09.05.14
Posted in News Roundup at 11:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Once you’ve got your Linux Mint image downloaded (or other distro if you fancy using a different one), you’ll need to burn it to a spare DVD or temporarily create a bootable USB stick with it. We recommend doing the latter by using the UNetbootin software and a spare USB stick that’s at least 2GB in size. Be sure to back up any files on the USB stick before using the software though, as it will delete them otherwise.
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There is an ever-growing demand for Linux professionals, and becoming a sysadmin can be a challenging, interesting and rewarding career path. We have curated a few resources that can help you take your Linux career to the next level – regardless of your current experience level.
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It wasn’t a big surprise when Linton announced her intention to sell the site. For a while it had been obvious she wasn’t putting the time into it she once had. Since the site had started in 2004, it had been constantly maintained, with links to other sites being posted daily, if not more often. Recently, it had lost that dependability. Days, sometimes weeks, would go by without the site being updated.
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Now, the newbie does not need to create a shopping list with thousands of entries. Many of the Debian packages are libraries shared by multiple applications so start with the major applications the newbie needs: a web browser or two, an office suite or two, some graphics applications for producing drawings or editing images, some multimedia software, various utilities like file-manager, search engine (yes you can have powerful tools on your desktop), database, etc. Make a short list of a few dozen or less packages that give the newbie what he/she wants. Then consider the desktop itself. The newbie can have none at all (strange but true), simple iconified desktops, brave new world shortcut-driven searchable-everything desktops and even some combinations like several different desktops running in virtual machines… Here the possibilities are numerous but there should be some combination that suites the user. If the user like most runs a few applications routinely and has a small total number of applications ever used, a rather finite desktop like XFCE should work. It’s a lot like XP with a task bar (or not), actual menus and such. If the user is some kind of genius with a huge number of applications, too many to hide behind icons, a search-engine base might be the way to go. You just start typing the name/description of an application and you find it just like URI’s autocompletion in your browser. Then choose KDE or GNOME.
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They are really happy with the OS as almost no downtime for them.
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Spotting Ubuntu in the wild should be promoted to a sport and records must be set for the most interesting places where the distro has been seen. It looks like NBC and the Today Show have used Ubuntu to illustrate the nefarious practices of the hacker that release some nude pictures of various celebrities.
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Desktop
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Chromebooks are becoming quite popular among the techie as well as non-techie crowd. Even Microsoft has started to get worried about Chromebooks and is pushing hardware partners to do a Netbook 2.0 to combat Chromebooks.
Linus likes Chromebooks quite a lot – this is one device which may realise the dream of ‘Linux on desktop’. When asked about what can be done to move closer toward the ‘year of desktop Linux’ at DebConf, he said, “Technical people don’t tend to use Chromebooks but I think Chromebooks are kind of things that will make the year of the desktop more possible.”
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Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, said a few day ago that Chromebook may realise the ‘year of Linux desktop’ dream. There is no doubt that Chromebooks are fast becoming preferred choice of users; the are the best selling devices on Amazon.com.
Now Toshiba has introduced two Chromebooks which not only look great, but also pack some good hardware. The company has announced two Chromebooks, where one is an entry-level $249 Chromebook with standard HD display the other one is kind of high end with Full HD (1920 x 1080) 13.3 incg display with IPS technology.
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There are many solved problems in open source. Groupware is not one of them.
How else would you explain the number of migrations that fail on average in groupware? The Swiss canton of Solothurn is just one example among many as a result of groupware vendors who have given up and transitioned to Outlook or the web to meet their needs. Kolab does things differently. For one, Outlook will never be the client for the Linux desktop. And, the web is a good answer for a lot of things, but not all.
The city of Munich is another good case to look at; they successfully completed a Linux migration that has saved them millions of Euros. But now, the newly elected mayor and his deputy have made the news by publicly considering a migration back to Windows. To explore this further, let’s first ignore for a moment that the City Council would need to approve any change in strategy and has renewed its dedication to LiMux. Let’s also ignore the fact that the City employees do not consider it a good idea to go back to Windows.
So, what was it that prompted LiMux to be put into question in the news?
If you guessed that Office interoperatbility may have something to do with it, you would be right. As long as there are competing standards there will be incompatibility between the dominant vendor and the rest of the market. Document exchange remains a constant issue that is ultimately only solved at the political level. This particular problem is not technical and the UK has recently demonstrated that they will choose open documents as the standard format to deal with it.
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The best Chromebooks all have one thing in common: they’re small. The most popular Chromebooks have small, low-resolution 11.6-inch displays. They may offer a low price, stellar battery life, and fast performance — but sometimes you just want a bigger computer.
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Server
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Does the channel need an open source operating system designed to power the next-generation networking hardware that powers the cloud? The company behind Cumulus Linux thinks so, and so too, apparently, do Dell, VMware (VMW) and other partners who have endorsed Cumulus Linux through major reseller and distribution agreements recently.
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Virtualization firm Parallels Inc. is hoping to break into the world of containers with its automation, security and management software.
Parallels told The Register that its automation and management software Virtuozzo could be useful in making containers better behave.
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French oil firm Total has revealed that its supercomputer is now running on a Linux Enterprise Server operating system.
The oil giant chose the Linux Enterprise Server – provided by software company SUSE – as it was the best value for money, according to the Total’s high power computer (HPC) engineer, Diego Klahr.
The IT deployment comes as Total looks to bolster its oil production process. In 2013, with oil and gas reserves diminishing, the Exploration and Production (Total E&P) department needed to improve how it located new oil and gas reserves.
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The open source Docker container virtualization project got started in March of 2013 and has since grown to become one of the most talked about virtualization technologies in the industry.
Docker was started by Solomon Hykes, while Hykes was running a PaaS company known at the time as dotCloud. The dotCloud business has since been sold and Hykes is the CTO of Docker, Inc. which is the lead commercial sponsor behind Docker.
In some cases with open source software, there is a push from the broader community for a vendor neutral foundation to help run the project. That’s not likely to be the case for Docker.
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Kernel Space
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Of course, as you might expect, Linus left a wide range of debate and discussion in his verbal wake. Among the things that raised both cheers and jeers were items like packaging programs is difficult and time consuming, systemd, GPLv3, and a complaint about the way distros go about doing what they do. That and, of course, saying the Free Software Foundation is full of fanatics (of course, he backtracked and said that there are many good FSFers, but some were extreme).
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Systemd continues to grab headlines and today there are calls to boycott it. The Document Foundation are holding membership committee elections. Matthew Miller and Jim Whitehurst talk Fedora and Red Hat. New high-risk threats have been reported to infect Linux systems. Christine Hall says Distrowatch’s Top Ten actually contains only five distros and Softpedia.com says an old Ubuntu installer bug can still wipe your hard drive.
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After spending a while fighting with upstart, at work, I decided that systemd couldn’t be any worse and yesterday morning upgraded one of my servers to run it.
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Graphics Stack
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A few weeks back Roy posted improved re-clocking code for NVA3 GPUs. Today his latest set of patches work on memory re-clocking improvements for DDR2/DDR3 hardware. The patches also implement wait-for-vblank to remove flickering during memory re-clocking, improvements for reducing the downtime of PFIFO pauses, etc. These patches are prep work for the actual memory re-clocking code that he says will follow later.
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The X.Org Foundation is looking for one female to fund in the months ahead to do some sort of work for the open-source project.
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Wayland 1.6 is finally close to materializing and should be officially released later this month.
Pekka Paalanen of Collabora has been handling Wayland 1.6 release management in the absence of Wayland founder Kristian Høgsberg. There was a Wayland 1.6 Alpha in late August while out today is Wayland 1.6 RC1 along with a release candidate to the Weston compositor.
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Benchmarks
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In adding some extra tests besides what was shared in our large Linux review of the new AMD FX CPUs from earlier in the week, that included a fairly big comparison of Intel and AMD CPUs, here’s some more Linux test results for just the FX-8370E, FX-8370, and FX-9590 processors.
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Applications
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The MEGAsync Nemo file manager extension lets you see the sync status of your MEGA folder (using emblems) and also, it can be used to copy a file share link or upload a file outside your MEGA folder to MEGA.co.nz.
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A year after the previous release, a new Tribler version was released recently and it includes new features, bug fixes as well as work towards anonymous streaming (using a built-in Tor-like network).
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LFTP 4.5.5, a sophisticated file transfer program with a command-line interface that supports FTP, HTTP, FISH, SFTP, HTTPS, and FTPS protocols, is ready for download.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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Valve released a new Beta version of the Steam distribution platform and the developers have implemented quite a few changes, including a very interesting one related to the In-Home streaming feature.
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Borderlands 2, the sequel to the Gearbox-developed four-player role-playing shooter, is in development for Linux, Aspyr Media confirmed with Gaming On Linux.
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The dictator simulation game will launch both versions later this month on September 19 via Steam and the Mac App Store.
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Altitude, a 2D aerial combat game with planes developed and published by Nimbly Games on Steam for Linux, is now completely free.
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Feral Interactive one of our new favourite porting houses has asked the big question. Why do we game on Linux?
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It’s been a while since the last Humble Bundle collection that also had a hefty portion of Linux title, but now The Humble Weekly Bundle: Presented by Rock, Paper, Shotgun has arrived and it’s pretty interesting.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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The introduction of the new Breeze icon set in KDE let us again wonder, what aspects of an icon set actually takes what impact on the usability of it. We investigated Oxygen and Tango Icons for the LibreOffice project before, but our focus then was on checking all icons of the standard tool bar. This time we focus on different icon sets and will use 13 common actions to compare them.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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Frederic Peters has announced the release of GNOME 3.13.91, the second beta release which is a new step towards 3.14.0, scheduled to be released September 24th. This beta release updates many core applications such as: adwaita-icon-theme, Baobab, Caribou, Clutter, Clutter-gtk, Epiphany, Evince, GNOME Display Manager, glibmm, Gnome Contacts, GNOME Control Center, GNOME Desktop, GNOME Screenshot, GNOME Shell, GNOME System Monitor, grilo, GTK+, LibGWeather, Mutter, Nautilus (Files), Pango, Totem (Videos), Vala, and more.
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The second beta release to the GNOME 3.14 desktop stack due out later this month is now available.
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One of the most common expressions that you will hear in the Linux community is platform fragmentation, and it’s also one of the contra arguments that people spout when citing reasons not to get a Linux OS. I’m here to tell you why platform fragmentation is actually a good thing.
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My overall conclusion with Netrunner Rolling is that there is no better Arch platformed Linux distro with KDE as the default environment out there. It just works. It gets out of the way and it gives the end user a clean, crisp and efficient desktop right out of the gate. You don’t have to know binary to get it installed, updated, and running. You don’t have to sacrifice a goat to Cthulhu (I’ve heard that comes later?) to have a pleasing KDE experience for your desktop. I keep saying this, but it just works.
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New Releases
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Backtrack was a Linux distribution designed for digital forensics and penetration testing and it’s no longer maintained. In fact, this OS was so successful that it’s still being downloaded and used even today, despite the fact that it’s no longer maintained.
Backtrack was not the only security-oriented distribution, but the wealth of applicationS provided by the developers ensured its supremacy. It remained one of the most downloaded Linux distributions for a long time, even after it wasn’t maintained anymore.
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Screenshots
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Gentoo Family
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There are so many Linux distributions to choose from. Depending on your perspective, this can be a good or bad thing. You see, for many, using Linux is about choice — you get to choose the distro, packages and environment. There is truth to this; however, many others, including myself, often wonder if the community’s efforts are too fragmented. In other words, when talent is spread thin, progress may be slowed.
One distro which should not be discussed in this debate is Gentoo; it has been around for 12 years and is not some recently launched project. Hell, Google chose this distro as the base for Chrome OS, so it must be good; seriously, the search-giant’s operating system is pretty darn stable. Gentoo Linux has reached version 20140826 and it looks like a winner.
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gentooA new Gentoo liveDVD was released last week featuring Linux 3.15 and KDE 4.13. Jack Wallen follows Jack Germain in tests of a new “fresh and juicy” Linux. The Reg test drives Ubuntu 14.10. And finally today, Christine Hall takes a look at my old Website, Tuxmachines.org, under its new management.
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Red Hat Family
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Cisco and Red Hat on Thursday announced integrated systems designed for OpenStack cloud deployments.
The companies also said they would collaborate more on OpenStack as well as Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure and Intercloud efforts.
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Cloud computing is enjoying a growing presence in businesses today, and according to forecasts from experts such as Gartner, uptake is only set to rise in the future.
As organizations that haven’t already latched onto the trend look to do so, investing in the right infrastructure, technology and tools is essential. OpenStack, as a community project, is not yet ready for the enterprise ‘as-is’. However, like other popular open source community projects including Linux, there are companies, including Red Hat, that are making the community project into an enterprise Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering, enabling organizations to attain greater agility and scalability with the cloud, with the support lifecycle, vast partner ecosystem, and certified solutions portfolio that enterprise customers require.
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Fedora
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“If you look at Fedora over the past decade, you see sort of a decision to make it one-size-fits-all. But we are now looking at Fedora and asking, ‘what is Fedora?’ and ‘what can we make better?’ When you look at Fedora now, you can see that there was a decision to make it a desktop-only distro — so that was the focus for a while. … Over the last few years, the focus has changed.”
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Jaroslav Reznik of Red Hat announced today that Fedora 21 has slipped by yet another week.
The Fedora 21 release was delayed by yet another week due to unresolved blocker bugs. In particular, there’s 8 blocker bugs right now ranging from Anaconda installer issues to theming issues. As a result, Fedora 21 Alpha will hopefully come around the 16th of September if no further delays take place. All further milestones are pushed back by an additional week.
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Debian Family
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Stefano is my great white whale. I’ve been trying to interview him for years, so I was very excited when he was able to make some time for this. He’s a Debian user, as you might expect from a former Debian Project Leader. Stefano also has a lot of nice things to say about GNOME Shell. And mutt users will want to check out his software list, as there’s a lot of nice Emacs integrations in there.
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Since its introduction, PPA’s are exclusively connected to Ubuntu and its derivatives (Mint, Elementary, etc …). But over time, a number of interesting projects appeared whose whole development is happening inside of PPA’s. To name few, I’m talking about TLP, Geary, Oracle Java Installer, Elementary OS and etc … Some of these projects are in WNPP without much happening for a long time, i.e: TLP
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Ubuntu 14.10, nicknamed Utopic Unicorn, is coming in just a few months. Alpha releases have been available for some time but beta testing started last week, meaning code is generally stable enough for virtual machines and other testing scenarios.
Ubuntu’s current release cycle means that the main Ubuntu line usually sits out the first beta and 14.10 is no exception. There is no beta 1 for Ubuntu 14.10; instead this beta consists of a number of participating “flavors,” whose betas are also now available.
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The Ubuntu Touch platform is getting closer to a release on the market and some very interesting applications are making their way into the Ubuntu Store, like this drone control app.
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For now, the app is still under massive development, the DowNow 0.3 click package being downloadable via either Launchpad or Ubuntu Software Center.
There aren’t a lot of applications for Ubuntu Touch available yet,but Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth hopes that by the time the first Ubuntu Touch powered phones hit the market, the top 50 Android/iOS apps will be available for Ubuntu Touch.
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For now, both Mir and Wayland are under massive development, none of them being used on desktop yet. While Mir is testable via the Ubuntu Touch Next Image, Wayland will be added to the default repositories of Fedora, but will not be used as default.
At first, Canonical intended to use Red Hat’s Wayland on their Ubuntu Touch, but it was difficult for them to submit patches and customizations for the mobile device and so, they decided to do the work themselves and created Mir.
Recently, Canonical has joined the Khronos Group to contribute to the creation of Mir/Wayland drivers.
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Have you ever wondered why you use the operating system you do to create programs, perhaps for other completely different operating systems? Canonical is making efforts to try to attract you to Ubuntu, even if you are targeting Android.
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Build a Raspberry Pi robot and create a game in Scratch with the latest issue of the digital RasPi magazine
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Epiphany is a new web browser for the Raspberry Pi. It’s been modified to be faster, smoother and more powerful than the previous web browser, Midori, meaning it possible to watch 720p YouTube videos and browse more Javascript-heavy websites like RaspberryPi.org and RasPi.Today.
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Phones
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Ballnux
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Prior to this week’s IFA show in Berlin, Samsung showed off its third Tizen Linux-based smartwatch. The Gear S offers several innovations compared to the Tizen-based Gear 2 and Gear Neo smartwatches, including autonomous operation and a curved screen. The Gear S will ship in Korea in October, followed by a global launch. According to this mostly favorable CNET Gear S hands-on, there are no current plans for a U.S. launch.
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Samsung is all set to further eat into Apple market with the introduction of Galaxy Note 4, the evolution of its Galaxy Note phatblet. It’s an evolution in a true sense as it continues to chisel out rough edges of Galaxy Note 3 while retaining the form factor and everything that’s neat about it.
Another major announcement by Samsung was Galaxy Note Edge, which kinds of takes smartphones and tablets to the next level – bringing in the much needed innovation that’s lacking in the otherwise somehow stagnated Apple hardware.
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OpenSUSE Factory only had around 2,000 users at the end of June but by the end of August was at nearly 6,000. Meanwhile, there’s also just under 6,000 users of openSUSE Tumbleweed. The openSUSE community appears happy with these numbers and they’re still working on making openSUSE Factory a better platform for users and developers.
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Android
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Google introduced a new visual language for its products which they called ‘Material Design‘. The upcoming release of Android – Android 5.x – will be using this new visual language. According to reports Chrome OS will also be moving to ‘Material Design’. If you are not willing to take a dive and try Android L, you can now enjoy the visual design on Android with Chrome.
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Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, one of the most authoritative data providers on global smartphone market share, has released its latest survey findings for the three months to July.
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Asus, LG, and Sony unveiled Android Wear watches, but the star of the show may be Samsung’s Tizen-based Gear S, which has 3G, WiFi, and a curved screen.
Google’s Android-based Android Wear platform was well represented at this week’s IFA show in Berlin. New entries include LG’s round-faced G Watch R, the stylish, curved Asus ZenWatch, and a Sony SmartWatch 3, notable for running on a quad-core processor. These models join an early wave of Android Wear smartwatches including Samsung’s Gear Live, LG’s original G Watch, and Motorola/Lenovo’s round-faced Moto 360. Alcatel, meanwhile, tipped an unnamed round-faced watch with an unstated OS that is not running Android Wear.
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“Today’s workforce is more mobile than ever and they face two major challenges; not all data is stored in the cloud and many desktop apps are not fully functional through mobile apps,” said Jesse Lipson, vice president, Citrix, in a statement. “With ShareConnect, users can access and edit files, use industry-specific desktop apps critical to getting their work done and even use their business networks – all through a simple interface, optimized pixel by pixel for tablets.”
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All of the tablets features here are very capable, powerful workhorses, and are ideal not only for home users, but also for enterprise users or those looking for a BYOD tablet. Any one of these will give you an excellent Android experience, and when combined with the right apps, will allow you to get a lot of work done when you’re away from your desk.
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We’ve been keeping an eye on the development of Android-x86 for a little while now, with the release of 4.4 seemingly imminent for some months now. In the past we’ve managed to use dodgy hacks of Android on proper computers or an emulated version via the ADK, but this promises to be one of the first complete ports of the mobile operating system to x86.
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Most people know to turn off GPS on their mobiles if they are bothered about being tracked however fewer people know not to leave on Wi-Fi & call service as these also can be used to track you.
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Today, Motorola announced its second-generation Moto X, the successor to the company’s rebooted flagship smartphone that was unveiled just over a year ago. Yes, the phone will simply be called Moto X again — not X+1, as some rumors had suggested — and it’ll be available for the same $499 unlocked as the original when it launches later in September (that’s for 16GB; the 32GB version runs at a $50 premium). AT&T, among others, will be offering it starting at $99 on contract.
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Since its release, Pushbullet has quickly become a favorite amongst many Android users. This free application lets you “push” any link or image to your mobile phone right from your desktop or browser. This means that you don’t have to get up and type in a link that you see on your desktop on to your smartphone.
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Sub-notebooks/Tablets
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Microsoft is copying competitor’s models so vigorously that they should move their head quarters to China. After pushing ‘cheap’ (in terms of price and performance) Netbooks to combat Chromebooks, Microsoft is now about to flood the market with ‘cheap’ Windows tablets.
Toshiba is going to be the first company to launch cheap 7-inch Windows tablet. The tablet will be launched at IFA tradeshow in Berlin.
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Nitish began sharing his stories with us on open source in May this year. Then, he wrote another one in June and July. In his first article, he explained how to write secure code using Open Web Application Security Project guidelines. Next, Nitish compared three giants in open source content management—Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress—based on these criteria: installation time and complexity, plugin and theme availability, ease of use, and customization and upgrades. Lastly (for now), Nitish shares his thoughts on Andriod’s rise to popularity in the hearts of million through open source.
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Open source software (OSS) now has a permanent role in the enterprise IT world. Gartner forecasts that open-source technology will be included in 85% of all commercial software packages by 2015 and 95% of mainstream IT organizations will leverage some element of OSS. One of the fastest growing segments within open software is Software Defined Networking (SDN), which simplifies IT network configuration and management by decoupling control from the physical network infrastructure. The SDN market is projected to surge from $360M to $3.52B in 2018.
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Germany’s Open-Xchange, a provider of web apps for renaming by service providers and deployment in the enterprise, has released an encryption tool called OX Guard. As around 110 million people use Open-Xchange’s apps (though they probably don’t know it), this is a reasonably big deal.
OX Guard is designed to provide a layer of security over Open-Xchange’s email and cloud storage products, whether they’re consumed through a service provider or installed on the customer’s own servers (the software is free for non-commercial use).
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This message is not intended to sell you anything but more to be an “exclamation mark” in the strategy decisions being made in the consumer’s IT environment. By Russell Gill, general manager at Linux Warehouse.
If you speak to IT professionals, Gartner etc, the majority agree that open source products are playing a larger part in the consumer’s IT environment. But here’s the conundrum: it’s more profitable for the average reseller out there to sell the proprietary product than to have their customers subscribe to enterprise open source software. Coupled with this, the resellers have to ensure that their staff are up to date with ever-changing trends and that they are able to support the IT environment.
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The browser incorporates Apache Lucene and Elasticsearch to furnish the search goodies here, said Mark Geene, Cloud Elements CEO and co-founder.
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Open source software developer Amida, based in Washington, D.C., has released the second version of its Data Reconciliation Engine (DRE), a Blue Button-branded software component that supports the aims of the Blue Button Initiative.
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Just days after support for AMD’s Steppe Eagle SoC landed in Coreboot, the first motherboard for this embedded G-Series SoC is now supported by mainline Coreboot.
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Events
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Chicago has many outstanding qualities, and provided an excellent backdrop to this year’s LinuxCon. Three things stuck out this year that were significant to my own experience…
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Web Browsers
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Chrome
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The Beta branch of the Google Chrome browser, the Internet browser developed by Google, has been updated yet again and the developers have made a series of changes and improvements.
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Mozilla
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This month marks my one year anniversary contributing to the Release Management Team as a Early Feedback Community Release Manager and I was not sure how the experience would turn out at first. I have really enjoyed the last 12 months working on our Firefox Nightly release.
At our last work week in Portland, one of the things I asked for was more responsibility surrounding our release and going hands on with more tasks and this month I will start working on our Extended Support Release (ESR) with Lukas. Additionally, One of my Q3 goals is to firm up some documentation and ideas around pathways and on boarding new contributors.
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According to the Mozilla Developer Network, Firefox OS is an open source mobile operating system based on Linux, open web standards and Mozilla’s Gecko technology.
But there’s more to it that that: Firefox OS is about reinventing what mobile platforms can be, about pushing the boundaries of what is possible with the Web on mobile and about enabling entirely new segments of users to come online with their smartphone at various levels of participation, from users to developers.
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Among others, Firefox 32 comes with an improved generational garbage collection, HTTP caching v2 has been enabled by default, the login metadata viewable is now viewable in the password manager, public key pinning support has been added, the number of found items in the find toolbar is now displayed, just like in Chrome, Scratchpad has received code completion and inline documentation, support for connectiong to the HTTP proxy over HTTPS has been implemented and both the Password Manager and Add-on manager have received improvements and a big number of security and bug-fixes have been implemented.
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Whether you are a business or community page owner, what would be better than increasing your page reachability by offering your standalone mobile app?
Apptuter is an open source framework to help you achieve that, with minimum coding knowledge and easy to follow steps you would be able to produce your own app. The framework currently supports Facebook pages as a content source and is capable of producing apps for Firefox OS, Android, and IOS platforms.
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SaaS/Big Data
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OpenStack has been on a tear recently, and is unquestionably the cloud computing platform that grabs the most headlines. However, not everyone realizes that there is heated competition on the OpenStack scene to win over telecommunications companies. Back in May, I covered the news that huge telecom player Telefonica announced that it will work with Red Hat and Intel to create a virtual infrastructure management (VIM) platform based on open source software running on Intel-based servers. Telefonica’s Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) Reference Lab will be targeted to help partners and developers build telecom-grade infrastructure, and will leverage OpenStack.
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How open is the OpenStack cloud computing distribution that VMware (VMW) recently launched? Not very, according to OpenStack vendor Mirantis, which is loudly touting its own ability to integrate its “pure-play” OpenStack distribution with VMware infrastructure while keeping the cloud open.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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TDF currently plans to invest into getting LibreOffice, its free office suite, to mobile Android devices like tablets and smartphones, extending the existing desktop version of the software.
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The new mayor of Munich is a self-proclaimed Microsoft fan and he wants to waste all the money that was invested in moving away from Microsoft’s vendor lock and incompatible technologies. His deputy is also a Microsoft fans so it’s not surprising that the new office of the mayor wants to bring back Microsoft technologies.
But that will be a very dangerous move for Munich.
Josef Schmid, teh deputy, points out two issues with LiMux – one is incompatibility with Microsoft technologies and other was increased support calls.
Incompatibility with Microsoft products is a huge problem and it’s a problem for everyone who is using Microsoft technologies. Linux or Open Source are not the cause of the problem as Schmid says, they are victims.
Then what is the cause?
In a recent interview one of the directors of The Document Foundation disclosed how Microsoft users various tricks to break compatibility and that leads to people like Schmid to blame open source technologies without fully understanding where the problem lies.
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CMS
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Matt Mullenweg, the founder and creator of WordPress has announced the release of version 4.0, code-named Benny. Matt says, “While 4.0 is just another number for us after 3.9 and before 4.1, we feel we’ve put a little extra polish into it. This release brings you a smoother writing and management experience we think you’ll enjoy.”
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Version 4.0 of WordPress, named “Benny” in honor of jazz clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman, is available for download or update in your WordPress dashboard. While 4.0 is just another number for us after 3.9 and before 4.1, we feel we’ve put a little extra polish into it. This release brings you a smoother writing and management experience we think you’ll enjoy.
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While a good portion of my focus on Opensource.com is on OpenStack and related cloud technologies, my most recent background prior to joining the team here was in doing web design and development work for small businesses, nonprofits, and others who needed sites created for them quickly and easily. So while I’m a Drupal fan for a lot of things I do, the ease and simplicity of WordPress led me to use it for a number of projects.
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Yesterday WordPress released version 4.0 or “Benny” of WordPress. I have now downloaded it and packed up for Debian users.
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Business
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Teradata, a company that sells data-warehousing hardware and software for storing and serving corporate information, has pulled out its wallet for another big data business. Instead of buying software, as it did last month, today Teradata reached for a big data consulting company called Think Big Analytics.
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BSD
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HardenedBSD is the latest BSD distribution writing into Phoronix to share its work.
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The PlayOnLinux open-source project that’s a graphical front-end to Wine to ease the installation of Windows games on Linux and other applications, is continuing to push ahead as it gains more features against CodeWeavers’ CrossOver software.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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GNU Guix, the package manager written for the GNU system, now has a neat Emacs user interface! It offers a visual, user-friendly alternative to the guix package command-line interface.
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The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced the addition of libreCMC, an embedded GNU/Linux project, to its list of recommended distributions.
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For those interested in GCC and other components of the GNU stack, the videos of the GNU Tools Cauldron 2014 event from earlier this summer have finally been published.
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Public Services/Government
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Professor Björn Lundell from University of Skövde – Sweden, has been researching the Open Standards phenomenon -particularly in public procurement-, for a number of years. He is one of the few academics in Europe that have tackled the analysis of benefits of using standards in public procurement of ICT.
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Alfresco is proud to announce that it has become the latest company to integrate with Unity, the world’s first universal health viewer, from Fortrus. This unique combination enables Alfresco to deliver to its customers an agile and innovative open source platform with a clinical viewer dedicated to the user experience.
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Licensing
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Slowly but surely, open source software is taking over. If you don’t believe it, just look at some of the most popular tools that we all use: Firefox, WordPress, 7-Zip, MediaWiki, BitTorrent, Android, plus all of the free alternatives to paid software. But did you know that not all open source licenses are the same?
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Openness/Sharing
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Last month, open source DIY automaker Local Motors launched its next big design contest, and this one has production ambitions. The goal? Create a high-performance, low-cost track racer for performance purists.
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I was lucky to be in Berlin Open Access Schism: Recapitulating Open So with some colleagues earlier this month for the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival and associated fringe events.
There’s really too much to distill into a short post—from Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Digital Agenda, making the case for “Embracing the open opportunity,” to Patrick Alley’s breathtaking accounts of how Global Witness uses information, to expose crime and corruption in countries around the world.
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Open Access/Content
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As well as in free software itself, this column is interested in the ways that the ideas underlying open source are spreading far and wide. One of the earliest manifestations was in the field of academic publishing, where open access has been gaining ground steadily. It seems that the open access world has just entered the schism phase that mirrors the similar split between those espousing “free software”, and those who resolutely call it “open source.”
This most recent development is captured in yet another brilliant contribution from the unofficial chronicler of the open access world, Richard Poynder. His blog, called “Open and Shut?”, is simply the best resource there is to find out about open access, its issues and key individuals. You could spend many days reading through the resources there, and it would be time well spent.
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Open Educational Resources (OER) have the capacity to extend this framework to education, provided that their proponents likewise view them as more than simply a means of lowering content costs. At the same time, one must also recognize the distinctions between the actors (hackers vs. instructors) and their products (software vs. educational materials). The achievable goal for OER by doing this is that it reshapes pedagogy as profoundly as OSS has reshaped software.
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The academic paper is old—older than the steam engine, the pocket watch, the piano, and the light bulb. The first journal, Philosophical Transactions, was published on March 6, 1665. Now that doesn’t mean that the journal article format is obsolete—many inventions much older are still in wide use today. But after a third of a millennium, it’s only natural that the format needs some serious updating.
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Programming
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LLVM 3.5 is now available for fans just not looking for a more liberally licensed compiler but for those dependent upon AMD’s GPU LLVM compiler back-end and the other innovative use-cases provided by the LLVM stack.
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Standards/Consortia
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Known as ISO 29119, the standard aims to join (and in some cases replace) existing ISO software testing mandates for concepts and definitions, test processes, test documentation, test techniques and one for keyword driven testing.
The elegantly named 29119 Software Testing standard has been created in association with the IEEE and the IEC — it is said to be an internationally agreed set of standards for software testing that can be used within any software development life cycle or organisation.
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Security
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Akamai’s Prolexic security operation says Linux malware has been implicated in DDoS attacks.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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As the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) has expanded control over territory in Iraq and Syria, a growing chorus of politicians and pundits are demanding the Obama administration take more forceful military action. ISIS’s gruesome beheadings of two American journalists have only increased those calls, leading some to compare the media frenzy to the run-up to the Iraq War.
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Whatever modern NATO has become, a defensive alliance it is not…
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Finance
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The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) responded to guest radio host Erick Erickson’s recent remarks that people who work in fast food have “failed at life,” calling the statement “degrading” and “out of touch” with hard working Americans.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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We already covered the bizarre situation in which one of the biggest names in PR has “teamed up” with the Huffington Post to write an entirely bogus “series” of stories on the “history of email” that is nothing more than a PR campaign for a liar. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai claims to have invented email. He did not. We went into great detail on this on Tuesday, so you can check out the history there.
Despite my requests to both Huffington Post and Larry Weber (the PR guy who kicked off the “series”), neither has responded and explained if any money is changing hands here. That means either it is, and Huffington Post is violating FTC rules concerning “paid” posts, or Huffington Post just made it clear that it is willing to post pure bullshit without the slightest bit of fact checking. I’m still not sure which is worse.
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As for Gregory–”famously left-leaning” to whom? The Post doesn’t offer any specifics on that score, but that’s typical right-wing media criticism: The corporate media are full of left-wingers because we’ve said so for a long time.
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Censorship
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The union representing media, artists, and journalists has backed an Australian government proposal to block websites containing copyright-infringing material.
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A Texas pastor is leading a campaign to have books about vampires pulled from Cleveland’s public library.
Phillip Missick and other religious leaders have called on the Austin Memorial Library to remove books about vampires, demons and other magical beings from the teen section.
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We’ve seen all sorts of bizarre and questionable attempts by companies to silence criticism or content they just don’t like. Bogus copyright, trademark and defamation claims are pretty standard these days. There’s also just general “begging” or the random “tortious interference” arguments. But according to Metafilter’s Matt Haughey, timeshare company Sundance Vacations may have taken things to insane new levels: forging a bogus court order to try to get Metafilter to remove a years-old thread.
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The email furnished me with a court order against a person running a Sundance Vacations protest site, who was no longer allowed to speak negatively about the company online. Sundance then asked that I remove the thread. I did a bit of research and quickly figured out the person named in the court order could not possibly be the person that posted the thread (different names, from different parts of the US, etc). I notified the company and they thanked me for my time.
This past Sunday, I was contacted again by Sundance Vacations, again about a court order obtained against someone running a “Boycott Sundance Vacations” Facebook group, asking me to remove that same old Ask MetaFilter thread which was now listed in court documents. (Here is the PDF, screenshots of the PDF below)…
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Via Bas Grasmayer we learn that the English Premier League and its insane take on copyrights has struck again. We’ve written many times before about the Premier League and its wacky belief that every possible use of its content must be licensed. Just a few weeks ago, it said that it would start taking down animated gifs and 6-second Vine videos of goals, even though it knew this would piss off fans. Still, the Premier League said it had to do this because “copyright.”
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While preparing a post for this blog about the wonderful panel ‘Who owns the World Cup: The case for and against property rights in sports events’, that concluded IViR’s 25th anniversary conference, something unusual stopped me.
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Travellers heading to Thailand have been urged not to carry a copy of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984
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UK Culture Secretary Sajid Javid has made some worrying declarations, threatening search engines with legislation unless they stop “sending people to illegal sites”.
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Privacy
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It was revealed this week that the Met police used a RIPA request to access the telephone records of The Sun’s Political Editor, Tom Newton Dunn.
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As to that NSA data, a great deal of confusion about “surveillance” seems to be floating around. In the United Kingdom, questions are being asked about all the data-gathering by the British equivalent of the NSA, GCHQ. In response, Secretary of State Theresa May has responded that “there is no programme of mass surveillance and there is no surveillance state” and labels claims that GCHQ engages in unlawful hacking as “nonsense.” Yet clearly, a lot of data is being gathered.
GCHQ, the NSA, and probably every other intelligence agency worth the name is actively gathering data from the Internet. Everything on the Internet is transient, with different decay periods, so gathering information is a constant process. They believe everything that can be gathered without illegal action is fair game, so they gather anything and everything they can, storing it just in case.
They are without doubt capturing and recording all and any email, instant messages, Web pages, social media traffic, and so on. Recent disclosures reveal that the NSA collects “nearly everything a user does on the Internet,” then offers analysts tools to search that data. The NSA has a variety of explanations why it’s all legally gathered.
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Civil Rights
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Plebgate is one of those silly minor political spats in the UK involving a top UK politician who apparently got angry that police wouldn’t let him ride his bike out of the main gate at 10 Downing Street. The details really don’t matter. It’s just one of those political type stories that the press loves. But, now it’s come out that in investigating this incident, the Metropolitan Police appear to have abused an anti-terror law to obtain the phone records of journalists who reported on the story.
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Police investigating the Plebgate saga obtained the telephone records of the political editor of the Sun without his consent, despite laws which entitle journalists to keep their sources confidential.
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While all eyes are on the disturbing evidence of police militarization in Ferguson, are you paying attention to what’s happening with law enforcement in your own back yard?
In the San Francisco Bay Area, the answer is yes. A coalition of community groups has come together to call attention to Urban Shield, a four-day long “preparedness” exercise for law enforcement and other agencies that will take place from September 4-8. They’ve organized a week of education, including a march and demonstration outside of the event on Friday, September 5. To these community groups, Urban Shield represents state violence and political repression, not public safety.
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Los Angeles law enforcement has been battling privacy activists seeking access to license plate data for over a year now. The plate and location data scooped up by the city’s many automatic license plate readers is considered fair game by law enforcement because visible license plates obviously don’t carry any sort of expectation of privacy.
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NYPD precinct commanders are going back to school to study a subject that’s second nature to any teen — using social media.
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I’d say it’s been pretty well established at this point that the NYPD sucks at Twitter. Occasionally they get it right and engage with the public in a meaningful way, but too often NYPD officers put things on Twitter that can only serve to cause the public to question their judgement. Insensitivity, racism, and otherwise crass behavior doesn’t make the NYPD look all that good, of course, so the top brass has a solution. They’re going to review their hiring practices to make sure they’re hiring good, level-headed men and women to put on the uniform and protect the public. Hahahahaha, just kidding, they’ve decided to send some of their officers to “Twitter school” instead.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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AT&T wants tax incentives and state laws that protect it from competition.
