posted part two of her analysis from first-time GNOME user experience testing.

    In this test, Diana asked testers to simulate an “unboxing” of a new system. The tester logged in to GNOME using a fresh “test” account so they get the first-time user experience. After allowing each tester to explore GNOME via three broad scenario tasks, Diana asked them to rate their reaction to GNOME using emoji, and followed up with several interview questions.

  • Writing GStreamer Elements in Rust (Part 2): Don’t panic, we have better assertions now – and other updates

Distributions

• Best Linux Distros for Developers

  One of the common questions I get asked is “which Linux distro is best for developers?” The short answer is that it depends. The long answer takes the form of this article. This piece will dive into the different Linux distros favored by developers. It’ll also provide some insight as to why there is no automatic (simple) answer for why one developer chooses one distro over another.

  To provide a more accurate look at this entire situation, I’m going to provide a break down of each consideration when making a developer friendly Linux distro selection. As you read, one must start off with the right development applications. Without these, selecting a distro is meaningless.

• Calamares 2.4 Universal Linux Installer Gets Its First Point Release to Fix Bugs

  The Calamares team announced recently the availability of the first point release to the new stable series of the distribution-independent system installer used in many GNU/Linux distributions, Calamares 2.4.

• New Releases

  • Black Lab Linux 8 “Onyx” Beta 2 released

    Today the Black Lab development team is pleased to release “Onyx” Beta 2 – this brings us one step closer to the stable release of Black Lab 8 due in late November. Our team is continuously dedicated to bringing you the best Linux desktop – Black Lab is and will continue to be the standard bearer, introducing cutting-edge features without sacrificing usability and stability or a unique, intuitive desktop interface.

  • Slackel 6.0.7 “Live Openbox” beta1

    Slackel 6.0.7 Live Openbox beta1 has been released. Slackel is based on Slackware and Salix.

    The 64-bit iso images support booting on UEFI systems.
    The 32-bit iso images support both i686 PAE SMP and i486, non-PAE capable systems.
    Iso images are isohybrid.

  • Elive 2.7.6 beta released

    The Elive Team is proud to announce the release of the beta version 2.7.6

  • Linux Top 3: Porteus Kiosk 4.1, 4MLinux 19 and TrueOS

• Screenshots/Screencasts

  • feren OS 2016.2 Screenshot Tour

  • SwagArch 16.09.1 Alpha 4 Screenshot Tour

• OpenSUSE/SUSE

  • Mozilla, systemd, compiler update in Tumbleweed

    QtCon, Akademy and VideoLAN Dev Days in Berlin this past week kept many developers busy, but openSUSE’s rolling release kept going forward.

    Tumbleweed had one new snapshot since that last article was published and more is expected this week.

    Snapshot 20160901 provided Mozilla updates for both Firefox and Thunderbird in the repositories. Firefox updated to version 48.0.2 and Thunderbird to version 45.3.0.

• Red Hat Family

  • What’s holding back containers? Red Hat evangelist has some ideas

    To hear Scott McCarty say it, the biggest barriers to the adoption of software containers in the enterprise are as much political as they are technical.

  • Flytoget Deploys Red Hat JBoss Fuse and the 3scale API Management Technology to Further Its Digital Ambitions

  • Finance

    • What Analyst suggest about Stocks? Xerox Corporation (NYSE:XRX) , Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Analysts Valuations For Two Stocks: American Tower Corp (NYSE:AMT), Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT)

    • Active Movers: Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT), Six Flags Entertainment Corp (NYSE:SIX), Carnival plc (ADR)(NYSE:CUK)

    • Traders Targeted Movers: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Analyst Opinions Is A Thing Worth Watching: Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT), American Water Works Company Inc (NYSE:AWK)

  • Fedora

    • What are Personas and why should you care?

      The Modularity working group is looking to flesh out a set of personas to help focus the work being done by the team. Personas are fictional characters created to represent the different user types that might interact with a “product” in different ways. They are not market segments but should be thought of as user archetypes.

      Personas can be useful in considering the goals, desires, and limitations of users to guide decisions about a product. They should be based on user research and can include all types of information about that particular person. Our personas include information related to behavior patterns, goals, skills, pain points, attitudes and daily activities. If you want to learn more about personas and their use, I recommend your start here.

    • Fedorahosted sunset

    • Fedora 24 – MariaDB

      I’m wanting to do some development on my laptop so as MariaDB has replaced mySQL I’ve installed that. It was simple enough all you need to do is run dnf install mariadb done.

    • Fedora 26 Linux Operating System to Land on June 6, 2017 [Ed: corrected URL]

• Debian Family

  • My Free Software Activities in August 2016

  • New software: sicherboot

    Today, I wrote sicherboot, a tool to integrate systemd-boot into a Linux distribution in an entirely new way: With secure boot support. To be precise: The use case here is to only run trusted code which then unmounts an otherwise fully encrypted disk, as in my setup:

  • Debian Releases Major Linux Kernel Security Update to Fix the Infamous TCP Flaw

    Debian Project released recently a new update to the kernel packages of its current stable distribution, namely Debian GNU/Linux 8.5 “Jessie”, patching four security flaws discovered by various hackers and researchers.

    Salvatore Bonaccorso is the one to inform the community about the new Linux kernel security update for Debian Jessie via the Debian Security Advisory DSA-3659-1 announcement, which details a total of four security flaws, namely CVE-2016-5696, CVE-2016-6136, CVE-2016-6480, and CVE-2016-6828.

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu 16.04 kisses the cloud, disses the desktop

        With Ubuntu 16.04LTS (Xenial Xerus), Canonical has introduced incremental improvements to the popular server and cloud versions of its operating system, but if you were looking for exciting changes to desktop Ubuntu, this version isn’t it.

        The 16.04 release is an iterative, not necessarily massive improvement. But this is an Long Term Service (LTS) version, which means that there’s a team working on keeping it solid for five years. So, into the next decade, 16.04 gets patched and fixed, as other versions continue to be released on a regular basis.

      • Run Widgets on Your Ubuntu Desktop with Plexydesk

        If I asked you about Plexydesk you’d probably look at be blankly. I last mentioned the promising widget-toting project five years ago today. Curious as to what became of it I went on a Google today. It only took a few characters strokes to discover that the project is still very much alive.

      • Tesla Autopilot 2.0 Capabilities Demoed With Ubuntu

        I don’t drive, so self-driving cars should be right up my one-way street, right?

        I can’t feign interest. I’m not a particularly mechanical person, barring a brief spurt of Moto-X (the sport, not the handset) at the turn of the decade. I don’t even like Top Gear.

      • Intel Graphics Update Tool Adds Support for Ubuntu 16.04

        Intel’s graphic update tool has been updated to support Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Fedora 24. It offers users the Intel 2016Q2 graphics stack.

Devices/Embedded

• Tiny $7 IoT module packs WiFi, BLE, and sensors, runs FreeRTOS

  SeeedStudio’s “ESP3212” COM taps Espressif’s IoT-focused ESP32 follow-on to the ESP8266 SoC, which uses a faster Tensilica LX6 MCU and adds BLE and sensors.

  Espressif’s highly integrated and highly anticipated ESP32 follow-on to its popular ESP8266 wireless system-on-chip is now shipping. It’s available as part of a tiny SeedStudio ESP3212 computer-on-module, as well on Espressif’s own, slightly larger ESP-WROOM-32 reference design board and more expansive ESP32 Development Board.

• Arduino Open Source Platform Fuels IoT and Farming’s Future

  Arduino, the world’s leading open-source software and hardware ecosystem, is being used to power Farmbot, the revolutionary farming robot that is built fully on open source. Farmbot is a computer numerical control (CNC) farming machine and software package for small scale, hyper local, DIY food production. It is controlled by and Arduino RAMPS stack and connected to the Internet using Raspberry Pi 2. The platform is designed to be simple, scalable, hackable, and easily made.

  “The applications that are fueling the IoT market are astonishing, and open source technology is playing a big role in it,” said Federico Musto, CEO of Arduino S.r.L. “Predicted to become a $6 trillion market by 2021, the IoT market is starting to take shape with advancements in wearables, healthcare, smart homes and cities, law enforcement, automotive, and, of course agriculture. We are proud to be a part of Farmbot, and look forward to continuing to fuel IoT deployments.”

• Phones

  • Tizen

    • Wallpapers: Tizen Themed for Samsung Z1 / Z2 / Z3 Backgrounds

      Following the release of the Samsung Z2 in India, Tizen Experts present you with custom Z2 wallpapers / backgrounds to celebrate the release of Tizen’s 3rd phone. This batch of wallpapers have a Tizen theme and support the Samsung Z1 / Z2 / Z3 smartphones. You can download them directly from our site either using your mobile devices and apply them easily to your Tizen smartphones.

    • Samsung Gear S3 Available from November 4 in the Netherlands

    • Samsung Z2 with LTE Launching Soon in Kenya for as Cheap as $60

      Whenever the Samsung Z2 launch in Kenya, the device might just make it as the cheapest Tizen OS powered smartphone ever. The exact date the Z2 will go official in Kenya has not yet been disclosed by Samsung but Samsung Electronics East Africa has teased the estimated price the device will fetch when finally launched.

      Samsung Electronics East Africa held an event in Nairobi where the Tizen OS was introduced to the East Africa market as well as Samsung’s strategy as regards the Tizen OS in the East Africa market, particularly in Kenya. According to Sijmon Kariithi, Director of Internet and Mobile (IM) at the East Africa Regional branch of Samsung Electronics, the Korean company plans to release a Tizen-powered smartphone and other household appliances in Kenya which would run on its Tizen operating system.

    • Samsung Gear S3 Gets HERE WeGo Maps & Navigation App

      The Samsung Gear S3 is yet to ship after it was launched, but we are already seeing Tizen-based apps that are designed for the smart wearable. Its not just any app but high profile apps and one of them is the HERE WeGo app developed by German company, HERE. The app offers comprehensive mapping experience whether you are searching for places, planning travel routes by car, on foot and by public transit.

  • Android

    • Pop! Slots Was August’s Top Trending Android Game in the U.S.

    • Samsung announces September Android security update

    • This nasty Android malware tries to bully its way past Marshmallow security features

    • This nasty Android malware tries to bully its way past Marshmallow security features

    • Android Pay now works with Chase Visa; mobile web coming soon

    • Android Pay hits the web via Chrome

    • Android Extension Pack Being Prepped For Mesa

    • Hackers Exploit Android Flaw to Target Iranian Activists

      Suspected state-sponsored hackers have intensified their attempts to break into the online accounts of Iranian rights activists in recent weeks by exploiting security vulnerabilities in Android smartphones, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has learned.

      On August 11, 2016 an unknown person sent a message on Facebook to a prominent Iranian political activist living in Paris and introduced himself as a former student. The hacker said he had created political stickers with the activist’s photo on them. He then sent a file, with an APK suffix, to the activist claiming that the file contained the stickers.

      But the file actually contained malware. Soon after the activist opened the file, the hacker was able to take over the activist’s Facebook page and sent similar messages to the activist’s friends, some of whom worked at Radio Farda, Deutsche Welle and the BBC. One of the friends fell for the trap and lost access to his Gmail account for several hours.

    • Google’s Pixel phones will run a brand new Android version that hasn’t even been announced

      Google is expected to release two new HTC-built smartphones later this year, the Pixel and Pixel XL. Although Google has long used its Nexus brand to debut new versions of Android, the two new devices this year are rumored to ship with something even newer than Google’s delicious Android 7.0 Nougat.

      Twitter leaker and Android developer LlabTooFeR claims that the Pixel and Pixel XL will come with Android 7.1, meaning that there’s a good chance we’ll never see brand new phones running the just-announced version of Google’s new OS.

    • Chromebooks may add fingerprint scanning, following Android and Windows

      Google appears to be planning some added security for upcoming Chromebooks. The company’s Chromium code repository mentions a fingerprint sensor for Chrome OS, as first spotted by Chrome Unboxed.

      Led by Apple, Samsung, and others, fingerprint sensors are currently the most popular—not to mention fastest—method of biometric authentication. Windows 10 PCs also use biometric authentication via Microsoft’s Windows Hello feature. Microsoft favors facial recognition and retina scanning in its Windows 10 devices, but it also supports fingerprint scanning.

    • Michael Kors brings really, really big design to Android Wear

    • Xiaomi’s Android set-top box to launch as soon as October for less than $100

      There’s much anticipation about Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi’s long-awaited entry into the U.S. market. And we don’t have long to wait. Kinda. TechCrunch understands that Xiaomi will begin selling its first mainstream product in the U.S. — an Android set-top box — as soon as next month.

      The Mi Box was announced and demoed all the way back in May at Google I/O, but so far the company has remained quiet on when it will go on sale. A source inside Xiaomi, however, told TechCrunch that it will be made available to consumers in the U.S. and other selected markets in “early Q4 2016.” That could indeed mean October.

      The price has also been kept quiet to date, but we also understand that the box will cost less than $100.

      Xiaomi declined to comment.

    • Google Pixel and Pixel XL phones expected to launch running Android 7.1 Nougat update

      When Google releases its next pure Android phones, they’ll launch running Android 7.1 according to the latest leak. The news comes from @LlabTooFeR, a leaker known for revealing nuggets of HTC-centric information before it’s confirmed.

      Perhaps notably, the tweet refers to the next phones as the Pixel and Pixel XL, rather than any form of Nexus, corroborating rumours that Google is shifting its hardware strategy this year.

    • Samsung’s next bonkers Android flip-phone is pictured in latest leaks

    • Drupe adds call recording to its free Android dialer app, no root required

    • You can now run Nougat on your OnePlus 3… kind of

    • 7 Easy Tips to Strong Android Security Against Hacks

    • Google rebuilt a core part of Android to kill the Stagefright vulnerability for good

    • Apple Music for Android hits 10 million downloads on the Google Play Store

    • List of Nougat ROMs for Popular Devices — Find Your Android Update!

    • SwiftKey updated with support for Android 7.0 emoji

    • NordVPN for Android

    • LG’s V20 is an Android phone built for audiophiles and power users

      LG just announced the V20, a successor to last year’s V10 smartphone. In 2015, the V10 stood out for its unique, sturdy design, a great camera, and audiophile-grade music playback. LG has retained two of those strengths and introduced others for the sequel. And as we already know, this is the first smartphone to run Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box. It’s set to begin rolling out globally this month and will be available in three color options: titan (dark gray), silver, and pink. Specific pricing will vary by carrier.

    • Android 7.0 Nougat review

      Android 7.0 Nougat is the major revision of Android for 2016/2017. The upgrade first became available for phones in August 2016. However, depending on the device you have, there’s a good chance you’re still waiting. If this is the case, there’s one question you’ll want answered: is this Android OS update actually worth getting excited about?

      If you’ve been hankering after a super-flashy revamp to make it seem we’ve entered a new era of Android, you may be disappointed. Android 7.0 Nougat’s goals are more about preparing for the future of Android app development, adding little tweaks here and there, with the end result being that in use your device will feel faster.

10 Open Source Tools for DevOps

To be sure, the list of open source tools for DevOps is growing. Why? Because DevOps itself is growing, and open source is a natural choice for this development methodology.

First coined around 2009, the term DevOps refers to an approach to IT that emphasizes collaboration between the development and operations groups. It arose out of the agile software development movement and applies some of the same principles to the application lifecycle management (ALM) process. DevOps is difficult to define because it’s more of a movement or a philosophy than a rigid set of rules or practices. Organizations that employ DevOps are characterized by a high degree of cooperation, few internal “siloes,” heavy use of automation, continuous testing and integration, and faster development and deployment of applications.

In the time since DevOps was first imagined, its popularity has increased tremendously. In fact, a RightScale survey found that 74 percent of organizations and 81 percent of enterprises say they are using DevOps.

Why Pixar open sourced its 3D graphics technology

Pixar Animation Studios has open sourced its Universal Scene Description (USD) technology. USD is an extremely powerful toolset that helps filmmakers in reading, writing, editing, and rapidly previewing 3D scene data.

“USD is the core of Pixar’s 3D graphics pipeline, used in every 3D authoring and rendering application, including Pixar’s proprietary Presto animation system,” according to Pixar.

USD is aimed at performance and large-scale collaboration among many artists that makes it ideal for the complex modern pipeline, allowing dozens of creative people working on the same project.

One of the most notable features of USD is Hydra, a high-performance preview renderer capable of interactively displaying large data sets.

Pixar engineers gave a live demo of USD at SIGGRAPH 2016, International Conference and exhibition on Computer Graphics & Interactive Techniques. The demo shows real time rendering capabilities of USD technologies.

Why open source matters to the IoT market

By using open source IoT app standards, Indian entrepreneurs will be able to sell their IoT apps globally. App store customers can run these apps on any type of enterprise or industrial hardware. India’s software industry is uniquely positioned to benefit from IoT. India can combine low-cost, innovation and revenue generation in any future IoT solution. IoT is the next big thing, and India should do everything possible to drive it.

Google’s Fuchsia OS is out in the open and shrouded in mystery

Google is developing a new operating system named Fuchsia, and the early source code is already public. Google itself and Fuchsia’s developers haven’t explained what the OS is for—but we can dig into the source code to learn more.

Student’s open source project takes him around the world

I discovered open source software while I was a student at the University of Lomé in Togo in 2004. From that very first day, I was in love with the philosophy and knew this would be a big part of my life.

I joined the National Open Source Users Association (ATULL) and became an active member. Then, as a student, I created an open source web application for the managing of college activities, and it won 3rd place at the African Conference on Open Source Software in Morocco in 2007. Thanks to the award, I got a first class ticket from the Francophonie International Organization to attend the Open Source Software World Meeting in 2008.

Events

• MEDIA ADVISORY: Open Source NFV Project to Host 2017 Summit in Beijing

  The OPNFV Project, a carrier-grade, integrated, open source platform intended to accelerate the introduction of new products and services using Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), today announced the 2017 OPNFV Summit will be held in Beijing, China, June 12-15, 2017 at the JW Marriott Beijing. The Summit provides an opportunity to reach the innovative communities, developers and companies transforming the networking industry through open source NFV.

  Registration for the 2017 OPNFV Summit is available here. Those interested in sponsoring the event can find more details here. Additional information, including the Call for Proposals, agendas and co-located events will be available in the coming months, so check the OPNFV Summit website for updates.

SaaS/Back End

• Testing the Right Things with Docker

  Fast and efficient software testing is easy with Docker, says Laura Frank of Codeship, who will be presenting a talk called “Building Efficient Parallel Testing Platforms with Docker” at LinuxCon + ContainerCon Europe next month.

• OpenStack Summit in Barcelona will be Last Design Summit

  Since my first OpenStack Summit back in San Diego in 2012, there has been one unique defining characteristic that made the event different than any other in the technology world – the event was where developers and users all gathered in the same place.