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The big telcos don’t exactly have particularly good records protecting your privacy. And now the FCC has reached an agreement with Verizon to pay the largest ever fine to the FCC to settle a long-term practice of hiding the fact that customers could opt-out of having their private info shared with marketers. Even as the “largest” ever such fine, it’s still pennies for Verizon at $7.4 million.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Trademarks
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The logo appears on Deadmau5′s record artwork and is the basis of the large helmet he wears during every performance. Disney began investigating the matter back in April, and it’s easy to see why — there is an obvious resemblance with the Mickey Mouse logo, and since the registration would cover classes of products from toys to BMX bikes, the entertainment giant no doubt feels the need to protect its trademark. Deadmau5 seems up for the fight, though, going by his Twitter feed.
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Apparently it’s a big deadmau5 day on Techdirt. Not only do we have the story of Ferrari looking into blocking the sale of his Purrari, Disney is officially opposing his attempt to trademark his logo mousehead, which he famously wears in concert.
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Copyrights
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We’ve already mentioned how a number of comments have been submitted concerning Australian Attorney General George Brandis’ Hollywood wishlist proposal for copyright reform in Australia. There are a number of interesting comments worth reading. I was pleasantly surprised to see the normally copyright-maximalist BSA come out against the proposal, saying that it will create a real risk of “over-enforcement, punishment of lawful conduct and blocking of lawful content including critically important free speech rights.” Dr. Rebecca Giblin, who has studied these issues and other attempts to put in place similar filters (and how they’ve failed), has also put forth a very interesting comment.
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In the wake of the release of stolen, intimate photos from a number of celebrities’ cell phones this past weekend on 4chan’s /b/ Web forum, the site has added something to its rules and policies—a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown policy. While 4chan previously relied on its rapid expiration of content to keep 4chan LLC and site founder Chris “moot” Poole out of trouble, the heavy scrutiny that came from the latest round of celebrity exposure has pushed the site to adopt more formal measures to avoid litigation. (Victims of photo theft could use copyright claims to seek damages from publications and websites that publish them.)
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In what could be one of the most ironic anti-piracy mistakes this year, music industry group IFPI has asked Mega to take down Kim Dotcom’s very own music album Good Times. Mega was asked to remove its founder’s music twice, casting doubt over the accuracy of the record labels’ takedown efforts.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
09.03.14
Posted in News Roundup at 6:59 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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However, there are also good commercial reasons. Most of China’s mobile phone manufacturers make use of Android and, even if the OS is nominally free and open source, we all know that it is still very much Google’s. An OS controlled by Chinese manufacturers makes sense. What is surprising is that there have already been a number of attempts at creating a Chinese operating system – Red Flag in 2000 eventually ran out of funds and COS China Operating System was launched as an Android replacement.
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Go to Google and type in a query. As you type you will notice that Google suggests some questions and topics for you.
The suggestions that appear are based on the most searched for topics based on the keywords provided. There is a caviat and that is each person may receive a slightly different list based on things they have naturally searched for in the past.
The concept of todays article is to provide answers to the most commonly asked questions using terms such as Why is Linux, What does Linux, Can Linux and Which Linux.
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Server
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Parallels is working to bring its automation, security and management wares to the burgeoning world of Linux containerisation.
The junior virtualiser finds itself in an interesting position vis a vis Linux containers and Docker, because it has long described its own Virtuozzo product as offering containers. But Virtuozzo is closer to conventional virtualisation than containerisation, because it wraps an operating system rather than just an application.
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In the first of this series on Docker security, I wrote “containers do not contain.” In this second article, I’ll cover why and what we’re doing about it.
Docker, Red Hat, and the open source community are working together to make Docker more secure. When I look at security containers, I am looking to protect the host from the processes within the container, and I’m also looking to protect containers from each other. With Docker we are using the layered security approach, which is “the practice of combining multiple mitigating security controls to protect resources and data.”
Basically, we want to put in as many security barriers as possible to prevent a break out. If a privileged process can break out of one containment mechanism, we want to block them with the next. With Docker, we want to take advantage of as many security mechanisms of Linux as possible.
Luckily, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7, we get a plethora of security features.
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The project began in March 2014 with both co-geeks Raffi Manoian and Zohrab Tavitian who founded Clusterbit. They decided to cram 8 credit card size servers into a little box and develop an open source platform where home enthusiasts, IT professionals, Linux technicians as well as high-end users can explore new possibilities.
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Kernel Space
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Dmitry Monakhov apparently jailed for public protest against Ukraine conflict.
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It’s not a secret that Russia doesn’t like democratic protesters and this was amply demonstrated in the last few years. Now, it looks like one of the kernel developers has been arrested in Russia while he was protesting against Ukraine’s invasion.
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Sony has cast its lot with the AllSeen Alliance in the ongoing standards squabble over the pervasive-computing future tech known as the Internet of Things (IoT).
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If you thought the systemd argument was settled, I’m not sure you’d be correct. Paul Venezia is back on the case today saying folks are continuing to blog, thread, mailing list, and forum about their problems with systemd. Katherine Noyes noted the trend in her Blog Safari today as well. Her first example says Linux is being turned into “OS X or even Windows.”
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A new project has been established that’s trying to boycott systemd and the Linux distributions utilizing systemd.
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They say art imitates life, but it’s surprising how often the same can be said of the Linux blogs.
Case in point: Just as the world at large is filled today with fiery strife — Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, Ferguson — so, too, is the Linux blogosphere. Of course, it’s not political, social or racial struggles tearing the FOSS community apart. Rather, the dividing issue here is none other than Systemd.
Systemd is a topic that’s been discussed in heated terms many times before, of course — including a lively debate here in the Linux Blog Safari back in May.
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From just a purely end-user perspective, systemd is an application that I’ve come to like a lot. And I think that its adoption by all Linux distributions will make it easier to manage Linux systems.
But it has come under heavy criticism from some quarters – for trying to be a Swiss-army-knife-type application. One that does practically anything and everything, which the critics claim is against the UNIX/Linux philosophy of coding an application to do one thing and do it well.
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For the Linux 3.18 kernel Intel has ready some more DRM graphics driver changes beyond the exciting work already sent into drm-next.
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Linux is also one of the oldest technologies which is growing strong day by day; Linux has been around for more than two decades (23 years to be precise) and it dominates virtually every space. It’s also one of those few open source technologies which are still being lead by their creators.
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Graphics Stack
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Following my testing and reporting last weekend about Intel Beignet starting to provide very usable open-source OpenCL support on Linux, one of the most common requests was to next see if this Intel OpenCL Linux supprot benefits x264 encoding at all.
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Google’s annual Summer of Code project ended last month and I’ve been meaning to write a brief update about the work done by the student open-source developers on their X.Org-related work.
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Those dependent upon AMD’s proprietary Linux graphics driver have a new Catalyst update to play with today.
Launched yesterday by AMD was the Radeon R9 285 “Tonga” graphics card, a GPU that’s derived from their Tahiti GPU core. The Radeon R9 285 has a $249 price point and comes in 2GB and 4GB GDDR5 versions. Unfortunately we weren’t seeded with any Radeon R9 285 so don’t know how well this new Rx 200 series graphics card works under Linux, but they released a Catalyst update that appears to support the new hardware for Linux users.
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Benchmarks
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With yesterday’s announcement of littler 0.2.0, I kept thinking about a few not-so-frequently-asked but recurring questions about littler. And an obvious one if of course the relationship to Rscript.
As we have pointed out before, littler preceded Rscript. Now, with Rscript being present in every R installation, it is of course by now more widely known.
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Having an eight-core CPU that can clock up to 5.0GHz (albeit having a 220 Watt TDP), curiosity got the best of me to run some quick (or slow) Gallium3D LLVMpipe tests just to see how this software fall-back driver performs.
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In anticipation of the LLVM 3.5 release that brings a number of new compiler features — including possible performance improvements from our benchmarking done earlier today — here’s some benchmarks comparing LLVM Clang 3.5 RC3 to a recent SVN snapshot of the GCC 5.0 compiler that’s presently under development.
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Applications
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VLC is a must-have media player if you are using Linux for your entertainment needs. When it comes to PC entertainment, it’s good to have a program that handles most of your needs. VLC has multiple tools for a good video playback experience. There is something new to learn the more you use it. More importantly, it gives its all when reading removable media.
VLC is a must-have media player if you are using Linux for your entertainment needs. When it comes to PC entertainment, it’s good to have a program that handles most of your needs. VLC has multiple tools for a good video playback experience. There is something new to learn the more you use it. More importantly, it gives its all when reading removable media.
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FxMovieManager, an application written to help users manage movie files and video clips, has been upgraded to version 6.6 and is now available for download.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Kubuntu 14.10 will be an interesting release, because it brings the new KDE Plasma 5, the next generation KDE desktop.
Among others, Kubuntu 14.10 and KDE Plasma 5 comes with a bunch of important applications ported to Qt5, a new Kicker Menu, support for hardware acceleration via OpenGL and OpenGL ES, KDM – a new KDE display manager and an enhanced lockscreen.
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Games
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Borderlands 2, an action role-playing game mixed with first-person shooter elements is coming to Linux. Borderlands 2 has been out for Windows gamers for nearly two years while now it’s finally getting ready to meet Linux and SteamOS gamers.
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Just over three months after the release of the troubled Witcher 2 Linux port, it seems The Witcher 2′s performance is finally getting into decent shape after numerous optimizations and bug-fixes.
Since July there’s been a Witcher 2 beta offering up many improvements to better the performance and playability of the game on most Linux hardware. The last beta update to talk about was in mid-August when the game’s performance continued to rise. Another beta update made it out today and again the focus is on increased performance.
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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 from Arcen Games are now available on Linux, and that folks is their entire back catalogue ported to Linux. I hope other developers are taking note of how amazing Arcen Games are. We quite often see people say that developers would rather bring out newer games to Linux, but not in this case!
They were both released for Linux in July, but we got swamped and decided to delay posting about them for a bit.
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It looks like that the wait for Borderlands 2 will finally be over for Linux users as SteamDB noted earlier today that the famous title will be making its way to the Linux operating system.
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A new Steam Hardware survey has been published for the month of August and things don’t look too bright for the Linux platform, although this might be just a statistical issue.
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Train Fever, a train business simulator developed by Urban Games and published by Gambitious, will be released in September for the Linux platform.
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It looks like Borderlands 2 , a popular video game released in 2012, is coming to Linux / Steam OS.
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Borderlands 2, the insanely fun and exciting collaborative FPS developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games will be getting a Linux release.
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Remember when Randy Pitchford of Gearbox told us not to get our hopes up? Then Borderlands: The Pre-sequel was confirmed for Linux? Well he’s a funny guy as Borderlands 2 is now showing signs of coming over to Linux anyway.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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The introduction of the new Breeze icon set in KDE let us again wonder, what aspects of an icon set actually takes what impact on the usability of it. We investigated Oxygen and Tango Icons for the LibreOffice project before, but our focus then was on checking all icons of the standard tool bar. This time we focus on different icon sets and will use 13 common actions to compare them.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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The GNOME Foundation has put out its annual report for 2013 as a 24-page PDF file. “As you will see when you read this annual report, there have been a lot of great things that have happened for the GNOME Foundation during this period. Two new companies joined our advisory board, the Linux Foundation and Private Internet Access. The work funded by our accessibility campaign was completed and we ran a successful campaign for privacy. During this period, there was a fantastic Board of Directors, a dedicated Engagement team (who worked so hard to put this report together), and the conference teams (GNOME.Asia, GUADEC and the Montreal Summit) knocked it out of the park. Most importantly, we’ve had an influx of contributors, more so than I’ve seen in some time.”
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If you’re reading this through planet GNOME, you’ll probably remember Ignacio talking about gedit 3 for windows. The windows port has always been difficult to maintain, especially due to gedit and its dependencies being a fast moving target, as well as the harsh build environment. Having seen his awesome work on such a difficult platform, I felt pretty bad about the general state of the OS X port of gedit.
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As you may know, Raspberry Pi is an ARM single-board computer with the size of a credit card, being available in three variants: model A, model B and model B+.
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Raspberry Pi is powered by a wealth of operating systems, but there is also an official one called Raspbian, which is based on Debian, as the name implies. The developers have now released a new web browser that should be much faster.
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The developers of Simplicity Linux have based their system on Slacko 5.9.3 and they are using the 3.15.4 Linux kernel. This kernel is one of the newest available and should provide adequate hardware support for the latest devices. Also, unlike previous releases in the series, the new version covers only two flavors, Netbook and Desktop.
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This means, in a way, that we can say that DistroWatch’s top ten distro list only contains five unique distros.
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New Releases
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Today, the Tails OS was updated to version 1.1.1, bringing with it some critical security patches. In this release we see Tor updated to 0.2.4.23 which tries to protect users from entities who control your first and last node and can then see who you are and where you’re going, this patch changes the rotation rates to help protect from this sort of attack.
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PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
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The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published
by volunteers from the community. The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor,
and Assistant Editor Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license,
and some rights are reserved.
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Red Hat Family
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Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that the company has been named one of the “World’s Most Innovative Companies” by Forbes magazine. Forbes named Red Hat the 12th most innovative company on its global list, and the eighth most innovative company in North America. Red Hat was one of only two enterprise IT systems software companies recognized by Forbes.
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My internship at Red Hat has not only advanced my knowledge and skills of Linux but also about the concept of open source. When I first started experimenting with Linux, I downloaded a copy of a Debian ISO to share a partition on my Windows machine. While researching Linux, the phrase “open source” would often appear on blogs, articles, and on quick “how-to” YouTube tutorials. I would soon come to realize what that term really meant.
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Open source technologies are “more secure” than software that is developed in a proprietary way, Red Hat’s JBoss middleware business unit general manager, Mike Piech, said in a meeting with journalists.
On the one hand, open source software code is freely available, which means that hackers will see how to hack it. But, on the other, there is also a vast community of people working to maintain open source software security.
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Herndon, Virginia-based DLT solutions on Sept. 3 announced the award of a five-year blanket purchase agreement through the Defense Information Systems Agency for Red Hat enterprise software and services.
The award comes under the Defense Department’s broader enterprise software initiative, a Pentagon plan to cut costs associated with common-use, commercial off-the-shelf software.
The agreement, worth up to $40 million through June 2019, covers the procurement of Red Hat open-source software and services for use by DoD and intelligence agencies. DLT is a reseller of government IT software and services. The award includes Red Hat offerings for Linux, virtualization, storage and certain cloud capabilities, according to a release from DLT.
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Fedora
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GNU Icecat will be available on Fedora updates-testing repositories for some days. That’s right time to test harshly this new web browser (really it’s not so new considering it’s a fork of Firefox) and leave a positive/negative karma or open a bug.
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On June 3, Matthew Miller was named as the new Fedora Project Leader, succeeding the outgoing Robyn Bergeron. Over the last several months, Miller has settled into his role of running Red Hat’s community project and is overseeing one of the biggest changes in the project’s history.
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Debian Family
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Debian is more than software. It’s 1K+ developers doing stuff I don’t have to do, bringing together thousands of software packages and providing an installer and package-manager to provide a pleasant installation, management and usage experience. Debian is also democratic and open. I can see their rules, their known bugs and what they’re doing about them, just like a modern political democracy, thriving and true.
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It’s well known that Linus once tried Debian, way back in 2007, and found it hard to install. One of the attendees during the Q&A session of DebConf 2014 asked if he tried it lately. The creator of Linux replied that while he didn’t give Debian a try lately he was sure that it has become much easier to install Debian.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Canonical wants to make developers who create applications for platforms other than Ubuntu feel at home. In a recent article posted on his blog, +Didier Roche, Software Engineer at Canonical, writes: “Ubuntu loves developers and we are going to showcase it by making Ubuntu the best available developer platform!”.
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Unity 8 and Mir are the technologies that are going to be the forefront of the upcoming Ubuntu releases and they are updated constantly. They are still pretty far off from a desktop implementation, but the progress made by the developers is visible.
Canonical is now focusing all their efforts to develop a stable and shippable Ubuntu Touch image for the phones that will arrive in just a few months. This means that developers are working around the clock to fix the problems and other various bugs that plague the Ubuntu for phones operating system.
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While new features and changes are first tested on the devel branch and get moved to the stable one when they are stable enough, the RTM branch does not get new features, only security and stability fixes.
While there is no official release date for the Ubuntu Touch powered phones, they should be released this Autumn, if everything goes as scheduled.
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Yesterday Meizu announced its latest flagship device, the MX4, and we love it. This bad boy comes with a 5.36-inch IPS display with unusual resolution of 1920 x 1152 pixels; that’s 418 PPI for those who count these sort of things.
MediaTek’s brand-new MT6595 octa-core chip is providing the processing power needed to run things smoothly. Said SoC rocks four high-performance Cortex-A17 and four energy-efficient Cortex-A7 cores. This combo can apparently score as high as 47,000 points at the popular benchmark website AnTuTu; so yes, future owners of the MX4 will get one fast phone.
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Canonical is looking to befriend the Android developers by becoming the development platform of choice. In this regard, the Ubuntu developers have implemented a simple way of getting the latest Android Studio (beta) and Android SDK, with all the required dependencies.
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Canonical has a new spin on its OpenStack plans. The company is rolling out BootStack, which is a managed service offering currently in private beta testing. Through BootStack, Canonical wants to help customers build, support and manage OpenStack-centric clouds for a fee of $15 per server per day.
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While Ubuntu 14.10 is still sticking to the X.Org Server by default on the desktop, an updated version of Mir is now available for early adopters and those running the Ubuntu mobile stack.
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Mark Shuttleworth announced earlier this year “Your Cloud” as a paid service by Canonical to build and manage OpenStack cloud deployments. Your Cloud has turned into BootStack and is rolling forward for those that wish to have Canonical build out and manage their cloud computing environment.
BootStack aims to “take away the pain of cloud management” by building, supporting, and managing clouds. Canonical will build a cloud for you either within your data center / premises or hosted by IBM’s Softlayer. The cloud will be built to your needs and on the hardware of your choosing.
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BootStack (short for: build, operate, and optionally transfer) is the new offer from Canonical to round up its cloud offering. Utilising their experience in working with some of the world’s leading telcos and enterprises to build OpenStack clouds, Canonical experts will design and build your OpenStack cloud in predictable time and on budget. Canonical will manage the cloud for you for a fixed price, relieving you from the pain of recruiting and training OpenStack staff. When your team is ready to take over your cloud operations, Canonical will transfer it to your care. It’s the best way to get up and running quickly on OpenStack.
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Tronsmart has launched an $80-and-up “Orion R28″ mini-PC that runs Android 4.4 on a quad-core, Cortex-A17 Rockchip RK3188 SoC clocked at 1.8GHz.
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Phones
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Android
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In March, Sony said it’d stick to its own smartwatch software in lieu of joining the Android Wear party with the likes of LG, Motorola, and Samsung. Today, Sony’s completely reversing that stance with the introduction of SmartWatch 3, its fifth-generation smartwatch, which has completely embraced Google’s Android Wear platform. Sony intends to add a Walkman app for music playback via a Bluetooth headset along with a remote control app for stuff you’re playing on another device. Don’t look for much more to distinguish this device on the software front.
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Android Wear devices are getting lots of attention in the media these days, and that’s definitely a good thing. But what about the software for Google’s newest mobile platform? Which apps do you need to get started using your Android Wear device? Android Police takes a look at five essential apps for Android Wear.
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So you’ve just picked up an Android Wear device, but what the heck can you do with this tiny wrist computer? Sure, it pulls in notification from your phone and shows you Google Now cards, but you need some apps too. It can be a challenge to navigate the Play Store in search of the best watch apps, but we’ve been keeping a close eye on things. Here are the five apps every Android Wear device needs to have installed.
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It is hard to argue against 2014 being the year of the ‘wearables’. So far we have seen smartwatches launched by Samsung and LG which first highlighted what we can expect from the new technology.
ASUS is also entering the smartwatch landscape with their Xen Watch which they claim to be the most good looking sub $200 watch.
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Over the last few months there has been massive speculation in regard to the future of the Nexus range. Some rumours highly suggest Motorola will be making the Nexus 6 (codename Shamu) while other rumours highly anticipate the Nexus 8 will be manufactured by HTC (codenames Flounder/Volantis). Of the two rumours it would seem that HTC and the Nexus 8 are a likely pairing and this was further suggested by the leaked information of the accessories to come with the Nexus 8.
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The Asus ZenWatch is the first smartwatch using Android Wear — Google’s operating system designed specifically for watches.
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We’ve always been suspicious of folks being able to snoop in on phone conversations or intercept data, but there isn’t much we can do to prove that happening or to prevent the foul act. One secure phone seems to have changed that, however.
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This week, reader Maureen noted that these apps seemed to be overreaching just a tad. Why, for example, would The Weather Channel app need access to your Device and Call information? Why would it need to know if WiFi is enabled and the names of all nearby WiFi devices?
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Samsung on Wednesday launched its Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Note Edge, a curved screen phablet, and Gear VR, a virtual reality headset, but the larger mission for the electronics giant was to claim ownership of large screen mobile devices and to position itself as an innovation leader.
The timing of the launch event, held at the IFA conference in Berlin and New York, was hard to ignore with Apple’s iPhone 6 debut next week. Samsung was clearly trying to claim the innovation mantle as Apple finally gets around to offering a larger screen iPhone.
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Sub-notebooks/Tablets
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The operating system that once powered devices like the Palm Pre and the HP TouchPad is getting another crack at life. A group of developers have taken the source code HP released a few years ago and turned it into something new(ish) called LuneOS.
While the software is still very much a work in progress, you can now download and install the operating system on a handful of devices including the HP TouchPad tablet and Google Nexus 4 smartphone.
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Formerly known as webOS Ports, LuneOS was officially released today for letting the HP TouchPad and select Google Nexus devices re-live what’s best about webOS.
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The Open WebOS mobile Linux operating system has been renamed “LuneOS,” and is available in an “Affogato” release supporting HP’s TouchPad and LG’s Nexus 4.
WebOS is back — yet again — in an open source “LuneOS” respin of the Open WebOS project, itself a spinoff of the proprietary WebOS. The WebOS Ports backed project, which was officially called “WebOS Ports Open WebOS,” released an Alpha 2 version in June 2013, and a year later announced its new project name based on the platform’s LunaSysMgr UI. The goal of LuneOS is “not to reach feature comparison with Android or iOS but rather building a system to satisfy basic needs in the mobile environment,” says the project.
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Above all the company also has a “3 Strikes” rule for any bad actors and states that certain violations like “threatening, abusive, destructive or illegal nature will be addressed immediately and are not subject to 3 strikes.”
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This places Hashicorp right at the nexus of so-called DevOps, in which developers take on more responsibility for managing the infrastructure that hosts their applications and puts them in the hands of users. Some people view DevOps as heralding the eventual extinction of IT operations as a specialized function; Hashimoto isn’t one of them, although he does think IT suffers from a fatal lack of automation. And that’s a problem he’s trying to fix.
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A group of developers have been working to make an app like Skype that isn’t owned by a large corporation and can avoid surveillance from organizations like the NSA. It’s called Tox, and while it’s still in development– its security is far from guaranteed at the moment– you can already download and try the app for Windows, OS X and Linux.
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If you like the convenience of Skype, but you are worried about government surveillance and don’t trust Microsoft to keep you safe against it, Tox might be just the thing for you.
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Since Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance programs last summer, developers and tech companies like Google have been rushing to create tools that restore some semblance of security and privacy for Internet users. Tox, a Skype alternative that features instant messaging, call and video features, is the latest entry in that field.
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In the wake of the mass NSA surveillance scandal sparked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, all sorts of hackers, academics, startups, and major corporations are working to build tools that let us more easily secure our email messages and other online communications.
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Private messaging apps like SnapChat and WhatsApp aren’t as private as you might think.
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Cisco Sourcefire recently announced that their Snort open source IDS/IPS 2.9.7 will now support free application visibility and control, called OpenAppID. It will be fully integrated into the current Snort framework and offers a new application preprocessor and keyword ‘appid’ that can be used in any Snort rule. OpenAppID will launch with detection for over 1400+ applications, providing Snort admins with much needed awareness of the applications on their networks. The Snort application information can also be sent to 3rd party analytics or SIEM tools.
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Events
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I am very glad to share with you that registration of the eleventh edition of Software Freedom Day has been opened since early August and you can see from our SFD event map, we already have 129 events from more than 50 countries shown in our map. As usual registration happens after you have created your event page on the wiki. We have a detail guide here for newcomers and for the others who need help, the SFD-Discuss mailing would be the best place to get prompt support.
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The days of open source software being something that only pasty white guys living in their moms’ basements cared about are long gone. Today, the open source movement is absolutely huge, with even big companies buying into the concept thanks to the cost savings and beneficial functionality offered by increasingly competitive and polished open source options.
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Some claim that the age of virtualization is now past. However, nothing could be farther from the truth. And this year’s Xen Project User Summit will highlight many of the newest advances in virtualization. If you use the Xen Project Hypervisor — or if you are simply evaluating your virtualization alternatives — join us in New York on September 15!
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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The new open-source Mozilla browser release supports public-key pinning and fixes half a dozen vulnerabilities.
Mozilla is out today with its Firefox 32 release, providing users of the open-source Web browser with new security fixes and features. Firefox 32 now provides support for public-key pinning, which enables enhanced security for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate authenticity.
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Mozilla has rolled out an update for its Firefox browser’s desktop and mobile platforms. The Firefox 32 for Android, Linux, Mac and Windows brings a number of additions, while fixing some major bugs and updating other features.
As a part of the Firefox update, Mozilla introduced a new HTTP cache for both platforms. According to the company, the new cache system will deliver improved performance and easy recovery when facing crash issues.
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Firefox 32 was released the past few days and it comes with some new perspectives from a user interface standpoint, it does more caching to speed up your browsing experience(if you switch from another browser to try this release let the cache build to see improvements) and improved security regards certificates.
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Mozilla has built a notable security system into the new Firefox version 32 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The new security scheme is targeted to keep hackers from intercepting data, including data aimed at online services. The browser incorporates public key pinning, which can ensure that users are connecting to the sites they mean to connect with. Pinning allows greater control over which site certificates are deemed valid.
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SaaS/Big Data
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How open is the OpenStack cloud computing distribution that VMware (VMW) recently launched? Not very, according to OpenStack vendor Mirantis, which is loudly touting its own ability to integrate its “pure-play” OpenStack distribution with VMware infrastructure while keeping the cloud open.
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Before Elizabeth Joseph began her career as a system administrator, she was a hobbyist who attended a lot of Linux Users Group meetings in her hometown near Philadelphia. Now she’s an automation and tools engineer at HP, working on the OpenStack infrastructure team and recently co-authored the latest revision of The Official Ubuntu Book.
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Databases
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A co-founder of the widely-used IMAP server Dovecot has outlined his three rules for open source success, in terms Larry Ellison may not enjoy.
“The first rule is don’t sell your company to Oracle if you want to keep your product alive,” he told World Hosting Day in Singapore yesterday.
“The second rule is also don’t sell sell your company to Oracle.”
Linnanmäki’s remarks were, of course, made in reference to Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL, a transaction he feels was a “fiasco” but has turned out “not that bad because the only one suffering is Oracle.”
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Education
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Open source software development is a very well-coordinated and properly engineered practice on a larger scale as typically, an individual or a small group of people start work on a project. After reaching a certain maturity level, the project is floated as open-source and volunteers are invited to participate in the development effort.
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Business
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Data warehouse software and hardware provider Teradata is on a big data Relevant Products/Services acquisitions roll. The company just grabbed Think Big Analytics to help customers get the most from their data.
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BSD
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LLVM 3.5 is tentatively scheduled to be released tomorrow as the latest bi-annual update to the open-source compiler infrastructure along with its sub-projects like the Clang C/C++ front-end. If you haven’t been following its development closely or trying out the pre-releases, here’s a recap of some of the changes you can find with this newest release.
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If all goes well, LLVM 3.5 will be released today. While we have already delivered some LLVM/Clang benchmarks of the 3.5 SVN code, over the days ahead we will be delivering more benchmarks of the updated compiler stack — including looking at its performance against the in-development GCC 5.0. For getting this latest series of compiler benchmarking at Phoronix started, here’s some fresh numbers of LLVM Clang 3.4 compared to a recent release candidate of LLVM Clang 3.5.
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The latest addition to GCC 5′s growing list of features is official support for DragonFlyBSD on i386 and x86_64 architectures.
Up to now a DragonFlyBSD developer had been maintaining his own out-of-tree patches that add support for the DragonFlyBSD target and complete ADA front-end support to all four major BSDs. A few months ago John Marino, the developer maintaining the patches, began working to mainline them to provide out-of-the-box support for C, C++, Objective-C, and Fortran.
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Openness/Sharing
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“We spend $1.8 million annually on maintenance for our systems, and we can’t find another firm to do the work that’s cheaper,” he said. Los Angeles County is hoping to release an RFP for its open-source system in the next few months.
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Washington DC based educator and FOSS evangelist Phil Shapiro thinks that open source could be a route to a more balanced mind if mental energies are attuned correctly.
Open source is as much a philosophy of living as it is a method of creating software argues Shapiro.
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Programming
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POCL, the Portable Computing Language, continues making headway for executing OpenCL kernels on CPUs. POCL now supports much of OpenCL 1.x and continues being refined for better support.
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A new phone number appears at the bottom of the press release [(646) 810-9268] which traces back to New York City, but it’s as useless as any other phone number the company has provided. Callers are greeted with an opening spiel in French before being spoken to in English. Callers inquiring about Descoteaux’s retail holdings (Gift World, KlearGear) are asked to press “1.” Doing so results in the message “Invalid selection. Please try again.”
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In case you missed it over the long weekend, Anand Shimpi, founder and editor-in-chief of hardware site AnandTech, retired from his position on Saturday evening. His farewell post doesn’t mention what his next project will be, but Re/code later reported that he had been hired by Apple, a fact that Apple confirmed without divulging more specifics.
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What is at question here is not whether it ought to be illegal to march in uniform for political objects. The fact is that plainly it is illegal. The law is not moribund – it was applied for example against Irish republicans in London in the 1980s.
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Health/Nutrition
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One of the less well-known projects of the West is to convince developing countries that they need to convert traditional approaches to agriculture, which have functioned well for hundreds of years, into a system of intellectual monopolies for seeds — the implicit and patronizing message being that this is the “modern” way to do things. Last year we wrote about how this was happening in Africa, and an article on bilaterals.org reports on similar moves in Guatemala…
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The controversial “Law for the Protection of New Plant Varieties,” also known as the “Monsanto Law”, has been widely rejected by Guatemalan civil society. Groups say the rules will jeopardise food security and affect the farm economy.
On 10 June, the Congress of Guatemala approved Decree 19-2014 or the “Law for the Protection of New Plant Varieties” which led to an outpouring of criticism from various sectors of civil society.
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Security
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Fears of backdoors and heightened concerns about encryption software are running rampant.
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But open source tends to be something of an agglomeration of programmers — some brilliant, some boneheaded — around a core developer or two. I think it just might be possible to influence the small group of programmers at the core of each open source project to create a culture that develops secure code. In fact, in some ways it might even be easier to do with open source projects because they, for the most part, don’t face the arbitrary deadlines of the commercial world.
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Developers love reusing code, whether it’s an open source library or a code snippet copied from the Internet. This expert tip looks at the best ways to secure and monitor component-driven software.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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The paper’s August 29 edition boasted the front-page headline “More Want US to Flex Muscle.” As if that militaristic tone wasn’t obvious enough, right next to it is a graphic labeled “Is Obama Tough Enough?”
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But I also have no doubt the establishment are not going to accept this lightly. They are not simply going to let Scotland’s people walk away with Scotland’s resources. They have yet to make serious use of their most frequent instrument of population control – the “War on Terror”.
The scene has already been set. Cameron has already told parliament that ISIS, or the Caliphate as it calls itself (I always think it is better to call people what they call themselves, rather than some made-up name) poses a major and imminent threat to the UK. Jack Straw is back on Radio 4 saying that Britain must bomb Iraq, as though the very cause of the Caliphate was not the last time he invaded Iraq. Saudi Arabia, which funded and still funds the Caliphate, is giving warnings to the security services of planned attacks in the UK.
The truth is that everybody who has ever carried out an actual Islamic terror attack in the UK (of which there have been very few indeed) has stated that they did so because of British bombings and invasions of Muslim countries – a fact which is very plainly true. The notion that the way to stop this is to bomb or invade Muslim countries is quite incredible.
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In May 2000 the Washington Post published an article called “For Pentagon, Asia Moving to Forefront.” The article stated that, “The Pentagon is looking at Asia as the most likely arena for future military conflict, or at least competition.” The article said the US would double its military presence in the region and essentially attempt to manage China.
The Pentagon has become the primary resource extraction service for corporate capital. Whether it is Caspian Sea oil and natural gas, rare earth minerals found in Africa, Libya’s oil deposits, or Venezuelan oil, the US’s increasingly high-tech military is on the case.
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This summer the insurgent group ISIS captured the Iraqi city of Mosul—and along with it, three army divisions’ worth of U.S.-supplied equipment from the Iraqi army, including Humvees, helicopters, antiaircraft cannons and M1 Abrams tanks. ISIS staged a parade with its new weapons and then deployed them to capture the strategic Mosul Dam from outgunned Kurdish defenders. The U.S. began conducting air strikes and rearming the Kurds to even the score against its own weaponry. As a result, even more weapons have been added to the conflict, and local arms bazaars have reportedly seen an influx of supply.
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Look out, Kiev. Russian President Vladimir Putin is so misunderstood. A Kremlin spokesman said today that EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso took Putin’s recent comments about the fighting in Ukraine out of context. According to Barroso, as quoted in an Italian newspaper, Putin told him, “If I want to, I can take Kiev in two weeks.” The Kremlin says those comments had a completely different meaning when Putin said them. Russian officials also accuse Barroso of a breach of confidentiality for sharing the contents of a private conversation. Did Putin really expect him to stay quiet about the possible expansion of the Russian “incursion” into Ukraine? Despite what appears to be a direct threat, European leaders remain flummoxed about what to do with Putin. They can’t live with him, but they just can’t live without his natural gas.
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The U.S. hopes, by including energy in a trade agreement, to reduce European dependence on Russian gas just as relations between Russia and the West are more fraught than since the days of the Cold War, APA reports quoting Anadolu Agency.
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Moscow’s surprise declaration of a shift in its military doctrine over Ukraine has come just ahead of a NATO summit in Wales.
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The U.S. super rich are outraged by Obama’s hesitancy to wage war overseas.
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Saudi Arabia said yesterday it had arrested 88 men suspected of being parts of an Al Qaeda cell that was plotting attacks inside and outside the kingdom.
The interior ministry did not give any details about the alleged plots, but said 59 of the men arrested had previously served prison sentences for similar offences.
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The Israeli military has provided its most detailed assessment yet of the conduct and impact of the Gaza war, including photographs indicating that militants stored and fired rockets from schools and a breakdown of the toll inflicted on Hamas.
In a briefing at its headquarters in Tel Aviv, the Israel Defense Forces presented a minute picture of the structure and capability of Hamas and other militant groups operating in Gaza, an effort to explain the severity of the threat Israel faced and justify Israel’s heavy tank shelling and air strikes during the 50-day conflict — tactics that drew international criticism.
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The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has reported that with only one CIA drone attack in Pakistan in August 2014 the drone strike casualty rate for August was less than half that of July’s casualty rate.
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A US drone strike hit Somalia, the first in seven months, in an attack aimed at killing al Shabaab leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane (below).
The attack killed “six al Shabaab officers” but it is not clear if Godane was among them, said Abdullahi Abukar, executive director of the Somali Human Rights Association (SOHRA).
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Much of what we today see as reasons to wage wars is in fact caused by wars. The atrocities of the Islamic State, a phenomenon that would not be possible without the Syrian Civil War and the American invasion of Iraq, is of course the prime contemporary example of this. A good runner-up is the reasons given for assassinating people with drones. Generating a worse situation than the status quo by engaging in an activity that is bad in itself is the risk. Improving the status quo is the potential gain. If we assume that the sizes of how much worse the situation can get and of how much better they can get are the same, the probability that we will see the gains must be commensurate with the evils of the war. In all other cases, waging a war cannot be justified on consequentialist grounds.
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Mareeg.com-According to media reports, the overall leader of Alshabaab Ahmed Godane survived the drone attack of last night.
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The Pentagon confirmed an attack on Somalia yesterday, but offered no details until this morning, confirming it was a drone attack with several Hellfire missiles fired along the southern Somali coast. Perhaps even more interesting, President Obama is said not to have given specific authorization for the attack.
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US forces have carried out air strikes against senior members of Somalia’s al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab rebels, with casualties reported but uncertainty hanging over the fate of the group’s leader, officials said on Tuesday.
Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby confirmed that the attack was aimed at the group’s leader Ahmed Abdi Godane, also referred to as Abu-Zubayr, and that the bombs definitely hit the meeting of Shabaab chiefs.
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Al Shabaab militant group has denied that its leader Abu Zubeyr, whose real name is Ahmed Abdi Godane, was killed in the convoy hit by US drone strike on Tuesday but confirmed that their convoy come under attack.
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Pentagon admits US airstrikes took place, but says details on operations will only be released to public “as and when appropriate”.
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A member of al-Shabaab said its leader was traveling in one of two vehicles hit by the strike but would not say if the leader was among those who were killed.
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The Pentagon is preparing to open a drone base in one of the remotest places on Earth: an ancient caravan crossroads in the middle of the Sahara.
After months of negotiations, the government of Niger, a landlocked West African nation, has authorized the U.S. military to fly unarmed drones from the mud-walled desert city of Agadez, according to Nigerien and U.S. officials.