Databases

• Tesora Teams with Red Hat on OpenStack-based Database as a Service

  As the OpenStack cloud computing arena has spread out, a whole ecosystem of tools has been growing along with it. Tesora, familiar to many as the leading contributor to the OpenStack Trove open source project, has focused very heavily on Database-as-a-Service tools for OpenStack deployments. It has also pursued partnerships. For example, Tesora has a partnership with OpenStack heavy-hitter Mirantis. The company has made available the first ever plug-in to automate configuration and deployment of its database as a service (DBaaS) platform with Mirantis OpenStack.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• ​OpenOffice is dead. Long live LibreOffice

  If you read some stories about how OpenOffice is reaching the end of the road, you might think OpenOffice was becoming insecure. That’s half true. OpenOffice doesn’t have the programmers it needs to be safe. That’s because all its good developers moved to its fork, LibreOffice, years ago. LibreOffice is as safe as any program can be.

• OpenOffice: Retirement Talk is Underway Online

  In case it isn’t clear, the situation looks dire for OpenOffice. Meanwhile, The Document Foundation recently announced the releases of LibreOffice 5.2 and 5.1.5. LibreOffice 5.2, and LibreOffice is gaining much traction with new levels of compatibility with mainstream office applications. We will follow up on the OpenOffice debate shortly.

• Community conference starts with 10th release of LibreOffice in 2016

  The Document Foundation (TDF) has celebrated the opening session of LibOCon with the announcement of LibreOffice 5.2.1, the first minor release of the LibreOffice 5.2 family.

  LibOCon is a showcase of the project activity, and will feature over 60 talks in three days, covering development, QA, localization, ODF, marketing, community and documentation, a business session in Czech focused on large deployments of LibreOffice, and a meeting of the Open Source Business Alliance (OSBA).

  Details of the conference, including the program and collateral activities such as the traditional “hacknight” – a hands-on session where developers hack over food and drinks – are available on the event website: http://conference.libreoffice.org.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

• Microsoft open-sources Bing components for fast code compilation [Ed: openwashing a propaganda machine?]

• Microsoft Open Sources Bing Components, Including a Speedy Compiler

• DigitalOcean Launches Hatch, Supporting Startups with Cloud Access

• Box Open-Sources Continuous Localization Platform Mojito

• Glencoe Software and Zeiss partner to build open source file reader for whole slide imaging

  Glencoe Software, the world-leading supplier of image data management solutions for the academic, biotech, pharma and publication industries, is delighted to announce a new partnership with the Carl Zeiss Microscopy GmbH, Jena, Germany. Glencoe Software and ZEISS will collaborate to extend the open source Bio-Formats image file conversion library to support whole slide images compressed with the JPEG XR compression scheme, like those recorded by the ZEISS Axio Scan.Z1 virtual slide scanner.

BSD

• FreeBSD Now Has A Port For CentOS 7 Binary Support

  We’ve known for a while that FreeBSD has been working on a CentOS 7 compatibility layer while now that work has finally landed in FreeBSD ports.

  As of yesterday, linux_base-c7 landed in ports for installing the CentOS 7 base packages. This will allow running newer Linux binaries built for modern CentOS/RHEL 7 era systems on FreeBSD, assuming the source isn’t available or isn’t compatible natively with FreeBSD. Previously CentOS 6 was the default port used for this Linux binary compatibility with FreeBSD.

Public Services/Government

• The Sun slams Corbyn for advocating ‘open source’ software, but uses it for its own website

  Its true that hackers in other countries can identify vunerabilities in open source software.

  But they can also hack proprietary software like Microsoft Windows.

  But with open source software – where all the underlying code is open so people can look at it, suggest changes and improve on it – at least problems can be quickly patched up.

  Moreover open source software can be more powerful, cheaper (good news for taxpayers!) and reliable!

  After all, the Sun uses it too. They run their website on WordPress – the open source blog software.

  Did they think we wouldn’t notice?

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• French municipal syndicate to share case system

  In October, Cogitis, a French ICT service provider for local public administrations, will share as open source software MutualiTIC, its case management system.

  MutualiTIC improves communication and cooperation, and creates a digital workflow, says Cogitis. The solution offers web-based services that are tailored to elected officials, staff at municipalities and inter-municipal cooperatives.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Open-Source in Action: TOIL Research Team Improves on 3D Printed Prosthetics with Motor Ability, Tactile Feedback & More

Programming/Development

• A Git Workflow for Humans

  The following paragraphs will define the most simple and minimal approach which is a base case of how this workflow works, the extensions paragraph defines some extensions which help you dealing with several common usecases. You will likely end up using the base workflow with one or two extensions.

• Stepsize brings AI to DevOps: contextualised code is smarter

  Stepsize is a UK startup focused on developer tools. The firm is aiming to put a degree of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into DevOps. Stepsize Layer is a desktop application for developers that automatically adds context to code bases. It does this by hooking up tools used to develop software, structuring historical data and attaching this to the piece of code.

• Why I love these markup languages

  Around this time last year, I wrote a brief introduction to various markup languages for this column. The topic of language selection has come up several times recently, so I thought it might be time to revisit the subject with my biases more overt. I’m here to explain why I prefer the languages I do, not to prescribe anything for you. After all, I’m no doc-tor.

• LEGO Mindstorms programming with ev3dev

  I was introduced to LEGO Mindstorms eighteen months ago while applying for a STEM grant at a local library. LEGO Mindstorms are kits to create customizable, programmable robots

• Confronting Jargon

  Throughout my software engineering career, I’ve struggled with and against jargon. Intellectually, I understand jargon as a set of specialized terms meant to facilitate smooth and precise communication, particularly in a professional context. It binds groups together: it’s the secret handshake, the side-long wink, the showing that yes, you’re in the club too, you belong. Experientially? I know the ways jargon can keep you out as you feel along, grasping for knowledge in the dark.

• LLV8 Is An Experimental LLVM Compiler For V8 JavaScript

• Open-Source OCaml to JavaScript Compiler BuckleScript Hits 1.0

  BuckleScript 1.0 brings almost full compatibility with OCaml features and an improved FFI with the aim of avoiding writing unsafe JavaScript stubs. InfoQ has spoken with Bloomberg’s Hongbo Zhang, BuckleScript creator at Bloomberg.

• Runtime CSS styling for SWT

Standards/Consortia

• Z-Wave Specifications Go Open-Source

  The company responsible for drafting the Z-Wave home networking standard has made certain parts of the technology publicly available.

  In an attempt to lure hardware and software developers to the standard, Sigma Designs last week released a public version of Z-Wave’s interoperability layer, which ensures that devices ranging from door locks to security cameras can share information.

  The company has added the software to Z-Wave’s open-source library. The code represents the “language” that defines how devices from different manufacturers talk to each other, said Raoul Wijgergangs, vice president of Sigma Design’s Z-Wave business. That makes it easier for home owners to connect devices with an internet gateway and control them remotely using a phone, computer, or tablet.

Typo made Air Asia X flight land at Melbourne instead of Malaysia

Finger trouble with onboard navigation systems led to an Air Asia flight making a two-hour internal hop in Australia before its scheduled journey to Malaysia.

An investigation report by the Australian Transportation Safety Bureau (ATSB) into the March flight disclosed the cockup, which it said was down to the A330′s captain “inadvertently enter[ing] the wrong longitudinal position of the aircraft.”

He had copied down the aircraft’s position co-ordinates from a sign displayed at the airport terminal gate while initialising the Airbus’ systems. Instead of entering 15109.8 east (i.e. 15˚ 19.8′ east), the captain entered 01519.8, resulting in “a positional error in excess of 11,000 km.”

British Airways apologises to delayed passengers

British Airways has apologised to passengers facing delays after an IT glitch affected check-in desks.

Passengers complained of delays at check-in and at the baggage drop, and on the tarmac waiting for take-off.

The airline said passengers were able to check in at Heathrow and Gatwick Airports “although it is taking longer than usual”. It advised passengers to check in online.

“We are sorry for the delay to their journeys,” BA added.

There was further disruption for passengers at London City Airport on Tuesday after, police said, protesters “locked themselves together” on the runway.

BA encouraged customers affected by the IT problems to check in online before they reached the airport. It told customers that some flights had been cancelled on Monday “due to operational reasons” but that specialists were “working to resolve this issue”.

Science

• The critical role of systems thinking in software development

  Software applications exist to serve practical human needs, but they inevitably accumulate undefined and defective behaviors as well.

  Because software flaws are often left undiscovered until some specific failure forces them to the surface, every software project ships with some degree of unquantified risk. This is true even when software is built by highly skilled developers, and is an essential characteristic of any complex system.

Health/Nutrition

• UNITAID Issues Call For Solutions To Overcome IP Barriers

  UNITAID, the drug financing mechanism, has put out an appeal calling for ideas on solutions to overcome intellectual property barriers that may be preventing progress in public health. The deadline for submissions is coming near.

Security

• Security advisories for Monday

• Wednesday’s security advisories

• Stealthy, tricky to remove rootkit targets Linux systems on ARM and x86 [Ed: IDG covers this nonsense from Trend Micro (not a real risk, just the name Pokémon for better headlines])

• You can’t weigh risk if you don’t know what you don’t know

  If any of us have ever been in a planning meeting, a variant of this has no doubt come up at some point. It came up for me last week, and every time I hear it I think about all things we don’t know we don’t know. If you’re not familiar with the concept, it works a bit like this. I know I don’t know to drive a boat. But because I know I don’t know this, I could learn. If you know you lack certain knowledge, you could find a way to learn it. If you don’t know what you don’t know, there is nothing you can do about it. The future is often an unknown unknown. There is nothing we can do about the future in many instances, you just have to wait until it becomes a known, and hope it won’t be anything too horrible. There can also be blindness when you think you know something, but you really don’t. This is when people tend to stop listening to the actual experts because they think they are an expert.

• New release: usbguard-0.6.0

  Another milestone behind us. The 0.6.0 release brings the promissed CentOS/RHEL 7 compatibility. This means that our Copr EPEL-7 repository as well as Fedora’s EPEL-7 repository will now provide the latest versions of USBGuard. Check it out!

  One more very good piece of news is that USBGuard was accepted in Debian and is available in Sid (unstable). A big thanks goes to Muri Nicanor and others involved in this packaging effort!

• StartSSL customers, it is time to leave. Now!

  While listening to the Security Now podcast, I have listened first with amusement then with horror to Steve reading email from Mozilla about the security problems with WoSign CA.

  Their list of woes is long, read the linked email for details, but one thing turned up during the email which I was not aware of: StartCom (owner of the StartSSL certificate authority) was apparently recently bought by WoSign CA! Apparently one of the security bugs StartSSL has (had?) was that with properly modified POST request (yes, I guess you can do it in the Developer Tools of your Firefox) you can get certificate linked to the root ceritificate “CA 沃通根证书” (or “WoSign CA Free SSL Certificate G2” with another value of the parameter). Awesome!

  What’s even more interesting is that I am a paying customer of StartSSL CA and I have never been made aware of the change of ownership. The only other mention of the possible change of ownership I found was on the Wikipedia page, which linked to the blogpost, which is now unavailable due to “legal review of the site” […]. Even better!

• Debian GNU/Linux Fixes Dangerous TCP Flaw In New Update

• Why Security Performance Will be Key in NFV

  There is growing evidence that the data center is driving toward a more software-centric security model that will be core to network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) technology. This new model means that security performance in NFV will be key.

• How to enable server-side encryption in Nextcloud

  Out of the box, Nextcloud servers do not run with server-side encryption. Follow these steps to enable an extra layer of security for Nextcloud.

• Umbreon rootkit targets Linux on x86, ARM [Ed: nonsensical marketing hype from Trend Micro]

• Pokemon Themed ‘Umbreon’ Rootkit Hides In Linux Systems

• Taking umbrage at Umbreon, the Linux rootkit that likes to hide

• Linux rootkit, named for Pokémon’s Umbreon, targets Linux

Defence/Aggression

• New leaked files reveal more about NSA satellite eavesdropping

  Newly published documents from Edward Snowden have shed more light on American surveillance operations in the UK.

• Video: Inside Menwith Hill – NSA spy base in UK used for ‘kill or capture’ missions

  Leaks by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have revealed how his former employer used the US spy base at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire to conduct ‘kill or capture’ missions in its global shadow war.

• The NSA Abroad: The UK Base That Makes US Targeted Killing Possible

  In a damning exposé published Monday, The Intercept reporter Ryan Gallagher dives into the inner workings of National Security Agency’s (NSA) largest overseas spying base, the U.K.’s Menwith Hill Station, and reveals concrete evidence that the British government is complicit in the United States’ targeted killing program.

  Citing top-secret documents obtained from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Gallagher reports, “The files reveal for the first time how the NSA has used the British base to aid ‘a significant number of capture-kill operations’ across the Middle East and North Africa, fueled by powerful eavesdropping technology.”

  And given the British government’s repeated assertion that activities at Menwith Hill “have always been, and continue to be” carried out with its “knowledge and consent,” the findings are all the more damning.

  “For years, Reprieve and others have sought clarification from the British government about the role of U.K. bases in the U.S. covert drone program, which has killed large numbers of civilians in countries where we are not at war,” Kat Craig, legal director of London-based human rights group Reprieve, told The Intercept. “We were palmed off with platitudes and reassured that any U.S. activities on or involving British bases were fully compliant with domestic and international legal provisions. It now appears that this was far from the truth.”

• NSA leaks show US spooks use UK base to launch ‘kill-capture’ missions

  Leaks by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have revealed how his former employer used the US spy base at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire to conduct ‘kill or capture’ missions in its global shadow war.

  The new files published by the Intercept partly lay to rest speculation by journalists and campaigners over what really goes on at the US base.

  They show that secretive NSA kill-capture operations in the Middle East have been developed and initiated from inside the base’s heavily guarded perimeter wire.

• New Snowden leaks unravel mystery behind NSA’s UK base

  Just when you thought you couldn’t be shocked by the NSA’s snooping anymore, new leaked documents show the agency’s reach extends far beyond American borders.

• Philippine President Sorry, Not Sorry He Cursed Obama for Criticism of His Killing Spree

  In a statement released on Tuesday, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said that he was sorry — not for calling President Barack Obama a “son of a whore,” but that “it came across as a personal attack on the U.S. president.”

  The contorted apology, read to reporters at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations forum in Laos by Duterte’s spokesperson, Ernie Abella, came after Obama responded to the slur by canceling a meeting with the new leader that had been scheduled for Tuesday.

  Duterte, whose first months in office have been marked by nearly 3,000 killings in a campaign of extrajudicial assassinations of suspected drug dealers and addicts carried out by the police and death squads, launched into a profanity-laced tirade against Obama on Monday when asked by reporters how he would respond to criticism of the killing spree from the American president.

• Karimov Family Values

  Twelve years ago President Karimov jailed his own nephew, Jamshid Karimov, for the “crime” of writing an article in a state publication which suggested modest improvements to his uncle’s economic policies. Like other prominent dissidents, young Karimov ended up chained to a bed in a psychiatric ward being pumped mind altering drugs to re-educate him.

• Dissecting the Propaganda on Syria

  The American public is so inundated with propaganda on the Syrian conflict that a rational policy that could minimize the death toll is almost impossible to formulate, a problem addressed by Rick Sterling.

• 5-key insights on the Syrian conflict via Hillary’s email and the Stratfor Wikileaks

• Hillary Clinton Thinks Real-World Military Responses To Hacking Attacks Are A Nifty Idea

  Again, you’ll note that the United States is portrayed as an innocent and noble defender of cybersecurity freedom, when it’s the one often engaging in frequently-unprovoked attacks the world over. Of course, Clinton and friends are well aware that the vast majority of the time it’s impossible to know where an attack came from, and any hacker worth his or her salt simply doesn’t leave footprints. That makes a real-world military or economic response to a nebulous, usually-unprovable threat simply idiotic. You’d assume Clinton knows this and was just doing some light pandering to the audience.

  But this rhetoric alone is still dangerous in that it opens the door wide to using hacking — much like communism and Islamic extremism and numerous “isms” before them — as a nebulous, endlessly mutable justification for a litany of bad US behavior. You could, for example, covertly hack a government, publicize its hacking response to your hack, using the press to help you justify military action. Given the US and global media’s historical complicity in helping governments begin wars with jack shit for evidence, it shouldn’t be hard to see how hacking is going to be a useful bad policy bogeyman du jour for decades to come.

  Despite some repeated, painful lessons on this front stretching back generations, forcing the government to show its math before it resorts to violence is simply not the US media’s strong suit. And with hacking and cybersecurity being subjects the press and public are extra-violently ignorant about, we’ve created the opportunity for some incredible new sleight of hand when it comes to framing and justifying US domestic and international policy. If history is any indication, by next time this year we’ll be blaming everything under the sun on Russian hackers because after all, two anonymous senior government officials said so.

  Healthy skepticism will be our ally as we stumble down the rabbit hole. While it’s no surprise that Russia, like the United States is deeply-involved in nation state hacking, you’ll note that actual evidence linking the Putin Administration to the recent rise in US hacking attacks remains fleeting. Most reports simply cite a single anonymous US government source, or security firms with a vested interest in selling services and products. That’s not to say Putin and friends aren’t busy hacking the US, but whether a country is responding to similar attacks by the United States (pdf) — or is actually involved at all — is rather important to transparently document before you begin trotting out awful new policies or worse, real world bombs.

• Trump Renews Focus on Military Spending as Race Tightens

  Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump detailed his proposals for an expansion of U.S. military power as his race with Democrat Hillary Clinton tightens, in an appeal to service members and veterans who could give him a critical boost in November.

  If elected, Trump would ask Congress to lift military spending caps, increase defense spending, and seek a plan from generals to counter Islamic State in his first 30 days in office, he said in a speech Wednesday in Philadelphia.

  Trump also said he would increase the size of the army to about 540,000, the Marine Corps to 36 battalions, the navy to a number of surface ships and submarines “approaching” 350, and the Air Force to at least 1,200 fighter aircraft.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• FBI Publishes Clinton Email Investigation Documents; More Bad News On Documents Mishandling, FOIA Compliance

  The FBI generally likes to keep as much information as possible out of the public’s hands, so its decision to release its files on the Hillary Clinton email investigation are probably best viewed as a one-off, rather than the leading edge of a new era of transparency.

  The agency certainly couldn’t pretend there isn’t significant public interest in the content of the investigative files. The outcome of a presidential election could very well hinge on the voting public’s interpretation of the documents’ content.

  And the FBI certainly has an interest in clearing the air of any hints of politically-motivated favoritism. That the investigation occurred at all does some damage to Clinton’s credibility, while the decision not to pursue prosecution doesn’t do much for the FBI’s.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• Oklahoma earthquake and oil drilling: What we know

  When an earthquake struck Oklahoma on Saturday, one of the first steps state officials took was to shut down 37 of the state’s 3,200 active disposal wells — a move that drew national attention to the link between oil and gas drilling and earthquakes.

• Dakota Access Pipeline Protests In North Dakota Turn Violent

  Protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota turned violent on Saturday.

  Demonstrators supporting the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe faced off with private security officers from Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners.

  Video from the scene showed security officers threatening protesters with dogs.

  As All Things Considered reported, hundreds of Native Americans from tribes across the country have set up a camp near the construction site in North Dakota. The Army Corps of Engineer approved the oil pipeline in July allowing it to run under the Missouri river close to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation.