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There is no end in sight for the drone strikes carried out in Marib, Abyan, Shabwa, Al-Bayda, Hadramout, and Dhamar governorates. In fact, it is said that the number of civilian casualties is still on the rise. In most cases the repercussions to families affected by the unmanned planes go beyond the loss of lives, often leaving them clueless, traumatized, and desperate for answers.
Meqdad Toiaman’s father was killed in a drone strike in Marib governorate in 2011. His death was a big blow to the family, both emotionally and economically. Toiaman, 18, found himself in a peculiar situation, suddenly having to bear the burden of financial responsibilities.
Although the attack took place three years ago, the psychological damage it fraught on Toiaman and his family exceeds their personal loss.
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Readers with a morbid sense of curiosity can visit a web site called NukeMap that allows visitors to witness the devastation caused by nuclear weapons of varying yields on a city of their choosing[i]. Herman Kahn, who was an armchair theorist from RAND during the Cold War, insisted that nuclear war was winnable[ii]. But a few hours with NukeMap will disprove Kahn’s folly and the baleful smiley face that he tried to slap over human extinction.
[...]
Such men often go unnoticed because they tend to exercise power discreetly, standing behind a veil of propaganda[ix]. For instance Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Steve Coll has called ExxonMobil an “invisible company” thanks to a disciplined and well-funded public relations division[x]. This underscores the fact that the narratives put forth by the press are under the influence of an extensive subversion apparatus that CIA officer Frank Wisner referred to as the Mighty Wurlitzer[xi]. Powerful groups build consensus behind closed doors and then, as Chomsky and Herman explain, coax the rest of society along by manufacturing consent[xii]. Thus enabling what’s known as democratic elitism.
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The New York-based group, citing reports from local Kurdish officials and photographic evidence, said ISIL fighters had used cluster bombs on July 12 and August 14, AFP reported.
They were deployed in fighting around the town of Ayn al-Arab in Aleppo province, near the border with Turkey, in clashes between the Takfiri group and local Kurdish fighters.
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Endless Propaganda Fuels “War on Terror”
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After Estonia’s request, Barack Obama said the US would send more air force units and aircraft to the country, as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization continues to amass on Russia’s border.
The American leader, in a one-day visit to Estonia, emphasized NATO’s commitment to a rapid-response force, as well as enlarging the military bloc’s footprint at Estonia’s Amari Air Base.
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In the mid-1980s, Western Europe had good reason to fear the military might of the Soviet Union and its allies in the Warsaw Pact.
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Last week, I wrote about the rhetorical contortions the Russian government and its rebel allies have employed to discuss the increasingly obvious and blatant presence of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. While the Ukrainian government is describing Russia’s actions as “undisguised aggression,” the Kremlin still hasn’t publicly acknowledged any Russian military presence across the border. President Vladimir Putin, though, may be a bit more brazen in private. According to a leaked report today, he told the president of the European commission that his forces could easily conquer Kiev if he wanted them to.
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Herbert E. Meyer, a nutcase who was a special assistant to the CIA director for a period during the Reagan administration, has penned an article calling for Russian President Putin’s assassination. If we have “ to get him out of the Kremlin feet-first with a bullet hole in the back of his head, that would be okay with us.” http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/08/how_to_solve_the_putin_problem.html
As the crazed Meyer illiustrates, the insanity that Washington has released upon the world knows no restraint. Jose Manual Barroso, installed as Washington’s puppet as European Commission President, misrepresented his recent confidential telephone conversation with Russia’s President Putin by telling the media that Putin issued a threat: “If I want to, I can take Kiev in two weeks.”
Clearly, Putin did not issue a threat. A threat would be inconsistent with Putin’s entire unprovocative approach to the strategic threat that Washington and its NATO puppets have brought to Russia in Ukraine. Russia’s permanent representative to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, said that if Barroso’s lie stands, Russia will make public the full recording of the conversation
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I don’t care for the phrase. Never did. Wearing boots is what combat forces do in certain circumstances. Using it as synecdoche for “troops in harm’s way” warps the scope of what the U.S. military does. It may also give the Pentagon an easy out, because certain forces wear sneakers, not boots.
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Over the last month, Libya has been spiraling out of control, as terrorist gains and attacks have intensified. As of August, the US embassy in Tripoli was overrun. The Inquisitr reported that a local militia group stormed the compound and took control.
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When the draft was ended in 1973, it became all too easy for American presidents to intervene militarily anywhere without the kind of public scrutiny and opposition that developed after the Vietnam War destroyed thousands of young lives in an endless, unwinnable conflict.
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North Korea has threatened to cut diplomatic ties if a forthcoming Channel 4 drama focusing on their nuclear weapons programme is allowed to air.
The country has branded political thriller Opposite Number a “slanderous, conspiratorial charade based on a sheer lie” and insisted through its state media that the British government ensure it is “dumped without delay”.
London’s Foreign and Commonwealth office remains unbothered by the demand, explaining that Channel 4 is responsible for its own programming schedule.
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A forthcoming drama about North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme has been criticised by the regime before it’s even been broadcast, with an NK spokesman saying that “hooligans and rogues under the guise of artistes” are disrespecting the country.
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One man thinks Americans should have had enough by now of hawks and chicken hawks drum beating for President Obama to get America into yet another war, this time against Isis or the Russians in the Ukraine or perhaps invading Syria.
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With America’s government-and-media war hawks back in full flight – preparing to swoop down on Syria as well as Iraq – wiser heads might reflect on the chaos that previous adventures have caused, as Danny Schechter recalls.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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The annual dolphin hunt at the cove in Taiji, Japan, began on Monday. For the next six months, hundreds of dolphins will be rounded up and killed, their meat sold in stores and restaurants in Japan and other countries. But butchered dolphins are becoming scarcer on the Japanese market, which is good not only for the dolphins but for public health.
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Finance
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2.1 Spooky Business: Corporate Espionage against Nonprofit Organizations, a report by Washington DC-based Center for Corporate Policy (CCP), reveals the “amazing” world of corporate espionage on a global-scale: Giant corporations engaging private spy agencies to smash activism. Like a public-private partnership (P-P-P), the catchword in vogue, government intelligence agencies are collaborating in the surveillance-espionage “enterprise” that targets activists and organizations active in the areas of social justice, public interests, safe food, environment, consumer rights, animal rights, insecticide-pesticide reform, opposition to war, nursing home reform, gun and arms control. With extensive evidence collected from sources that include government documents the report exposes a “mine” of chilling facts:
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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I thought this story had ended a few years ago. Back in 2012, we wrote about how The Washington Post and some other big name media outlets were claiming that a guy named V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai had “invented email” in 1978. The problem was that it wasn’t even close to true and relied on a number of total misconceptions about email, software and copyright law. Ayyadurai and some of his friends have continued to play up the claim that he “invented” email, but it simply was never true, and it’s reaching a level that seems truly bizarre. Ayyadurai may have done some interesting things, but his continued false insistence that he invented email is reaching really questionable levels. And, now it’s gone absolutely nutty, with the Huffington Post running a multi-part series (up to five separate articles so far — all done in the past 10 days) all playing up misleading claims saying that Ayyadurai invented email, even though even a basic understanding of the history shows he did not.
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Former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, who has a financial relationship with Gov. Scott Walker, is using his Washington Post column to lavish praise on the Wisconsin Republican and help position him for a 2016 presidential run.
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Leaked audio from an invite-only Koch donor summit highlighted the role of the billionaire brothers in boosting Scott Walker in Wisconsin — and suggests that David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity Foundation may have violated its charitable status during the state’s 2012 recall elections.
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The upshot was that being in the middle is what wins, and that Obama has had trouble when he’s leaned too far to the left. So that’s good politics, then–when Democrats move further to the right to meet Republicans in some mythical, pundit-approved “center.” But there’s a real chance that some people aren’t confused–they actually don’t like politics, or at least they don’t care much for politicians. And some critics of political journalism actually think that it should hold powerful people to account. That is very much at odds with viewing politics as a sport where the athletes just aren’t performing particularly well. That’s where Chuck Todd is coming from.
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Censorship
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Twitter users are questioning Turkey’s hosting of this year’s Internet Governance Forum (link is external) despite its controversial internet policies.
Amnesty International highlighted the country’s prosecution (link is external) of more than 20 Turkish citizens for social media posts. They’re standing trial for allegedly “inciting riots” (link is external) by retweeting information about the 2013 Gezi protests. “It’s astounding to see Turkish authorities plough on with the prosecution of Twitter critics, even as they host a discussion on internet governance where human rights are a key theme,” said (link is external) Amnesty’s Deputy Director of Global Issues.
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The Ares Rights saga is… bizarre. So, they’ve summoned Barbra Streisand to sing their song. After substantial attention to the firm’s abuse of copyright law to censor political dissidents (and, er, international oil conglomerates), Ares Rights has deployed a DMCA (copyright) takedown notice against an Ecuadorian news outlet targeting their coverage of Ares Rights’ censorious abuse of copyright.
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We still hear from copyright system supporters who insist that copyright is never used as a censorship tool. And yet… we’ve written a few times about a Spanish firm named Ares Rights that works with the Ecuadorian government and others to seek to censor critical content by totally abusing the DMCA process. However, it appears to have stepped things up a notch in the ridiculous category, now seeking to abuse the DMCA even further to censor stories about its own censorship-by-DMCA. It gets a bit recursive.
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You’d think that after years and years of pointless banter along these lines that people in power would understand just how ridiculous they sound when they try to blame search engines for infringement. TorrentFreak points out that the UK’s Culture Secretary Sajid Javid gave a barn raising speech to folks from the British recording industry. It starts out with the usual political fluff about just how important the recording industry is and how much money the government is forking over to the industry in questionable subsidies. And, apparently Javid has no qualms directly admitting to accepting favors (bribes?) from the industry. Specifically he tells a “joke” about now his kids thing he’s cool, because he can get hot concert tickets (“my new-found ability to get tickets for the Capital FM Summertime Ball, or Sam Smith at Somerset House!”), whereas in his previous job no one was rushing to give him such favors. It’s a joke, but it’s pretty telling.
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UK Culture Secretary Sajid Javid says that the government has warned Google, Microsoft and Yahoo over the issue of online piracy. In an address to the BPI’s AGM in London yesterday, Javid said that if the search engines don’t stop referring people to pirate sites, the government will take a legislative approach.
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Iran continues to battle the Internet, recognizing the fact that an unfiltered exchange of ideas (some of them admittedly often horrifically bad) tends to undermine repressive regimes. While the President and the Minister of Communications have stressed that higher-speed connections (and less censorship) are useful to Iran’s citizens, many others in the government feel that increasing speeds means giving up lots and lots of control.
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A Grand Ayatollah in Iran has determined that access to high-speed and 3G Internet is “against Sharia” and “against moral standards.” In answer to a question published on his website, Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi, one of the country’s highest clerical authorities, issued a fatwa, stating “All third generation [3G] and high-speed internet services, prior to realization of the required conditions for the National Information Network [Iran’s government-controlled and censored Internet which is under development], is against Sharia [and] against moral and human standards.”
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This post is about more than our new app, Disconnect Mobile, being arbitrarily removed by Google from the Play Store Tuesday, five days after it went live and prior to doing any PR announcement. This post is really about Google’s disregard for user privacy and security, their ability to arbitrarily and unilaterally ban any app from the world’s dominant mobile operating system (78% of total smartphones run Android), and the importance of alternative Android distribution platforms that support privacy and security.
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So it’s quite disappointing that Google has chosen to pull Disconnect.me’s new app from the Android store based only on a very vague and broad “prohibition” in its terms of service, saying that you can’t offer an app that “interferes with” other services. The email Google sent doesn’t provide many details, other than saying that the Disconnect.me app “interferes with or accesses another service or product in an unauthorized manner.”
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After doing without an element needed for safe harbor protection, 4chan has just introduced an official DMCA policy. The decision comes in the wake of the celebrity photo leak known as The Fappening and 4chan users’ connections to it. In the meantime, the leaked image library has clocked a million torrent downloads.
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Privacy
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But a much larger crisis looms – everyone, and I mean everyone, now knows that everything private they’ve done with their iPhone, if they use iCloud, is not only vulnerable, but extremely vulnerable.
The Next Web says that a tool that allows brute force attacks against the Find My iPhone service gives hackers a way in to iCloud.
That may or may not be what’s actually going on. Hacker Nik Cubrilovic, for example, says it isn’t slowing people down from accessing new accounts…
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A couple of years ago, we wrote about a rather troubling legal ruling in which a court declared that Facebook “likes” aren’t a First Amendment protected expression. The ruling made little sense. It involved some employees of a local sheriff getting fired after “liking” the Facebook profile of the sheriff’s opponent in the next election. Thankfully, that key part was overturned on appeal, with the 4th Circuit appeals court ruling that Facebook likes absolutely could be protected speech. Now, facing a somewhat similar issue, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has similarly concluded that a Facebook like can be a form of “concerted protected activity” for which you cannot be fired.
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Last time we saw how to share files and folders stored in the Virtuoso DAV system. Today we will protect and share data stored in Virtuoso’s Triple Store – we will share RDF data.
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All kinds of ways? I was intrigued. So I clicked on the Gizmodo link and found….two suggestions. The first is two-step authentication, which is a fine idea for anyone with a cell phone. The second is encrypting all your data. But like it or not, this is much too hard for most people to implement. There’s just no way it’s going to become widespread anytime in the near future.
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In the meantime, SEOs are left to ponder the consequences of Google’s adding HTTPS encryption to its approximately 200 search ranking signals. It’s eerily reminiscent of the company’s move a while back to add the speed at which web pages load to its algorithmic bag of tricks. After all, how do security and speed relate to content authority and relevance.
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The U.S. Supreme Court could soon be asked to decide the constitutionality of the federal government’s massive data collection of phone records after two lawsuits challenging the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance program have begun to inch forward in federal circuit court for the first time. The American Civil Liberties Union and other privacy rights groups have denounced the NSA’s data collection program, first revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden last summer.
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In July 2013, the program was publicized after NSA’s contractor Edward Snowden leaked the NSA documents. As soon as the program was revealed, the ACLU challenged its legality and constitutionality.
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Mysterious “interceptor” cell towers in the USA are grabbing phone calls — but they’re not part of the phone networks. And, two experts told VentureBeat today, the towers don’t appear to be projects of the National Security Agency (NSA).
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Fake mobile phone ‘towers’ dotted across the US could be listening in on unsuspecting smartphone users according to recent reports. And — tin foil hats on, everyone — nobody knows who’s behind them.
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Caught up in the uproar over this year’s latest hullabaloo—militarized police in Ferguson, tanks on Main Street and ISIS—Americans have not only largely forgotten last year’s hullabaloo over the NSA and government surveillance but are generally foggy about everything that has happened in between.
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The trustee overseeing Reston-based Truland Group Inc.’s bankruptcy wants to abandon its claim to millions of dollars it might be owed for building a massive data center in Utah, a mostly unpaid project that appears to have led in large measure to the firm’s abrupt shutdown and subsequent Chapter 7 filing in July.
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Big Brother is watching just about everywhere you go and soon you won’t be able to drive away from the electronic surveillance. GM says it’s about to launch cars that detect distracted driving.
KTRH Car Pro Show host Jerry Reynolds agrees it’s the next step toward the driverless car of the future.
“As long as they don’t store the information somewhere like currently they do with the black boxes it’s probably okay.”
We can trust the NSA, right? Reynolds says it’s great technology, but he doesn’t need it.
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Richard Aldrich, an academic at Warwick University’s Politics and International Relations Department, echoed an official’s remark from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that there is no allied intelligence, only intelligence on allied countries.Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA) regarding the latest allegations that the U.S. intelligence service NSA and the U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ are keeping tabs on Turkey, Alrich said, “Your closest ally may not share your political and economic interests.
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Schindler wants an agency befitting Germany’s position.
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Germany shows no sign of regret over the electronic spying claims, with a senior German official saying it would not be surprising if they learn that Germany is also being spied on by the Turkish government in a similar way.
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The recent revelations of US, British and German surveillance of NATO ally Turkey sparks debate about relations among friendly nations.
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A court convicts a cybersecurity director for child pornography
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The National Security Agency is no doubt licking their lips over the potential intelligence trove of Google’s proposed fiber optic cable, which will span the Pacific Ocean from the U.S. to Japan.
As a former NSA official told VentureBeat, “Easy to tap for sure. If its US to JP, then no need to tap in the middle obviously, just look behind the big red door :)… if its a win would depend on what its replacing, if anything.”
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Australian government agencies will be required to implement stringent new security policies, to monitor public servants in order to protect the government against the ‘insidious enemy’ of the ‘trusted insiders’ leaking sensitive information to the public.
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After all its hard work this year Congress is almost done with its summer recess. Lawmakers are due back Sept. 8 and have much to tackle. Two bills are of paramount importance to EFF: one—the USA FREEDOM Act—must be passed by Congress, while the other—the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA)—must be killed.
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I think the interception of these crypto phones is the biggest security scandal of the republic; but we are blatantly forgetting and are being forced to forget about it.
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We do have some degree of privacy on our computers and hard drives when they are disconnected from the Net and through public key cryptography when we communicate with each other through the Net. But both are primitive stuff—the cyber equivalents of cave dwellings and sneaking about at night wearing bear skins.
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During the Cold War, the United States recruited and trained civilian Alaskans as part of a covert network designed to collect intelligence in preparation for a Russian invasion, the AP reported.
“The military believes that it would be an airborne invasion involving bombing and the dropping of paratroopers,” one FBI memo said of the expected Russian attack, according to the AP. Expected targets were the cities of Nome, Fairbanks, Anchorage and Seward.
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The U.S. spends billions on intelligence, yet we always seem to be surprised by events in the world. George W. Bush told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and CIA Director George Tenet backed up this assessment. In fact, Iraq had no such weapons.
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Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa and his Australian counterpart Julie Bishop have signed a long awaited document entitled, “Code of Conduct on Espionage”.
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On Saturday, August 30, more than 6000 people took to the streets of Berlin, Germany to protest against intelligence agencies’ mass surveillance produced by Weltnetz.tv
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Law enforcement ought to be using state-of-the-art digital and communications tools: The more traps for catching crooks, the better. But it shouldn’t shroud its weapons in multiple layers of secrecy.
The Tacoma Police Department has been far too secretive in deploying Stingray, a powerful electronic surveillance and tracking device frequently used in federal investigations.
The technology – broadly known as cell site simulators – could be described as a microcosm of the National Security Agency’s continental-scale data-mining. It tracks cell phones, which normally exchange signals with commercial towers. Stingray diverts those transmissions into the device, allowing police to capture and analyze them.
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Les Goldsmith, the CEO of ESD America, recently claimed that his CryptoPhone 500 found 17 different fake cell towers known as “interceptors” in the U.S. during July.
According to Popular Science, these “interceptors” can trick cell phones into connecting and then eavesdrop on calls or texts, and add spyware to phones.
“Interceptor use in the U.S. is much higher than people had anticipated,” Goldsmith told Popular Science. “One of our customers took a road trip from Florida to North Carolina and he found 8 different interceptors on that trip. We even found one at South Point Casino in Las Vegas.”
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Gary Sullivan’s commentary defending the actions of the National Security Agency is full of faulty arguments (“Too much of a good thing,” Aug. 27). First of all, the Fourth Amendment is the law and was established at the time of this country’s founding. No one needs to “get out and vote” in order to be protected by it from government spying.
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Turkish government is ‘both partner and target’ for US spying, Der Spiegel and Intercept jointly report.
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In 1957, the U.S. and British governments planned regime change in Syria … because it was drifting too close to the Soviet Union.
20 years ago, influential U.S. government officials decided to effect regime change throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The countries targeted were “old Soviet regimes”.
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Alarmed at the anti-Russian hysteria sweeping Washington, and the specter of a new Cold War, U.S. intelligence veterans one of whom is none other than William Binney, the former senior NSA crypto-mathematician who back in March 2012 blew the whistle on the NSA’s spying programs more than a year before Edward Snowden, took the unusual step of sending the following memo dated August 30 to German Chancellor Merkel challenging the reliability of Ukrainian and U.S. media claims about a Russian “invasion.”
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A group of former U.S. Intelligence officials including William Binny, the first whistleblower to report on the NSA’s mass surveillance, has sent an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, warning her of the risks of Ukrainian NATO membership and of the dangers of faulty intelligence resulting in an escalation of the conflict, as published on the website Antiwar.org
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There’s also the more general underlying concern about US tech companies’ dominance of European consumer services, against the backdrop of the NSA spying scandal. All these things could mean mean a rocky road ahead for the $19 billion deal. The US Federal Trade Commission approved the acquisition earlier this year with some privacy caveats and warnings.
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The United States government has refused to respond to claims that it spied on Turkey made based on documents from the archive of US whistleblower Edward Snowden seen by German magazine Der Spiegel.
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Ladar Levison is the owner of the encrypted email startup Lavabit. After Edward Snowden’s NSA document leaks last summer, Levison rebuffed government demands to hand over the email service’s private encryption keys—opting to shut it down instead. He spoke with Popular Mechanics about his new project Dark Mail, online privacy, and how encrypting our email helps disassemble today’s unconstitutional surveillance networks.
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Civil Rights
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The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups recently filed a lawsuit accusing the federal government of, among other lapses, denying due process to mothers with children detained at the border and interfering with their efforts to get legal advice to guide them in appearances before immigration judges.
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Three Syrians convicted of drug trafficking were executed by the sword in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, the interior ministry announced.
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Elite media don’t see Human Rights Watch’s closeness to power as a problem
[...]
Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth arrived at the function, which also hosted the leaders of Microsoft, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, JP-Morgan Chase and Disney. (The administration also aimed to “press China to open its markets to goods made by American companies,” reported the Times.)
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Today’s militarized policeman often feels naked without the protection of mine-resistant vehicles, despite very little evidence that such vehicles are necessary to handle the deadly (or is it?) rigors of police work. Citizens, however, aren’t so sure they like seeing their law enforcement officers rolling out like they’re keeping the peace in the middle of Baghdad.
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Davis, Calif., city officials have directed the police department to return a surplus U.S. military armored vehicle to the federal government after residents, citing images seen during protests in Ferguson, Mo., expressed fears of militarization.
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Ten days after a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, killed Michael Brown another young African-American man was shot dead a few miles away in St. Louis.
The circumstances around the death of Kajieme Powell were markedly different from those in Ferguson. Powell, who may have suffered from mental health issues, had a knife, and shouted, “Shoot me now… kill me now,” at responding officers.
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Joining forces with a group of privacy organizations and former White House officials, four House Democrats sent a letter to President Barack Obama over the weekend urging him to declassify all legal opinions and interpretations involving a controversial executive order used to justify government surveillance.
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Against this backdrop it’s no wonder that recent developments in the Ukraine have been known to cause night terrors. Your author can vouch for this. Last week there was an earthquake in the Bay Area and at the outset I woke up mistaking it for a shock wave from sub-megaton warhead hitting Silicon Valley.
One could posit that what’s happening in Eastern Europe offers a look-see into the nature of the groups that are calling the shots in the United States. Do they care that their destabilization program in Ukraine provokes a nuclear-armed country or enables neo-Nazis to assume vital positions in government?3 So far almost 2,600 civilians have been killed in the ongoing humanitarian crisis.4 While the corporate press does its best to create the impression of a “shining city upon a hill” which aims to “spread democracy” and conduct “humanitarian intervention,”5 a different sort of world power is clearly visible to those who look carefully.
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Senate intelligence committee chair Dianne Feinstein expects the executive summary of her staff’s long-awaited report on the torture of American detainees to be ready for public release before the end of September, she said in an unaired segment of her “Meet the Press” interview this weekend (starts at 10:25 of the video).
The torture report, which was five years in the making, was sent to the White House for declassification in April. But the exhaustive redactions that Obama administration officials sent back in early August included such things as the elimination of pseudonyms, apparently to make the report too confusing to follow, and the blacking out of copious supporting evidence, such as proof that information derived from torture actually came from other intelligence sources.
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On August 26, Wright, a US military lawyer also resigned from the Army in protest at what he called the “show trial” of Mohammed being held by the US at Guantanamo Bay. Wright also accused the US of not providing due process and of “abhorrent leadership” on human rights at the Guantanamo facility.
Wright has been in the US army since 2005 and served over a year in Iraq. He has been on Mohammed’s defense team for three years. Wright resigned after he was given a choice between leaving the army and leaving the defense team in order to complete a graduate course so he would qualify for promotion from Captain to Major. Wright claims it would be unethical to follow the order.
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An Army lawyer assigned to defend Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at Guantanamo Bay has resigned his commission after being told he was being pulled from the case to attend a graduate program required for promotion.
Maj. Jason Wright, one of a team of lawyers defending Mohammed, resigned Aug. 26 from the Army, National Public Radio and others have reported.
Wright joined the Army in 2005, and for almost three years, he served on Mohammed’s defense team.
The Army had instructed him to leave the team in order to complete the course. He refused, saying it would have been unethical for him to leave the team.
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New York Times reporter James Risen may soon have to decide whether to testify in a criminal trial or go to jail for contempt of court.
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The kingdom’s many critics argue that Saudi Arabia itself helped spread the toxic virus by bankrolling Islamist rebels and their extremist Salafist Muslim ideology.
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The Angola-Cuba Friendship Association (ASAC) today denounced the U.S. government”s plans to promote subversion and destabilize the revolutionary process in Cuba.
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CIA Director John Brennan might have dodged a bullet over his agency’s potentially unconstitutional snooping on the Senate, but critics insist his reprieve is only temporary.
Calls for the spy leader to resign after the CIA admitted that officials spied on the Senate have lost steam in recent weeks, since lawmakers left town for a five-week summer recess.
November’s midterm elections and crises from Syria to Ukraine could distract Congress from forcing the director to offer a public mea culpa in the short term.
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Dysfunction in Congress can damage the country in many ways, but none may be as serious as a failure to fill its role in the system of checks and balances set up by the U.S. Constitution. When Congress heads back to Washington after the August recess, members of the Senate face a serious test on whether they can assert control over the U.S. intelligence agencies.
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Under the Protected National Security Document Act, enacted by the Obama administration in 2009 to cover the period September 2001 through January 2009, the United States Government has prohibited the release of photographs depicting ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ – Torture – administered on enemy combatants taken into custody abroad by the U.S. military and/or its allied forces.
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The CIA’s admission that they lied for several months when accused of doing what they did, as well as their apology to the senators to whom they had spied on, does not make their actions acceptable.
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Unlike his close ally in pursuing intelligence abuses, Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, Ron Wyden has not yet called for CIA Director John Brennan to quit or be fired. But speaking about the agency in Oregon this month, the senior senator from Oregon used the D.C. magic words:
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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About two-thirds of people commenting on potential new rules for the Internet warned regulators not to allow “fast lanes” online, according to an analysis of hundreds of thousands of the filings.
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At least 200 comments came from law firms, on behalf of themselves or their clients.
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Today, China and Russia are capable of challenging U.S. dominance. Despite being a strong commercial power, China has not deployed Internet technology across the world. The Chinese have good infrastructure but they use U.S. Domain Naming System, which is a basic component of the functioning of the Internet. One good thing is because they use the Chinese language for domain registration, it limits access to outsiders in some way.
India too is a big country. It helps that it is not an authoritarian country and has many languages. It should make the most of its regional languages, but with regard to technology itself, India has to tread more carefully in developing independent capabilities in this area.
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DRM
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We’ve covered a lot of stories dealing with the Right of First Sale being undermined by digital goods being sold as licenses, rather than products. It’s much more rare to find the Right of First Sale being yanked away from paying customers who have purchased physical products. But it happens. You’d think shelling out a quarter-million dollars would allow you to do what you please with your purchase.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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The trial of Pirate Bay co-founder Gottrid Svartholm Warg and his Danish co-defendant began with an almost immediate delay followed by the surprise showing of a hitherto unseen video of the hacker known as anakata.
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The largest hacking case in Danish history began in confusion on Tuesday, after lawyers representing Swedish Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg accused the prosecution of “unreasonable” tactics.
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In other words, these high-profile wins for the copyright industry are not the result of the police making use of surveillance powers, or of clever sleuthing by organizations like FACT. Rather, they are the direct and largely predictable result of the arrogance and stupidity displayed by those breaking the law.
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This was mentioned briefly in our recent post about EasyDNS changing how it deals with online pharmacies, but it’s still dealing with bizarre requests from the City of London Police. As we’ve been detailing, the City of London Police seem to think that (1) their job is to protect the business model of the legacy entertainment industry and (2) that they can do this globally, despite actually just representing one-square mile and (3) that they can do this entirely based on their own say so, rather than any actual court ruling. It started last year when the City of London Police started ordering registrars to transfer domains to the police based entirely on their say so, rather than any sort of due process/trial that found the sites guilty of violating a law. The police wanted the domains to point to sites that the legacy entertainment industry approved of, which makes you wonder why the police are working on behalf of one particular industry and acting as an ad campaign for them.
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Send this to a friend
09.02.14
Posted in News Roundup at 7:14 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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During the past month I have been in discussions with a number of people at about.com.
I have been provided with the opportunity of writing articles on the linux.about.com subsite and I am in full control of all the content that will appear on that site.
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As far as writing screenplays is concerned, Hollywood has only one standard: Final Draft. For years, much like Microsoft’s monopoly with Windows, the software had no big competitors. From big Hollywood directors like Spielberg to small independent studios, everyone considered Final Draft the gold standard of screenwriting software. In many ways, it still enjoys the same monopoly; however, the stronghold it had over the screenwriting industry isn’t the same as before. With its high price, clunky UI, and lots of persistent bugs, Final Draft is slowly being taken over by lesser-known tools in this huge shift that is happening in the screenwriting industry.
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That’s the reason I got away 15 years ago. It’s too bad the world has endured so much harm all these years before coming to its senses. The world now sees that FLOSS works. Just about everyone has used Android/Linux and knows it works. Just about everyone has used web applications running on GNU/Linux and knows it works. The poor souls still using that other OS are locked in miserable dark damp cells peering at a vibrant world outside.
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Although there are those who think the systemd debate has been decided in favor of systemd, the exceedingly loud protests on message boards, forums, and the posts I wrote over the past two weeks would indicate otherwise. I’ve seen many declarations of victory for systemd, now that Red Hat has forced it into the enterprise with the release of RHEL 7. I don’t think it’s that easy.
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I think more media attention needs to be brought to Linux [an open-source operating system] nowadays. I’ve tried many platforms and have found Lubuntu in particular to be a very sophisticated and extremely lightweight operating system. Even on computers with as little as 512MB of RAM the system boots, runs programs and shuts down like a bullet.
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The FUD doesn’t work. The world sees M$ as the cancer, not GNU/Linux and FLOSS. The world sees Android/Linux systems working smoothly for more folks and at lower cost and complexity. The world sees that depending on M$ for anything in IT is difficult, expensive and a nightmare waiting to happen.
The result is that consumers are switching to Android/Linux and governments, businesses and large organizations are switching to GNU/Linux, in droves. Governments are banning M$’s standards and protocols. The OS itself is next. Already huge segments of humanity know that a web browser and the Internet will do a lot of what they want done. There’s just no need for a lot of what M$ offers and it’s more efficient to go elsewhere for software. Enter FLOSS, the most efficient means of creating and distributing software. It’s time is now.
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Kernel Space
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Linux kernel developer Dmitry Monakhov was detained for 15 days for disobeying a police officer on Saturday. The debacle came about when Monakhov decided to protest the recent invasion into Ukraine by Russian armed forces.
This was not the first incident of aggression towards Monakhov. During a rally in July of 2013 he was reported to have been beaten in one of the police vans most likely for participating in expressing his discontent with Putin’s policies regarding human rights.
According to Monakhov’s tweet the day before his most recent run in with the authorities, he announced, “I am a Russian. Not cattle. Not a killer. And it is not the occupier. I am ashamed that my president Putin. At 9.00 I go to Manezhku [Manezh Square] against the war.” after this tweet, pictures surfaced a day later of four Russian policeman arresting him.
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One idea is that they will choose a single file-system, btrfs, and use some of its features/complexity to standardize the GNU/Linux file-system, versioning of software, production, distribution and installation of software. They seem to want to turn the GNU/Linux PC into something more like Android so that developers will have a standard target and more control over the run-time environment.
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systemd0 is a replacement for the sysvinit daemon used in GNU/Linux and Unix systems, originally authored by Lennart Poettering of Red Hat. It represents a monumental increase in complexity, an abhorrent and violent slap in the face to the Unix philosophy, and its inherent domineering and viral nature turns it into something akin to a “second kernel” that is spreading all across the Linux ecosystem.
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A growing dependency on digital data has spurred new interest in flash storage technologies along with cloud-based services and storage. With the broadest portfolio of flash-memory based solutions in the industry, SanDisk is on the leading edge of this transformation, with Linux and open source at the heart of its innovation. By working with hundreds of open source projects in compute, storage, and networking, SanDisk can help enable software stacks to take advantage of flash’s behavior and performance, says Nithya Ruff, director of the SanDisk Open Source Strategy Office.
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The Linux Foundation’s Allseen Alliance has a new member today. Sony has announced that it is joining AllSeen in a bid to bolster its Internet of Things (IoT) presence.
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Graphics Stack
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Well known open-source Radeon driver developer Marek Olšák has landed a number of commits today inside mainline Mesa Git for improving the state of HyperZ for AMD hardware, a feature that remains disabled by default for the open-source Radeon Linux driver due to stability and artifact issues.
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Benchmarks
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In the tests shared yesterday of looking at the AMD FX-9590 CPU on Linux and other CPU benchmarks from this weekend, some Phoronix readers raised concerns about the CPU scaling governor differences between the AMD and Intel hardware. The AMD FX CPUs continue to use the CPUfreq driver by default to handle their scaling while modern Intel CPUs have the new Intel P-State driver. Beyond the Intel-specific P-State vs. CPUfreq, the AMD CPUs generally default to using the “ondemand” governor while with Intel desktop CPUs on P-State it generally ends up with the “performance” mode. Some Phoronix readers found performance vs. ondemand differences to be unfair, but for AMD FX CPUs, there isn’t much of a difference in our common CPU torture test benchmarks found in the Phoronix Test Suite.
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Applications
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Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box.com – they all allow you to share files with others. But they all do it via the strange concept of public links. Anyone who has this link has access to the file. On first glance this might be easy enough but what if you want to revoke read access for just one of those people? What if you want to share a set of files with a whole group?
I will not answer these questions per se. I will show an alternative based on OpenLink Virtuoso.
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Universal Copy & Paste allows you to copy a link or some text from a device and paste it on another device. For now, this feature only works one way with Pushbullet Indicator: you can copy a link or some text on your Android device and then paste it on your Ubuntu desktop, but it doesn’t work the other way around, because the Pushbullet API doesn’t allow this for now.
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Proprietary
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RAR, a powerful archive manager that can be used to reduce the size of files and to decompress RAR, ZIP, and other formats, is now at version 5.11.
People forget that RAR is not a tool only available for the Windows platform. There are two major differences between these platforms. The name of the Windows version is Winrar and the Linux version is command line only. The software is pretty much identical in all other aspects.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Windows users looking to use Linux for the first time will find it beneficial to try it out in a virtual machine.
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Games
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Ryan Icculus Gordon has just recently been on a guest on the excellent Linux Action Show to talk about Linux gaming. Ryan Icculus Gordon is the name behind a number of big ports, and you can see here just what he has done. Hint: It’s a lot.
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We already knew that Total War: Rome II would come to Linux which sadly didn’t come out when expected early this year, but now it looks like the original Empire: Total War will come to Linux too.
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– Legend of Grimrock: Old school and modern gaming combines in this thrilling dungeon crawler RPG from Almost Human Games. A group of prisoners are sentenced to certain death by exile to the secluded Mount Grimrock for vile crimes they may or may not have committed. Unbeknownst to their captors, the mountain is riddled with ancient tunnels, dungeons, and tombs built by crumbled civilizations long perished now. If they ever wish to see daylight again and reclaim their freedom, the ragtag group of prisoners must form a team and descend through the mountain, level by level.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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Akademy is a non-commercial event, free of charge for all who want to attend. Generous sponsor support helps make Akademy possible. Most of the Akademy budget goes towards travel support for KDE community members from all over the world, contributors who would not be able to attend the conference otherwise. The wide diversity of attendees is essential to the success of the annual in-person Akademy conference. Many thanks to Akademy 2014 sponsors.
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New Releases
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We are proud to announce the first maintenance release of version 4 Neptune 4.1.
This release fixes some bugs in the installer, bluetooth, plasma & systemd and also provides updated software.
KDE Applications & Platform 4.14 was packed in with a new kernel 3.14.13. We added the bfq (budget fair) I/O scheduler to improve desktop responsiveness even on heavy disk I/O usage.
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Red Hat Family
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Fedora
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Fedora is a global Linux distribution, as soon as we say the word “Global”, immediately internationalization (i18n) and localization(l10n) become a utmost important part of the distribution.
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Debian Family
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The next Tails release is scheduled for October 14.
Have a look to our roadmap to see where we are heading to.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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The Ubuntu installation procedure is governed by a piece of software called Ubiquity and it’s one of the most intuitive and easy-to-use installers on the Linux platform. Unfortunately, users have been confronting with a bug that could wipe their entire hard-driver without any kind of announcement.
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Flavours and Variants
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The curious case of Pear OS 8 is a very interesting one. This operating system had numerous problems during its existence, which spanned a few years. The devs had to change the name two or three times, they had to change the logo as well, and they finally decided on Pear OS. They had a few releases under the Pear OS name, but one day the distro disappeared.
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Many users fear the switch to a Linux system because the new interface might seem little to alien for their taste. This problem can be fixed if the Linux operating system uses a similar design with the Windows counterpart and it looks like Ubuntu MATE can do this without a problem.