• A Native American fight to stop an oil pipeline is a “morally embarrassing reminder” of America’s founding

  For months, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota has been protesting the construction of a $3.8 billion (paywall) oil pipeline that would cut through four US states. Last week, the protests reached unprecedented size. Hundreds of environmental activists joined the local community of about 8,000. The BBC reports that the largest gathering of Native Americans in over a century, with over 90 tribes represented, is currently underway in Cannonball, North Dakota.

  The Native tribes and environmentalists say the pipeline would disrupt a sacred burial ground, as well as threaten water quality in the area. They say that the Army Corps of Engineers should never have granted permits for its construction.

• Hillary Clinton Raises More Than Donald Trump From Oil Industry

  Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has raised significantly more money than Donald Trump in the heart of the Republican fundraising territory—the oil and gas industry.

• The oceans are heating up. That’s a big problem on a blue planet

  So, just as a refresher, it’s always good to remember that we live on an ocean planet. Most of the Earth’s surface is salt water, studded with the large islands we call continents.

  It’s worth recalling this small fact – which can slip our minds, since we humans congregate on the patches of dry ground – because new data shows just how profoundly we’re messing with those seven seas. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has published an extensive study concluding that the runaway heating of the oceans is “the greatest hidden challenge of our generation”.

  When we think about global warming, we usually fixate on the air temperature. Which is spiking sharply – July was the hottest month ever measured on our planet. But as the new study points out, 90% of the extra heat that our greenhouse gases trap is actually absorbed by the oceans. That means that the upper few meters of the sea have been steadily warming more than a tenth of a degree celsius per decade, a figure that’s accelerating. When you think of the volume of water that represents, and then try to imagine the energy necessary to raise its temperature, you get an idea of the blowtorch that our civilization has become.

• Judge halts North Dakota pipeline contruction temporarily after protests

  An American Indian tribe succeeded on Tuesday in getting a federal judge to temporarily stop construction on some, but not all, of a $3.8bn four-state oil pipeline, but its broader request still hangs in the balance.

  James Boasberg, a US district court judge, said on Tuesday that work will temporarily stop between North Dakota’s state highway 1806 and 20 miles east of Lake Oahe, but will continue west of the highway because he believes the US army corps of engineers lacks jurisdiction on private land.

• Judge grants partial stop on North Dakota pipeline work

  An American Indian tribe succeeded Tuesday in getting a federal judge to temporarily stop construction on some, but not all, of a $3.8 billion four-state oil pipeline, but its broader request still hangs in the balance.

  U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said Tuesday that work will temporarily stop between North Dakota’s State Highway 1806 and 20 miles east of Lake Oahe, but will continue west of the highway because he believes the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lacks jurisdiction on private land.

  He also said he will rule by the end of Friday on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s challenge of federal regulators’ decision to grant permits to the Dallas, Texas-based operators of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which will cross North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois.

• Finnish nuclear company fired whistleblower over safety concerns

  The Fennovoima nuclear firm’s parent company, Voimaosakeyhtiö SF (VSF), fired one of its executives because he expressed safety concerns to the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK). VSF admitted this to Yle after initially denying it.

Finance

• Inside an International Court of Money and Mystery

  A Dubai real estate mogul had a prison sentence disappear. Manufacturing executives in El Salvador dodged having to clean up a case of dangerous lead contamination. Two global financiers embezzled $300 million from an Indonesian bank but got off light.

  Welcome to the world of international arbitration court. BuzzFeed reporter Chris Hamby spent 18 months penetrating the court and tracing its influence.

• NYT: Corbyn Has Marginalized Labour With His Popular Positions

  The story focused on Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn—or “its left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn,” in the Times‘ formulation. The point of the piece is to blame Corbyn for the fact that “the Labour Party is in shambles: Its leader and its members of Parliament are in a virtual civil war, and it is deeply unpopular with the broader electorate.”

  Labour’s unpopularity is easy to exaggerate; its projected national share of the vote in the last local elections, held in May 2016, was 31 percent, a percentage point ahead of the Conservatives; this is considered unpromising, as opposition parties that are soon to become governing parties generally do better than that, but it’s an improvement over May 2015 (four months before Corbyn assumed leadership), when Labour trailed by 6 percentage points.

• At WaPo, You Can Say Anything to Support TPP–or to Smear Sanders

  In pushing trade agreements, it is fair to say anything, even if it has no relationship to the truth. Therefore it is not surprising to see Fareed Zakaria (Washington Post, 9/1/16) pushing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) by claiming that it will boost growth, and attacking Bernie Sanders for opposing “trade policies that have lifted hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people out of poverty.”

  First, the impact on growth will be trivial. According to the International Trade Commission’s assessment, the TPP will boost the annual growth rate over the next 15 years by less than 0.02 percentage points. And this projection does not take account of the negative impact of the protectionist measures in the TPP, such as stronger and longer copyright and patent protection. These measures have the same impact on the protected items as tariffs of several thousand percent.

  [...]

  Actually, in standard trade theory, most of the benefits from lowering tariffs accrue to the countries that lower them. In trade theory, it benefits their consumers. Overall, trade balances are not affected. This is why the very pro-TPP Peterson Institute shows that by far the largest gains to TPP accrue to Vietnam: It lowers its tariffs the most under the terms of the deal.

  In terms of the attack on Bernie Sanders for opposing the world’s poor, Zakaria is again confused. In the standard trade story, capital is supposed to flow from rich countries like the United States to poor countries in the developing world. That would mean rich countries run trade surpluses, and poor countries run trade deficits. This allows poor countries to sustain consumption levels even as they build up their capital stock.

• Made in China G20 and its Geoeconomic Significance

  Yet now geoeconomics has reached an extremely worrying zone of turbulence. Since the end of the Cold War in 1989 – and of “history” itself, according to academic simpletons – it’s never bee so dire. Greed led globalization to be “defeated”by inequality. In a nutshell, low inflation – due to global competition – led to the proverbial “expansionary” monetary policies, which inflated housing, education and health care, squeezing the middle class and allowing unlimited wealth flowing to a 1 percent minority of asset owners.

  Yet even in de-acceleration, China was responsible for more than 25 percent of global economic growth in 2015. It remains the key global turbine – while at the same time carrying the self-attributed burden of being the representative of the Global South in global economic governance.

• America and the Plague of ‘Moral Idiocy’

  When it comes to applying rules of international law and ethics, the U.S. government and its mainstream media operate with stunning hypocrisy, what might be called “moral idiocy,” says Lawrence Davidson.

• Tencent Is Now the Most Valuable Company in Asia

  The web firm Tencent tcehy has become the most valuable company in Asia, and one of the top 10 in the world by market capitalization.

  It wasn’t so long ago that Tencent was racing neck-and-neck with Samsung — their share prices were both up by a third on the year — to overtake state-owned China Mobile and steal the title of the most valuable company in Asia.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Clinton Foundation plans to close overseas fundraising arms

  The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation will shut down its fundraising affiliates in Sweden and the United Kingdom if Hillary Clinton wins the U.S. presidency in November, a spokesman for the global charity said this week.

  The foundation has in recent weeks begun announcing planned new donor restrictions to allay criticism that wealthy supporters might be expecting special treatment from the U.S. government in return.

  Both the William J. Clinton Foundation UK in London and the Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse in Stockholm will close if Clinton becomes president because of their acceptance of foreign funding, Brian Cookstra, a spokesman for the Clinton Foundation in New York, said in one of a series of emails responding to questions from Reuters.

• The Unrelenting Pundit-Led Effort to Delegitimize All Negative Reporting About Hillary Clinton

  In his New York Times column yesterday, Paul Krugman did something that he made clear he regarded as quite brave: He defended the Democratic Party presidential nominee and likely next U.S. president from journalistic investigations. Complaining about media bias, Krugman claimed that journalists are driven by “the presumption that anything Hillary Clinton does must be corrupt, most spectacularly illustrated by the increasingly bizarre coverage of the Clinton Foundation.” While generously acknowledging that it was legitimate to take a look at the billions of dollars raised by the Clintons as Hillary pursued increasing levels of political power — vast sums often received from the very parties most vested in her decisions as a public official — it is now “very clear,” he proclaimed, that there was absolutely nothing improper about any of what she or her husband did.

  Krugman’s column, chiding the media for its unfairly negative coverage of his beloved candidate, was, predictably, a big hit among Democrats — not just because of their agreement with its content but because of what they regarded as the remarkable courage required to publicly defend someone as marginalized and besieged as the former first lady, two-term New York senator, secretary of state, and current establishment-backed multimillionaire presidential front-runner. Krugman — in a tweet proclamation that has now been re-tweeted more than 10,000 times — heralded himself this way: “I was reluctant to write today’s column because I knew journos would hate it. But it felt like a moral duty.”

  [...]

  That American journalists have dispensed with muted tones and fake neutrality when reporting on Trump is a positive development. He and his rhetoric pose genuine threats, and the U.S. media would be irresponsible if it failed to make that clear. But aggressive investigative journalism against Trump is not enough for Democratic partisans whose voice is dominant in U.S. media discourse. They also want a cessation of any news coverage that reflects negatively on Hillary Clinton. Most, of course, won’t say this explicitly (though some do), but — as the wildly adored Krugman column from yesterday reflects — they will just reflexively dismiss any such coverage as illegitimate and invalid.

  It should be the opposite of surprising, or revealing, that pundits loyally devoted to a particular candidate dislike all reporting that reflects negatively on that candidate. There is probably no more die-hard Clinton loyalist in the U.S. media than Paul Krugman. He has used his column for years to defend her and attack any of her critics. Indeed, in 2008, he was the first to observe that — in his words — “the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality,” comparing the adulation Clinton’s 2008 primary opponent was receiving to the swooning over George W. Bush’s flight suit. He spent the 2016 primary maligning Sanders supporters as unstable, unserious losers (the straight, white, male columnist also regularly referred to them — including female and LGBT Sanders supporters — as “bros”). And now he’s assigned himself the role as Arbiter of Proper Journalism, and — along with virtually all other Clinton-supporting pundits and journalists — has oh-so-surprisingly ruled that all journalism that reflects poorly on Hillary Clinton is unsubstantiated, biased, and deceitful.