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Robots provided with autonomous operation capabilities and, particularly, those sporting sense organs similar to the human ones, have always tickled the fancy of science fiction writers and screenwriters.
As always happens, from a certain point in history, even official science has started to deal with the subject, at first with the so-called “strong theses”, whose objective was to reproduce, to substitute, the capabilities that are typical of humans.
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Phones
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Recently a major publication house published an article about how the Tizen smartphone “flopped – and open source is to blame” [1]. If you did read the article, however, you found that even the author did not really believe open source was “to blame.” The author blamed the companies behind the projects for a lack of commitment to the use of Open Source, which created a lack of follow-through and (given the number of alternative closed and partially open operating systems they could use) the final use of either Android or Microsoft instead. Of course, this headline particularly infuriated me because even iOS is based on FreeBSD, and both Android and Firefox OS use kernels “based on” Linux. So, “Open Source Failed”?
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Android
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The Xposed Framework is a way to make system-level changes to your Android operating system without installing a custom ROM. All you need is root access. Here’s a look at what you can actually do with the Xposed Framework.
You’ll find all of these modules listed in the Xposed Framework itself. Install the Xposed Framework, open it, and use the Modules search to browse, search, and install modules.
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Now, you can make Firefox for Android your own in any of 55 languages, regardless of the language you originally downloaded your favorite browser in. With the new language switching feature, you can easily choose between and set a language without restarting your browser. You can switch between all of the languages Firefox for Android offers regardless of the locales supported by your Android device. Today, we have added Armenian, Basque, Fulah, Icelandic, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh language support to the languages Firefox for Android offered before.
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Minix is prepping a sub-$150 mini-PC running Android 4.4 on a quad-core Intel Atom Z3735F and featuring WiFi, Bluetooth, IR, Ethernet, and USB connectivity.
Intel’s Atom Z37x5 system-on-chip, the second generation of its 22nm Z3000 (Bay-Trail-T) family, is beginning to appear in Android- and Windows-ready tablets such as the Toshiba Excite Go, as well as a “Sharks Cove” single board computer from Intel and Microsoft. Now we’re starting to see mini-PCs built on the tablet-focused SoC. Last week Zotac unveiled a tiny Zbox P1320 Pico computer that ships with Windows 8.1, and now Minix is prepping a Minix “Neo Z64″ miniPC for those who would prefer to run Android 4.4.
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Devices will land in the sub-$100 price range, making them highly desirable in the emerging markets, not limited to Brazil, India, China, and Russia — so-called BRIC nations.
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Google’s first update to Android Wear is coming this week, and several more will follow it before the end of the year as Google moves to quickly iterate on its new wearable software platform. In an interview with CNET, two leading Android engineers lay out what we should expect to see in some future updates. This first one sounds as though it may not be much — just some navigation and voice control improvements — but a few useful features are coming down the road. That includes Google officially beginning to support custom watch faces from third-party developers: some developers have already figured out how to build them, but Google is working on a toolkit for developers that will allow watch faces to easily be made. Google previously teased details of this in a Google+ post.
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Looking at the challenges—and opportunities—of FarmBot, I’m reminded a bit of the factors that played into the origin of the world’s first open source company, Cygnus. That history traces back to 1987, the year that Richard Stallman released version 1.0 of the GNU C compiler. At that time, compiler ports cost millions of dollars and took years to deliver. I was very interested in writing compilers, but I saw no prospect for doing so because (1) there were very few compiler companies in the world, and (2) they employed a very small number of people—most of whom were famous for having written the few compilers I’d ever heard of. Who would hire somebody with no commercial compiler experience to work on something so rare and valuable?
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Small business owners and freelancers put a lot of work into their businesses. They do that not only because they’re passionate about what they do, but they also have the goal of getting paid.
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Commonwealth and state/territory government funded public company, Healthdirect Australia, has used open source software to build an identity and access management (IAM) solution.
The IAM solution allows users to have one identity across all of its websites and applications. For example, users can sign in using their Facebook, LinkedIn or Gmail account.
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As much as we may like the myth of the hobbyist developer, no one codes for free anymore. Well, not quite “no one,” but according to Dirk Riehle’s recent academic research, at least half of all open-source software is written by paid developers during work hours. And if Linux is any indicator, the percentage of 9-to-5 open-source development is only going to increase over time.
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Web Browsers
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Chrome
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As we’ve been reporting, Google is embracing the 64-bit future with its Chrome browser, having just elevated the 64-bit version of Chrome for Windows to its stable Beta distribution channel, while also elevating Chrome for Mac OS X’s 64-bit version to Canary and Dev builds. In some ways, 64-bit versions of Chrome represent a game of catch-up for Google, because Mozilla has offered 64-bit versions of Firefox for Mac OS X and Linux for a long time.
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Opera Software on Tuesday announced the latest version of its browser for Linux, Mac and Windows – Opera 24. The browser introduces the tab preview feature, and the company alongside announced the milestone support for 1,000 extensions for the first time since it shifted to the Chromium engine.
With Opera 24, the company introduced tab previews – aimed at helping users figure out what a tab contains just by hovering their mouse over it. The new feature gives an inside preview of the opened tab upfront in the form of the most recent snapshot of the site.
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Mozilla
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If you checkout the Mozilla FTP servers tonight the official 32.0 builds have surfaced for the Firefox web-browser.
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Among others, Firefox 32 comes with an improved generational garbage collection, HTTP caching v2 has been enabled by default, the login metadata viewable is now viewable in the password manager, public key pinning support has been added, the number of found items in the find toolbar is now displayed, just like in Chrome, Scratchpad has received code completion and inline documentation, support for connectiong to the HTTP proxy over HTTPS has been implemented and both the Password Manager and Add-on manager have received improvements and a big number of security and bug-fixes have been implemented.
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Mozilla recently announced that the first smartphone running its Firefox OS mobile operating system is now on sale in India, following earlier reports that a low-cost phone would arrive there in July. One of the big surprises with the Cloud FX phones is that, while the rumor mill had set the price at $50, these phones are actually priced at a rock-bottom $33. In India’s fast-growing mobile market, that could put phones in the hands of many new users and help Firefox OS become entrenched.
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SaaS/Big Data
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The first time I ever heard of the Manila project was at the recent OpenStack Atlanta summit. I had planned to sit in on the Manila session, but the room was overflowing and I wasn’t allowed in, which was very disappointing.
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BSD
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GhostBSD is a desktop distribution that’s based on FreeBSD. The project started out with support for several desktop environments (Gnome, Mate, XFCE, LXDE, and Openbox), but has since become a MATE-only distribution.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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GNU FreeDink is still going on as an GPL-licensed portable and improved upon version of the Dink Smallwood game engine.
Dink Smallwood is the Zelda-like RPG game title from the late 90′s that still has a small following of gamers. GNU FreeDink meanwhile is an official GNU project that frees up the title to more platforms. The GNU FreeDink engine runs the original game and its mods while supporting multiple platforms and supporting newer technologies like SDL from what was originally available when the game was originally developed. This GNU project also frees up the sound/music replacements with other assets via the freedink-data component. The game also avoids MP3 files in favor of Ogg Vorbis audio.
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Standards/Consortia
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We often wish to share electronic documents with friends, colleagues, business or government, and the software application we use to prepare these documents will save them in a particular format.
Any application that later loads the document will also need to be able to understand this format. If an organisation can control the format, and convince people to use it, then they can use this as a very powerful tool to create a monopoly in the market.
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Hardware
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AMD today is rolling out three new FX-Series processors (the FX-8320E, FX-8370E, and FX-8370) while cutting prices on their existing Vishera AM3+ FX processors. AMD sent over the new FX-8370 and FX-8370E CPUs last week to Phoronix (the FX-8320E is still forthcoming) so we are here with the rundown on the Linux performance of these new FX CPUs compared to a wide variety of other Intel and AMD Linux systems with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
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Health/Nutrition
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Ukraine’s bid for closer ties with the west could come at a cost. With the IMF set to loan the country $17 billion, the deal could also see GMO crops grown in some of the most fertile lands on the continent, warns Frederic Mousseau.
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Security
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Nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Kim Kardashian and Rihanna, among others, leaked online Sunday in what appears to be a massive celebrity hacking scandal. The racy photos surfaced online Sunday and had the Internet buzzing.
A representative for Lawrence has since confirmed the images are real.
“This is a flagrant violation of privacy,” the actress’ spokesperson said in a statement. “The authorities have been contacted and will prosecute anyone who posts stolen photos of Jennifer Lawrence.”
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Initial media reports suggested that the hacks stemmed from individual accounts on iCloud, an online service to store photos, music and other data from Apple devices.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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Al shabaab accuses pastoralists who carrying mobile phones and anyone knows English in this area of spying and collaborating with the enemy.
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Al-Qaeda militants have executed three men they accuse of planting electronic chips in the network’s vehicles to help US drones target them, a security official said Monday.
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A blast has struck a convoy in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula slaughtering at least 11 Egyptian border police officers.
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Demands include UN compensation for deaths of 3 rebels, aid; IS accused of using cluster bombs
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Ireland may not replace its 130-person rapid response force in the Golan Heights, where 44 peacekeepers from Fiji are being held by rebels, Ireland’s Defense Minister said on Monday, according to Reuters.
According to the minister, Simon Coveney, Ireland would like the United Nations to review its mandate for its forces there.
Ireland’s contingent, which is the most heavily armed element of the 1,200 strong multinational UN mission, was due to be replaced by new Irish troops next month, but Ireland is to freeze the rotation, Coveney said.
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The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has reported that with only one CIA drone attack in Pakistan in August 2014 the drone strike casualty rate for August was less than half that of July’s casualty rate.
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In a suburban courtroom outside Syracuse, before a jury of six men and women, Russell Brown talked about his days as a Marine in Vietnam.
He talked about the fighting and killing – he was in Quang Tri Province, a bloody battleground in the late 1960s – and how a lot of innocent Vietnamese died there.
He also talked about why, 45 years later, his experiences during that war led him to an anti-drone protest and the decision to lie down in front of an Air National Guard base in Central New York and cover himself with paint the color of blood.
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NATO is set to add cyber-threats to its fundamental treaty – but reportedly has little idea about the computer arsenals of its member countries
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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Halliburton has agreed to pay $1.1 billion to settle a majority of plaintiff claims brought over the company’s role in the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Finance
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The 1972 book Limits to Growth, which predicted our civilisation would probably collapse some time this century, has been criticised as doomsday fantasy since it was published. Back in 2002, self-styled environmental expert Bjorn Lomborg consigned it to the “dustbin of history”.
It doesn’t belong there. Research from the University of Melbourne has found the book’s forecasts are accurate, 40 years on. If we continue to track in line with the book’s scenario, expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon.
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Censorship
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n Indonesian student, who could be jailed for comments posted on social media, is facing an ethical hearing at her university.
An Indonesian student, who could be jailed for comments posted on social media, is facing an ethical hearing at her university today.
Postgraduate law student Florence Sihombing, 26, was arrested on Monday after a message she sent to friends on social media went viral.
In her post, Ms Sihombing called the central Java city of Yogyakarta “poor, stupid and uneducated”.
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Privacy
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Hundreds of journalists working at the Times of India and its sister publications have received a peculiar request from their employer: hand over your Twitter and Facebook passwords and let us post for you.
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Regarding your recent editorial on drones, while there may be benefits of using unmanned aerial vehicles in less populated areas, I oppose providing Baltimore City police with drones for any purpose (“Eyes in the sky,” Aug. 28).
Drone manufacturers and operators hope to create thousands of jobs and earn billions of dollars with this technology. But as with any quasi-military device there is a need for civilian oversight. It’s time the City Council takes up the matter.
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Documents released last week by the City of Oakland reveal that it is one of a handful of American jurisdictions attempting to upgrade an existing cellular surveillance system, commonly known as a stingray.
The Oakland Police Department, the nearby Fremont Police Department, and the Alameda County District Attorney jointly applied for a grant from the Department of Homeland Security to “obtain a state-of-the-art cell phone tracking system,” the records show.
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The Don’t Spy On Us campaign is coming to the Labour party conference in Manchester and asking the question “Surveillance, where do you draw the line?”
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Civil Rights
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David Cameron will make a statement to the House of Commons later today on proposals for new legislation which will “make it easier to take people’s passports away“.
This comes after a fortnight during which senior Tory, Labour and UKIP figures, as well as the Met police commissioner and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, spoke in favour of increasing the government’s ability to remove the passports of those with British citizenship who go abroad to fight with extremist groups.
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The Coalition is proposing new discretionary powers to stop terror suspects returning to the UK, David Cameron announced today.
The move is designed to thwart court challenges to Home Office attempts to remove passports of suspected terrorists while they are abroad.
In a wide ranging Commons statement responding to crises in Ukraine and the Middle East as well as an increased terror threat at home, the prime minister also unveiled plans to give border police temporary powers to seize the passports of those who they suspect are travelling abroad to fight with terrorist groups.
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From Ferguson’s military police to loaning drones and tracking your every move, the agency’s expensive, violent sinkhole of bureaucracy needs reform – now
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One of the leading activists of the 1960s and beyond will house his papers, including his extensive FBI file, at the University of Michigan.
The collection of Tom Hayden’s papers will be open to the public, starting in the middle of September.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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The UK’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit arrested a man yesterday believed to have operated streaming sites that provided illegal access to subscription-only sports TV services. The arrest marks the third carried out by PIPCU in the streaming sector.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
09.01.14
Posted in News Roundup at 4:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Linux doesn’t have any kind of PR, and in the collective mind of the people, there is still an impression that Linux users spend their time inside the terminal and in dreary desktops. In fact, most of the current Linux desktops are much better than anything made by Apple of Microsoft.
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Lennart Poettering of systemd and PulseAudio fame has published a lengthy blog post that shares his vision for how he wishes to change how Linux software systems are put together to address a wide variety of issues. The Btrfs file-system and systemd play big roles with his new vision.
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Of course, we are developers of the systemd project. Implementing this scheme is not just a job for the systemd developers. This is a reinvention how distributions work, and hence needs great support from the distributions. We really hope we can trigger some interest by publishing this proposal now, to get the distributions on board. This after all is explicitly not supposed to be a solution for one specific project and one specific vendor product, we care about making this open, and solving it for the generic case, without cutting corners.
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Desktop
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Is Word better than LibreOffice Writer or is LibreOffice Writer better than Word? Is Android better than Apple? Were Nirvana better than Pearl Jam? Which were better “The Beatles” or “The Rolling Stones”?
Microsoft Word has a lot of flaws that people seem to gloss over. Bullets and numbering for instance are just random. The fonts change, the numbering changes, the indentation changes and for no apparent reason.
The Microsoft ribbon bars have surely just been added to sell training courses because there is no way they are better than menus, toolbars and keyboard shortcuts. Everything we have been used to for 20 years all switched around for no seemingly good reason. I don’t like it when my local supermarket rearranges all the shelves for no apparent reason either. If you want a ribbon bar then there is always Kingsoft Office.
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Server
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Relational database management systems (RDBMSs) aren’t the sort of thing to get most folk out of bed in the morning – unless, of course, you happen to think they’re one of the most brilliant concepts ever dreamed up.
These days you can’t sneeze without someone turning it into a table value in a database somewhere – and in combination with the freely available Linux operating system, there’s no end to them.
Most Linux distros make it almost trivial to add popular DBMSs to your system, such as MySQL and MariaDB, by bundling them in for free in their online app stores. But how do you tell which combination – which Linux distro and which DBMS – will give you the best performance?
This week we’ve revved up the Labs servers to ask the question: what level of performance do you get from OS repository-sourced DBMSs?
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Kernel Space
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I’m back to the usual Sunday release schedule, and -rc3 is out there
now. As expected, it is larger than rc2, since people are clearly
getting back from their Kernel Summit travels etc. But happily, it’s
not *much* larger than rc2 was, and there’s nothing particularly odd
going on, so I’m going to just ignore the whole “it’s summer”
argument, and hope that things are just going that well.
Please don’t prove me wrong,
Linus
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Linus Torvalds is back to his rhythm of releasing new kernel release candidates on Sundays.
After Linux 3.17-rc2 was released last Monday to celebrate 23 years of Linux, Torvalds is now back in Portland and doing his Sunday release rhythm.
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Graphics Stack
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Mesa 10.3 release candidate 2 is now available for testing. The current plan of record is to have an additional release candidate each Friday until the 10.3 release on Friday, September 12th.
The tag in the GIT repository for Mesa 10.3-rc2 is ‘mesa-10.3-rc2′. I have verified that the tag is in the correct place in the tree.
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The Nouveau development community released the xf86-video-nouveau 1.0.11 driver update to kick off the start of September. While you wouldn’t guess it from the version number, this driver update is actually very significant and introduces a lot of new functionality and other improvements.
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Benchmarks
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Since last year AMD’s had the FX-9590 as the top-end Vishera CPU that can top out at 5.0GHz with its Turbo Frequency, but initially this processor was only available to OEM system builds. Over time the OEM version of the FX-9590 became available to consumers while earlier this summer AMD launched a retail version of the FX-9590 that included the eight-core CPU with a closed-loop water cooling solution. Today we’re reviewing this highest-end Vishera CPU to see how it compares to other AMD and Intel processors on Ubuntu Linux.
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Applications
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XBMC, which renamed itself to Kodi, is out with a new alpha release for the Kodi 14 media center software. While XBMC 13 introduced a lot of new features, Kodi 14 is going to be mostly about minor refinements.
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DVDStyler 2.8 RC3, a cross-platform, free DVD authoring application that allows video enthusiasts to create professional-looking DVDs, is now ready for download and testing.
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Fotoxx 14.09, a free, open source Linux photo editing and collection management program that’s easy to use and install, is now available for download.
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Proprietary
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The Opera developers have released a new version of their Internet browser in the 25.x branch, and they have implemented a default PDF viewer.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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The problem is “Linux” has only been mentioned once that we can see, and that’s on their Steam coming soon button. It’s not mentioned in any other announcement or their FAQ, but this is still on their official site.
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Metro 2033 Redux is confirmed for Linux, but the actual release date isn’t certain yet. Luckily thanks as usual to the excellent SteamDB it looks like it’s coming sooner rather than later.
The official announcement of the Redux versions did note the Linux builds would come at a later date, but it may not be too far.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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Quick update for Ambiance & Radiance Colors fans: the theme pack was updated (version 14.04.6) today with quite a few Xfce fixes such as: fixed window borders on non-Debian distros, fixed Xfce GTK3 indicator background and more.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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I’m doing a little work on Tupi – the 2D animation application that joined the KDE community some months back — so that it builds on FreeBSD (the C++ code is wonderful, but the build system is qonf, which is not).
This has led me to the maze of git documentation on KDE’s infrastructure, and I’m taking notes so I don’t forget what I did. It’s also part of one of the things-to-do-at-Akademy on my list: talk to the techbase people to find out what the status and intentions are.
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Desktops on Linux. They’re a concept completely alien to users of other operating systems because they never having to think about them. Desktops must feel like the abstract idea of time to the Amondawa tribe, a thought that doesn’t have any use until you’re in a different environment. But here it is – on Linux you don’t have to use the graphical environment lurking beneath your mouse cursor. You can change it for something completely different. If you don’t like windows, switch to xmonad. If you like full-screen apps, try Gnome. And if you’re after the most powerful and configurable point-and-click desktop, there’s KDE.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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GNOME is working to implement official Wayland support for the upcoming 3.14 release and they seem to be more than half way there. It’s difficult to test the new GNOME 3.14 Beta updates that have been made until now, especially with the Wayland integration, but a Reddit user posted a short and easy-to-follow tutorial in this regard.
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New Releases
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Today we are pleased to release the next in the 5 series of Black Lab Linux. Black Lab Linux 5.1 contains many updates, new features and enhancements to the Black Lab Linux distribution.
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Red Hat Family
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Brian Stevens joined the company 13 years ago and did not give a reason for leaving the job.
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Yes, already year passed since I joined ARM team at Red Hat. It was a good time and I do not plan to change it 
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Debian Family
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Debconf14 started with a Meet and Greet before the Welcome Talk. I got to meet people and find out what they do for Debian. I also got to meet other GSoC students that I had only previously interacted with online. During the Meet and Greet I also met one of my mentors for GSoC, Zack. Later in the conference I met another of my mentors, Piotr. Previously I only interacted with Zack and Piotr online.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Yesterday I wrote about Ubuntu 14.10 not yet having X.Org Server 1.16 even though the first beta was issued this week and there’s been a testing package repository for more than one month. This lack of X.Org Server 1.16 thus far is apparently due to AMD with not yet having a supportive Catalyst driver.
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Flavours and Variants
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Ultimate Linux Mint 1.4, a Linux distribution based on Linux Mint 17 Qiana Cinnamon Edition 64-bit, has been released and is available for download.
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I find the attitude of many within the Raspberry Pi community to be strange and offensive.
I first discovered this odd phenomenon (odd because it contradicts the ethos of the project’s academic foundations) back when it first started, as many within the Raspberry Pi community took an extremely hostile attitude toward academic freedom, apparently in defence of various parties’ highly dubious intellectual monopolies (Broadcom and MPEG-LA, for example).
I pointed out the irony and hypocrisy of their attitude at the time, explaining that they were more than happy to leech Free (as in freedom) Software for their own benefit, but then balked at the prospect of freely sharing the results, and in particular this contradicted their stated academic goal of facilitating better computer education in UK schools, an environment that rightly demands open access to knowledge.
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Since the first beta release we have made huge improvements; now the browser is more responsive, it’s faster, and videos work much better (the first beta could play 640×360 videos at 0.5fps, now we can play 25fps 1280×720 videos smoothly). Some web sites are still a bit slow (if they are heavy on the JavaScript side), but there’s not much we can do for web sites that, even on my laptop with an Intel Core i7, use 100% of one of the cores for more than ten seconds.
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Phones
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Android
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At my house we have a second generation Nexus 7. I don’t use it at all, but my roommate depends on it. Again, it’s a beautiful OS, stable and easy to use, but it’s all about selling things. In fact, you can’t even enter the app store without going through a screen that nags you to make a deposit in case you find an app you want to buy — and a way of saying “no thanks, I’m just looking for free apps” isn’t as obvious as it should be.
Like the Internet, Android is primarily a marketing tool designed by Google, which is primarily a marketing company.
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Emil Velikov, the new Mesa release manager, just landed a large set of libdrm patches for improving the open-source graphics drivers for Android.
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Open source is not just for Linux. Yes, you’ll certainly find a much larger selection of open-source software for the Linux platform, but both Windows and Apple also enjoy a good number of titles. Regardless of what Free Open Source Software (FOSS) you need to use, you might not always find it the most natural evolution — especially when you’ve spent the whole of your career using proprietary software. The thing is, a lot of open-source software has matured to the point where it rivals (and sometimes bests) its proprietary counterpart.
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Of course, I’m not just aiming this blogpost at EMC, I’d also like to see IBM take this approach with GPFS. The open-source products are beginning to be good enough for many, certainly outside of some core performance requirements. Ceph, for example, is really beginning to pick up some momentum, especially now that RedHat has bought Inktank.
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Events
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With regards to the open source community in Pakistan, the situation is analogous to that on Wikipedia. Outside of a core group of members of Mozilla Pakistan and Linux Pakistan, the majority of internet users are not familiar with the free culture and open movements. This, in all likelihood, is due to a lack of widespread awareness of the movements.
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Web Browsers
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Chrome
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The developers have explained that the user switching feature has been redesigned and it will make changing profiles and into the incognito mode a lot simple. They have also added a new experimental Guest mode, a new experimental UI for Chrome supervised users has been implemented, and numerous under-the-hood changes have been made for stability and performance.
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Mozilla
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Intex and Spice launched the first Firefox OS phones in India using a low-cost Spreadtrum design: the $33 Intex Cloud FX and the $38 Spice Fire One Mi-FX 1.
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It’s been a little over a month since the previous Firefox stable release and the developers have now pushed a new major update to users. This latest iteration of Firefox brings just a few major features for regular users, but it excels in other areas like better HTML 5 support.
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Users of the Mozilla Developer Network and Bugzilla testing system are advised to update their passwords after a pair of data disclosures were reported in August.
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SaaS/Big Data
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The open source software allows users to store, manage and deploy data analytics on a cloud-based service.
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Databases
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PhpMyAdmin, the popular tool written in PHP and intended to handle the administration of MySQL databases, is now at version 4.2.8.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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There are many, many interesting talks this year, and I cannot resist to remind you of the two talks I’ll be giving, even though Italo and I will also be on the deck for a few talks about LibreOffice marketing especially on Wednesday.
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BSD
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PfSense is a free network firewall distribution based on the FreeBSD, it comes with a custom kernel, and a few quite powerful applications that should make its users’ life a lot easier. Most of the firewall distros are Linux-based, but PfSense is a little bit different and is using FreeBSD. Regular users won’t feel anything out of the ordinary, but it’s an interesting choice for the base.
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Project Releases
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Public Services/Government
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Each OK Lab is a source of a great variety of projects, tackling different social issues and topics. For example, the OK Lab in Hamburg has a strong focus on urban development, and has created a map which shows the distribution of playgrounds in the city. An app from the OK Lab Heilbronn depicts the quality of tap water by region, and another from the OK Lab Cologne helps users find the closest defibrillator in their area. One more of our favorite developments is called “Kleiner Spatz”, which translates to “Little Sparrow,” and helps parents to find free child care in their city.
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Openness/Sharing
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Interested in keeping track of what’s happening in the open source cloud? Opensource.com is your source for what’s happening right now in OpenStack, the open source cloud infrastructure project.
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Standards/Consortia
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MT@EC has been developed under the ISA programme, which supports interoperable solutions for public administrations.
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Since 1973, the National Football League has prevented local TV stations from broadcasting games when tickets aren’t sold out—and Federal Communications Commission rules enable this decidedly fan-unfriendly policy. The rules are finally close to being overturned, and if they are you can thank David Goodfriend.
Founder of the Sports Fans Coalition, Goodfriend is an attorney and lobbyist with years of experience in government and private industry. He was a Clinton Administration official, a Congressional staffer, legal advisor at the FCC, and executive at Dish Network. The Sports Fans Coalition teamed with four consumer advocacy organizations in 2011 to petition the FCC to stop supporting the NFL’s blackout regime.
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Conservationists will fall silent at noon today to mark the hundredth anniversary of the death of Martha, the last ever passenger pigeon – just as a new project is set up to bring the species back from the dead.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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Ecuador’s pro-US neoliberal president Lucio Gutierrez was ousted in 2005. Since then, relations between Ecuador and the United States have deteriorated, with the Andean nation’s increasing rejection of US hegemony.
The government of Rafael Correa, first elected in 2006, has broken from the neoliberal doctrines Washington has imposed on Latin America. It has embraced regional integration, moving closer to its neighbours and further away from the US.
Diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks show how hard the US fought to control Ecuador’s future post-Gutierrez.
They show a key element of US efforts to control Ecuador’s political and economic direction in the post-Gutierrez years was the US Embassy’s “democracy promotion” activity.
So-called “democracy promotion” came to prominence as a method for maintaining US hegemony in the 1980s.
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We had the first proof of this strategy with the decrypted military film “Collateral Murder”, where helicopter pilots shot up some Reuters journalists and civilians in Iraq in 2007. That was bad enough — but the cover-up stank. For years the Pentagon denied all knowledge of this atrocious war crime, and it was only after Wikileaks released the information, provided by the brave whistleblower Chelsea Manning, that the families and the international community learned the truth. Yet it is Manning, not the war criminals, who is serving a 35 year sentence in a US prison.
Worse, by sheer scale at least, are the ongoing, wide-ranging unmanned drone attacks across the Middle East and Central Asia, as catalogued by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in the UK. Many thousands of innocents have been murdered in these attacks, with the US justifying the strikes as killing “militants” — ie any male over the age of 14. The US is murdering children, families, wedding parties and village councils with impunity.
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IN THE last 10 years armed unmanned aerial vehicles — drones — have been operated to kill individuals in at least seven countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Palestine, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Their use is changing the way war is conventionally waged.
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Heavy fighting between Syrian army forces and rebels erupted on the Golan Heights on Monday, a Reuters photographer said, but it was unclear if either of the two sides had gained an advantage to control a key frontier crossing.
Rebels of al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front have been battling the Syrian army in the area and have wrested control of the crossing at Quneitra, which is operated by the United Nations.
Persistent small arms fire and explosions from mortar shells and other munitions could be heard on the Israeli-controlled side of the frontier of the strategic plateau, the photographer reported.
At least one tank belonging to the Syrian army loyal to President Bashar al-Assad was also involved and rebels could be seen a few meters (yards) away from the frontier fence.
On Sunday, Israel’s military said it shot down a drone that flew from Syria into Israeli-controlled airspace over the Golan.
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After four decades, UN supervision on the Syrian border is about to end and Assad’s military is being replaced by more hostile forces.
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Recent months have witnessed worrying developments in the realm of news media in Yemen. On June 11, the Yemen Today TV Channel was shut down by Presidential Guards on President Hadi’s order following the channel’s coverage of the demonstrations and riots in Sana’a that same day.
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China today reacted guardedly to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks of “expansionist” tendency among some countries, saying it is not clear what was he referring to and recalled his earlier comments that India and China are strategic partners.
“We have noted relevant information about Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Japan. You just mentioned comments made by him I don’t know what is he referring to,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a media briefing here when asked about Modi’s remarks made during his ongoing visit to Japan.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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The Royal Danish Navy arrested 14 volunteers from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society on Saturday for trying to intervene in the slaughter of 33 pilot whales in the Faroe Islands, a protectorate of Denmark.
A team of six Sea Shepherd volunteers spotted a pod of pilot whales from shore on Sandoy Island in the remote North Atlantic archipelago on Saturday and alerted Sea Shepherd’s small flotilla of boats, which has been patrolling the icy waters for nearly three months. Sea Shepherd has been trying to stop the annual Faroese whale hunt known as grindadráp, or grind.
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A total of 14 volunteer crew members of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s pilot whale defence campaign Operation GrindStop 2014 arrested on Saturday in the Faroe Islands today have been released.
As of Sunday morning, all 14 Sea Shepherd crew have been released. The six volunteers from the land team must return to court tomorrow, Monday, September 1. The eight members of the boat team have been told to return to court on September 25. Postponing the court date until that time allows the police to hold the three Sea Shepherd boats until the end of September, as they are being held for “evidence.” All video and still camera data cards were removed by police and are still being held. Sea Shepherd attorneys are working to have them returned as well.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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Despite claims that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is not a “target” in the state’s criminal campaign finance probe, newly-released documents demonstrate that prosecutors are indeed looking at potentially criminal activity by the first-term governor and 2016 presidential hopeful.
The latest round of documents released in Wisconsin’s “John Doe” investigation shine new light on the stalled inquiry into alleged illegal coordination between Walker’s campaign and outside political groups like Wisconsin Club for Growth (WiCFG) during the 2011-2012 recall elections.
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Privacy
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The web forum 4chan is known mostly as a place to share juvenile and, to put it mildly, politically incorrect images. But it’s also the birthplace of one of the latest attempts to subvert the NSA’s mass surveillance program.
When whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that full extent of the NSA’s activities last year, members of the site’s tech forum started talking about the need for a more secure alternative to Skype. Soon, they’d opened a chat room to discuss the project and created an account on the code hosting and collaboration site GitHub and began uploading code.
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Documents publicized by whistleblower Edward Snowden show that false US intelligence provided to the Turkish government resulted in the 2011 massacre of nearly three dozens of Kurdish villagers on a mountain in eastern Turkey.
In a cold and snowy December night in 2011, 34 civilian cigarette smugglers were killed in an aerial strike launched Turkey under the false belief that the men on Mount Cudi were fighters affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a group designated as a terrorist group.
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Turkey’s foreign ministry Monday summoned the U.S. charge d’affaires, currently Washington’s most senior diplomat in Ankara, over a media report that the United States had spied on Turkey, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said.
German magazine Der Spiegel said in an article on its website Sunday that the U.S. National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ eavesdropping agency had carried out “wide-scale spying against Turkey,” citing documents from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
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“For the reasons that the United States’ name was mentioned, and such claims were made … the charge d’affaires has been called to the foreign ministry and information has been received from him,” Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç told reporters Sept. 1, referring to Washington’s most senior diplomat in Ankara.
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The attorney general, George Brandis, has denied referring lawyer Bernard Collaery and a former intelligence officer to the Australian federal police after they revealed that Australia spied on Timor-Leste during negotiations over a lucrative oil and gas pipeline.
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Americans should assume “Big Government” is watching them, contends the author of “Police State USA: How Orwell’s Nightmare is Becoming Our Reality.”
Cheryl Chumley’s warning follows confirmation that the National Security Administration accessed hundreds of billions of records of emails, telephone calls and online chats.
“This latest revelation shows that Americans who use social media at all should just assume their posts and communications are being monitored by Big Government,” she said.
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Protester Mitch Anthony told We Are Change UK: “This is a dirty protest against the government taking the piss. So now we’re giving the piss back”.
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A new federal government proposal would have your car report your location, direction and speed at all times to Big Brother.
Nate Cardozo is an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“It’s something about which we’re really concerned. Currently, as it stands, the proposed rules don’t seem to take enough privacy into account.”
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Top NSA Whistleblower: We Need a New 9/11 Investigation [Ed: The so-called "truthers" are trying to pretend that Binney supports their views when in fact all he calls for is declassification/re-investigation]
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Civil Rights
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John Crawford III died Aug. 5 after police were called to Walmart in Beavercreek, near Dayton, by another shopper who reported a man carrying what appeared to be an AR-15 rifle.
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British authorities have been accused of funding a four-year intelligence operation in Nepal that led to Maoist rebels being arrested, tortured and killed during the country’s civil war.
Thomas Bell, the author of a new book on the conflict, says MI6 funded safe houses and provided training in surveillance and counter-insurgency tactics to Nepal’s army and spy agency, the National Investigation Department (NID) under “Operation Mustang”, launched in 2002.
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Campaigners say city is entering ‘era of civil disobedience’ after China claims free leadership poll would lead to ‘chaotic society’
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This undated photo shows a memorial or “ghost bike” near where Milton Olin was struck and killed by an L.A. County Sheriff’s patrol car on Dec. 8, 2013 while riding his bicycle on Mulholland Highway in Calabasas, Calif.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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As I mentioned in my previous update, the TTIP negotiations are currently paused until the end of the month, but that does not mean that all activity has stopped. By an interesting coincidence, the other major EU trade agreement – that with Canada, generally known as CETA, and intimately linked with TTIP in many ways – seems to have been “concluded”, although quite what that means is not yet clear.
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Copyrights
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Dozens of adult companies are using “copyright trolling” tactics to supplement their income…
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The mother of Swedish Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg has told The Local about her son’s “suffering” in jail ahead of the final stages of his trial.
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We’ve been manufacturing without a license in our homes for 30 years now. It’s about to go physical. Maybe that will wake legislators up to the bigger picture. If not, we’re in for something much worse.
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Send this to a friend
08.31.14
Posted in News Roundup at 4:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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According to the Xinhua news agency (via Reuters), the Chinese government is looking to boost its domestic software industry and develop alternatives firstly for desktop operating systems (namely Windows), and then it will follow those footsteps in the mobile world with an Android usurper (or that’s the theory). This is according to a certain Ni Guangnan, head of an “official OS development alliance” which was put together back in the spring.
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Desktop
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When you stop and think about it, it’s kind of astonishing how far Chromebooks have come.
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Kernel Space
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This branch of the Linux kernel is LTS (long term support) and it doesn’t usually gathers too many changes, but this latest update is a little bit different and it’s quite consistent.
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In recent years with more motherboard vendors enabling the updating of the BIOS/UEFI from within the setup utility itself and support loading the BIOS file off a USB thumb drive or other storage, it’s generally easier for Linux users and all around a smoother process than the days of having to make a MS-DOS start-up floppy disk or similar. For most of these BIOS updates, Windows is generally not required as you can just head on over to the vendor’s web-site, download a zipped up copy of the BIOS, transfer it to a USB drive, and reboot into the UEFI setup utility and flash away.
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Benchmarks
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As earlier this week I did a 20-way AMD Radeon open-source comparison, looked at the most energy efficient Radeon GPUs for Linux gaming, and then yesterday provided a look at the fastest NVIDIA GPUs for open-source gaming with Nouveau, in this article is a culmination of all the open-source graphics tests this week while seeing how Intel Haswell HD Graphics fall into the mix against the open-source Radeon R600/RadeonSI and Nouveau NV50/NVC0 graphics drivers.
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This holiday weekend (in the US) can be a great time to test your Linux system to see how it’s performing against the latest AMD and Intel processors to see if it’s time for a good upgrade.
This weekend I’m working on many Linux CPU benchmarks for the upcoming Linux review of the Intel Core i7 5960X Haswell-E system (still waiting for Intel’s review sample to arrive though…) and also have some other hardware in preparation for an unrelated launch that’s happening next week from another vendor. I’m testing several different Intel/AMD CPUs from the latest desktop CPUs to the Extreme Edition models to some slightly older parts. Beyond the raw performance results are also the power consumption data and much more.
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Applications
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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Company of Heroes 2, a real time strategy developed by Relic Entertainment and published by Sega, might be getting a Linux release soon.
Sega has already expressed its interest to bring some of the titles in its portfolio to Linux platform. For example, Total War: ROME II is expected to arrive on the open source platform in the near future and Football Manager 2015 will also get a Linux launch.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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Popular Linux distributions for beginners typically default to one of two desktop environments, KDE or GNOME. Both of these environments provide users with an intuitive and attractive desktop, as well as offering all the applications users love, ranging from multimedia software, games, administration programs, network tools, educational applications, utilities, artwork, web development tools and more. However, these two desktops focus more on providing users with a modern computing environment with all the bells and whistles, rather than minimising the amount of system resources they use.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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A new version of the digiKam Recipes ebook is available for download. The new release features a slightly tweaked cover and the new Fix keywords with ExifTool recipe.
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I meant to write a post about the upcoming Akademy for a while now. Since I submitted quite a few sessions (obviously requiring preparation) and I had to prepare for the KDE Frameworks BoF, I never quite found the time… until now! I’m all done! Actually I just have to pack my bags and hit the road at that point. It’s probably the first Akademy where I’m ready four days before the first flight of my journey.
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New Releases
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The OpenELEC devs have released yet another Beta version of their embedded operating systems and they are getting really close to get a new stable version out the door. Some of the major components have been updated as well and the Raspberry Pi users should be really thrilled about this latest upgrade, as it includes some interesting changes for them as well.
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Slackware Family
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If you want to be reminded of the new features in LibreOffice 4.3 then I advise you to read the Release Notes. My previous post on LO 4.3.0 mentions some of these improvements as well.
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Debian Family
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It turns out that I’m not the only one who thought about this approach, which has been named “debops”. The same day that my talk was announced on the DebConf website, someone emailed me saying that he had instituted the exact same rules at his company, which operates a large Django-based web application in the US and Russia. It was pretty impressive to read about a real business coming to the same conclusions and using the same approach (i.e. system libraries, deployment packages) as Libravatar.
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Phones
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Android
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Android 4.4, KitKat was released on October 31, 2013, or at least, that’s what you can say about one device: the Nexus 5. For the rest of the ecosystem, the date you got KitKat—if you got KitKat—varied wildly depending on your device, OEM, and carrier.
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Steppe Eagle is the codename for AMD’s new embedded G-Series SoC that arrived this summer. Steppe Eagle boasts a TDP as little as five Watts and is a big upgrade over earlier G-Series hardware. The Steppe Eagle SoC features GCN-based Radeon graphics while the CPU is Jaguar-based and similar to Kabini. As of today, basic support for these latest-generation AMD embedded SoCs can be found within mainline Coreboot. This Coreboot tooling was done by Sage Electronic Engineering, the firm responsible for much of AMD’s involvement in Coreboot.
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Web Browsers
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Chrome
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Recently Google made switching accounts on their various web and mobile services much easier. Signing in between multiple accounts in the Chrome browser however was somewhat a pain because the option becomes tucked away in settings after the first run sign-in, and because all extensions are re-installed/reloaded every time an account is connected to Chrome.
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Openness/Sharing
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Standards/Consortia
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Yes, you are likely using the Microsoft formats for your documents. However, they don’t always follow OpenDocument Format (ODF) standards. Instead of opting for the proprietary Microsoft formats, switch over to one that’s welcomed by nearly all office suites: ODF. You’ll find a much more seamless collaboration process and fewer gotchas when moving between office suites. The only platform that can have a bit of trouble with this format is Android. The one Android office suite that works well with ODF is OfficeSuite 7 Pro.
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There are reports of such gibberish papers flooding academia, sometimes in attempts to highlight how lax publishers are, and what a giant scam all of this is.
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The Verge got a lot of attention yesterday for its story on “Uber’s playbook for sabotaging Lyft.” If you follow the space at all, you know that there have been stories making the rounds for months claiming that people working for Uber were scheduling competitors’ rides and then cancelling them, thereby tying up competitors’ systems. Uber has hit back saying that the reverse is actually true, and that Lyft has called up and cancelled Uber rides.
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Health/Nutrition
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In her June 25 keynote address to the BIO International Convention in San Diego, Calif., Hillary Clinton voiced strong support for genetic engineering and genetically engineered crops. She earned a standing ovation that day by stating that the biotech industry suffers from a public perception problem and that it just needs “a better vocabulary” in order to persuade GMO skeptics who don’t understand “the facts” about genetic engineering.
And then Hillary proceeded to get the facts wrong.
Why does it matter what Hillary, who holds no public office and has not (yet) declared her candidacy for president, says or believes about genetic engineering and genetically modified crops and foods?
It doesn’t—unless she throws her hat in the ring for the Democratic nomination. And then it matters not just what her position is on GMOs, not just how deep her financial ties to the biotech industry run, not just how much she distorts the facts about the “promise” of biotech crops.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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Then three years ago, after looking into the facts surrounding unmanned aircraft, he sat down to put his thoughts on paper and came up with “Grounded,” a one-woman play about a fighter pilot assigned to operate drones in the Nevada desert.
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Yet, some have argued that human rights are western concepts and not eastern and therefore not in keeping with our culture. If one studies human rights in detail as scholars such as Chandra Muzaffer in Malaysia and Abdullah An’aim in Sudan have done, one can immediately see that they are basically rooted in the concept of human dignity which is present in all the world’s religious and ethical traditions. In the past they were expressed in religious or ethical terms within religious texts, traditional laws and practices.
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Seeking $1.5 billion in compensatory damages as well as punitive damages, it accuses the global figures of “laundering U.S. dollars” to Hamas, which is officially designated by the U.S. government as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
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But in true “Spy v. Spy” fashion, Turkey is itself is the target of intense surveillance even as it cooperates closely with the U.S.— one NSA document describes the country bluntly as both a “partner and target.” The very politicians, military officials, and intelligence agency officials with whom U.S. officials work closely when conducting actions against the PKK are also considered legitimate spying targets by the NSA. To that end, in addition to the official SUSLAT liaison office and the intelligence workers it has cleared with the Turkish authorities, the U.S. has two secret branch offices, operating Special Collection Service listening stations in both Istanbul and the capital city of Ankara.
The degree to which the NSA surveils its partner is made clear in the National Intelligence Priorities Framework (NIPF), a document establishing U.S. intelligence priorities. Updated and presented to the president every six months, the NIPF shows a country’s “standing” from the perspective of the U.S. In the April 2013 edition, Turkey is listed as one of the countries most frequently targeted by Washington for surveillance, with U.S. intelligence services tasked with collecting data in 19 different areas of interest.
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On Friday, the US government announced the imposition of a new round of sanctions on over 25 Iranian individuals and companies, including shipping firms, oil companies, airlines and six banks despite the fact that Iran and the six world powers Russia, China, France, Britain and the US and Germany are in the process of talks with the intention of resolving the West’s nuclear standoff with Iran.
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Four years ago this Sunday, President Barack Obama declared the end of the Iraq war. So much of that fight and our current involvement in the Middle East is carried out by a privatized military. Here’s why that matters
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America’s war hawks, including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, were thrilled by the Libyan “regime change” engineered through a U.S.- European bombing campaign in 2011. But now with Libya torn by civil war and Arab powers intervening, the “victory” has a bitter aftertaste, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.
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As Chile nears its 41st anniversary since the U.S.-backed military dictatorship toppled Salvador Allende’s government, the country remains incarcerated within a complex historical memory framework. Grappling with dictatorial restrictions enforced through the constitution, the ramifications of Augusto Pinochet’s macabre era, from 1973 to 1990, are evident in various struggles — from the ongoing endeavor to uncover the fate of Chile’s disappeared population, to protests calling for the termination of an education system that favors those of privilege.
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A report has revealed that British intelligence agency MI6 and America’s Central Investigative Agency (CIA) have intercepted conversations on mobile phones, e-mails that show that several former British Army officials have joined the ranks of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
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Washington should establish a new Syrian army in order to fight both the Islamic State and Bashar al-Assad, allowing the US to end the Syrian war “on its own terms,” believes Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA intelligence analyst and Senior Fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
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Luckily this is the “Opinion” page and the letters submitted don’t require the use of actual facts, otherwise we wouldn’t have the pleasure of getting in our morning laugh while reading Thomas Hanley’s letters.
Tom states that I was only able to list one positive accomplishment for Bush’s time in office. Apparently four out of the five that I listed were easily dismissed by your ingenious arguments, you know, ones like this: “A simple fact check and he would have discovered that the old right-wing lie that Bush’s use of torture led to Bin Laden has been soundly debunked.”
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Richard Nixon’s legacy is more alive and well than it should be
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“Russian Invasion” – How long is screaming ‘Wolf!’ having an impact on Western public opinion? – Until Full Spectrum Dominance has been attained?
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We’re not sure how we missed this (the internet is kinda big) but earlier this week InfoWars picked up on a column published back on August 4 by former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative Herbert E. Meyer.
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America Has Undertaken Regime Change In Many Countries Before
In 1957, the U.S. and British governments planned regime change in Syria … because it was drifting too close to the Soviet Union.
20 years ago, influential U.S. government officials decided to effect regime change throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The countries targeted were “old Soviet regimes”.
The U.S. has, of course, already carried out regime change in Guatemala, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Chile, Haiti and many other countries. The U.S. was also instrumental in the recent regime change in Ukraine.
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Most books and articles about the CIA mention the Agency’s first two successful covert operations: the overthrowing of Premier Mossadegh of Iran in 1953 and the overthrowing of President Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954. Some of them spare a few paragraphs to mention the CIA’s alleged first mistake: its failure to predict the Bogotazo riots. But there is more about the Bogotazo affair than the CIA, Fidel Castro, and his CFR masters want us to know.
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Armed with this list, you too should be able to determine whether or not Russia has invaded Ukraine last Thursday.
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On Tuesday, August 20, a US army veteran named Mark Paslawsky was killed during a battle in Ilovyask, near Donetsk, which is currently held by anti-Kiev rebels.
Fighting on the side of pro-government forces, the American had sprung to prominence because of his Twitter feed (@BruceSpringnote), often sharply critical of Ukrainian politicians, and a fawning video interview with Vice News’ Simon Ostrovsky shortly before his death.
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Washington and NATO are providing personnel, mercenary forces and advice to help the Ukraine government bomb, kill, maim and drive out those who are demanding autonomy from the US puppet regime in Kiev [4]. Washington and its proxy forces in Ukraine are ‘ethnically cleansing’ the mainly Russian speaking separatists in the east, with up to one million having fled across the border into Russia [5].
Yet it is Washington that accused Moscow of invading Ukraine, based on flimsy or no evidence at all. Washington has accused Moscow of having a hand in the downing of a commercially airliner based on no evidence at all. As a result of this invisible Russian ‘aggression’, Washington has slapped sanctions on Moscow, which are hurting Europe more they are hurting the US [6]. But that’s the point: to de-link Europe’s economy from Russia in terms of trade and energy and weaken Europe to ensure it remains dependent on Washington.
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With a replica drone in front and crosses with the names of those killed in military drone strikes at their feet, a little more than a dozen protesters begged for the government not to bring a drone command center to Montgomery county.
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Sinai locals find again decapitated bodies of two young men who have been abducted amid continuous unrest in the peninsula
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An al-Qaida-inspired militant group in Egypt has posted an online video showing the beheading of four men in the Sinai Peninsula accused of spying for Israel, whose bodies were found earlier this month.
The Ansar Beit al-Maqdis group, whose name means Champions of Jerusalem in Arabic, posted a 30-minute video showing detailed confessions of the four men. The four said that in exchange for money they helped Israel target the group’s members with drone strikes in the northern Sinai Peninsula.
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In the last few years there has been a hotly contested global debate about the civilian impact of the U.S. drone strike program and its moral and legal justifications. Despite being geographically part of Asia (where the majority of drone strikes took place) and politically aligned with the west (states responsible for the strikes), until now the global debate went largely unnoticed in Australia.
The death of two Australians has led to a new reality Down Under – there is now an increasing public debate about whether the U.S-Australian intelligence sharing alliance has fairly been used as cover for Australia’s secret involvement in the controversial U.S. targeted killing program. The debate has raised concerns that Australia’s democratic institutions and rule of law could be collateral damage in the US drone program.
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Another American citizen has been killed in Syria in the past week, albeit under completely different circumstances. Douglas McAuthur McCain was killed by ‘Free Syrian Army’ militants during a gunfight while fighting for Islamic State (IS), becoming the first American Islamist to die in Syria. This comes as the world is still reeling from the beheading of reporter James Foley, which was first broadcast last week. The deaths of Foley and McCain back-to-back provide the US with different justifications for the same objective – the bombing of Syria.
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Imagine that there’s a powerful, invisible force hovering above you in the sky. It sees everything, controls everything—you can keep no secrets from it. If it wanted to, it could kill you instantly.
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Dressed in a navy button-down shirt and black slacks, Jackson said he had never encouraged his dogs to fight with each other or with people and that he played with them in a joyful manner. “They have a loving side to them,” he said.
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Most British police, for example, do not carry firearms at all. In England and Wales over a 12-month period ending March 2013, there were only three incidents during which police had to discharge their guns. You would think the U.S. would be interested in what might help us move in a similar direction.
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Thousands of Islamic Jihad fighters paraded in Gaza City Friday, in a defiant show of force three days after a ceasefire ending a bloody war between Israel and Gaza militants.
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The UK government is set to reopen a complaint against BT after a Computer Weekly investigation found evidence suggesting the telecoms giant provided communication links that support controversial US drone strikes.
BT has consistently denied the allegations, originally made in a complaint by legal charity Reprieve in 2013, that it had breached international rules on corporate social responsibility by taking a contract to supply a fibre-optic connection between a US military communications centre in the UK and a base in North Africa that has been linked to controversial drone strikes.
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Human rights groups Reprieve has asked the UK government to again investigate whether BT supplied high-speed fibre cable for US drones, after the surface of new evidence, the Guardian reported. The group alleges that the USD 23 million fibre-optic circuit built by BT in 2012 was installed to facilitate air strikes in Yemen and Somalia by US air force drones. The military internet cable reportedly connects US air force facilities in Northamptonshire to a base for unmanned craft in Djibouti.
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BT says $23m circuit linking US hub with base for unmanned craft in Djibouti is general purpose, not a special military system
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The British government is being asked to reopen an investigation into BT, after new evidence appeared to link the company to illegal US drone strikes and the mass government surveillance used to select their targets.
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In war, nobody wants to be the last to die. In Gaza, it was the chief of the electric company’s maintenance division and his deputy. In Israel, it was a pair of volunteers working a security detail on their kibbutz.
The four deaths on Tuesday, hours before an open-ended cease-fire began between Israel and Hamas, reflected the often indiscriminate, opaque and lethal nature of a conflict that dragged on for 50 days and more than 2,100 deaths, only to end where it began, with a truce deal that is essentially a retread of the one signed in 2012 after the last Gaza war.
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In the minds of many, the American-led “War on Terror” arrived at a major turning point when it caught and killed the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May 2011. His death followed a highly effective, though somewhat controversial, drone campaign that successfully eliminated many senior al-Qaeda members who were holed up in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Although there were no post-Iraq War style “Mission accomplished” banners being brandished, these developments were supposed to usher in a new era in which global jihadism was much less of a threat, and the US could retreat from the Middle East and South Asia and be slightly less concerned about it.
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As 51 million refugees are forced to flee their homes, it’s time to examine the connection between the history of our failed foreign policies and the exploding refugee crisis. It’s time to stop the killing. The world as had enough of U.S. plunder.
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Qatar, a key backer of Palestinian militant group Hamas, hailed the Gaza ceasefire accord and offered to help rebuild the enclave battered by seven weeks of Israeli bombardment, AFP reported.
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Cemeteries are becoming the most dangerous places in Gaza.
The Israeli military has targeted both of Gaza’s primary burial grounds on six occasions over the past week, alleging that they’d received intelligence that rockets were being launched from the areas.
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Transparency Reporting
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Israel is implementing the Dahiya Doctrine in Palestine at the moment, argued Michael Ratner, legal adviser to Wikileaks. The doctrine is named after the village of Dahiya, in Beirut, which was destroyed during the 2006 Lebanon War (also known as the Israel-Hezbollah war).
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WikiLeaks cables from 2005 and 2006 from the U.S. embassy in the Ecuadoran capital city of Quito, reveal how the United States collaborated closely with conservative former President Lucio Gutierrez (2003-2005) to undermine progressive President Rafael Correa (2006-present), reported Green Left Weekly (GLW) this Monday.
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In the small southern African nation of Swaziland, a group of activists inspired by WikiLeaks is exposing the excesses of Swaziland’s opulent royal family, AFP reports.
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The 9/11 Commission Co-Chairs – Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean – have called for the 28-page section of the 9/11 Commission Report which is classified to be declassified.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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As prime minister of Samoa I urge the global leaders who will gather at our small islands summit next week to rise above the rhetoric and forge binding agreements on climate change
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Hundreds of demonstrators descend on Newport protesting against Nato’s nuclear weapons policy – but not quite the 10,000 predicted.
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Finance
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Bitcoin entrepreneur Charlie Shrem has reached a plea deal to resolve U.S. charges that he engaged in a scheme to sell over $1 million of the digital currency to users of illicit online marketplace Silk Road, his lawyer said Friday.
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MANY white Americans say they are fed up with the coverage of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. A plurality of whites in a recent Pew survey said that the issue of race is getting more attention than it deserves.
Bill O’Reilly of Fox News reflected that weariness, saying: “All you hear is grievance, grievance, grievance, money, money, money.”
Indeed, a 2011 study by scholars at Harvard and Tufts found that whites, on average, believed that anti-white racism was a bigger problem than anti-black racism.
Yes, you read that right!
[...]
• The net worth of the average black household in the United States is $6,314, compared with $110,500 for the average white household, according to 2011 census data. The gap has worsened in the last decade, and the United States now has a greater wealth gap by race than South Africa did during apartheid. (Whites in America on average own almost 18 times as much as blacks; in South Africa in 1970, the ratio was about 15 times.)
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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Texas Gov. Rick Perry, in a Friday afternoon speech that sounded a lot like presidential red meat, accused President Barack Obama of overstepping his constitutional authority and abdicating national defense at home and abroad.
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It turns out the CIA may have been pursuing a global propaganda strategy through its affiliation with the Paris-based Congress for Cultural Freedom, an organization meant to perform cultural guerrilla warfare against communism. Among recipients of the CCF’s money were a number of hip intellectual magazines throughout Africa, where people like Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong’o wrote. When Soyinka was later jailed, the CCF paid his bail.
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Mr Lai, a colourful self-made billionaire, is one of the most vocal critics in Hong Kong of the Chinese government. He recently came under the spotlight after leaked emails showed he had given money to anti-Beijing lawmakers in Hong Kong and to help pro-democracy group Occupy Central.
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Censorship
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Our government’s lunge for censorship suggests a fear among both officialdom and elected representatives that our society cannot defend itself against bad ideas
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Russian culture committee threatens to outlaw movies that show the country and its citizens in a ‘primitive and silly way’
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Yesterday the licensing man from Dundee Council went down the taxi ranks ordering saltires and yes stickers removed from the taxis. (would he have ordered No stickers removed as well? We can never be sure as there weren’t any.)
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Update: After the Lizard Squad Twitter account was down for a couple of hours, it’s now back in business. It’s not clear what happened, but it’s back up now with tweets flowing.
The Lizard Squad Twitter account has been taken down within the last hour and heading to the twitter.com/LizardSquad url only reveals an Account Suspended message. It is not clear if anyone in particular requested the profile to be taken offline, or if this was Twitter themselves, but the person behind this account reached almost 52,000 followers this week after taking PSN down along with outages like Twitch.
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OVER 1.3 billion people, nearly the population of China, are now active Facebook users. That means a whopping 18% of the world’s population logs on to the site at least once a month. The social network is the largest community ever: a place where ideas, stories, images and perspectives are communicated instantly and widely across national, geographical and ideological boundaries.
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The fact that Americans and Russians are taking opposite sides over the conflict in Ukraine is not just a matter of cultural sympathies or a geopolitical grudge match over the cold war. It is also, as Lilia Shevtsova writes in the American Interest, a conflict between the world’s liberal democracies and a new and adaptive form of capitalist authoritarianism. In other words, it’s a conflict between the kinds of countries where foreign athletes can openly express support for an increasingly unfriendly power, and those where even soldiers’ mothers’ committees may face crackdowns if they dare to criticise the government. As tensions between Washington and Moscow grow sharper, Mr Ovechkin may find that American fans are angered by his apparent support for the other side. Athletes are celebrities, and celebrities cannot publicly express their political opinions without affecting their brand. But Mr Ovechkin lives in a country where his position will not earn him any sort of official censorship.
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And the Facebook page – where scores had vented their frustrations – was wiped and frozen to prevent people thinking it was a way to reach the helpdesk, according to operations director Peter Lowes.
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Privacy
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An effort is nearing passage at the California statehouse to thwart wayward federal surveillance programs.
The Assembly voted unanimously to advance a bill that would prohibit state agencies, officials and corporations that provide services to the state from supporting or assisting the federal government to collect electronic data or metadata on citizens without a warrant.
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There seems to be someone asleep at the wheel in the federal government’s HR department, given how many questionable people have been put in high profile/high responsibility security positions. Kieth Alexander, uber-Patriot, locked his cyber-security expertise up with a patent. The White House’s cyber-security guy can’t wait to tell you how little he knows about his job. Homeland Security’s former Inspector General was accused of a ridiculously long list of questionable behavior (in addition to having no qualifications for the job). And now, ex-director of cybersecurity for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been convicted on kiddy porn charges.
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When walking through the centre of a busy city it is easy to feel anonymous.
Set against the cacophony of sharing and declaring that happens online, it can be precious to feel that, just for a moment, you are lost in a crowd.
Unidentifiable.
It is, of course, an illusion. You are never alone, especially if you are carrying a smartphone that has ever been used to connect to a wireless network. Which is pretty much all of them.
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation, io9 and a coalition of fan groups have launched Project Secret Identity for this weekend online where they’ve asked people to upload a cosplay photo whilst holding up a piece of paper with a message written on it to raise awareness of how online anonymity and privacy are key to free expression.
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The US government’s web of surveillance is vast and interconnected. Now we know just how opaque, inefficient and discriminatory it can be.
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We’ve even seen dramatic examples — during Iran’s “Green Revolution” and more recently in Ferguson, Mo. — of social media being used to coordinate rallies and share information. And that arguably enlarges our freedom.
During a lecture I attended last year, a panel of political consultants and media experts postulated that social media, and Twitter in particular, markedly enhance democracy and encourage political participation.
One of the panelists even predicted that political and public policy polling would eventually be conducted over social media, because it provides a far more accurate, authentic, wide-ranging and “real-time” depiction of public sentiment regarding hot-button topics than other political tools and traditional media used in the past.
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The rally in Berlin against federal surveillance gathered thousands of people under the motto ‘Freedom not fear,’ who were calling for stricter control of German intelligence agencies.
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The importance of the support of Silicon Valley is obviously not lost on Mrs Clinton, as it wasn’t lost on her husband during his presidency, as she took time to discuss a wide range of hot topics on stage at the Nexenta OpenSDx Summit in San Francisco this week. She has also booked a number of other speaking slots during conference season in Silicon Valley this year – just as a side note.
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Clinton also addressed the spying itself on Thursday: “There’s no doubt we went too far in a number of areas,” she said about the increased surveillance powers the government gave itself after the 9/11 attacks.
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Well before the dawn of cellphones, Joseph Heller wrote this in Catch-22: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” His novel was about absurdities in a time of declared war, but our era of uneasy peace doesn’t lack matters to fret about.
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Whenever I explain the OffNow Project to someone, they initially respond enthusiastically. Something to the effect of, “Wow! That’s cool! The federal government shouldn’t be spying on us!” But when I further explain that the idea behind OffNow includes shutting off state supplied resources to NSA facilities – like the water necessary to cool the super-computers at the Bluffdale, Utah spy facility – those same people get nervous. “Shutting off the water seems like an extreme move. Can we even do that?” they ask.
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But when 4,000 U.S. users were asked if they trust Facebook with their personal data, the answer was a resounding, “No.”
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Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is testing a new tool for its mobile app that makes it easier to search for photos, posts, and like that are currently hard to find, but from some of the reporting you would think that Facebook has made another drastic change to its privacy policies (it hasn’t).
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Australia’s domestic spy chief, David Irvine, the head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), delivered an address to the National Press Club on Wednesday, seeking to defend the Abbott government’s latest proposed “anti-terrorism” legislation.
It was the first-ever such appearance by an ASIO director-general. For decades, they remained in the shadows of the corridors of power. His appearance itself indicates the far-reaching character of the as-yet-unseen laws, which are known to include the compulsory retention of all online communications data.
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German politicians have already discussed plans to scrap the no-spy agreement Germany has held with Britain and the U.S. since 1945. “We must focus more strongly on our so-called allies,” claimed Stephan Mayer, a domestic security spokesman for Merkel.
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In the wake of the controversy about the NSA’s snooping tactics by Edward Snowden, we’ve begun to realize just how little privacy we have online. There’s profit to be had from data you normally want unseen. But if you’re up for it, you can get something back for all the privacy you’re losing, courtesy of San Diego-based company Luth Research.
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The government’s practice of monitoring attorney-client communications over prison email systems was on display in two New York cases this summer. Prosecutors argued that by using the prison-provided email system, inmates consented to monitoring. Inmates wanting to speak privately with their attorneys should have sent letters or arranged visits through the prison’s Byzantine bureaucracy, they said.
Defense attorneys countered that email is the modern version of postal mail, and should be afforded the same level of confidentiality. The judges reached opposite results in the two cases, a clear display of the level of confusion in the law in this new era of mass surveillance.
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Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) is using his opposition to the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs to gain an edge over his Republican challenger.
Udall’s campaign on Thursday released a new online advertisement that highlights his role as one of the largest critics of the embattled spy agency in Congress.
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A Pledge of Allegiance for our era:
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under surveillance …”
The government has built its own Google.
After collecting hundreds of billions of pieces of so-called metadata – details on people’s phone calls and emails and locations –the feds needed a way to search through the vast mountain of information.
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Civil Rights
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The student was given two options: face an “administrative panel” whose decision would be final and unable to be appealed (but suspension or expulsion not an option) or face a Student Conduct Panel, which would leave room for appeal but put suspension/expulsion back on the table.
The administration’s “bright line” for determining guilt is (I AM NOT KIDDING) whether the incident “more likely than not” occurred. Any discussion about whether the shouted joke “more likely than not” should have resulted in having the book thrown at the student apparently isn’t up for discussion.
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The University of Oregon (UO) has filed multiple, blatantly unconstitutional conduct charges against a female student who jokingly yelled “I hit it first” from a dormitory window. The student, who wishes to remain anonymous, contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help. FIRE is calling on UO to immediately dismiss all charges against the student and reform its unconstitutional speech policies.
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On August 9, 2014, an unarmed black youth named Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer named Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, after some kind of physical altercation between the two. Several eyewitnesses claim that Brown put his hands above his head in surrender and pleaded with Wilson to not shoot him, which Wilson did. This event led to protests in the streets, and things got worse from there. It became a convoluted mess of misinformation, no information, and some actual information, so here is every important truth and lie that you need to know to understand the situation. Due to the sensitive, controversial, and racial nature of this series of events, and how it’s being retold by a white man-child on a comedy website, I will be using several farts from butts to explain everything to you. Don’t let the metaphors scare you, and feel free to not watch any of the videos of people passing gas…
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The United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has published a scathing report analyzing the current state of racial justice in the United States. Citing the August 9th shooting of 18 year-old Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri and the rise of stand-your-ground laws, the committee expressed deep concerns about the ways in which the American justice system handles racially-charged events.
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A Harris County grand jury has no billed a Navasota police officer who was off duty when he shot and killed a 17-year-old during a confrontation.
Neither the officer involved nor the family of the dead teenager would talk about the grand jury’s decision as they left court. Those jurors weighed what happened last November in the villages of Copperfield apartments off Park Point Drive and Highway 6.
Jonathan Santellana died after a confrontation with off-duty Navasota police officer Rey Garza, who lived in the complex.
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Local cops, often untrained in military tactics, may be carrying assault rifles used by our Marines and even Special Forces, commanding American boulevards from atop armored personnel carriers — all using surplus weaponry donated by the Pentagon in a program designed to better equip civilian police against terrorists and heavily armed criminals.
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An autopsy on an Oklahoma inmate who died after his troubled execution was halted concluded that he was killed by the lethal drugs, but it doesn’t explain why he writhed, moaned and clenched his teeth before he was pronounced dead about 43 minutes after the process began.
Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton had said earlier that Clayton Lockett died from an apparent heart attack 10 minutes after Patton had halted the execution. But an independent autopsy released Thursday concluded that the cause of death was “judicial execution by lethal injection.”
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Unlike his close ally in pursuing intelligence abuses, Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, Ron Wyden has not yet called for CIA Director John Brennan to quit or be fired.
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Sen. Dianne Feinstein wants a classified report released on Bush-era “enhanced interrogation” policies. She just doesn’t want it out quite yet.
The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder earlier this month urging the Justice Department to delay its compliance with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking the disclosure of her panel’s so-called torture report. Feinstein argued the report is not ready for the public because negotiations are ongoing between her and the CIA over the document’s heavily redacted material.
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At least four of the hostages held in Syria by the Islamic State, including executed American journalist James Foley, were waterboarded in the early stage of their captivity, The Washington Post reported, citing people familiar with the situation.
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Foley was among four hostages who were waterboarded several times while in the clutches of the merciless terror group, sources told the Washington Post.
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Former CIA Director Michael Hayden says we shouldn’t rush to judgment. But the facts are already in.
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‘You must now take responsibility for telling the world — and more importantly the American people — the whole truth about rendition and American torture.’
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Starting in 2002, the CIA began operating secret prisons all over the world: Thailand, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Afghanistan, Djibouti, briefly Guantanamo Bay.
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A report that has been declassified by the U.S. CIA has revealed the battle on sovereignty over the Arctic region has caused a friction in the relations between the U.S. and Canada.
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Goldstein explains that the program started with the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in 1990, giving preference to local police located in High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) like the Northwest.
The availability of these freebies exploded as the U.S. military returned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wars, bringing lots of surplus equipment with them.
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Detention without charges and intimidation was the order of the day for Ferguson, Missouri, police again, with a heavily militarized force continuing to bully protesters while also vowing to continue arresting journalists who are working to cover the situation in Ferguson after an unarmed black teen was shot and killed by a police officer over a week and a half ago.
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When the NDAA passed, which purports to allow the executive branch to arrest and detain any American without charge or trial, indefinitely, in the service of the “war on terror,” Cantor and company tried to tell us it did not apply to American citizens.
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Because it’s the responsibility of the Senate to oversee the nation’s intelligence agencies.
If the CIA can undermine or sabotage the Senate’s oversight, Americans have reason to worry that the country’s intelligence agencies are running amok.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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A few weeks ago, Verizon Wireless introduced a new bandwidth throttling plan and tried to claim it wasn’t throttling at all, but rather “network optimization,” and now Ars Technica has the story of how Comcast is trying to spin its data caps as not being data caps at all. Instead, they’re “flexible data consumption plans.” Because flexible is fun. Of course, their definition of flexible may be different from yours and mine, because they’re only “flexible” on Comcast’s side in determining just what the caps are. Once you go over those “flexible” plans, you’ll certainly be paying more. Just like a data cap. But, Comcast insists, it’s no data cap.
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Given how often major telcos and wireless service providers have willingly provided intelligence and law enforcement agencies with way more than they’ve asked for, the following shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
The back story is this: In July 2008, an FBI agent had his gun and cellphone stolen from his “official” vehicle. The search for the missing items involved Verizon. In an application for a court order authorizing the release of cell site location info, it’s noted that the service provider performed the most futile of gestures on behalf of itself.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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On September 15, five days before the end of an already extraordinary election campaign, Internet Party founder and funder Kim Dotcom will host an evening at the Auckland Town Hall that he says will discredit John Key and ensure National’s defeat.
Announcing the event that he calls The Moment of Truth in early July, Dotcom said he would reveal “my evidence around the political interference and my evidence that John Key lied”. Two weeks later he announced he had hired Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, who led coverage of Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks, to be guest of honour. He told One News the event would cover “a lot of interesting things that will make our Prime Minister look pretty dull”, including alleged evidence Key knew of Dotcom earlier than the day before the 2012 raid of his mansion.
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08.30.14
Posted in News Roundup at 5:32 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Microsoft would make you think it’s the only alternative, however that ignores the shining beacon of Linux just beyond the horizon. Once thought to be the malformed operating system of only the most hardcore tech nerds, speaking in riddles and snake languages such as ‘Python’, the Linux landscape has changed to be more welcoming to everyone.
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Desktop
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You see, I was out in the world for more than a decade teaching in many different communities all over Canada. At first it was rare to meet anyone who had ever heard of GNU/Linux. After a few years, about 2004, if I recall correctly, I began to visit random communities where one or more people actually had used GNU/Linux. These were communities from about 1K to 4K people in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, so one person in 1K is tiny but definitely far beyond, “many average computer users have no idea that they exist”. I can promise you that all of the high school and many of the younger students in those communities did learn about it so the proportion abruptly changed to about 1 in 10.
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The Linux Foundation has created all of the content for the course, including the videos, written text, activities, and labs. It’s clear to me that their content team has made an effort to space out the videos between the written material in a way that gives you a break from endless reading. Also, each video is only approximately 30 seconds to 2 minutes long. They avoid getting into the weeds too much at once, giving you chunks of knowledge, letting you test it out, then moving on to another topic. Each chapter points out that as the course progresses, you will go into further depth with each topic.
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The vendors are leveraging their respective technologies to enable the popular notebook to better handle graphics-rich applications.
VMware, Nvidia and Google want to take the Chromebook, which is increasingly popular among consumers and in such areas as education, and make it more attractive to the enterprise.
At the VMworld 2014 show this week, the three companies demonstrated how the combination of VMware’s Blast Performance software and Nvidia’s Grid vGPU technology will enable Chromebooks to handle graphically intensive applications, such as Adobe Illustrator CC, AutoDesk’s AutoCAD and Microsoft Office, in desktop virtualization environments.
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In some ways, Scrivener is the very embodiment of anti-Linux, philosophically. Scrivener is a writing program, used by authors. In Linux, one strings together well developed and intensely tested tools on data streams to produce a result. So, to author a complex project, create files and edit them in a simple text editor, using some markdown. Keep the files organized in the file system and use file names carefully chosen to keep them in order in their respective directories. when it comes time to make project-wide modifications, use grep and sed to process all of the files at once or selected files. Eventually, run the files through LaTeX to produce beautiful output. Then, put the final product in a directory where people can find it on Gopher.
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Thanks to Vladimir Serbinenko, as of today there’s now mainline support for the Lenovo X220. The Lenovo ThinkPad X220 is an Intel Sandy Bridge era laptop/ultra-portable. While Sandy Bridge isn’t exactly the newest hardware out there, it’s better than some of the recently enabled Coreboot devices and certainly much better than the Free Software Foundation prompted re-brand of the Lenovo ThinkPad X60 with its Libreboot downstream of Coreboot.
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Samus is a much rumored device, potentially a new version of the Chromebook Pixel. While we don’t know when this Chromebook codenamed Samus is launching, the Coreboot support confirms a few details of the hardware.
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Intel is expected to launch its 5th-gen Intel Core CPUs based on Broadwell architecture by the end of this year. According to the latest leaked information, Google’s Chromebook might feature this Broadwell chip. Intel is focusing on bringing high performance CPU which has minimum power requirement with Broadwell chip.
Even though Broadwell is the scaled down version of Haswell, it will still maintain the same CPU performance as Haswell. The company is working on better performance-per-watt and lower power consumption to improve battery life of devices. Broadwell is just 14 nanometer in size.
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Server
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Let me make one thing clear up front: I like Docker. I think it is good tech. I can see all sorts of scenarios when a lightweight, containerized deployment mechanism could be really nifty, even if it doesn’t have the advantage of a hypervisor under it to protect its host operating system. I get it. It’s cool.
But there are a few loud, but lonely, voices in the crowd who proclaim, “The battle is over! Containers have won! Hypervisors are obsolete!”
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Kernel Space
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At LinuxCon last week, the Linux Foundation announced a new certification scheme for Linux professionals to complement their existing training activities. The Linux Foundation Certification Program offers a peer-verified certification for both early-career and engineer-level systems administrators for a fee of $300.
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In the world of hypervisors for Linux, a couple of names have come to the fore over time: Xen and KVM. But a new hypervisor called Jailhouse, designed for safety-critical and real-time use cases, made its public debut this week.
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Daniel Vetter of Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center has putout some slides covering the general process for reviewing patches, in order to help out those new to contributing to the open-source community.
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Graphics Stack
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A German web-site is hosting a yet to be officially released Catalyst Linux driver.
As pointed out in our forums there is a new Catalyst Linux driver version that’s being hosted by Computerbase.de. This driver is marked Catalyst 14.201.1008 and was uploaded today for Linux along with Windows.
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In this article the NVIDIA hardware is being benchmarked to a similar stack from earlier this week with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and then upgrading to the Linux 3.17 Git kernel and employing the Oibaf PPA for the upgraded xf86-video-nouveaui DDX and Mesa/Gallium3D drivers. Compared to the Radeon tests, the Nouveau driver was bumped slightly ahead to address a Nouveau driver problem that otherwise was a show-stopper. So even though it shows Mesa 10.3-devel vs. Mesa 10.4-devel, it’s just a few days difference of Mesa Git due to the recent branching of Mesa 10.3. The rest of the stack was maintained the same for this Nouveau Linux gaming tests. The tested NVIDIA hardware included both old and new graphics processors:
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An open-source project that’s currently Windows-only allows for creating virtual computer monitors that are then rendered on an extra computer, tablet, or smart-phone as a secondary display. Making this different from other VNC-like programs is that the secondary system’s monitor can be rendered to an HTML5 web-browser window. The developer behind this software is now working on bringing it to Linux.