• Despite Bernie Sanders’s Urging, Die-Hards Still Resist Hillary Clinton

  Outside Senator Bernie Sanders’s first general-election rally for Hillary Clinton on Monday, a small group of Clinton supporters and former Sanders backers glared at one another.

  [...]

  “Never Hillary!” the former Sanders supporters yelled back, as some declared they would vote for Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential nominee.

• Voters Want Third Party Candidates On Debate Stage

  Kent Redfield, a UIS Professor Emeritus of Political Science, said, “Most people really don’t know who they are or what they stand for. But again, we’ve never had an election where you’ve had the two main party candidates with such high unfavorables. It could be that [the third party] will retain strength and then, if they’re getting combined 15% of the vote, then that could tip the balance in a very close state.”

  So far, neither Johnson nor Stein have reached the necessary 15% across the five national polls to be invited to the debate stage, but it’s clear that many Americans would like to see any serious third-party candidates on that stage with Clinton and Trump this fall.

• Poll: Nine weeks out, a near even race

  Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton start the race to November 8 on essentially even ground, with Trump edging Clinton by a scant two points among likely voters, and the contest sparking sharp divisions along demographic lines in a new CNN/ORC Poll.
  Trump tops Clinton 45% to 43% in the new survey, with Libertarian Gary Johnson standing at 7% among likely voters in this poll and the Green Party’s Jill Stein at just 2%.

• It is undemocratic to exclude me and Gary Johnson from presidential debates

  Presidential debates should be an opportunity for the American people to decide the direction of our nation. But since 1987, everything about the debates has been predetermined by the party bosses who run Washington.

  Consider that 76% of Americans want the presidential debates to include Gary Johnson and me. Yet the phony Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) is trying to rob voters of the open debates they want.

  The CPD is actually a private corporation that refuses to disclose its current funders or sponsors. The Democratic and Republican National Committees both select its leaders. The CPD literally excludes the 50% of voters who reject their parties.

  This two-party cartel posing as a public service “commission” admitted in a 1987 press conference that independent candidates and alternative political parties should be excluded from the debates, and they create artificial barriers to exclude them.

• Why Aren’t Third Parties Allowed to Debate?

  Would you eat at a restaurant that only offered two unpalatable menu options —especially when more tasty choices were available? Watching a presidential debate with only Clinton and Trump is like having to choose between liver and tripe. And why is this, especially when there are at least two other, more appealing, candidates to choose from?

  Because the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a private corporation run by establishment Democrats and Republicans, doesn’t want you to know you might have better choices. It’s incredibly ironic that their website states they want to “provide the best possible information to viewers and listeners.” That could not be further from the truth.

  The CPD is like one of those exclusive clubs where you have to know somebody influential to get in. But this is America — the land where we were raised to believe anyone could become president. Unfortunately, this is no longer true. Because campaigns are not publicly financed, a candidate needs millions of dollars to buy advertising to build familiarity — or the media needs to be unbiased enough to give equal coverage to all the candidates, which it doesn’t.

  Only 50% of Americans identify as being either Democrat or Republican, and only 9% of these voted in the primaries. A huge segment of the population does not identify with either party, so why can’t we hear about what third parties have to offer? Because the CPD wants you to vote for one of their pre-chosen candidates.

• Diddy: Black voters ‘shortchanged’ by Obama presidency

  Rapper-turned-mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs said he thinks that black voters “got a little bit shortchanged” by Barack Obama’s presidency, and urged the black community to “hold our vote” as a way to spur meaningful action by political leaders.
  “The heat has to be turned up so much that as a community, we’ve got to hold our vote,” Diddy told the Rev. Al Sharpton on MSNBC Sunday. “Don’t pacify yourself; really revolutionize the game. Make them come for our vote. It’s a whole different strategy, but I think we need to hold our vote because I don’t believe any of them.”

  The entertainment icon explained that while he thinks that Obama has done “an excellent job” as president, he also feels that the first black presidency didn’t fully deliver on its promise.

• Young Blacks Voice Skepticism on Hillary Clinton, Worrying Democrats

  When a handful of liberal advocacy organizations convened a series of focus groups with young black voters last month, the assessments of Donald J. Trump were predictably unsparing.

  But when the participants were asked about Hillary Clinton, their appraisals were just as blunt and nearly as biting.

  “What am I supposed to do if I don’t like him and I don’t trust her?” a millennial black woman in Ohio asked. “Choose between being stabbed and being shot? No way!”

  “She was part of the whole problem that started sending blacks to jail,” a young black man, also from Ohio, observed about Mrs. Clinton.

• EmailGate and the Mystery of the Missing GAMMA

  Last week’s Federal Bureau of Investigation release of materials relating to their investigation of Hillary Clinton has reignited the political firestorm surrounding EmailGate. How the Democratic nominee mishandled her emails while she was secretary of state is again front-page news, which is bad news for Hillary. Particularly because the FBI’s data dump demonstrates clearly that Clinton is either dumb or dishonest—and perhaps both.

• Observer: Sidney Blumenthal ‘Was Reading Above-Top-Secret NSA Reports Hours After They Appeared’

  [Sidney] Blumenthal’s email read exactly like classified NSA reporting, as anybody acquainted with our SIGINT would immediately recognize. As one veteran agency official told me back in January, Blumenthal’s email was NSA information with “at least 90 percent confidence.”

Censorship/Free Speech

• Censorship is not the solution

  I was watching a comedy program on TV the other night, and I was shocked at how often they made fun of people who take their faith seriously (especially Christians). I think such programs should be banned, don’t you?

• Awards against media in Kenya akin to censorship

  The awarding of Sh26 million in damages against The Standard and ordering the defendants to publish an apology to the plaintiff and Sh20 million against the Daily Nation have significant implications on media freedoms in the country.

• Roger Ailes Hires Peter Thiel’s Favorite Lawyer To Threaten NY Mag For Its Stories About Him

  Remember how lots of people (including plenty of you right here) were saying that it was no big deal that Gawker was shut down due to a campaign financed by Peter Thiel? Remember how people said it wouldn’t mean any harm for anyone else as long as they “don’t publish someone’s sex tape?” Remember how we pointed out that Thiel’s funding campaign included plenty of other lawsuits that had nothing to do with sex tapes? Yeah, about that. It appears that Thiel’s favorite lawyer, Charles Harder, who he apparently helped set up in his own law firm with ongoing support for a variety of cases to take down Gawker, has now become the go-to lawyer for another famous hater of media: Donald Trump and his friends. Trump, of course, has repeatedly publicly stated that he has sued a reporter just to cost him money. So, Trump and Harder seem perfect together.

  Last week, Harder, representing Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, sued The Daily Mail and a random blogger in Maryland, claiming defamation. The inclusion of the blogger was weird, but many are saying it was to get the specific jurisdiction they wanted, in Maryland (where anti-SLAPP laws can’t be used).

• Sweatshop HD is the latest victim in Apple’s war on serious games

  According to UK developer Littleloud, Sweatshop HD is an iPad game that “challenged people to think about the origin of the clothes we buy”.

  But it has now been removed from Apple’s online marketplace. Why? Well, because the App Store gatekeeper was “uncomfortable selling a game based around the theme of running a sweatshop”.

• The Global State of Internet Censorship [Infographic]

• Norwegian politicians want to censor the Internet, because Rule 34 (“because all the pornography”)

  Norwegian politicians from the Christian People’s Party are shocked that there is porn on the Internet, and want it eliminated – censored off all the Internet pipes as though the pornography doesn’t exist. This highlights how offline-born politicians still have both feet firmly in the clouds – such censorship is not just a violation of all modern principles, but is also completely ineffective. Regardless, seeing the UK went along with this silly idea, the Christian People’s Party in Norway, which holds a balance-of-power position in Norwegian parliament, are pushing the concept.

• Fears of Censorship Overshadow US-ASEAN Laos Meeting

  The three-day U.S.-ASEAN Summit in Vientiane, Laos, starts today, and with U.S. President Barack Obama becoming the first U.S. president to visit the country, foreign media have been parachuted into Laos to cover the landmark event.

  But foreign journalists “have been told that their articles and broadcasts will have to be approved by a censor before publication,” Amnesty International reports, and “escorts” may be appointed to accompany reporters during their stay in Laos.

  The human rights organization also says that journalists have said they “may not be allowed to raise questions on certain human rights issues by the authorities.”

• YouTubers are accusing the site of rampant ‘censorship’

• Youtube’s Censorship of Prolific Producers Will Backfire

• Influencers weigh in on YouTube’s ‘censorship’ controversy

• YouTube Just Started A War With Its Vloggers

• Can YouTube make it big on the small screen?

• A Day in the Life: BBC Worldwide’s YouTube Channel Manager Thomas Martin

• YouTube Makes Changes To Video Monetization

• Use YouTube to Make Money

• Censorship and sensibility in Indian literature

Privacy/Surveillance

• Location Privacy: The Purview of the Rich and Indigent

  I’d just finished parking my car in the covered garage at Reagan National Airport just across the river from Washington, D.C. when I noticed a dark green minivan slowly creeping through the row behind me. The vehicle caught my attention because its driver didn’t appear to be looking for an open spot. What’s more, the van had what looked like two cameras perched atop its roof — one of each side, both pointed down and slightly off to the side.

  I had a few hours before my flight boarded, so I delayed my walk to the terminal and cut through several rows of cars to snag a video of the guy moving haltingly through another line of cars. I approached the driver and asked what he was doing. He smiled and tilted the lid on his bolted-down laptop so that I could see the pictures he was taking with the mounted cameras: He was photographing every license plate in the garage (for the record, his plate was a Virginia tag number 36-646L).

• Edward Snowden’s Guardian Angels

  From a hotel in Hong Kong, Edward Snowden shocked the world in 2013 by disclosing the extent of U.S. intelligence spying. Then he vanished before fleeing to Moscow. Handelsblatt found the people who hid Snowden — refugees with nothing, and everything to lose.

• Activists to FBI: Show Us Your Warrant for Mass Hack of TorMail Users

  Mass hacking is now one of the FBI’s established tactics for fighting crime on the dark web. In February 2015, the agency hit at least 4,000 computers all over the world in an attempt to identify visitors of a child pornography site.

  But questions remain about another FBI operation from 2013, in which the agency may have hacked users of a dark web email service called TorMail even if they weren’t suspects of a crime. Now, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is trying to unseal the court docket sheet containing the search warrant used to deploy malware against users of the service. If the ACLU were then to get access to the warrant itself, it may reveal the true scale of the FBI’s controversial hacking campaign.

• FBI’s Fancy Bear Cyber Structure

  So we already know that the FBI’s legally mandated reports to Congress on NSL numbers are bogus. Now we learn that FBI has devolved its 702 work to field offices which has led to the discontinuation of one of the key oversight mechanisms on their counting process: an outside check.

• New NSA documents detail how the spy agency used the Iraq war to build its global surveillance system

  Newly released internal NSA documents reveal how the US spy agency used the Iraq war to develop its global surveillance infrastructure, which was later brought to light by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The documents, called WARgrams, also contain messages sent to a vast body of NSA employees between 2003 and 2004 by the then NSA director Michael Hayden.

  According to a report by Motherboard, the documents bring to light for the first time how the NSA asked its staff for “unprecedented degrees of cooperation”, in efforts to develop and establish its global surveillance system. The documents also reveal the agency’s rapid shift in priorities, detailing its move from providing intelligence support to wartime coalition forces to assuming the role of a “pervasive” and “intelligent-driven” leading component in the global war on terrorism.

  Around 70 WARgrams were sent out, the first of which, sent out in the days or weeks leading up to the start of the war in March 2003, characterised Operation Iraqi Freedom as “an intense attack of relatively short duration intended to overwhelm the Iraqi ability to respond.” In Hayden’s own words, the WARgrams were “designed to keep us all ‘in the loop’ with the latest developments during the campaign.”

• Every Move You Make

  The Delta IV Heavy, introduced in 2004, is the most powerful rocket in American history, and this was only the ninth time it had launched. Even more exclusive, however, was its top-secret cargo: Inside its nearly seven-story-high nose cone was an Advanced Orion, the world’s largest satellite. About eight hours after launch, when the most advanced spy craft ever built went into geosynchronous orbit, it unfurled its gigantic mesh antenna, larger than a football field, and began eavesdropping on the Earth below.

• WARgrams released: How NSA used Iraq War as springboard for global intel gathering

  Newly published documents from the beginning of the Iraq invasion reveal how the NSA used the “war on terror” to develop its global intelligence capabilities and strengthen the surveillance network exposed by Edward Snowden.

  The information was revealed in a series of documents dating back to 2003-2004, referred to as WARgrams. This was essentially a series of newsletter-style communiqués distributed to a vast number of NSA employees by the agency’s former director, Michael Hayden. These short messages, which number close to 70, contain colorful (when not redacted) descriptions of the NSA’s plans to insert itself into the Iraq war effort. The revelation was made by VICE’s Motherboard, which obtained the documents through an FOI request from back in 2008.

• NSA used Iraq war to develop surveillance capability, documents show

  As the controversial Investigatory Powers Bill inches closer to becoming law, NSA documents reveal that the agency used the Iraq war to develop and expand its surveillance infrastructure

• New Docs Show How the NSA Used the Iraq War to Build its Surveillance Apparatus

  Newly released internal NSA missives from the early days of the Iraq war show how quickly the agency’s priorities shifted from providing wartime intelligence to coalition troops to being a “pervasive” part of the “intelligence-driven” global war on terror.

  The documents, which have surfaced for the first time, outline how the NSA asked its employees for “unprecedented degrees of cooperation” to set up the global surveillance infrastructure revealed by Edward Snowden with the stated aim of combating terrorism worldwide.

  The documents, called WARgrams, were newsletter-style messages sent in 2003 and 2004 by then-NSA Director Michael Hayden to what seems to be a large contingent of NSA employees. (Motherboard has reached out to the NSA to learn more about who, exactly, received the WARgrams.)

  The first WARgram pitched Operation Iraqi Freedom as “an intense attack of relatively short duration intended to overwhelm the Iraqi ability to respond.” It was sent sometime in the days or weeks leading up to the March 20, 2003 start of the war. Hayden wrote WARgrams were “designed to keep us all ‘in the loop’ with the latest developments during the campaign.”

• Former Intelligence Official Leaks Details Of NSA’s Hack Of French Presidential Network

  The latest leak about the NSA’s overseas spying transgressions took the unlikely form of a little-noticed YouTube video — one that covered mostly-wonkish subject matter. The details of the NSA’s malware attack on the French “White House” were revealed during an interview with Bernard Barbier, the former head of the French Intelligence Service, by a local engineering school. The video, of course, has since been removed, but not before French paper Le Monde picked up on the content of the interview.

  Matt Suiche parses it all out — an inadvertent confirmation of a Snowden document leaked in 2013 that contained an itinerary item about a discussion between French and US intelligence officials concerning a (at that time “alleged”) “May 2012 cyber attack on the French Presidential network.”

• German intelligence accused of ‘serious legal violations’ over surveillance

  The surveillance apparatus used by German intelligence to collect and store masses of communications and internet data may have taken a hit after a classified document that accused the spies of “serious legal violations” leaked online.

  The 60-page analysis, conducted by Andrea Voßhoff, the German federal data protection commissioner, slammed how the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) stores data on citizens and demanded for key databases to be deleted with immediate effect.

  The report was made in July 2015 after a visit to Bad Aibling in southern Germany, which is jointly managed by the US National Security Agency (NSA). The audit was conducted in light of the Edward Snowden revelations in 2013 that exposed how major agencies such as the FBI, NSA and UK’s GCHQ use sophisticated tools to collect data in bulk.

• Universal credit poses a major security risk, spies tell No 10 [Ed: GCHQ grossly intervening in politics as well]

  The universal credit welfare programme was sent back to the drawing board because spies warned that it was insecure and could lead to millions of people being hacked, a report reveals.

  Experts working for GCHQ, the government’s listening agency, contacted Downing Street in alarm after being “fobbed off” by the Department for Work and Pensions over security flaws in the benefits programme.

  As a result plans to launch the service next year were abandoned. Today only about 300,000 people are receiving benefit payments through universal credit and the system will not be fully operational until 2022 at the earliest.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Court To Cops: Residing In A State Where Marijuana Is Legal Does Not Automatically Make A Motorist ‘Suspicious’

  Colorado legislators legalized recreational marijuana use and now law enforcement agencies in bordering states are camping out on highways hoping for easy busts. All roads in and out of the state are now “drug corridors.” This has led to suspicionless stops and seizures by police officers — predicated on nothing more than a vehicle being on a strip of highway leading to or from a supposed “source” state.

  Not every bust goes as easily as officers might have hoped. Nebraska deputies tried to make drug conspiracy charges stick to a pair of Minnesotans arrested while on their way to Colorado with more than $60,000 in cash. The conviction didn’t stick because it isn’t against the law to conspire to perform an act that is legal in another state. It’s illegal to buy or sell marijuana in both Minnesota and Nebraska, but not in Colorado, where the two were headed. The charges went away but the $60,000 in cash is likely going to remain in Nebraska law enforcement’s possession.

  Another traffic stop in another Midwestern state has been ruled unconstitutional, partially because Kansas law enforcement officers believed the driver being a resident of marijuana-friendly Colorado was pretty much all the reasonable suspicion they’d need to perform a search.

  The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals — in stripping away the immunity granted to two Kansas Highway Patrol officers by the lower court — points out the many flaws in the officers’ reasoning. [PDF link]

  Peter Vasquez was pulled over because his temporary tag was unreadable. Once the temporary tag had been verified as legitimate, he should have been free to go. Instead, it was merely the start of a fishing expedition by the officers, who hoped to find the Colorado resident in possession of an illegal substance.

• Indians Staged One of the Largest Strikes in History, But No One on U.S. Cable News Covered It

  Ten Indian trade unions staged one of the largest strikes in human history on Friday, with tens of millions of public sector workers participating in a shutdown of parts of the Indian economy to protest Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic plans.

  But if you’re an American relying on cable news, it would be hard to know it ever happened.

  Not a single American cable news network ran a segment focused on India’s massive strike, even on Labor Day, the U.S.’s annual holiday dedicated to workers.

  The strike came after Modi began a push for increased foreign investment and privatization of some state-run industries. Unions fear these policies will undermine both wages and employment.

• Jim Comey Impugns Pot Smokers Again

  I get that this cute labeling of pot smokers as lacking integrity is part of his script (he used almost the same lines in both speeches), perhaps to avoid thinking about what it means that our nation can’t best fight the alleged biggest threat to it because of outdated laws. But either he has given no thought about the words that are falling out of his mouth (indeed, he also seems to have no understanding of the the words “adult” and “mature” mean, which are other words he tends to wield in profoundly troublesome fashion), or the nation’s top cop really can’t distinguish between law — and that, not even in all states anymore — and ethics.