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Beignet is the project out of Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center for exposing GPGPU/compute capabilities out of Ivy Bridge hardware and newer when using a fully open-source Linux stack. While Beignet differs greatly from Gallium3D’s Clover state tracker, this Intel-specific open-source OpenCL implementation is working out quite well for Ubuntu Linux.
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Benchmarks
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Frame-buffer compression (FBC) support was disabled by default in the Linux 3.15 stable series for Haswell hardware and newer since the support wasn’t mature and there were Intel HD Graphics users reporting issues with this feature being turned on, so it was disabled by default and hidden behind a kernel module parameter. After an Arch Linux user experienced a 4+ Watt increase in power draw for his Apple laptop, he bisected it to this FBC feature, but Intel Linux developers weren’t expecting FBC to make such a huge difference in power draw. The matter is still being investigated but FBC simply can’t be flipped back on by default since the code is incomplete and there’s still some unmerged patches under review that won’t make it until at least the Linux 3.18 kernel.
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Applications
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Kazam is a GStreamer-based screen recording and screenshot tool for Linux.
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Matt Mullenweg founder and CEO of Automattic which is responsible for WordPress.com has reached out to people who develop software on the GNU/Linux platform to find someone who will bring the Simplenote application to GNU/Linux.
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I had already mentioned in passing here that I am using Emacs for a variety of tasks: outline, project management and planning with Org-Mode, IRC (go figure, my default email client on all my machines is Emacs’ ERC), notes editing or quick scribbling with the Scartch buffer (happens to me all day long), and regularly, albeit less frequently than in 2013, various editing of html pages, javascript and sometimes even Python when I dare to edit one or two things in Python scripts. A consequence of all these use cases is that I have Emacs open almost everyday on almost any of my machines.
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UberWriter is described by its developer as a simple markdown editor, but it’s so much more than that. It has only a handful of features and some people might be disturbed by its simplicity, but in the end everyone will love it.
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The Linux platform has no shortage of media players, and most of them are really good. It should come as no surprise that Quod Libet is also playing in the same league and that users will really enjoy it.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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Sentris is a new kind of music game that puts you at the epicenter of musical creation. It’s colourful and filled with great music, so what more could you want?
It’s very early though, so be warned they will be plenty of bugs and nasties lurking around, but the basic game is actually a pretty awesome idea.
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The Journey Down: Chapter Two is a point-and-click adventure that will transport you back in the golden era of gaming that was populated by titles like Grim Fandango and Broken Sword. It’s an amazing experience and it shows us that adventures games are not a thing of the past.
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Metro Redux is on its way to Linux and it will require Linux gamers have OpenGL 4.x core support. For now this means that right off the bat the open-source Mesa/Gallium3D drivers are off-limits for the time being.
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One of the developers of a ”next-gen” first-person mystery game The Vanishing of Ethan Carter tweeted out that they are looking into Linux as one of the platforms to release for.
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The third part in my articles on giving some limelight to open source games, this time I have a completely different set to show you! See part one is here where I highlight 18 different projects, also see part 2 for even more open source goodness!.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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The E19 RC3 release most notably features the rewritten Wayland compositor that was talked about on Phoronix earlier this week. The Wayland compositor rewrite for Enlightenment reduxes the memory footprint along with the code-base size and at the same time lowers the rendering complexity. This new version also supports Wayland clients inside X11, wl_shell/xdg_shell protocol support, initial support for standalone Enlightenment Wayland, and has no hard requirements on X11. This new compositor is still considered unstable and doesn’t yet feature XWayland support.
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What impresses me considerably about XFCE in Peach OSI is its fresh appeal. Its integration leaves nothing of standard XFCE out, but it rolls in a list of design features. The result is a user experience that is very pleasing. Much of Peach’s appeal to more seasoned Linux users comes from its preconfigured layout. Newcomers to Linux will like its desktop appearance and intuitive operation.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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The Christmas season for GNU/Linux is coming as most communities will be releasing the next version of their Linux-distributions. Betas have started to arrive and there is obvious excitement around those distributions which offer a great Plasma experience and Kubuntu is one such distribution.
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Yesterday was the first LaKademy’s day and we had some presentations for the general public. During this second day Sandro Andrade is presenting his Qt programming course. In the next two days we will have hacking sessions on KDE software and as Plasma Network Management maintainer I am interested in making networking easy for KDE users.
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Kubuntu 14.10 beta 1 is out now for testing by early adopters. This release comes with the stable Plasma 4 we know and love. It also adds another flavour – Kubuntu Plasma 5 Tech Preview. Try Kubuntu Plasma 5 to see the future of desktop software but expect some more bugs as we iron out the integration.
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With a series of icon tests we currently study effects on the usability of icon design. This article however does not focus on these general design effects but presents findings specific to the Tango icon set.
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Red Hat Family
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Red Hat (RHT) CTO Brian Stevens stepped down this week in an unexpected move that some reports are attributing to tension in the executive boardroom.
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No one’s saying why long-time Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens left the company, but it seems clear he left from his own desire for a bigger, better job elsewhere.
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He went on to say that some within Red Hat speculate that tensions between Stevens and Paul Cormier, Red Hat’s president of products and technologies, might be responsible, although there doesn’t appear to have been any current argument between the two. Cormier will take over Stevens’ duties until a replacement is found.
Vaughan-Nichols also said that others at Red Hat had opined that Stevens might’ve left because he’d risen as high as he could within the company and with no new advancement opportunities open to him, he’d decided to move on. If this was the case, why did he leave so abruptly?
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Fedora
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I’ve been talking to my fellow Fedora user, James [who happens to be my boss] and he’s told me a few extensions that are available for gnome 3 that make things a little better, and to be honest I like them lots.
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Debian Family
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Today in Linux news, Terry Relph-Knight takes the new Ubuntu 14.10 Beta 1 for a test-drive and wrote up his opinion. Jack Wallen today said, “Linux on the desktop isn’t dead.” In other news, Bryan Lunduke spent his last week running the Pantheon desktop environment and shared his thoughts today. And finally today, Bruce Byfield explains why Linux “isn’t a desktop alternative.”
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It might seem like an official flavor of Ubuntu, but it’s not there yet. The Ubuntu MATE developers, which included a MATE and Ubuntu devs, are seeking to gain official Ubuntu flavor status, but they are not there yet. Still, they are following the release schedule for the regular Ubuntu versions and they have now made available their first Beta in the 14.10 series.
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The Ubuntu 14.10 Beta 1 (Utopic Unicorn) flavors have been released and users can now download and test them properly.
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Many users might have something against the Unity desktop environment that’s being used in Ubuntu, but the truth is that Unity comes with a great app launcher. Coincidentally, the same kind of launcher might work very well on phones and a similar implementation is being done for Ubuntu Touch.
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The family of Ubuntu flavors have released their first Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn beta.
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A team of developers is working hard to develop the classic, simple and lightweight Ubuntu MATE Remix. Now current Ubuntu users can try out MATE without having to wait for the release of the distro. One of the developers working on MATE Remix has given Ubuntu 14.04 users a chance to try out MATE though a PPA (Personal Package Archive). PPA allows users to use the software that isn’t there in Ubuntu’s official repositories.
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The Canonical X PPA offers the “X staging” packages with the new package versions providing the support. Besides the upgraded xserver package there’s also version bumps to xserver-xorg-input-evdev, xserver-xorg-video-ati, xserver-xorg-video-intel, and xserver-xorg-video-nouveau that are built against the X.Org Server 1.16 ABI. Those wishing to upgrade to the X.Org Server 1.16 code can run sudo apt-add-repository ppa:canonical-x/x-staging; sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade for trying out these packages on Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic. Canonical sadly hasn’t done any updates to these packages since the end of July per the Launchpad package details.
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Linux distributions and goofy names go together like peanut butter and jelly. There is a method to the madness though, as code names make it easier to search for version-specific issues. Still, I wish the names would be a bit less silly. Case in point, the new version of Ubuntu, 14.10, is code-named “Utopic Unicorn”. Sigh. Whatever.
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Flavours and Variants
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“The upcoming release of LMDE will be version 2, codename ‘betsy’ and it will use a Debian ‘jessie’ package base. The team is currently adapting to the new LMDE, setting up its repositories and porting various packages onto it. The target for a stable release is estimated for this November, along with an official upgrade path from UP8 to Betsy,” said the leader of the Linux Mint project, Clement Lefebvre.
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T Creator – for QT 5
Gambas 3 – Visual Basic for Linux
Ubuntu Quickly – Quick and dirty development tool for python
emacs and Xemacs – Advanced Text Editor
Anjuta and Glade – C++ RAD development tool for GTK
Netbeans – Java development environment
GNAT-GPS – IDE for the following programming languages. Ada, C, JavaScript, Pascal and Python
Idle – IDE for Python
Scite – Text Editor
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Linux Mint, as the name suggests, has always been green in its icons and themes. Clement Lefebvre, the Linux Mint project lead, updated today that more colors are on the cards for the next releases of Mint.
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Deepin 2014.1 was released today with numerous bug fixes meant to improve the system stability and performance as well as a few interesting enhancements / new features. Users who have already installed Deepin 2014 don’t have to reinstall – a simple upgrade via the Deepin Store or command line (sudo apt-get dist-upgrade) is enough to get the latest Deepin 2014.1.
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One of the things the Raspberry Pi is supposed to encourage is an appreciation and wonder for the world of coding and making. This issue we’ve put together ten Raspberry Pi projects that will hopefully inspire you to do a little bit more. From dusklights to mini arcade cabinets, we have a wide range of projects you can do in your own home. The best thing is, all of them work with a Model B+.
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Hard to choose between Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black, and MinnowBoard Max? Now there’s another choice: the open source MIPS-based “Creator CI20″ dev board.
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You don’t need an electrical engineering degree to build a robot army. With the $35 Raspberry Pi B+, you can create robots and connected devices on the cheap, with little more than an Internet connection and a bunch of spare time.
The Raspberry Pi is a computer about the size of a credit card. The darling of the do-it-yourself electronics crowd, the Pi was originally designed to teach kids computer and programming skills without the need for expensive computer labs. People have used Raspberry Pis for everything from robots to cheap home media centers.
The Pi sports USB ports, HDMI video, and a host of other peripherals. The latest version, the B+, sports 512MB of RAM and uses a MicroSD card instead of a full-size card.
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I am based in the UK and I have never seen a person who likes Xiaomi or MIUI (the ROM that Xiaomi makes and runs on their devices, it can also be installed on 3rd party devices). The main reason for this is because they have not really expanded too far from China, since their launch they’ve expanded into a few more Asian markets and recently India where their Mi3 device sold out in under three seconds on Flipkart, the registration for that device in three days is already closed but you can register to buy the entry level Redmi 1S here.
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Eric Anholt, formerly a lead developer on Intel’s Linux graphics driver, has been quickly working away at the VC4 Gallium3D driver and related code now being a Broadcom employee tasked with making an open-source driver for the Raspberry Pi. If you’re looking to try out his in-development driver or help him out in the driver creation process, he’s published a brief guide to lower the barrier to entry.
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Phones
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Ballnux
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Samsung announced yet another smartwatch, Samsung Gear S that runs Tizen and comes with a 3G wireless radio. I have seen some call this the Gear Note because it does have a long two inch curved Super AMOLED display.
The Gear S has WiFi, Bluetooth, and 3G radios and antennas inside so you can use the watch when your phone isn’t handy. Turn-by-turn pedestrian navigation is powered by HERE. It has an integrated GPS chip and can be used for exercise, again without a phone connection.
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Samsung in Partnership with Nike have announced the Nike+ Running App for the newly announced Tizen Samsung Gear S, which fully utilises its Bluetooth, 3G and GPS connectivity features to bring Nike’s running experience to your wrist.
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Android
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DIY electronics fans will be glad to hear that the MIPS Creator CI20 development board for Linux and Android has arrived. The board has a 1.2GHz MIPS-based dual-core Ingenic apps processor running Debian 7 and Android 4.4 KitKat. The dev board is running Linux right now and the Android support will come soon.
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Yesterday, we advised of a new call recording feature which has recently popped up on the CM nightlies. Today we have information on another new feature which seems to have recently been added to CM11 nightlies.
Those of you who are used to non-CM ROM’s will already know of this feature as it appears on other ROM’s such as Omni, Slim and Paranoid Android. So although not a novel feature this is a new feature to CM and one which users should be happy with.
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Recently, Android talk has been overwhelmed with reports on Android Wear and Android L. So much so that one would be forgiven for forgetting about another big Android project in the pipeline.
Just like Wear and L, ‘Android One’ was also announced at Google’s I/O event back in June. Since then there has been little information or reports released. However that is very likely to change over the next few days with reports coming in that Android One is set to launch in September.
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Haiku, the open-source operating system that maintains compatibility with the defunct BeOS, now appears to have basic support for Haswell graphics.
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Linux and *BSD have completely changed the storage market. They are the core of so many storage products, allowing startups and established vendors alike to bring new products to the market more rapidly than previously possible.
Almost every vendor I talk to these days has built their system on top of these and then there are the number of vendors who are using Samba implementations for their NAS functionality. Sometimes they move on from Samba but almost all version 1 NAS boxen are built on top of it.
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Yahoo has announced its decision to halt the development of Yahoo User Interface library (YUI), its open-source JavaScript library for writing HTML application interfaces. In the announcement, the company cites the rise in popularity of Node.JS, which has changed how developers build HTML applications, as have recent changes in package management and web application frameworks.
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At Cray, we are a big user and investor in Lustre. Because Lustre is such a great fit for HPC, we deploy it with almost all of our systems. We even sell and deliver Lustre storage independent of Cray compute systems. But Lustre is not (yet) the perfect solution for distributed and parallel-I/O, so Cray invests a lot of time and resources into improving, testing, and honing it. We collaborate with the open-source Lustre community on those enhancements and development. In fact, Cray is a leader in the Lustre community through our involvement in OpenSFS.
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Genode OS 14.08 also brings pluggable VFS file-system support, C run-time support for time functions, a port of the CPU jitter random number generator, a new port of OpenVPN, networking support for VirtualBox, and much better integration of the Qt5 tool-kit.
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Events
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Next Tuesday, Sept. 2, is the deadline to apply for The Linux Foundation’s Training Scholarship Program. Don’t miss this opportunity for free tuition on a Linux Foundation training course.
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Web Browsers
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Chrome
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Today’s Chrome Beta channel release includes a ton of new primitives and APIs to simplify development and give developers more control over their web applications. Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to Chrome for Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS.
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Since the beginning of the Web era, the simple image tag has defined the use of nearly all static images. Google’s new Chrome 38 beta browser will change that with the introduction of a new element known as “picture,” which could usher in a new era of responsive design.
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Mozilla
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Back in July we kicked-off Maker Party, our annual campaign to teach the web around the world. Throughout this two-month campaign we have seen people on nearly every continent increase their web literacy by writing their first line of code, making their first app, taking steps to protect their privacy, or creating engaging content for others to enjoy, share or remix. They’re all coming together thanks to the individuals and organizations that are helping us grow a movement by teaching their friends, family and communities through hands-on making and learning events.
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This November, Mozilla is up for renegotiation with Google for placement of Google search as the default search in Firefox and for the related subsidies that Google pays Mozilla, which reached almost $300 million last year. That comprised the majority of Mozilla’s income. With Chrome establishing itself as a leader in the browser wars, its unclear what relationship Google will continue to pursue with Mozilla.
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The launch of two Firefox OS phones in India in the same week marks an exciting moment in Mozilla’s mission to promote openness and innovation on the Web, and an opportunity to empower millions of Indians wanting to buy their first smartphones. Firefox OS will enable users to obtain lower-cost devices that offer telephony, messaging and camera and rich capabilities like built-in social integration with Facebook and Twitter, the Firefox browser, FM radio and popular apps.
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SaaS/Big Data
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Docker has created a lot of buzz in the news over the last year. At Eucalyptus, we really understand the need that Docker addresses regarding the DevOps culture. In recognizing that, we have come up with a series of blogs and videos that demonstrate how to deploy, use and maintain Docker on a Eucalyptus — while still proving that Eucalyptus is the best on-premise AWS compatible cloud environment.
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Docker has only gained traction since its launch a little over a year ago as more companies join the community’s efforts on a regular basis. On July 30, the first official Docker build for openSUSE was released, making this distribution the latest among many to join the fray. I connected with Flavio Castelli, a senior software engineer at SUSE, who works extensively on SUSE Linux Enterprise and has played a major role in bringing official Docker support to openSUSE. In this interview, he discuses the importance of bringing Docker to each Linux distribution, the future of Docker on SUSE Linux Enterprise, and other interesting developments in the Docker ecosystem.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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The Document foundation has announced the release of LibreOffice 4.3.1, the first minor release of LibreOffice 4.3 “fresh” family, with over 100 fixes (including patches for two CVEs, backported to LibreOffice 4.2.6-secfix, which is also available for download now).
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As more and more open-source programs get brought up for 64-bit ARM, LibreOffice is the latest to receive such AArch64 enablement.
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Education
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Open source software is hugely important to us here at edX, since it’s what we do all day, every day. Two weeks ago, the O’Reilly company hosted their annual OSCON convention in Portland, Oregon—a convention focused on open source software. Of course, we had to be there. So, my edX colleague James Tauber and I packed our bags and headed to Oregon for a week of learning and teaching to meet wonderful people, and to get excited about open source. We even gave a presentation about edX!
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BSD
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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This month, we welcome Raman Gopalan as a new co-maintainer of GNU gengen (with its author Lorenzo Bettini), Marcel Schaible as the new maintainer of GNU gperf, and Sergey Poznyakoff adds yet another new package, direvent, to his long list. I’d also like to specially thank Assaf Gordon (the author and maintainer of GNU datamash, new last month) for a significant amount of effort with all aspects of Savannah; new Savannah volunteers are always needed, and welcome. Thanks to all.
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Media publishing platform, MediaGoblin, has hit version 0.7.0. With this update new features include initial support for federalisation, a responsive CSS system, a featured media option, bulk uploading via the command line and a blogging media type.
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Public Services/Government
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Why choose open source? “In some ways, [the open source software used by the agency] is effectively more capable” than commercial products, he said. “In terms of cost-effectiveness, [it] wins hands down: no license/maintenance fees, extensible architecture [and] global open source R&D.” The team uses an open source software package called ‘R’.
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Openness/Sharing
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Open Access/Content
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If you want to download court records in the United States, your first stop is probably PACER, the oft-maligned digital warehouse for public court records. Maintained by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the system charges 10 cents per page of search results within its archive, and 10 cents per actual page of court documents that are officially in the public record. It’s a useful tool for attorneys, but often difficult for the average citizen to navigate and understand.
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We were among the first to report that the federal court system’s PACER electronic database of court records had deleted a ton of old cases, and once our story went live, we saw a ton of lawyers, law professors and journalists flip out over the news, which had been hidden in a little-read notice on the PACER site, posted with basically no notice at all. The Washington Post got the Administrative Office of the US Courts to provide a statement about the deletions that makes almost no sense at all.
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Here’s some nice news. Kalev Leetaru has been liberating a ton of public domain images from books and putting them all on Flickr. He’s been going through Internet Archive scans of old, public domain books, isolating the images, and turning them into individual images. Because, while the books and images are all public domain, very few of the images have been separated from the books and released in a digital format.
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Open Hardware
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And if these three modes and their respective functionalities bore you, you’re in luck! The M!ltone is open-source and compatible with Arduino, an electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software that allows users to write their own code.
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Programming
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Two-and-a-half months after Git 2.0, a new version of Git has been released. Though a minor update, the list of new features and improvements is large.
The complete release notes can be found on git repository and provide full details about what can be found in Git 2.1. What follows provides a minimal selection of new features in Git 2.1.
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make does it, Haskell does it, spreadsheets do it, QML can do it and below I explain how to do it with C++11: declarative programming. And not just any declarative programming, but my favorite kind: lazy evaluation.
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Having not ran any PHP 5.6 development build in quite some time, this morning after the official PHP 5.6.0 official release I was running some tests to ensure the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org wouldn’t run into any problems when deployed on the latest version of PHP. Overall, everything is good and for those running the Phoronix Test Suite using any recent version of our open-source benchmarking software should be good for PHP 5.6.
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Google Inc. (GOOG) executive Megan Smith is close to heading to the White House.
Smith, 49, who was most recently a vice president at Google’s X lab, is a top candidate for the role of U.S. chief technology officer, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the process is private.
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Health/Nutrition
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The makers of “Omo”, a new clothes washing detergent, are considering changing their labelling after accidentally poisoning unsuspecting riders particpating in the “Fredagsbirken” race in Rena, near Oslo . The product was available as part of a sampling campaign by Lilleborg, sponsors of the event.
All competitors were given a free sample of “Omo Aktiv & Sport”, together with their starting numbers before the race, reported Hamar Arbeiderblad.
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But the problems of the piece were bigger than just the cover. The piece is built around the idea that illegally imported “bushmeat”–what we would call “wild game” if it were being eaten in the United States–could carry the deadly Ebola virus.
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Security
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Q: In doing some research it seems that some of the hoopla surrounding Heartbleed came from the fact that Cloudfare announced they had fixed it, but only for their customers, is that correct?
A: No, not at all. Once the existence of the bug was disclosed, the fix was absolutely trivial to anybody with technical knowledge because the code in question was Open Source. Anybody who wanted to fix it could very easily do so. This is very different from the later bug in Microsoft software that, even though the details were well known, only Microsoft could fix because the bug was in proprietary code that only Microsoft could change.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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It is difficult to find a coherent explanation for the Post’s apparent position that Putin’s aggression so obviously violates “international norms” that are “uncontroversial,” but US warmaking is, if anything, insufficiently aggressive. Unless you accept that the kind of people who edit the Washington Post are the kind of people who do not believe that “universal norms” apply to everyone.
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Finance
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KlearGear’s unprecedented $3,500 charge for customer complaints tossed whatever little reputation it had down the drain and it’s abusive actions earned it a $300,000 judgement when a former customer took it to court. Of course, the company only exists as a half-assed website and handful of remailing services. Someone named Vic Mathieu claimed the company is actually run by Descoteaux Boutiques out of France, and as such, is out of reach of the judgement.
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It’s hard to be a good teacher. It means planning weeks’ worth of lessons in detail. It means covering the needs of every student, whether they’re dyslexic, or don’t speak English as their first language, or are high achievers and so on.
Being a good teacher means uncovering themes which will engage kids, trawling websites and libraries for films and texts as stimuli. It entails writing four different intentionally-flawed versions of a suspenseful story for them to modify in their first lesson, and five different tiers of riddles about 3D shapes for them to tackle in the second, all before 8am.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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As the Labor Day holiday approaches, ask yourself how often you see unions represented on corporate-owned television. On the highest-profile public affairs shows, the answer is basically never.
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Using Twitter to follow the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after the fatal police shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown, Bilton said he saw “thousands of one-sided accounts, many of which were grossly inaccurate.”
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Censorship
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Back in April, I wrote to inform you of the crazy-pants lawsuit filed by Katherine Heigl after Duane Reade, a drug store chain, tweeted out a photo of Heigl shopping at one of its stores. Under the auspices of publicity rights and the corollary idea that celebrities are simply better people with more legal privileges than the rest of us, Heigl wanted six-million dollars for the following tweet.
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Privacy
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One thing sits at the heart of what many consider a surveillance state within the US today.
The problem does not begin with political systems that discourage transparency or technologies that can intercept everyday communications without notice. Like everything else in Washington, there’s a legal basis for what many believe is extreme government overreach—in this case, it’s Executive Order 12333, issued in 1981.
“12333 is used to target foreigners abroad, and collection happens outside the US,” whistleblower John Tye, a former State Department official, told Ars recently. “My complaint is not that they’re using it to target Americans, my complaint is that the volume of incidental collection on US persons is unconstitutional.”
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The small number of protesters on Friday were reportedly outnumbered by the police and members of the media, according to the BBC. There was minor disruption at the Cheltenham site on Friday morning, as GCHQ staff were driven by bus into the site itself, instead of the usual practice of being dropped off outside.
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The study–or the Times recap, more to the point–is likely to get a lot of I-told-you-so attention from people who take a dim view of Twitter and the like. So it’s worth making two points.
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Australian intelligence and law enforcement agencies are pushing for access to more personal data and other records with a minimum of court oversight. The most recent development tells us they should be trusted as much with this additional info as the guy standing in front of an empty barn asking for more horses. If they can’t keep what they already have safe and secure, why on earth would you give them access to more?
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Thus, while depressing, it shouldn’t be too surprising to find out that when a Section 215 request came to him concerning activity of a US person that was entirely protected by the First Amendment, Bates figured out a way to give the FBI the go ahead to spy on the person anyway. Because terrorism.
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More news of secret surveillance has been uncovered, thanks to FOIA requests. Police in Tacoma, Washington have a Stingray device and have been using it, unbeknownst to pretty much everyone in the area. And it’s not just a recent development. According to information obtained by The News Tribune, this dates back more than a half-decade.
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At least at the time I’m writing this, you can still see the full text via Google’s cache, though that may go away soon. The really ridiculous part is actually the final paragraph. The main part of the article lists out five areas where there are benefits to sharing your info (more on that in a second) and then it comes to this ridiculous conclusion:
Apart from these five reasons, there are many more why you shouldn’t be paranoid and try to conceal your location while online. Remember if you’re doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide. There is almost to zero chance that you would be of interest to any secret service on the planet. The only nuisance to you will be advertisement robots – and there are more effective tools against them than online anonymity.
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Back in July, we wrote about the Intercept releasing a leaked copy of the US law enforcement guidelines for putting someone on the no fly list. There have been a series of lawsuits recently concerning the no fly list, and the government has basically done everything possible, practically to the point of begging judges, to avoid having those cases move forward. So far, that’s failed miserably.
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The Obama administration is fighting a federal judge’s order requiring it to explain why the government places US citizens who haven’t been convicted of any violent crimes on its no-fly database.
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Civil Rights
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Turning police departments into military bases has been one of the side effects of the 1033 program. This program routes military weapons and vehicles (as well as ancillaries like office equipment and medical supplies) to police forces, asking for nothing in return but a small donation and the use of the words “terrorism” or “drugs” on the application form. The program has been extremely popular and the US government can rest easy knowing that its excess inventory won’t go to waste.
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The ridiculousness is our notion that we will stop the jihad commanded by Islam by repurposing Cinnabon workers, dressing them up in faux cop uniforms, and stationing them at airports to feel us up and violate our Fourth Amendment rights.
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The two groups want one week’s worth of data during Ramadan last year.
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge will not force local law enforcement to release a week’s worth of all captured automated license plate reader (ALPR, also known as LPR) data to two activist groups that had sued for the release of the information, according to a decision issued on Thursday.
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Among the many, many, many problems with running a torture program (beyond being morally problematic and with no history of effectiveness) is the fact that it makes it easier for others to justify torture programs as well. It’s now come out that ISIS has been waterboarding prisoners, including reporter James Foley whom they recently beheaded. Waterboarding, of course, was one of the CIA’s favorite torture techniques. And, of course, people had warned for years that having the CIA waterboard people would only encourage others to use the technique against Americans.
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One of the more unfortunate side effects of police militarization isn’t directly the fault of law enforcement agencies or their enablers at the Pentagon. But it is related. Thanks to the Drug War, nearly every town in the US has a SWAT team or one minutes away, whether they need one or not. This has led to the rise of SWATting — calling in a false report in order to send a charged-up SWAT team to raid someone’s home.
[...]
At the beginning, the SWAT team does the usual cop thing of everyone yelling at the same time because that apparently works better than having a point person designated to deliver concise, well-enunciated instructions. (Note: it does work better than other situations where officers have yelled contradictory instructions over each other ["Stand up!! Lay on the ground!!].) Bonus points for swearing because no one takes guys with assault rifles and Kevlar vests seriously unless they use variations of the word “fuck.”
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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Janice Bowling, a 67-year-old grandmother and Republican state senator from rural Tennessee, thought it only made sense that the city of Tullahoma be able to offer its local high-speed Internet service to areas beyond the city limits.
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Thomas Stocking is chief operating officer of US operations at gandi and I met him during LinuxCon Chicago. We talked about gandi’s no bullshit policy, how a France based company is offering services across the globe, how gandi is defending the Internet and how they engage with the Linux & Open Source community.
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We’ve written a little bit about the campaign of Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu for Governor and Lt. Governor of NY — in particular about incumbent governor Andrew Cuomo’s petty attempt to bankrupt the campaign with a bogus attack on Teachout’s residency. That required a significant waste of time and resources, eventually leading a judge to toss out Cuomo’s frivolous challenge. Teachout and Wu have long histories of being really in touch with the internet generation, and being true anti-corruption reformers. While their campaign may be a longshot (big time “outsiders” against the quintessential insider), they’ve certainly managed to make some noise.
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DRM
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The law only affects California, but phone manufacturers won’t sell two different phones. So this means that all cell phones will eventually have this capability. And, of course, the procedural controls and limitations written into the California law don’t apply elsewhere.
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Earlier this year, we wrote about Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, maker of the infamous Keurig single cup coffee makers, and its plan to DRM its next generation coffee pods. The original pods were going off patent, and competition was rising. So, of course, the solution is to come up with something new… and lock it down to make it less useful for consumers.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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President Obama nominated a longtime trademark and copyright lawyer to be the White House’s new intellectual property enforcement officer.
The White House announced on Thursday evening that Danny Marti was the president’s nominee for the post, which is tasked with coordinating ways to protect intellectual property with companies and other government officials.
Marti, who is currently a managing partner at the Kilpatrick Townsend and Stockton law firm in Washington, was greeted warmly by industry groups when his name was announced on Thursday.
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While we’re still waiting for the White House to actually nominate a new head of the US Patent and Trademark Office, the other big administration “intellectual property” job has also been vacant for over a year: the “Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator” (IPEC) job, frequently referred to as the “IP Czar.” That job was previously held by Victoria Espinel, who left a year ago and immediately jumped to a lobbying job with the BSA, the copyright maximalist trade group run by Microsoft.
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Take-Two Interactive, the publisher of Grand Theft Auto V, has told a judge that Lindsay Lohan’s publicity rights lawsuit is a publicity grab.
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Every so often we see this kind of thing: a reporter (who may very well do amazingly good work) gets upset to realize that other news sites and aggregators pick up on some of his stories and write about them — potentially even getting more attention than the original. In this case, it’s reporter Matthew Taub, who is annoyed that other sites got the glory for his investigative reporting on… on a guy dressing up as a clown and running around a Brooklyn cemetary…
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Trademarks
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Yesterday we wrote about the ALS Association trying to trademark “ice bucket challenge” despite having absolutely nothing to do with the ice bucket challenge or its rise to viral fame. A lot of other news sites also wrote about the story, and there was quite an uproar on Twitter. At first, the ALS Association defended the move claiming that it only did so “after seeing many examples of unscrupulous profiteers trying to drive revenue to themselves, instead of the fight against ALS.” However, a little while ago, the ALS Association reached out to us (and via their Twitter feed, it appears they’re trying to respond to pretty much everyone) to say that it has withdrawn the trademark application:
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Copyrights
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The digital company also renews a challenge to the irreparable harm faced by TV broadcasters
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Tom Giovanetti is a wacky sort of copyright maximalist, who insists that “copyright is property, no questions asked” and never misses an opportunity to defend stronger and stronger copyright. Every so often he pops off with something totally nonsensical like the time he insisted that copyright could never be used for censorship. He recently spouted off, comically, about how “piracy” is “killing movie franchises.” Now, this might be a surprise to anyone who, you know, actually pays attention to Hollywood. Because nearly every top grossing film these days is… part of a movie franchise. Let’s take a look at the top performers of 2014 so far:
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Kevin Carson points us to a fascinating story in The Atlantic about fans trying to recreate the “original” version of Star Wars (“Episode IV — A New Hope for the folks who feel like being pedantic) from 1977. As various fans have pointed out repeatedly (mainly each time Lucas went back and “edited” Star Wars again), back in 1988 Lucas spoke to Congress about the importance of preserving original versions of movies, and avoiding the constant attempts to update and modernize them in ways that might erase the original versions.
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City of London Police have increased the pressure on domain name registrars who do business with file-sharing sites. With a “notice of criminality” the police hopes to pressure the companies into taking action, or else.
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VAP, the anti-piracy association of the Austrian film and video industry, has sued four local ISPs after they failed to act on a request to block streaming portals Movie4k.to and Kinox.to. The IFPI says it is preparing legal action against the ISPs for their failure to block The Pirate Bay.
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Warner Bros. has filed a lawsuit against a small bar from Amityville, New York, for playing one of their songs without permission. The track in question is not a recent pop song, but the 80-year old love song “I Only Have Eyes for You” which first appeared in Warner’s 1934 movie “Dames.”
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Kim Dotcom has lost his appeal to keep his worldwide assets hidden from Hollywood in advance of a Court of Appeal hearing in October. The Court ordered the Megaupload founder to hand the information to Hollywood lawyers, although they must obtain permission to further share the information.
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I got a nasty letter(in English here) in the mail. I was being demanded 600 euros for alleged copyright infringement. I operate a TOR exit node and an open wireless network. I’m also an active member of the Pirate Party and have been a municipal election candidate in Turku, Finland.
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A leaked draft prepared for government submission has revealed Hollywood’s Australian anti-piracy strategy. Among other things, the paper says that providers should be held liable for infringing customers even when they only “reasonably suspect” that infringement is taking place.
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Send this to a friend
08.28.14
Posted in News Roundup at 5:46 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Gah, so frustrating! Ten years ago I wrote a rather popular book called Wicked Cool Shell Scripts, and I’m working on a new edition—a Tenth Anniversary release. There are lots of new scripts, entirely new chapters and updates to the older stuff. Fortunately, Bash hasn’t evolved that much in the last decade, so just about everything still works fine (although there are some scripts I’m now realizing can’t handle spaces in filenames—something I talked about years ago in this very column).
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The user friendly distros have done a great job of accommodating this new set of Linux users. It’s now entirely possible for a new Linux user running something like Ubuntu or one of its derivatives to never once open a terminal and still have a pretty decent experience. Some of these new users, who might have initially come to Linux only to breath new life into an old computer until they can afford a new Windows box, might be curious enough to delve under the hood enough to discover that what they’re using isn’t merely a free OS that works on obsolete hardware, but a powerful and highly configurable operating system that puts Windows to shame on almost every level.
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We have another metric in showing a 1.7% Linux desktop market-share, which isn’t far off from other figures we’ve seen in the past indicating Linux desktop usage at under 2%.
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Desktop
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The year of the Linux desktop has become a joke, referred to ironically when mentioned at all. Under the circumstances Linus Torvalds showed either courage or naivete when he admitted last week at Linuxcon that he still wants to see Linux become popular on the desktop.
However, neither Torvalds nor anyone else should stay up nights waiting for the event. Most users have no awareness of the possibility, or set impossible standards for it, even though, for a minority, the year of the Linux desktop happened years ago.
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The simple fact is that Linux has changed the world and been a tremendous success outside the desktop, and there is nothing wrong with that. Android is hardly the only Linux-based platform that has made a big mark. Linux is huge on servers, in embedded technology, and is a constant prompt for innovation on emerging platforms. Ubuntu is the most popular platform for building OpenStack deployments on. Supercomputers all over the world run Linux, and Chrome OS is based on it.
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It’s not just Munich city council that uses Linux on the desktop. A number of household names have also opted for open source.
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Linux is multi-functional and efficient. Everyone shells out money for a computer. On top if it spending more on an operating system is not a feasible option for many if there are alternatives. Windows requires users to pay licensing fees and other extended fees, whereas Linux is free. It is charged a minimal fee when bought from other distribution companies. Hardware requirements are not a problem for Linux whereas Windows requires a higher set of specifications for hardware if it has to run, and be compatible on the users’ computer systems. The poor efficiency of Windows consumes a large space and the processing speed slows down drastically. With Windows users can not use old computers if they are aiming at good back up.
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At LinuxCon this year, the creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, was asked what he wanted for Linux. His response? “The desktop.” For years, the call to Linux action was “World Domination.” In certain markets, this has happened (think Linux helping to power Android and Chrome OS). On the desktop, however, Linux still has a long, long way to go.
Wait… that came out wrong. I don’t mean “Linux has a long, long way to go before it’s ready for the desktop.” What I meant to say is something more akin to “Linux is, in fact, desktop ready… it just hasn’t found an inroad to the average consumer desktop.”
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Server
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Less than a year after their announcement that they planned to invest a billion dollars in the Linux platform, IBM continues to ramp up their Linux play by rolling out Linux on Power System servers across 54 of the IBM Innovation and Client Centers worldwide. This comes almost two years after IBM announced that they had ported Linux to the Power Server platform.
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According to Netcraft, it’s been many years since M$’s OS was so unpopular on servers…
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Kernel Space
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The group is one of the more diverse consortiums, with members ranging from consumer electronics and chipset manufacturers to retailers and service providers. Primarily, work revolves around the AllJoyn open-source framework, which AllSeen said acts as a universal translator for objects and devices to interact.
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Linux reached the entirely respectable age of 23 this week, more or less.
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For the past year and a half, the Linux kernel has participated as a project under the FOSS Outreach Program for Women (OPW). OPW provides a three month paid internship for women (cis and trans) and genderqueer or genderfluid people. After a month-long application process, the selected OPW interns are paired with an open source mentor to work on a project. As of August 2014, there are eleven Linux kernel OPW alumni, and five interns that are just finishing up their internships.
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Power regressions are still easy to come by with the Linux kernel and other areas of the open-source stack… Multiple users have been reporting of a recent power increase on newer versions of the Linux kernel, which seem to track down to the Intel i915 DRM driver.
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Graphics Stack
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If you are trying to re-clock your NVIDIA GPU with the Nouveau driver when using the Linux 3.17 kernel, there’s an extra step involved, but still your mileage may vary and the re-clocking is still mostly for Kepler GPUs.