• How Snowden escaped

  Earlier that day, that “famous” 29-year-old walked out of the five-star luxury Hotel Mira in Kowloon and sparked an intensive global manhunt not seen since the search for al-Qaeda’s Osama Bin Laden after the Sept. 11, 2001, bombings.

  Edward Snowden, a former U.S. intelligence contractor, became the most wanted fugitive in the world after leaking a cache of classified documents to the media detailing extensive cyber spying networks by the U.S. government on its own citizens and governments around the world.

  To escape the long arm of American justice, the man responsible for the largest national security breach in U.S. history retained a Canadian lawyer in Hong Kong who hatched a plan that included a visit to the UN sub-office where the North Carolina native applied for refugee status to avoid extradition to the U.S.

• White House Report Concludes That Bite-Mark Analysis Is Junk Science

  The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has concluded that forensic bite-mark evidence is not scientifically valid and is unlikely ever to be validated, according to a draft report obtained by The Intercept. The report, titled “Forensic Science in Criminal Courts: Ensuring Scientific Validity of Feature-Comparison Methods,” is marked as a “predecisional” draft created August 26 that is not to be quoted or distributed, though the title page suggests the report will be made public sometime this month.

  The report reviews a handful of common forensic practices, so called feature-comparison disciplines, or pattern-matching practices — bite-mark analysis, fingerprint and firearm analysis, shoe tread analysis, and DNA mixture analysis — each of which involves an “expert” looking at a piece of evidence and eyeballing whether it matches a particular image, person, or object. The report discusses whether each practice has been scientifically validated, what it would take to do so, and how each practice should be used in the courtroom — if at all.

• Air China magazine warns London visitors to avoid ethnic minority areas

  Even for China, where companies have struggled with race issues in their marketing previously, the latest inflight magazine from the country’s flagship airline will likely come as a shocker.

  Air China’s Wings of China carries a long feature on visiting London, with almost a third of the magazine dedicated to tourist attractions in Britain’s capital and other famous towns such as Oxford. The main article, titled “London the city of ‘hat tricks’,” covers Brits’ apparent fondness for all kinds of hats.

  Then, after a section on transport options and lifestyle and cultural activities in London, Wings of China offers some “Tips from Air China.”

• Albuquerque Police Seize Vehicle From Owner Whose Son Drove It While Drunk; Want $4,000 To Give It Back

  Last spring, New Mexico’s governor signed a bill into law that would prevent law enforcement from seizing people’s assets without securing a criminal conviction. This was likely prompted by the New York Times’ publication of footage from Las Cruces asset forfeiture seminar in which the speaker basically said asset forfeiture is used by law enforcement to “shop” for things they want.

  Several months later, the city of Albuquerque was sued by state legislators because its police refused to stop seizing assets — mainly vehicles — without obtaining convictions. The city claimed the new law only applied to state police, and anyway, it was only performing a valuable community service by taking cars away from members of the community.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• [Older] EU’s net neutrality guidelines get published

  The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (Berec) – which represents all the EU’s communications regulators – has finally published guidelines clarifying how telecom companies should treat the data they handle, months after a law concerning the matter was published.

  In the past, apps and other online services could, in theory, pay more to ensure their products ran smoothly. That appealed to network providers, who saw it as a way to boost profits.

  But Berec says only a limited number of services will be able to ask for special treatment, and then only so long as it is not to the detriment of others.

  The new rules also set out consumers’ right to be free to access and distribute information and content, run applications and use services of their choice, so long as they are not illegal.

  The publication has been welcomed by digital rights experts.

• Users Say Comcast Broadband Usage Meters Don’t Work, May Result in Hundreds Of Dollars Of Errant Charges

  We’ve noted for years that usage caps on fixed line broadband connections are little more than a major, unnecessary price hike on uncompetitive markets. But while caps certainly are little more than a cash grab, there’s another less talked about problem at play: nobody is making sure ISP usage meters are accurate. That has resulted in a number of instances where an ISP will bill users for consumption when the power is off, and even some instances where ISPs confused MAC addresses and billed the wrong customer for additional monthly consumption.

Intellectual Monopolies

• IP Offices Focus On Educating Younger Population About IP Protection [Ed: Serial abuser of human rights "WIPO is also developing an Education Took Kit for teachers of children aged 5 to 18." Indoctrination of younger populations for IP protectionism and for large corporations.]

  Intellectual property rights awareness campaigns are increasingly targeting the younger population, as early as primary school, according to several country presentations at the World Intellectual Property Organization enforcement committee this week. WIPO is also developing an Education Took Kit for teachers of children aged 5 to 18. However for some countries, this education should encompass a broader view on IP than only enforcing rights.

• Take Two Interactive Wins Two Publicity Rights Lawsuits Against Lindsay Lohan And Karen Gravano

  Hopefully you will recall that Take Two Interactive had been facing down two lawsuits brought by Lindsay Lohan and Karen Gravano over character depictions in the company’s opus, Grand Theft Auto V. Both filed suit over publicity rights and likeness concerns in New York. Lohan claimed that a character in the game that evaded paparazzi after having sex in public and made some oblique references to similar-sounding movies that Lohan had acted in, along with a female character on the game’s cover art, were both ripping off her personage. Gravano, meanwhile, claimed that a different character, one which made references to starring in a reality show about mobster wives and evading mob retribution, was ripping off her personage. While both suits failed to address the fictional differences in the characters, which were both composite characters parodying their celebrity archetypes, Take Two attempted to defend itself with those facts and tried to get the case dismissed. Strangely, the court at the time allowed the case to move forward…

• A Principle Of Balance: Top Official Explains India’s IP Policy

  Adopted in May, the first Indian intellectual property policy brought some concerns that the focus on IP rights might dampen India’s willingness to use the IP flexibilities to safeguard national policy space. It was also perceived by some as giving in to pressure from the foreign pharmaceutical industry for India to strengthen patent protection. However, a high level Indian official in an interview this week said the policy caters to Indian development needs and India is aware of its pioneering role in certain sectors like access to medicines.Rajiv Aggarwal, Joint Secretary at the Indian Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion Ministry of Commerce & Industry sat down with Intellectual Property Watch’s Catherine Saez to describe how India’s IP policy came into being, to what aim, what it is expected to change in the Indian IP landscape, and how Indian is standing fast to its principle of balance.

• Trademarks

  • Donut maker gored by University of Texas over a fan favourite pastry

    Donut Taco Palace in Austin, Texas, is famous for their ‘Longhorns donuts’. These donuts are modelled after the Hook ‘em Horns hand gesture which is made in support of the University of Texas’ Longhorns American football team. These donuts of allegiance satisfied the sweet tooth of many Longhorns fans until last month, when the University of Texas became aware of the situation. They sent a cease and desist letter to the owner of the shop, Angel Feng, citing trademark infringement.

  • Do Apple Trademarks Reveal What It’s About To Launch?

    If you’re a gadget watcher or an Apple fanatic, then you already know that tomorrow is Apple’s big fall event when it announces new hardware products. Unlike basically every other tech blog in the world, we tend not to cover the announcements (or all of the rumors leading up to those announcements). Every so often something interesting will come out of them and we’ll write up that, but for the most part, we recognize that other sites are going to cover the basic beats and we’re not the kind of publication that wants to spend our time writing up promotional copy for tech companies. But, sometimes there’s some overlap in our usual coverage and these kinds of events. Brian Conroy, a trademark lawyer in Ireland who has a fun blog of trademark-related issues realized that Apple may have leaked some details via its trademark applications.

• Copyrights

  • Bethesda Does Connecting With Fans Right

    We’ve spent some time and energy in these pages poking at Bethesda and its parent company, Zenimax, over each’s overtly ridiculous stances on protecting what it views as its intellectual property in the past. But even a bad actor in the IP arena can get things right in other ways and Bethesda has shown itself to be fairly good in the past in the area of connecting with its fans. This is one of the more underappreciated aspects involved in digital business models, in which the digital realms where we operate open up content producers to direct interaction with their customers. Done right, this will ingratiate a business with its community, fostering a loyalty it might otherwise not have. Done really right, it gets a company all of that plus a PR bonus that can only come from these organic interactions.

  • Warner Bros. Issuing Takedowns For Its Own Site Is No Laughing Matter

    But here’s why this isn’t really a laughing matter: many of the legacy industry players, including Warner Bros. and the MPAA who represent WB, have been pushing very heavily for a revamp of the DMCA that would include a “notice and staydown” provision — such that once a copyright holder representative sent a notice claiming a work was infringing, platforms would basically be required to block that content from ever appearing again. In response, many of us have pointed out just how bad companies like Warner Bros. are at issuing takedowns, and we’re told that such mistakes are rare. But they’re not rare. We see them all the time. And if notice and staydown were in place, it could create all sorts of problems.

    Notice, too, that it wasn’t just WB’s own site that was the target of this bogus takedown. Just two slots above it are the official Amazon sales link for the movie. Elsewhere in the list were official IMDB pages as well. Yes, Google is actually better than most at going through these notices and rejecting ridiculous requests like this, but most other companies are not. If you send a notice, it’s treated as accurate, and down go those sites. Some may consider that fair game when it’s something as ridiculous as WB taking down its own sites, but it’s not so funny when it’s someone else’s work — like the time Fox sent DMCA notices taking down Cory Doctorow’s book, Homeland, just because it had the same title as a TV show.

    Meanwhile, we keep hearing from companies like Warner Bros. about how Google is really to blame, and that it’s “obvious” when there’s infringing content that should be taken down. If it’s so “obvious” why can’t WB gets its act together and not take down its own sites? Perhaps it isn’t so obvious after all and perhaps we shouldn’t make copyright policy based on the bogus claims of companies so clueless that they’re issuing DMCA takedowns on their own websites or other official channels?