With the Nouveau driver changes for Linux 3.17 there are no magic breakthroughs when it comes to re-clocking — allowing the GPU’s core and memory clocks to run at their rated frequencies and voltages rather than any (often much lower) values programmed by the video BIOS at boot time. With Linux 3.17 came re-clocking for Kepler GPUs and now it works, but generally not all performance levels/states properly function. If you are running a GeForce 400/500 “Fermi” GPU or other generations of NVIDIA hardware aside from the few integrated mobile chipsets, chances are you’re out of luck in being able to tap the full potential of the GPU when using this open-source, reverse-engineered NVIDIA GPU.
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When it comes to Linux gamers wanting a discrete graphics card backed by open-source drivers, the only solution right now to truly recommend for those serious about performance and making use of the hardware is really AMD Radeon graphics. While Nouveau has been making much progress, until re-clocking and other issues are worked out the performance can be unbearably slow depending upon the particular graphics processor or run into other problems. (Of course, when talking about proprietary graphics drivers on Linux, the story is entirely different, or if considering integrated Intel HD Graphics.) For those pursuing a AMD Radeon GPU for their own Steam Box/Machine build and hope to use the open-source Gallium3D drivers, here’s some Steam on Linux gaming benchmarks from almost two dozen different GPUs.
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Upstream Nouveau was unaware of this issue that was affecting my entire assortment of NVIDIA GeForce hardware so it was then quickly assumed to be an issue with the Oibaf PPA that constantly is packaging the latest open-source Linux GPU drivers. On top of mainline Mesa Git, recently there’s been the the Gallium3D Direct3D 9 patches (Gallium-Nine). While none of my testing was relying upon the Gallium-Nine D3D9 support, it was wreaking havoc on the system anyhow.
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With the DRM merge window for drm-next now closing earlier going forward than in past kernel releases, another Radeon DRM-Next pull request was already submitted for Linux 3.18.
Alex Deucher of AMD had already sent in a pull request to add Radeon userptr support for Linux 3.18 after it just missed the Linux 3.17 merge window due to the user-space support not being tried and tested. In Alex’s latest pull request to DRM subsystem maintainer David Airlie, there’s more changes than the first.
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Mesa has a new release manager to allow the two existing managers from Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center to get back to more driver wrangling rather than release wrangling.
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Applications
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Proprietary
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Storix, Inc., providers of disaster recovery solutions for Linux and Unix systems, today announced the general availability of System Backup Administrator (SBAdmin) version 8.2.1.0, which includes support for the latest release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 7.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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While last year developers on the Company of Heroes 2 game said a Linux port was unlikely, recent Steam activity indicates that a Linux port is likely in the works.
Company of Heroes 2 is a World War II set real-time strategy game developed by Relic Entertainment and sequel to the original Company of Heroes game. The Company of Heroes 2 title is powered by the Essence 3.0 Game Engine, which is proprietary to Relic Entertainment, uses a DirectX renderer, and designed around Windows. Company of Heroes 2 was released last summer for Microsoft Windows and is available on Steam.
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Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth, the next game in the Civilization series developed by Firaxis, no longer has a Linux launch date.
When 2K Games and Firaxis announced that the upcoming Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth launch will also include a Linux version, gamers were ecstatic. This was supposed to be the silver bullet for the Linux platform, but it looks like we’re going to be skipped.
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Besides the normal security fixes, this release features a newer Linux kernel (no specifics) that boasts more network drivers and better Intel graphics performance. On top of that this release also features the Nvidia 340.32 drivers which fixes some of the white screen bugs when switching between modes.
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Valve released this morning the 133 update to the SteamOS Alchemist Beta. With this update comes new packages and other updates.
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Crystal Picnic is a lighthearted and colourful tribute to the classic era of action RPGs! Join a sarcastic gardener and a wannabe knight as they journey across the kingdom chasing after ants who stole magic crystals from the castle. Oh, and did we mention the ants have gone mad because they’re EATING those crystals? Yeah, that makes things much more unpredictable! Hours of exploration, mesmerizing platform-style combat, plenty of new friends to meet and loads of wacky enemies to encounter. When you fight chubby birds and ants carrying bazookas, you know you’re in for a good time!
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Metro 2033 Redux, a remake of the original Metro 2033 FPS released back in 2010, will be getting a Linux release on Steam for Linux.
The developers from 4A Games have reworked the original title and they have introduced high resolution textures and new effects. In addition to that, they have reworked a number of gameplay aspects too.
All of these have been done to get the game ready for Xbox One and PlayStation 4. They didn’t ignored the PC, and Steam users will also be able to enjoy the game in a new coat.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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The overall theme of version 14.08 is the introduction of a new scalable GUI architecture that takes security as the most fundamental premise. It is unique in the way that the security of graphical applications and thereby the privacy of the user depends on only a few components of very little complexity. We strive for low complexity to reduce the likelihood for bugs and thereby the attack surface of the system. When using a secure microkernel such as NOVA, Genode’s trusted computing base for graphical applications is orders of magnitude less complex compared to contemporary operating systems. To illustrate the rigidity of this claim, the security-sensitive parts of the GUI stack do not even depend on a C runtime. With the current release, we maintain our focus on security while taking the scalability of the GUI architecture to a level that meets the expectations of general-purpose OSes. Thanks to its component-based design, the new GUI stack provides a great deal of flexibility with respect to its behaviour and style. Section New GUI architecture provides the rationale behind the development, the big picture of the architecture, and details about the current implementation.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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The GSoC might have come to an end, but I am very happy with the progress that we have made porting the Plasma Active to KF5. In my previous blogposts i have describe some of the stuff which they have been ported. So at the moment a lot of the basic features have come back to the Plasma Active, so yes it is at a usable state Smile One of the big changes is that Nepomuk has been replaced with Baloo. Despite the fact that a lot of the Nepomuk stuff has been ported, there are still some things left, for example the timeline and tag support on the active-filebrowser.
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At Akademy 2014, outgoing KDE e.V. Board President Cornelius Schumacher will give the community keynote. He has attended every Akademy and has been amazed and inspired at every one of them. If you want more of what KDE can bring to your life, Cornelius’s talk is the perfect elixir.
Here are glimpses of Cornelius that most of us have never seen. They give a sense of what has made him a successful leader of KDE for several years.
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Let’s talk about my project now. KStars is desktop planetarium application under KDE Education Projects. I developed QML based cool interface to enable users to browse through image database of community of astrophotographers (i.e. astrobin.com) which contains more than 1,20,000 (number is increasing everyday) real time and very high resolution images along with various information related to them (i.e. Date on which image was captured, Bortle Dark-Sky Scale, RA Centre, DEC Centre, Telescope or Camera used, Description added by astrophotographer etc). I am sure that this browser will enthrall school children by showing them real time images of stars and galaxies located at hundreds of light year far from earth.
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In case you were wondering what was going on in Randa, here are some first hand impressions. The video was produced by Françoise Wybrecht (alias Morgane Marquis) and Lucie Robin, and the people in it are the actual participants of the event. It was also created using KDenlive, one of the awesome Free Software tools a team has been working on at the Randa meeting itself. The video introduces the faces and personalities of the contributors and their different backgrounds and origins. Many thanks to our brand new ad-hoc media team for producing this video!
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With this year’s Google Summer of Code over, Antonis Tsiapaliokas shared a status update concerning the state of KDE’s Plasma Active being ported to KF5.
Much progress was made this summer in porting Plasma Active to KDE Frameworks 5 and it’s now in a usable state. All basic functionality of Plasma Active should work in a KF5 world but parts of Nepomuk and other components are still being ported over.
Antonis Tsiapaliokas says he continues to continue on with this work around the end of September after his university exams. More details can be found in Tsiapaliokas’ blog post and the KF5 Plasma Active porting video that’s embedded below.
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Resizing and repositioning windows on the PC desktop is such a fundamental task that you’ll almost do it without thinking. Move the mouse to the title bar/ border, click, drag, release. Very basic, very simple — but there might still be room for improvement.
KDE Mover-Sizer is an open source, portable tool which brings a common Linux desktop trick to Windows. Instead of having to move your mouse cursor to the title bar or border, you just hold down the Alt key, then left-click anywhere inside a window and drag to move it, right-click and drag to resize it.
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First of all, I get why so many people say it is a “Mac clone.” I do. It has the same standard layout that Mac OS X has been using for several years: a dock on the bottom, menu bar up top. But that’s really about where the similarities end. My guess is that people who call this a Mac clone haven’t actually had the chance to use the system extensively and were going on screenshots alone.
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New Releases
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It’s been a long road back, but here it is. Everythibng has caught up to Slackware (x86), up to and including a recompile with patch for the latest glibc security patch of 20140826. Even have pulseaudio working to keep the Skypers happy 
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Slackware Family
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Absolute, an x86 Linux distribution based upon Slackware that concentrates on making sure that Internet, multimedia, document, and general home use works out of the box, is now at version 14.10 and is available for download.
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Red Hat Family
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No-one among the rank and file at Red Hat seem to have seen this coming. In a move the Linux giant’s staffers said was “shocking” and a “punch in the gut,” long-time Red Hat chief technology officer Brian Stevens has resigned.
In a short press release, the company announced: “Brian Stevens will step down as CTO.”
In the same release, Red Hat’s president and chief executive Jim Whitehurst said, “We want to thank Brian for his years of service and numerous contributions to Red Hat’s business. We wish him well in his future endeavors.”
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Red Hat Inc., might already be a superpower where Linux is concerned, but it has no intention of resting on its laurels. It has ambitions to become a major player in the cloud as well, and to that end it’s launched an open hybrid cloud management solution called Red Hat CloudForms 3.1, unveiled yesterday at the VMworld 2014 event in San Francisco.
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Fedora
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Today was another FESCo meeting but fortunately no further Fedora 21 delay was announced today, but it could happen with the F21 alpha change deadline being today and the developers trying to get an approved build.
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DNF 0.6.1 was released today and this updated open-source package manager picked up a few more features as it’s still in pursuit of replacing Yum on Fedora systems.
The DNF 0.6.1 release adds full support for the history redo command with integration for the repository-packages commands. DNF 0.6.1 also adds new configuration options pertaining to GPG keys/checking and there’s many bug-fixes.
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Debian Family
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There is also an unofficial Debian 7.0 image and it should be possible to run just about any distro that has an armhf architecture build. Provided that is that the aforementioned kernel and device tree are located in the BOOT filesystem on the SD card, along with an FPGA configuration bitstream.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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“So Beta 1 is this week and I’ll be taking care of the builds and paperwork. Could participating flavours please get in touch here or on IRC? In the mean time, I’m going to assume a participation similar to Alpha-2 and configure cron, propose-migration and the tracker accordingly, then build a first candidate for each of your flavours,” wrote Canonical’s Stéphane Graber.
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Despite optimistic 2011 predictions of a fully converged cross-platform OS running Mir and UnityNext (8) by 2014, Ubuntu 14.10 is set to retain X Windows and Unity 7. Based on this beta, it seems there will be no big changes in 14.10, although upgrading is always worthwhile.
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Canonical is planning to bring the Unity 8 to the desktop, but it will take a while until this task is accomplished. Until then, users can test the new Ubuntu Next images, which incorporate Unity 8 and the Mir display server.
Ubuntu developers have been working very hard on the new Unity 8 desktop environment, but their progress has been limited so far on the mobile phones. With the work that’s being done for Ubuntu Touch RTM and Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn), the implementation of the new desktop is now on a back burner.
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Canonical has published details in a security notice about a Squid 3 vulnerability in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS operating systems that has been found and fixed.
The Ubuntu developers have closed a small problem with Squid, which could have been made to crash, if it received specially crafted network traffic.
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The first beta of the Utopic Unicorn (to become 14.10) has now been released!
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Flavours and Variants
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Linux Mint developers are looking to shed that green look for their operating system and they are working on providing more colors for the users of their operating system.
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Deepin developers have been hard at work on their new operating system and it looks like they managed to get a lot of fans. This system is one of the most interesting ones that have surfaced in the last couple of years. One of the reasons for its success is the implementation of a new desktop environment that is somewhat different from what other operating systems provide.
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Today, Imagination is announcing the launch of a MIPS development board called the MIPS Creator CI20, with support for Linux (running Debian 7 currently, but other distro images are supported) and Android 4.4 KitKat (coming soon).
According to Imagination, this MIPS developer board is merely the first step in the company’s campaign to get more people to build cool stuff on top of the MIPS CPU architecture. The dev board is targeting open source communities, schools, hobbyists or anyone who might want to try out the MIPS platform. It’s basically a direct competitor to the likes of the ARM-based Raspberry Pi and Texas Instruments’ BeagleBone development boards.
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This means that we should soon have Capemgr support in newer kernels and we are trying to get a jump on that now.
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Phones
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Samsung’s Tizen mobile operating system is under fire. Some industry pundits have called the operating system, which is open-source and designed to take on Android, a failure, even though it has reached the market in only a few minor mobile products and really hasn’t had a chance to show its worth. Just recently, in fact, Huawei, a top China-based device and telecommunications equipment maker, said that it researched the possibility of using Tizen but found that it couldn’t serve its needs. The company said that it sees Tizen failing eventually with no chance of competing against the likes of Android and others. Samsung, the company behind Tizen, has been silent on the complaints about its operating system. While the company has acknowledged that it has faced some challenges in design, it’s still saying publicly that it can make Tizen a mainstream option in the mobile space. Samsung has even said Tizen could be an ideal choice for wearables, where the company has already brought the operating system to some of its devices. The truth, however, is not as simple as Samsung would have the market believe. This eWEEK slide show looks at the reasons why Tizen may have a hard time proving itself as a viable alternative to Android or any other mobile operating system.
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Samsung Electronics has been making steady headway in the world of cameras, and possibly leading the pack when it comes to Smart Cameras with its features that it offers. We heard a while ago that samsung where going to be releasing another flagship Smart Camera following the release of the Samsung NX30 camera.
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Android
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Last September Apple AAPL +0.16% caused a stir when it announced iOS 7 and the accompanying iPhone 5S would support 64-bit operation. The move to this much faster architecture gave it the jump on 32-bit rivals Android and Windows Phone and brought Apple’s products in-line with desktop and laptop-class computing. But now Android has caught up and may well go speeding past.
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Apple stole a march on Android when it released the iPhone 5S with a 64-bit processor, and Android manufacturers have put the pedal to the metal in a race to catch up and make their products 64-bit. AnandTech reports that HTC has announced the Desire 510, its first 64-bit Android phone.
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While normally one might expect high end phones to get the latest and greatest features first, this time we see a bit of a surprising reversal. The Desire 510 is HTC’s first 64-bit phone, and the first announced device with Snapdragon 410. For those that aren’t familiar with Snapdragon 410, it has four Cortex A53 CPU cores running at 1.2 GHz, along with an Adreno 306 GPU which suggests that it is a mild modification of the current Adreno 305 GPU that we see in the Snapdragon 400. Overall, this should make for a quite fast SoC compared to Snapdragon 400, as Anand has covered in the Snapdragon 410 launch announcement.
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There are actually good new Android apps in the Google Play Store that seemed to slide off under the radar. In this news, we’re going to mention some of the best, often ignored, Free Android Apps that you might want to check out. Perfect for those who are actually bored or disappointed with their present apps.
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If you have been following my blog or the SelekTOR news posts here at Dazzleships you will know that I intended to take SelekTOR open source under the GPL 2 license and also discontinue the Windows version well I can now report that this has come to pass.
SelekTOR for Linux V3.06 and all its source code including the Netbeans build forms are now available for download on the SelekTOR page.
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The OS has been available since February. It is open source. We tried to release a new version of it every two or three weeks. Anybody who runs Rasperry Pi can use it. So we already have users. They share content and discuss features and exchange idea on our forums. So far, we have sold 18,000 kits since last year, through the Kickstarter campaign via preorder. We are now in production and have most of the different pieces in place. We will start shipping by the beginning of September, hopefully. We do the materials and the hardware and the components and the packages ourselves. Finally, it is all coming together.
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A release engineer from Chef, the company providing commercial support for the open-source Chef configuration management tool, said in a blog post Wednesday that he is leaving the company after being harassed by members of the Chef community for his contributions to the open source project.
Seth Vargo (pictured above) wrote that because he has “received numerous abusive emails and two death threats” in addition to other offensive behavior regarding his open-source contributions to the Chef community that were outside of his official work for Chef, he will not only be leaving Chef but will be taking a sabbatical from software engineering.
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Events
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The Linux Foundation, a non-profit consortium that promotes Linux and open source software, announced Vault on Thursday. The purpose of the conference, according to the group, is to help guide the direction of open source storage development as organizations increasingly move data to the cloud, creating new types of security and privacy challenges.
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Web Browsers
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Chrome
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Google released Chrome 37 as stable on Tuesday and with this update comes more fixes and other improvements.
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Mozilla
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Mozilla is targeting first time smartphone buyers who haven’t yet upgraded their basic feature phones because of high prices or technology specifications.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Jane Hsu, director of product marketing at Mozilla based in Taiwan, explains how the company was able to bring down the cost of smartphones and discusses Mozilla’s future plans.
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SaaS/Big Data
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Taking place twice a year, OpenStack’s summits provide a great deal of the face-to-face interaction between developers, vendors, and users. But what about the rest of the year? Many projects opt to host mid-cycle meetups to bridge the gap to collaborate, make plans for the future, and knock out major tasks.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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The Document Foundation has announced LibreOffice 4.3.1, the first minor release of LibreOffice 4.3 “fresh” family, with over 100 fixes.
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CMS
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The lead sponsor of the open-source WordPress content management system makes plug-in security free.
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Education
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This one is fundamental. If we look at the four software freedoms we can see very clearly how important the concept of sharing is. To clarify, obviously these four freedoms are not a part of all open source, but they do hold value as a reference when thinking through the concept of sharing.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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While we’re just a few months into the GCC 4.10 release cycle that’s going to be released as GCC 5, there’s already some release notes forming for this 2015 open-source compiler update.
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FSF executive director John Sullivan spoke at this year’s FOSDEM, a volunteer-organized conference held in Belgium that highlights the development of free software.
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Openness/Sharing
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Crowdfunding is everywhere. People are using it to fund watches, comic books, even famous film directors are doing it. In what is now a $6 billion industry globally, I think the most interesting, disruptive, and exciting work that’s happening is in donation-based crowdfunding.
That’s worth, very roughly, $1.2 billion a year worldwide per year. Within that subset, I’ve been looking at civic projects, people who are producing shared goods for a community or broader public. These projects build on histories of community fundraising and resource pooling that long predate the Internet; what’s changed is that we’ve created a scalable, portable platform model to carry out these existing practices.
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Open Data
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Last year, I described OpenStreetMap (OSM) as the “open source of maps”. On the occasion of the project’s tenth anniversary, I’d like to explore this important example of open collaboration in a little more detail, and explain why I think it is destined to become the next absolutely key open project.
First, some history. To celebrate OSM’s anniversary, TechCrunch has an excellent interview with the project’s founder, Steve Coast.
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Programming
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PHP 5.6, an HTML-embedded scripting language with syntax borrowed from C, Java, and Perl, with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown in, is now available for download.
The PHP 5.x branch includes a new OOP model based on the Zend Engine, a new extension for improved MySQL support, built-in native support for SQLite, and many more features. This branch of PHP has been in the works for quite some time and it’s nice to see that the stable version is now out.
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MenuetOS, the operating system written in Assembly and now primarily focused on 64-bit x86 systems and fits on a 1.5MB floppy disk image, is out with a new release.
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Security
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In a restricted intelligence document distributed to police, public safety, and security organizations in July, the Department of Homeland Security warned of a “malicious activity” that could expose secrets and security vulnerabilities in organizations’ information systems. The name of that activity: “Google dorking.”
“Malicious cyber actors are using advanced search techniques, referred to as ‘Google dorking,’ to locate information that organizations may not have intended to be discoverable by the public or to find website vulnerabilities for use in subsequent cyber attacks,” the for-official-use-only Roll Call Release warned. “By searching for specific file types and keywords, malicious cyber actors can locate information such as usernames and passwords, e-mail lists, sensitive documents, bank account details, and website vulnerabilities.”
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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Like Al-Qaida, the Islamic State is a monster partly of our own making.
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For a third night unidentified aircraft struck targets in Tripoli. The attacks came just hours after the Misrata militia claim they have finally gained control of the Tripoli International AIrport from the rival Zintan brigades.
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There is no one more capable at provoking a crisis than the U.S. national-security establishment. They are absolute experts at doing so. They have to be. Their survival and ever-increasing tax-funded bounty depends on it.
Consider, for example, a recent altercation between a U.S. surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet near the coast of Japan.
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President Obama is compelled to get permission before striking Syria, but if he violates the law by unilaterally ordering a strike it won’t be the first time.
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The government has been asked to investigate whether BT is aiding drone strikes with a specially built military internet cable connecting US air force facilities in Northamptonshire to a base for unmanned craft in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa.
Evidence is mounting that the $23m (£13m) fibre-optic circuit built by BT in 2012 was installed to facilitate air strikes in Yemen and Somalia by US air force drones, according to a complaint filed by the human rights group Reprieve.
The circuit runs from RAF Croughton, a base where US air force personnel staff a command, control, communications and computer support hub for global operations organised by the US military.
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Finance
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Argentina is playing hardball with the vulture funds, which have been trying to force it into an involuntary bankruptcy. The vultures are demanding what amounts to a 600% return on bonds bought for pennies on the dollar, defeating a 2005 settlement in which 92% of creditors agreed to accept a 70% haircut on their bonds. A US court has backed the vulture funds; but last week, Argentina sidestepped its jurisdiction by transferring the trustee for payment from Bank of New York Mellon to its own central bank. That play, if approved by the Argentine Congress, will allow the country to continue making payments under its 2005 settlement, avoiding default on the majority of its bonds.
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More than a month after Detroit was criticized for turning off water to people who had not paid their bills, the water shut-offs are beginning again.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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Privacy
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Revealing too much about the Central Intelligence Agency’s activities would undermine national security. But that doesn’t mean the CIA shouldn’t have to answer to Congress.
And it certainly doesn’t mean the CIA should spy on Congress.
Legislative oversight of the CIA is a legal, logical and necessary way for federal lawmakers to assure that the agency operates within proper limits. That’s how the American public, through our elected representatives, keeps track of what the CIA is doing in our name.
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We’ve been covering the pending release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s CIA torture report, which is currently undergoing a fight over what should or should not be redacted. We also covered the NY Times report about how former CIA boss George Tenet (who helped mentor current CIA boss John Brennan) is both implicated by the report… and has been leading the campaign to discredit the report.
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Civil Rights
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The US State Department approved its first clandestine operational plan for Portugal on 27th September 1974 with the stated aim of “avoiding the communists taking power” according to documents publicly released on their 40th anniversary.
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A California congressman wants to ban everyday Americans from owning high-performance body armor.
Rep. Mike Honda, a Democrat, tells U.S. News law enforcement officers need an edge over criminals and rampaging madmen, whom he says can “wreck havoc with impunity” wearing the gear.
Honda’s “Responsible Body Armor Possession Act,” introduced July 31, would prohibit civilians from buying or owning armor – including vests, shields, helmets and other items – rated Type III or higher on the National Institute of Justice’s penetration resistance scale.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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A mysterious conservative group with strong ties to the Koch brothers has been bombarding inboxes with emails filled with disinformation and fearmongering in an attempt to start a “grassroots” campaign to kill net neutrality—at one point suggesting that “Marxists” think that preserving net neutrality is a good idea.
The emails, which come with subject lines like “Stop Obama’s federal Internet takeover,” come from American Commitment, an organization that is nonprofit in name only and has been called out time and time again by journalists and transparency organizations for obscuring where it gets its funding.
In an email I received, American Commitment president Phil Kerpen suggests that reclassifying the internet as a public utility is the “first step in the fight to destroy American capitalism altogether” and says that the FCC is plotting a “federal Internet takeover,” a move that “sounds more like a story coming out of China or Russia.”
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DRM
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If you like PC games, chances are you already know all about GOG, or Good Old Games. The GOG website has done more to extend the life of gently-aged games by building a platform for old games that will work on new machines while having one singular principal dominate their products: there shall be no DRM.
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Well this is interesting: GOG.com, the digital retailer best known for selling old games without DRM, is branching out into film and TV.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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With Hollywood hovering in the background looking for cash, last month the High Court ordered Kim Dotcom to reveal in detail where he’s getting all his money from. The Mega founder isn’t ready to give in though, and is putting up a fight ahead of an appeal hearing in October.
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The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department sees piracy as one of its top priorities. In a highly tainted news report the Assistant Sheriff claims a direct link between piracy, organized crime and terrorism. But are the alleged pirates who inspired the report really hardcore criminals? Let’s find out.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
08.27.14
Posted in News Roundup at 11:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Vibrations and wave motions describe many different physical systems. In fact, most systems that dissipate energy do so through waves of one form or another. In this article, I take a look at gvb (Good ViBrations, http://www.pietrobattiston.it/gvb), a Linux application you can use to visualize and model wave motion and vibrations.
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It’s not a secret that most of the scientific community likes and uses open source software. The reasons for this choice are numerous, but the bottom line is that wherever you see any kind of scientific endeavor, either at CERN, the Fermi Laboratories, or even NASA, it’s always powered by open source software.
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I’m a big fan of Scott Nesbitt’s writing, which has a technological bent, but is usually more about working effectively, rather than how tools can make you effective, which is a key distinction. Scott’s setup reflects his focus on production rather than tweaking. He has his work tools and everything else is pretty much white noise—which is why LXDE/Lubuntu probably makes a lot of sense for his workflow.
It’s simple and it stays out of his way. Scott also gets bonus points for moving his family to Linux. That’s a tough move, but given that his wife stole his ZaReason laptop, the conversion seems to have taken.
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Desktop
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It was just a few short weeks ago that we here in the Linux blogosphere were rehashing the open source world’s documentation dilemma — one of those perennial topics bloggers love to resurrect whenever there appears to be a lull in the conversation.
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I saw that years ago when I worked in schools. We could afford a lot more IT because we used GNU/Linux and the vast majority of users had no problems with it at all. GNU/Linux needs OEMs to offer this desktop to retailers in bulk ASAP. They can make more money through higher margins and the retailers can make more money through higher volumes. It does no one any good to stick with Wintel when it doesn’t sell well at all. OTOH, Android/Linux and ChromeOS are selling like hotcakes and GNU/Linux could offer something more than both on the desktop, all native code.
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Server
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The open-source Docker container virtualization technology has a new ally today. VMware announced a new partnership with Docker, Google and Pivotal to enable container technology in VMware environments.
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Dell, VMware, and Cumulus Networks intend to accelerate the adoption of network virtualisation and open networking in the software-defined datacentre with the launch of a joint solution at VMworld 2014.
The companies have merged VMware’s NSX network virtualisation platform with Cumulus Linux on Dell’s networking switches, claiming the end product will give enterprise customers and service providers holistic management provisioning of a complete datacentre networking environment.
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IBM HAS REAFFIRMED its commitment to Linux with the announcement of an extension to Power Systems Linux.
Following on from the company’s $1bn financial commitment to the Linux operating system last year, IBM will add Power Systems Linux to the Power Systems services already available for AIX and IBM iSeries servers at 54 IBM Innovation Centres and Client Centres. This will enable Linux systems to better use IBM’s Power8 parallel processing and advanced virtualisation.
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IBM is adding Power Systems Linux services to its Innovation and Client Centers around the world so clients can create big data and cloud applications using Linux on IBM Power Systems servers.
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Kernel Space
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“So I deviated from my normal Sunday schedule partly because there wasn’t much there (I blame the KS and LinuxCon), but partly due to sentimental reasons: Aug 25 is the anniversary of the original Linux announcement (‘Hello everybody out there using minix’), so it’s just a good day for release announcements.”
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Linus Torvalds released issued Linux 3.17 rc-2 on Monday.
Linux-loving readers will note that releasing on a Monday is not Torvalds’ style. He usually releases on Sundays.
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Linus Torvalds released the Linux 3.17-rc2 kernel this afternoon in marking this day 23 years ago is when he announced the project.
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LinuxCon and CloudOpen North America this year hosted the developers and maintainers building the software that is running our lives. It also hosted the DevOps professionals and SysAdmins supporting the systems that keep those lives humming along. These events have become the one place where leaders from a variety of projects in the software community can come together. The result is new technologies that will fuel the future.
Highlights from the event included some of these things. There are too many to list here, but this is a sampling.
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The Linux Foundation hosted its LinuxCon North America conference from Aug. 20 to 22 in Chicago, providing attendees with insight into the latest and greatest advancement in the Linux and open-source worlds. The event kicked off with the Linux Foundation’s executive director, Jim Zemlin, announcing a new Linux certification program. The two new designations are the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS) and Linux Foundation Certified Engineer (LFCE). During his keynote address, Zemlin also provided insight into what the Linux Foundation does and what his role is within the Linux community. The highlight for many attendees at any LinuxCon event is the opportunity to see and hear Linux creator Linus Torvalds speak. At the 2014 event, Torvalds, speaking on a Linux kernel developer panel, declared that he is still interested in seeing the Linux desktop succeed. Looking beyond just Linux, the CEO of education platform edX explained why the future of education is open and how his company has fully embraced the open-source model. An open model of collaboration is also being embraced in the automotive industry by startup Local Motors. Jay Rogers, CEO of Local Motors, explained how his company is aiming to revolutionize the automotive industry with crowdsourcing techniques. In this slide show, eWEEK looks back on some of the highlights of the LinuxCon North America 2014 event.
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Graphics Stack
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Handling merge requests for the DRM graphics driver updates will be done differently for the Linux 3.18 kernel, which will result in a few less weeks of development time.
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Earlier this month at SIGGRAPH, ARM and Collabora was talking up the benefits and possibilities for Wayland over X11.
ARM and Collabora have been working together to show off Wayland and in preparation for the SIGGRAPH conference earlier this month in Vancouver they got Wayland up and running on a Samsung Chromebook 2 with the latest ARM Mali graphics drivers.
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The NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit 6.5 update released this week provides measurable performance advantages to those using the open-source Blender modelling software with NVIDIA’s GPU acceleration.
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With Kristian Høgsberg seemingly busy with other projects, Pekka Paalanen went ahead and did the first alpha release for the upcoming Wayland and Weston 1.6 release.
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Users of some pre-Fermi NVIDIA graphics cards can be thankful to Roy Spliet for managing some re-clocking related improvements to the Nouveau driver.
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This week I’ve been running a large open-source graphics card comparison using Mesa 10.3-devel and Linux 3.17 from Git. While the intentions were nice with featuring Intel/NVIDIA/AMD graphics, running several benchmarks of Steam / Source Engine games on Linux, and also measuring the power efficiency and thermal performance, the testing was cut short when it came to the Nouveau driver testing.
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Benchmarks
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Yesterday’s comparison was just about looking at the open-source performance (now that it’s finally working) of the Radeon R9 290 compared to other AMD Radeon HD/Rx graphics cards on the same open-source driver stack. In today’s article we’re exclusively looking at the Radeon R9 290 performance when testing both the latest open and closed-source drivers. On the open-source side was the Linux 3.17 Git kernel, Mesa 10.3-devel, xf86-video-ati 7.4.99, and other Git components supplied by the Oibaf PPA atop the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS installation. On the closed-source AMD side was the Catalyst 14.6 Beta that was the latest at the time of testing.
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Compared to the state of AMD’s RadeonSI Gallium3D driver stack shipped in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS back in April, the latest open-source graphics driver code for the Radeon HD 7000 series GPUs and newer is a heck of a lot faster. Here’s some tests showing how much progress has been made the past few months.
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Applications
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Kid3 audio tag editor, a tool that can be used to edit the tags of MP3, Ogg, FLAC, MPC & WMA files in an efficient way, convert between ID3v1 and ID3v2, set the tags of multiple files, generate tags from file names or vice versa and import from freedb, MusicBrainz and Disco, is now at version 3.1.1
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The desktop environment with its bundle of programs sharing a common graphical user interface (GUI) remains a firm favorite with users. Not surprising really given that a good desktop environment makes computing fun and simple. The graphical desktop environment has become so ingrained in almost everyone’s computer activities that it might seem the command line will wither away. Yet, there is still an important role to play for the humble command-line interface (CLI).
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Proprietary
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Instructionals/Technical
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Wine or Emulation
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The earlier Wine 1.7.24 started working on a packet capture library while with v1.7.25 is the working implementation. Wine 1.7.25 also implements more DirectWrite functions, improves the HTML table support, offers more Math VBScript functions, and contains about three dozen bug-fixes.
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Games
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The ioquake3 open-source game engine derived from the id Tech 3 code-base is working to finally switch over to using SDL2 and ditching the old SDL 1.2 support.
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Leadwerks, a tool designed for Linux games development that managed to secure enough funding on Kickstarter, has been released on the Steam platform.
It took the Leadwerks people a while to get their software on the Steam for Linux platform, but now it’s finally here and Linux users should find it a lot easier to build 3D games from scratch, even if they don’t have the special training for it.
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A new Steam Beta version has been released by Valve and it looks like the devs are gearing up for another long development cycle.
The latest major Steam update is only a week old, but the devs from Valve are already pushing numerous updates. All of these improvements should arrive sooner or later in the Stable branch of the software, depending on how important they are.
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Valve has just released a new update for the development branch of SteamOS and now the Linux distro features some of the newest packages available.
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The long-awaited The Journey Down: Chapter Two point-and-click adventure game has been launched and players will get to continue the tale of Bwana and Kito.
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Time Mysteries: The Final Enigma, a hidden object game developed and published by Artifex Mundi on Steam, will also get a Linux release.
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More powerful versions of the company’s small-form-factor systems could include Core i5 and i3 Broadwell processors and support for 2.5-inch drives and handle up to 16GB of RAM.
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Another Steam Linux client update is out today and with this latest revision comes VA-API video acceleration support when using Steam on Linux for in-home streaming.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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While LXQt is making great progress, version 0.7 of the GTK-based LXPanel was released recently and it boasts a number of changes.
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Enlightenment
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Following last week’s EFL 1.11 release, the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries are back under heavy development.
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Enlightenment fans can celebrate today that the big Enlightenment compositor work has been merged to mainline Enlightenment ahead of the upcoming E19 release.
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A ton of fresh code has been hitting the mainline Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) following this week’s release of EFL 1.11.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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Well, it’s been quiet some days since I came back from the Randa meetings, and I have to admit that after staying there, I have had the single-most productive experience in my life so far. These Randa Meetings are an event, where KDE developers from all across the globe are invited to come and code away for a week, under one roof, with a common goal, and I am fortunate enough to be a part of this.
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Sadly I needed to change the direction of where I put most of my efforts, which means that I’m focusing more on getting some commercial products done to get bills payed (as fundraising campaigns doesn’t work well all the time). For a long time I’ve been trying to polish everything I could to have the desktop I wanted, but recently I realized that the way I was doing it would never work, first because I’d need to convince people to think like I do, second because no one in free software writes stuff for free, and this took me a lot of time to realize.
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This is a big thank you, a thank you to all the people who made the Randa Meeting 2014 possible, the people who invested their time and their energy to go there and work on free software, and the people who made donations to support this.
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Following the recent Plasma 5.0 release, the German Linux developer is back to working on Wayland support and for the KWin 5.1 release will be the premiere of the kwin_wayland binary to complement the kwin_x11 binary of KWin 5.0. Of course, how much of KDE will be able to run on Wayland by that time and exactly how far the support will be remains to be seen, but there should be a clearer picture in the months ahead.
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The introduction of the new Breeze icon set in KDE let us again wonder, what aspects of an icon set actually takes what impact on the usability of it. We investigated Oxygen and Tango Icons for the LibreOffice project before, but our focus then was on checking all icons of the standard tool bar. This time we focus on different icon sets and will use 13 common actions to compare them.
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I have the pleasure to attend Akademy this year again. From my past experience, I’m really looking forward to have a good time again. Lots of hacking, meeting known and unknown faces, drinking beer and socializing ahead! I also love that it’s in a (to me) new country again, and wonder what I will see of the Czech Republic and Brno!
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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The GParted team is happy to announce the tenth anniversary of GParted.
The first public release of GParted was version 0.0.3 on August 26th, 2004. Over the past 10 years, much has happened. Following are some statistics:
Over 300 people have contributed to GParted
Many GNU/Linux distributions now include GParted
Translators have worked to make GParted available in over 50 different languages
GParted is used in over 220 countries around the world
There have been over 17 million downloads from Sourceforge alone
To mark the occasion, questions were posed, and following are responses shared by some key contributors.
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Today in Linux news Fedora Project leader Matthew Miller says folks are bored with Linux distributions. After the Red Flag failure, China is looking to develop another homegrown operating system. Paul Venezia has more on the raging systemd wars and the Linux Tycoon says recompiling the kernel is getting him down. And finally tonight, NetworkWorld has the top 10 things you should know about Red Hat 7.
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I can easily name five distros that have brought some massive changes to the way we interact with our computers…and not all of them on the good side of my list. A more pertinent question might be, which Linux distros are in it for the long haul?
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Evolve OS, a new Linux distribution that’s still under development and that features a new desktop environment, is now reaching out to the GNOME 2 fans and showing that they might find some solace with this operating system.
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One of the best things about Linux is that there are so many distributions to choose from, unlike corporate-controlled operating systems such as Windows or OS X. And historically many Linux users have switched frequently between distros, but is distrohopping becoming a thing of the past? Steven Rosenberg has taken a stand against distrohopping and explains why he doesn’t do it.
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New Releases
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Now that we have caught our breath after the Black Hat and DEF CON conferences, we have put aside some time to fix an annoying bug in our 1.0.8 ISO releases related to outdated firmware as well as regenerate fresh new ARM and VMware images (courtesy of Offensive Security) for our new 1.0.9 release.
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The Alpine Linux project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 3.0.4 of its Alpine Linux operating system.
This is a bugfix release of the v3.0 musl based branch. This release is based on the 3.14.17 kernel which has some critical security fixes.
The alpine-xen image is fixed and should now have a working hvmloader again.
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Arch Family
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As explained in that article, Operating System U is to be based off Arch Linux, run a modified version of the MATE Desktop Environment, and will use Wayland in place of the X.Org Server. Operating System U also plans to modify the MATE Desktop to make it better while also developing a new component they call Startlight, which pairs the Windows Start Button with Apple’s Spotlight. Those technical goals alone are rather lofty seeing as MATE doesn’t even have Wayland support right now, and they hope to potentially have out a development release of OSu in a half-year. Pushing further, the developers hope Operating System U will come pre-installed on laptops and via partnerships with retailers will be the driving force for OSu consumer adoption.
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Red Hat Family
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Open source solutions provider, Red Hat, will be hosting its annual Asia Pacific forums to address pain-points and share strategies with public sector agencies and businesses interested in open source.
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While much of the virtualization market’s attention this week is focused on the VMworld event taking place in San Francisco, Linux vendor Red Hat wants people to remember that VMware isn’t the only virtualization vendor in town. This week, Red Hat announced updates to its OpenStack Platform as well the CloudForms cloud management technology.
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Outside the operating system, according to AngelList data compiled by Leo Polovets, these developers go with MySQL, MongoDB, or PostgreSQL for their database; Chef or Puppet for configuration; and ElasticSearch or Solr for search. None of this technology is developed by Red Hat.
Yet all of this technology is what the next generation of developers is using to build modern applications.
Given that developers are the new kingmakers, Red Hat needs to get out in front of the developer freight train if it wants to remain relevant for the next 20 years, much less the next two.
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Debian Family
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Anyway, Debian GNU/Linux is a powerful operating system with powerful tools to use whether on or off the web and with or without a CD-drive.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Canonical has provided information about an OpenJDK 7 regression that has been found and corrected in its Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) operating system.
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TiVo introduced a Linux-based DVR for “cordcutters” who want to eliminate cable fees by obtaining their TV content from Internet streams and OTA broadcasts.
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The Raspberry PI is perfect for this sort of thing. I don’t have a desktop computer and therefore to download files whilst away from the house used to require using a laptop and leaving it on all day. Now I just queue up the files and let the Raspberry PI do its thing.
I tend not to do much on a Friday night and so it was Saturday before I needed to use one of the files.
Unfortunately something catastrophic happened to the Raspberry PI and not only did it not have the files I needed it had also corrupted the operating system.
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Phones
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Ballnux
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Android
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In today’s Android roundup: A Huawei bigwig thinks that Tizen is already dead. Plus: Lemon Meringue Pie might be the official codename for Android L, and are mobile carriers clogging up Android with bloatware?
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I love Android, particularly the latest release, KitKat. It’s come a long way from my first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 (the one with the weird flip out QWERTY keyboard). My current Android phone – the Motorola X – is superb, with a stunning display, great camera and a gigantic unified memory for all my apps, music and photos. But I only bought it because my previous Android phone became practically unusable after 3 months of ownership. Why? Because of this annoying message: Insufficient Storage Available.
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“The operating system on the Android One devices will be upgraded to Android L in October,” one of the people said. This upgrade will allow users to have better browsing and gaming experience at affordable prices, making the smartphones attractive buys for first-time buyers and those wanting to replace their existing phones.
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This week, Malwarebytes points us to a malicious app which can add remote administration toolkit functionality to existing applications. What sets Dendroid apart from similar apps is its extensive list of features which lets it exploit Android devices.
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While Android users everywhere are rejoicing at the announcement of what is perhaps the biggest revamp to the open-source mobile operating system, Apple users are impatiently twiddling their fingers for iOS 8 to land on their smartphones. Following its own major revamp last year with iOS 7, Apple seems to have found its voice by letting go of skeuomorphism and following a more holistic design that measures up to the latest trends of “flat design”. Also, iOS 8 is a huge stepping stone for “convergence” the big utopia major operating systems are aiming for today. Where does Android L stand on all of this? Well, it matches iOS 8 in pretty much every department. And that is what makes this mobile OS battle so exciting.
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However one of the issues with such a revolutionary concept is trying to make sure all the components are interchangeable and can work independent of each other. It is likely the processor will be one of the hardest elements to implement as the processor will be integral to all the other components or MODs. To combat this Google have recently announced they are working with Chinese-based Rockchip to design the modular processor. Google hope to create the SoC with a native and general-purpose UniPro interface. The logic is this will be able to act as an independent entity without the need of a ‘bridge chip’ to communicate with the rest of the device.
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So you’re a road warrior – that means you need to move fast and seamlessly across vast distances totally hassle-free. Gotcha. Here are the Android apps you’ll need to make your travels as fast and trouble-free as a “Beam me up, Scotty” command. No, there’s no transporter yet, but these apps are definitely the next best thing. And yes, there are Android apps here to help you get work done while you’re on the move too!
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Now consider open source, the software that powers all these web companies. Open source has a built-in guarantee that users are in control. Always.
This matters, because open source “is where innovation happens,” as Red Hat’s Gunnar Hellekson opines. From Hadoop to Android to Mesos to MySQL, much of the world’s best software is available for free.
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The Open Source Initiative ® (OSI), the premiere organization that promotes and protects open source, announced today that the Puerto Rico Python Interest Group (prPIG) has joined the OSI as an Affiliate Member. prPIG’s support of open source software development and its advocacy for the adherence to the open source definition are supporting software innovation in Puerto Rico. prPIG’s affiliation with OSI will help build a sustainable software development community in Puerto Rico, that will drive technological and social innovation.
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Chawner begins by relating a tale that is probably familiar to many in the open source world. It is the story of Richard Stallman’s battle with a closed source Xerox printer. The printer was subject to frequent paper jams, but because the source code was not available, he could not modify the printer’s software to report the jams to inconvenienced users waiting on their print jobs. This event, along with a general trend towards closed source software, caused Stallman to start the GNU Project and found the Free Software Foundation. The story of that troublesome printer and the subsequent developments in the free software and open source movements led Chawner to explorer her research questions in an attempt to understand participant satisfaction with FLOSS projects.
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Apparently, I’m not alone in thinking highly of the software, if this page of testimonials is any indication. In fact, the publication “This Old Schoolhouse” recently echoed many other reviews in their article in the June 2012 edition. In the article, Andy Harris, the Tech Homeschooler, wrote, “Tux Paint is just about the most kid-friendly program I’ve ever seen. It’s designed so the adult can set it up, and even very young children can enjoy it thoroughly. It also has sophisticated enough features for siblings and parents to enjoy.”
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The top story tonight is the releases of GIMP 2.8.12 and 2.8.14. Linux celebrated 23 years yesterday and the community had a bit to say about “the desktop.” And finally tonight we have a couple of gaming announcements and Bruce Byfield on the KDE Visual Design Group.
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Open source software is now a force drawing enterprises and developers like a magnet.
The factors pulling adopters into the open source fold are changing, though. Also changing are the attitudes of software developers and corporate leaders about the viability and adaptability of open source.
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The offer was too good to be true. Three whole weeks at the NASA Glenn Research Center and an invitation to come back. I could scarcely believe it when I read the email. I immediately forwarded it to my parents with an addition of around 200 exclamation points. They were all for it, so I responded to my contact, Herb Schilling, with a resounding “YES!”
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Events
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Web Browsers
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Chrome
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Google Chrome 37 is now the current stable version of the Internet browser from Google. It’s a release that’s more focused on security than anything else, but there are a few new features. It won’t feel different from the 36.x branch that users have just upgraded from, but that shouldn’t be a reason not to update the software.
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Mozilla
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Mozilla is set to add a feature to its mobile Firefox OS that will give users the ability to revoke any application’s permissions on a granular basis.
Firefox OS is the open source operating system that Mozilla built for smartphones. The software runs on a variety of devices from manufacturers such as Alcatel, ZTE and LG. The devices mainly are available outside of the United States, although there’s at least one Firefox OS phone sold in the U.S. The operating system is meant to be flexible and includes many of the security and privacy features that Mozilla has built into the Firefox browser over the years, namely support for Do Not Track.
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SaaS/Big Data
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VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger kicked off his company’s VMworld 2014 conference with a message – Be Brave. Gelsinger’s message was intended for attendees but is also a message that is reflective of his company’s approach to the rapidly evolving Software Defined Data Center landscape.
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Apache Hadoop is an open source software framework for storage and large scale processing of data-sets on clusters of commodity hardware. Hadoop is an Apache top-level project being built and used by a global community of contributors and users. It is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.
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Four years ago, Rackspace and its early partners came up with an idea for an open source private alternative to Amazon Web Services –and OpenStack was born. Today, the future of Rackspace is murky, but the open source project it helped create is strong enough to stand on its own, whatever happens to one of the founding members.
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Red Hat has introduced updates for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 5, the latest version of its enterprise-focused OpenStack platform built on the Icehouse release. An updated installer and new high availability platform security capabilities are designed to let administrators more easily protect a healthy and fault-tolerant OpenStack deployment.
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Never underestimate the impact that the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) can have on technology. After all, way back when there was no commercial web, it was the NSF that–under pressure from entrepreneurs–opened up the gates for the commercial web to become a low cost way for organizations and individuals to become networked.
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Education
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Panorama Education, the Y-Combinator education startup backed by the likes of Mark and Priscilla Zuckerberg’s Startup:Education, Google Ventures and other notable investors, is today announcing a partnership with Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education that speaks to how the startup is evolving its core business model. The pair have teamed up to launch Panorama Student Survey, Panorama’s signature school survey delivered as a free, open source product.
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It’s back to school for many kids in the United States, and soon to be so for many others around the world. While open source software and hardware are used less often to teach kids in grade school about the world, open principles are. They are what you might think of as the most natural methods of teaching. And, they are what we call the open source way.
Think: sharing, collaboration, transparency, and failing faster.
When I was a kid, these were the methods practiced by my teachers and taught to the students to use among their groups. To many adults, they are still the principles that guide them in their grown up world of business.
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BSD
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With each kernel revision, LLVM Clang gets closer to being able to build the mainline Linux kernel. There’s now just a few dozen patches outstanding for LLVMLinux to be a mainline success.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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Welcome to MediaGoblin 0.7.0: Time Traveler’s Delight! It’s been longer than usual for our releases, but we assure you this is because we’ve been traveling back and forth across the timeline picking up cool technology that spans a wide spectrum of space and time. But our time-boat has finally come into the harbor. Get ready… we’ve got a lot of cargo to unpack!
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Project Releases
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GIMP 2.8.12 was released yesterday, bringing various bug fixes and small enhancements. This is the stable GIMP branch and no new features are added in the 2.8.x releases, just bug fixes.
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Public Services/Government
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Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center in Mississippi will offer open source training and Linux certification for military personnel and civilians in groundbreaking new program.
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Openness/Sharing
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Have you ever tried to grow your favorite summer vegetable or garden herb and something went wrong? Maybe it was poor planting, a disease, or a pesky insect. Likely, you searched the Internet and found some answers, but millions of pages of information remains unviewed and unread on the subject. Maybe you need to troubleshoot problems or want definitive answers to questions like when to plant for your area or exactly when to fertilize.
This is how the idea for OpenFarm sprouted. The knowledge for all these answers is out there, it’s just not in one place.
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Open Access/Content
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For years, we’ve talked about the many problems with PACER, the horribly designed and managed electronic court records system that the federal court system uses here in the US. Beyond being clunky, buggy, horribly designed and slow — it’s also expensive. With some exceptions, it’s 10 cents per page you download, and also 10 cents per search.
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Programming
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C++ has continued to garner more market share from C and the latest C++14 standard will help to continue this trend (see “C++14 Adds Embedded Features”). Most C/C++ developers are using compilers that support both but C still takes precedence for many for a variety of reasons. Support for legacy code is one reason. Corporate mandates are another. Unfortunately many stay away because of perceived complexity, inefficiency or that fact that it is an object oriented programming (OOP) language.
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The R programming language is quickly gaining popular ground against the traditional statistics packages such as SPSS, SAS and MATLAB, at least according to one data statistician who teaches the language.
“It is very likely that during the summer of 2014, R became the most widely used analytics software for scholarly articles, ending a spectacular 16-year run by SPSS,” wrote Robert Muenchen, in a blog post summarizing his analysis.
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printf-style debugging and the ability to partition computing devices into subdevices make OpenCL 1.2 a very useful upgrade.
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For the uninformed, Julia is a high-level, high-performance dynamic language centered around technical computing. The Julia high-performance JIT compiler is LLVM-based and features a large math function library, supports highly parallel execution, and is MIT licensed.
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Standards/Consortia
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Over on Gordon Haff’s blog, Connections, the senior cloud evangelist for Red Hat talked with Simon Phipps, the president of the Open Source Initiative about U.S. software patent cases and the United Kingdom’s decision to make ODF its official document format.
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The former chief executive officer of Redflex, a major red light camera (RLC) vendor, has been indicted on federal corruption charges stemming from a contract with the City of Chicago.
On Wednesday, in addition to former CEO Karen Finley, government prosecutors also indicted John Bills, former managing deputy commissioner at the Department of Transportation, and Bills’ friend Martin O’Malley, who was hired as a contractor by Redflex.
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For those of you who have just woken up from a two-week coma, there are a couple of things you should know. People in Missouri are really pissed off. Iraq is being Iraq. ISIS isn’t a fictional spy agency on Archer any longer. And, finally, there’s this thing going around where people are pouring buckets of ice water over their heads in order to raise money for ALS, which it has successfully done to the tune of millions of dollars.
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Science
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Only recently has it become possible to accurately “see” the structure of a liquid. Using X-rays and a high-tech apparatus that holds liquids without a container, Kenneth Kelton, PhD, the Arthur Holly Compton Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, was able to compare the behavior of glass-forming liquids as they approach the glass transition.
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Health/Nutrition
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U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Kurren overturned Kaua’i County’s law regulating the use of pesticides and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) this week. He ruled that it was preempted by Hawai’i state law, although not by federal law.
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Security
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These days, in the computer security world, it’s pretty well known that if you’re relying on security by obscurity, you’re not being secure. Somehow that message has not reached the techies working on Healthcare.gov. I guess it shouldn’t be much of a surprise, given what a disaster the rollout of that site was, but everyone was claiming that the whole thing was under control these days, since real techies had been brought in to fix things. In fact, everyone was so happy with Mikey Dickerson’s miraculous saving of the program that the White House set up a special US Digital Service for him to lead, allowing him to save other US government projects from near certain disaster.
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CyberSec Coordinator Tells Why Lack of Tech Know-How Helps
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So we were just writing about how the White House appeared to be going with a security by obscurity tactic in denying an Associated Press FOIA request concerning the security behind Healthcare.gov. Specifically, the request was denied because the White House claimed that revealing such info might help hackers. As we noted, if revealing the basic security plan you’re using will help hackers, then you’re not secure and chances are you’ve already been hacked.
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Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression
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So much of our discussion of public policy consists of absurd accusations from the right matched with self-serving justifications from the somewhat-less-right. The most obvious example of this is the perennial think piece on Obama’s foreign policy, which is invariably analyzed as being either foolishly pacifistic or prudently diplomatic.
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The US is once again on the warpath against Syria after the beheading of US citizen James Foley was released on the internet a week ago.
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Is the US about to attack Syria? President Obama has approved air surveillance of Syria to monitor possible ISIS activity, but the flyovers could be a precursor to eventual airstrikes.
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Barack Obama gives go-ahead for intelligence operation which could pave way for air strikes against Islamic State in Syria
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The AP reports today that President Obama has authorized surveillance flights over Syria, a move that could be the first sign of the U.S. expanding its operations against ISIS to the other side of the porous Syria-Iraq border. It makes sense that such a mission would begin with an extensive intelligence-gathering effort. That’s because, compared with other areas of the world, the U.S. military knows very little about what’s happening in Syria.
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Iran has provided weapons and ammunition to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq, said the region’s President on Tuesday in a joint a press-conference with the Iranian foreign minister.
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The intelligence gathered by U.S. military surveillance flights over Syria could support a broad bombing campaign against the Islamic State militant group, but current and former U.S. officials differ on whether air power would significantly degrade what some have called a “terrorist army.”
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A senior Hamas official says a ceasefire has been reached with Israel to end a seven-week war that has killed more than 2,000 people.
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The alleged money man died in a pile of burnt cash. He was riding in a car in Gaza City when the Israeli missile struck. The blast tore apart the vehicle, ripping open bags of American dollars and blowing the bills across the street. An unidentified witness told the New York Times that security soon collected the dollars billowing across the road and searched the car for more.
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Hamas’ finance chief was killed by a pinpoint missile strike that ripped open his car — and scattered US currency on the streets of Gaza City.
Bills burned by the blast lay amid the debris near where Muhammad al-Ghoul, who handled “terror funds,” was killed.
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On September 30, 2011, Anwar al-Aulaki, a radical Islamist cleric and an American citizen, was killed in a targeted drone strike in Yemen.
Among the many legal questions raised by such an act, a most important and intriguing one relates to the legal status of certain CIA activities given the existence of 18 USC 119, a federal statute which prohibits the (actual or attempted) murder of an American citizen by another American citizen outside of the United States.
The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memorandum providing the Obama administration’s rationale for the strike was released last week, the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the ACLU and the New York Times.
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War fever is running high again in Official Washington with pols and pundits demanding that President Obama order a major military intervention in Iraq and Syria to stop the violent jihadists of ISIS, a group that got its start with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, as ex-CIA analyst Paul Pillar recalls.
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Will criticising British foreign policy be seen as something that defines how ‘extreme’ you are. If you are a Muslim and chose to state this openly will you be labelled a ‘radical’?
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The ghastly killing of journalist James Foley — more than merely savage — was quite calculated to induce terror and to influence. And it did. Indeed, to discuss his death in a broader political context at this point may seem distasteful, clinical, and disrespectful to the dead and his family.
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An Egyptian-brokered cease-fire halting the Gaza war held into Monday morning, allowing Palestinians to leave homes and shelters as negotiators agreed to resume talks in Cairo. ()
The horrific pictures of the beheading of American reporter James Foley, the images of executions of alleged collaborators in Gaza and the bullet-ridden bodies left behind in Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are the end of a story, not the beginning. They are the result of years, at times decades, of the random violence, brutal repression and collective humiliation the United States has inflicted on others.
Our terror is delivered to the wretched of the earth with industrial weapons. It is, to us, invisible. We do not stand over the decapitated and eviscerated bodies left behind on city and village streets by our missiles, drones and fighter jets. We do not listen to the wails and shrieks of parents embracing the shattered bodies of their children. We do not see the survivors of air attacks bury their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters.
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China’s air force said it deployed an armed drone to multinational anti-terrorism drills on Tuesday, underscoring the country’s rapid progress in developing unmanned aerial vehicles.
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The humanitarian situation was cynically manipulated by the Obama administration –and echoed by the U.S. media– to provide an excuse for the president to attack Iraq again. President Obama has started another war in Iraq and Congress has been completely silent.
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How can anyone still be an interventionist after what has happened in Iraq?
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The scandal that became known as Iran-Contra is a distant memory for most Americans and Iranians. But an important new book provides fascinating details about US ignorance about Iran, which contributed to the largely botched effort to free US hostages in Lebanon and hindered a possible breakthrough in US-Iran ties 30 years ago.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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Pierre Trudeau’s bid to enhance Canadian sovereignty and promote economic development in the Arctic created some “friction” with the United States, says a declassified CIA report.
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As much as Iran, Russia, the US and the EU are involved in a sophisticated nuclear/energy ballet, Syria and Ukraine are also two key power play vectors bound to determine much of what happens next in the New Great Game in Eurasia.
And both Syria and Ukraine also happen to be energy wars.
The Obama administration’s Syria master plan was “Assad must go”; regime change would yield a US-supported Muslim Brotherhood entity, and a key plank of Pipelineistan — the $10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline — would be forever ditched.
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Extensive reporting from the Associated Press on the Koch brothers’ financial background and political influence glossed over the duo’s ties to the fossil fuel industry and ignored their efforts to dismantle action on climate change.
On August 25, the Associated Press published a “primer on the Koch brothers and their role in politics,” headlined “Koch 101,” along with a lengthy overview of the history of the Koch family. A primer on the influence of Charles and David Koch is sorely needed: Their political organizations are reportedly expected to spend nearly $300 million during this year’s election cycle, yet most Americans still haven’t heard of the highly influential brothers.
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Some of the most high-profile media climate deniers–George Will, Charles Krauthammer and Robert Samuelson–are all Post columnists who have done their part to contribute to the “shape of the climate debate.” Krauthammer most recently (2/20/14) mocked the idea that the science of climate change was “settled,” and that scientists who warn of the disastrous effects of climate change are “white-coated propagandists.” Krauthammer went on TV this year to mock climate change science as “superstition.”
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Finance
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Daniel Roberts, a World Bank Project Manager assigned with Ministry of Finance has been forwarded to the court for an attempted Theft of Property and Economic Sabotage in the tune of US$87,486 by the National Security Agency (NSA).
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The poorest areas of England have endured council cuts under the coalition worth 16 times as much per household as the richest areas, research has claims.
Hilary Benn, the shadow communities secretary, said his figures showed the government had “failed to apply the basic principle of fairness” when allocating money to local government.
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The presidency of Barack Obama has catapulted a network of former advisers into lucrative positions.
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If there were any lingering doubts about the seriousness of the crisis hanging over the future of the euro – and potentially of the European Union itself – the shock announcement of the dissolution of the French government should remove them.
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Under U.S. law, federal agencies are allowed to pay above and beyond normal salary rates for would-be employees who are extraordinarily talented, especially in the fields of science and technology. So-called Critical Position Pay Authority was used, for example, to bump the 2011 salary of the director of the National Institutes of Health — a geneticist who is both a best-selling author and winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom — from $155,000 to just shy of $200,000.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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Leaked documents show a forest of brackets in News Corp’s Australian newspapers, with The Australian particularly in the red. How long can the house that Rupert built sustain such body blows?
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Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has a rather long and somewhat sordid history of obtaining confidential information and publishing it. But apparently when someone else does that to News Corp., the company declares war. The Australian website Crikey got its hands on some internal News Corp. documents showing how badly its Australian newspapers were performing.
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A lawyer who described piracy settlement demands as “extortion” changed his mind in 2011 and began suing BitTorrent users. In an attempt to erase the past he’s just sent DMCA notices to the domain registrars of two anti-troll websites. Sadly for him, they remain online and history remains intact.
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Censorship
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You would think in uber-liberal academia, a leftist professor could get away saying anything. But apparently you can go too far. Earlier this month, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign rescinded its offer to Steven Salaita, a Palestinian-American former Virginia Tech professor, for a tenured position in the American Indian Studies department. Why?
Because of dozens of tweets Salaita made from his Twitter account preaching hatred of Israel and bashing America’s ties to the Jewish homeland. At the news of his hiring earlier in the Summer, the university started to get backlash from students, parents and donors who did not appreciate Salaita’s aggressively unfriendly attitude towards Israel. So the Univ. of Illinois’ Chancellor Phyllis Wise wrote to Salaita, stating he was no longer welcome as a professor at the university.
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We’ve written a few times about domain registrar/hosting company EasyDNS, which has been pretty vocal about how law enforcement and industry groups have recently started targeting registrars and hosting comapnies as “the soft underbelly” for censorship and coercive control. While we’ve covered this issue frequently as it relates to things like copyright, the real ground zero for this may be around online pharmacies. The online pharmacy space is a bit complicated — because there are really a few different kinds. There are US-based accredited/approved pharmacies, there are overseas accredited/approved online pharmacies… and then there are flat-out rogue pharmacies dealing in illegally obtained or counterfeit medicines. Obviously the last one is in a different category altogether from the first two, but US drug companies like to conflate legal foreign online pharmacies with the rogue ones.
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“Finally, I can do whatever I want!” thought every incoming college freshman ever. But for some unlucky students arriving on campus this fall, that sought-after right of passage applies to just about everything except internet usage.
Northern Illinois University enacted an Acceptable Use Policy that goes further than banning torrents, also denying students access to social media sites and other content the university considers “unethical” or “obscene.”
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My understanding is that there was once a theory that America’s public universities were havens of free speech, political thought, and a center for the exchange of ideas. I must admit that this seems foreign to me. I’ve always experienced universities primarily as a group-think center mostly centered around college athletics. That said, if universities want to still claim to be at the forefront of idea and thought, they probably shouldn’t be censoring the hell out of what their students can access on the internet.
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Either way, if you’re going to go around claiming that you’re against intellectual property and an “anarcho capitalist,” it’s going to look pretty sketchy when you use a federal law like copyright to censor someone else’s speech that is critical of you.
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The other issue is that most sites are pretty much legally compelled to have such terms of use, which provide them greater flexibility in deciding to stifle forms of speech they don’t appreciate. In many ways, you have to respect the way the First Amendment is structured so that, even if courts have conveniently chipped away at parts of it at times (while, at other times making it much stronger), there’s a clear pillar that all of this is based around. Terms of service are nothing like the Constitution, and can be both inherently wishy-washy and ever-changeable as circumstances warrant.
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Tufecki should know. As a fellow at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, she focuses on the politics of free speech in social media. Over the years she’s traced this push and pull with particular attention to the Middle East and North Africa (Tufecki is a native of Turkey).
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Privacy
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The latest report from The Intercept on documents obtained from Ed Snowden (and, yes, they make it clear that these are from Snowden, rather than the purported “second leaker”) is about a “Google-like” search engine that the NSA built, called ICREACH, which lets the NSA share a massive trove (at least 850 billion) of “metadata” records not just with others in the NSA or CIA, but with domestic law enforcement and other government agencies including the FBI and the DEA. The database includes records collected via Executive Order 12333, which we recently noted a State Department official revealed as the main program via which the NSA collects its data (and which is not subject to oversight by Congress).
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The largest earthquake to hit California’s Napa Valley in 25 years struck near the Bay Area early Sunday morning. The 6.0-magnitude quake hit at 3:20 a.m. local time near American Canyon, about 6 miles southwest of Napa, at a depth of 6.7 miles. Nearly 90 people were injured—and countless more woken up, disturbed, and generally freaked out. Thanks to the quantified self phenomenon—the always-on activity and sleep trackers many people now wear—we know more than ever about the psychic effects of such an event.
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More than a year after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked secret documents describing the breadth and depth of US surveillance, policy makers continue to debate the legal framework for such monitoring.
Yet a number of technology startups are blazing ahead to create a range of products that promise to restore people’s privacy online. Silent Circle, WhisperSystems, and Wickr offer a variety of services, from private instant messaging to secure data storage to encrypted phone calls. Other companies, such as Blackphone, have focused on creating a secure smartphone for the privacy-conscious.
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A “spiral of silence” has arisen on social media since government spying revelations emerged from Edward Snowden last year, according to a new study.
Pew Research found that people were less likely to post their views or concerns about NSA surveillance on Facebook and Twitter than in person due to fears that their views are not widely shared.
Around 86% of people surveyed for the study – which questioned 1,801 US adults in August and September last year – said that they were willing to have an in-person conversation about the surveillance program, but only 42% of Facebook and Twitter users were willing to post about it online.
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If you didn’t see a lot of talk about Ferguson and Michael Brown on your Facebook feed, maybe that’s because your Facebook friends were afraid you’d disagree.
The Pew Research Center on Tuesday said a study of nearly 2,000 adults on an earlier hot-button political issue – the massive leak by Edward Snowden of documents that showed the National Security Agency had spied on U.S. citizens – found those surveyed were less willing to discuss the issue in social media than they were in person, and that social media did not provide an alternate platform to talk about the story if they weren’t willing to discuss it in person.
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The technology many of us use to stay in touch with friends is poorly suited to creating meaningful debate and discussion, argues a new study which examined how revelations of widespread NSA media surveillance played out on Twitter and Facebook. Conducted by Rutgers University and the Pew Center for Research, the study points out that since social media functions as a bonding tool between groups and individuals, those who hold dissenting views are hesitant to express them. Groups formed on social media tend to be like-minded so contradicting people’s opinions can result in exclusion which, psychologically speaking, is not a good feeling.
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The revelations have a few implications, the most obvious one confirming the seamless transition between intelligence work on the one hand, and the policing function on the other. The distinction between intelligence communities whose interests are targeting matters foreign to the polity; and those who maintain order within the boundaries of a state in a protective capacity, prove meaningless in this form. The use of ICREACH makes it clear that the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are regular clients and users of the system.
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UK SUPREME COURT PRESIDENT Lord Neuberger is pushing for an update to UK privacy laws.
Neuberger was speaking in Hong Kong when he turned to the topic of privacy laws in the light of technology advances. He said that technology leaps forward while the legal system shuffles. He suggested that because of this, some sort of overhaul to UK privacy laws will be necessary.
The judge spoke of the “astonishing advances” and “enormous challenges” presented by technological progress and the need to make adjustments before real problems occur.
He said that technology developments have radically changed how content moves around, and how easily it can be transmitted, recorded and manipulated.
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It’s now more than two years since the cookie law began to be ‘enforced’ in the UK, but has it changed anything?
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Americans’ telephone conversations already are being monitored by the National Security Agency and their health-care policies by the Internal Revenue Service. Now there’s “Truthy,” a government-funded project at Indiana University that will watch their Tweets for “political smears” and “social pollution.”
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The NSA has secretly built a “Google-like” search engine to be used by various US government agencies and intelligence agencies of the Five Eyes countries to sift through phone call, email, and Internet chat metadata, as well as cellphone locations collected and stored in a number of different databases.
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Bankers and bank regulators have become more vocal lately about concerns that cyber attacks could put customer data and the stability of the financial system at risk.
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Bloggers are all a-twitter about Charlie Rose’s recent interview of Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) co-founder Larry Page at a TED conference in Vancouver, Canada. Page, enduring the softball-quickly-followed-by-frustrating-interruption style of Rose, still managed to eke out responses of intense bloggy interest. When asked about government surveillance, Page lamented the “tremendously disappointing” behavior of the NSA. Sounds noble, but it may end up sounding duplicitous. Recent testimony by NSA general counsel stated Google had full knowledge of data harvesting activities from day one, despite the company making denials to the contrary for months.
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America’s NSA scandal has been making headlines all over the world since it first came to light back in July. Somehow, though, France’s surveillance program has managed to fly under the radar for the most part.
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On Friday, Russia’s Ministry of the Interior (MVD) awarded a contract for $110,000 to an unnamed Russian contractor with top security clearance to uncloak Russian users of the surveillance-evading Tor browser. This is the Russia’s Federal Security Service’s (FSB) response to the surge of Russian Tor users from 80,000 to 200,000 due to the restrictions by the Russian government on free use of the internet, such as the new law that requires all Russian bloggers to register.
The NSA and the FSB want to puncture Tor anonymty and expose the identities of the people using it because the Tor browser erases identifying browser fingerprints. Almost everyone who uses the internet has a unique traceable fingerprint. An Internet user can check his or her own internet uniqueness in a few seconds with Panopticlick, a one-click test created by the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF). Most people find themselves to be pretty unique; 1 in 4.5 million to be exact. Go ahead, try it.
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Privacy and individuals’ ability to remain anonymous are important protections against persecution, bullying, intimidation and retaliation. These can be perpetrated by other people, private businesses and, perhaps most seriously, the state and its police and intelligence agencies.
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The Tacoma Police Department apparently has bought — and quietly used for six years — controversial surveillance equipment that can sweep up records of every cellphone call, text message and data transfer up to a half a mile away.
You don’t have to be a criminal to be caught in this law enforcement snare. You just have to be near one and use a cellphone.
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Dictators around the world can now exploit a fundamental feature of cell phones, leaving individuals at risk of having their whereabouts monitored wherever they go.
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Cellular carriers already know where you are thanks to your phone. On paper it makes sense: Service providers like AT&T need to know your location in order to relay calls and texts, determining your position from cell towers. But now, according to a new report in the Washington Post, surveillance companies are selling advanced tracking systems that take advantage of this technology, making it possible even for small governments to track users anytime, anywhere–for days or even weeks at a time with stunning accuracy.
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In a world where many aspects of our daily lives are written or recorded and transmitted digitally, our raw thoughts and casual observations are increasingly open to scrutiny and vulnerable to interception. Our behavior is frequently documented, whether it is by government agencies, corporate entities, news organizations, or fellow citizens. This means that every iteration of an evolving idea, off-hand comment, and emotional outburst could be recorded. Given how often we all misinterpret each other, especially in writing, the exponential increase in documented human behavior is cause for concern.
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The American climate of fear about terrorism has combined with this technological shift into a potent mix that stifles debate and free expression.
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At Black Hat and Def Con earlier this month, the penetration testing tool makers at Pwnie Express unveiled two new products aimed at extending the company’s reach into the world of continuous enterprise security auditing. One, the Pwn Pro, is essentially a souped-up version of Pwnie Express’ Pwn Plug line of devices; the other, Pwn Pulse, is a cloud-based software-as-a-service product that provides central control of a fleet of Pwn Pro “sensors.” Combined, the two are a whitehat’s personal NSA—intended to discover potential security problems introduced into enterprise networks before someone with malevolent intent does.
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Citing an endless river of filth, vacuous conversations, idiotic Tweets and endless cat videos, the NSA announced it is “freaking done” with spying on Americans.
The NSA decision came only hours after thousands of analysts, following similar threats at CIA, said they planned to quit and apply for jobs as Apple Geniuses and Best Buy Geek Squad Support workers.
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Civil Rights
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A Times editor defended this assessment of Brown by explaining that it was a reference back to the opening scene of the piece, where Brown talks to his stepfather about seeing the image of an angel in a storm cloud. Of course, this reference was plainly obvious to anyone reading the piece.
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America has long held the position as the world’s foremost imprisoner of its own citizens. Around 2 million people are incarcerated in America, giving us nearly one-fourth of the world’s total prison population. Spending any length of time in prison is a good way to destroy your future. But even if you never spend a day inside — or even end up facing charges — there’s a good chance you’ll still be facing a bleak future should you ever have the misfortune to be booked.
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According to the New York Times, the White House is having “second thoughts” about the policy of arming U.S. police to the teeth. The images from Ferguson, Missouri – of police kitted out like paratroopers with sniper rifles and armoured cars – is causing consternation in Congress. President Barack Obama has ordered a “comprehensive review.”
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As Charles Johnson at LGF says, this is a “big admission”. Although the autopsy suggests none of these shots struck Michael Brown, it explains why more than one eyewitness described his having been shot in the back. Several eyewitnesses said that after these shots were fired, Brown turned around with his hands in the air.
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The basic issue is this: many, many people have access to personal information that the government demands you provide in exchange for essential items like driver’s licenses, vehicle/home titles, etc. Connected to these databases is one used to house information on every person booked by police (notably, not every person convicted or even every person charged).
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A 9-year-old girl accidentally killed an Arizona shooting instructor as he was showing her how to use an automatic Uzi, authorities said Tuesday.
Charles Vacca, 39, of Lake Havasu City, died Monday shortly after being airlifted to University Medical Center in Las Vegas, Mohave County sheriff’s officials said.
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We’re pretty much begging cops to be our heroes. Think about it: Every major blockbuster movie is about a brave hero enforcing an important moral code: John McClane, Transformers, every superhero — even if they’re going outside the law, they’re still doing the exact job a cop is supposed to have: upholding the law and protecting the innocent. In fiction, they’re the ideal we strive for.
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Almost a decade ago, I spent more than a year freelancing for a major metropolitan newspaper — one of the biggest in the country. I would, on an intermittent basis, work out of a newsroom that appeared to be in a state of constant churn. Whoever wasn’t being downsized seemed to be jumping ship or madly searching for a life raft. It looked as if bean counters were beating reporters and editors into submission or sending them out of the business and into journalism schools where they would train a new generation of young reporters. For just what wasn’t clear. Jobs that would no longer exist?
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The US Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) has removed access to nearly a decade’s worth of electronic documents from four US appeals courts and one bankruptcy court.
The removal is part of an upgrade to a new computer system for the database known as Public Access to Court Electronic Records, or PACER.
Court dockets and documents at the US Courts of Appeals for the 2nd, 7th, 11th, and Federal Circuits, as well as the Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, were maintained with “locally developed legacy case management systems,” said AOC spokesperson Karen Redmond in an e-mailed statement. Those five courts aren’t compatible with the new PACER system.
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Compare these stories with two instances of UK police—only about five percent of whom are armed—handling men with knives in an admirably brave (and restrained) fashion: in one, an officer Tasers a man with two knives from just a few feet away, while in the other, 30 cops—the visible ones clearly unarmed—spend nearly six minutes trying to apprehend an aggressively unhinged man holding a machete. If folks with whittling knives, bats, and steak knives are given mere seconds before fatal shots are fired, this guy deserved a millisecond. And yet, the cops brought him in alive—and took him to a mental health facility.
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Prompted by the fatal shooting of Ferguson resident Mike Brown, a We the People petition asking the federal government to require body cameras for all law enforcement officers has roared past the 100,000 signature threshold required for a White House response. (Theoretically.)
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In New Orleans, Armand Bennet, 26, was shot in the forehead during a traffic stop by New Orleans police officer Lisa Lewis. However, the police department did not reveal until much later that Lewis turned off her body camera just before shooting Bennett. Bennett survived and has now been charged under prior warrants for his arrest. It also reviewed that Lewis had had a prior run in with Bennet who escaped about a week earlier.
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Court documents show that Fairfield Police Officers Stephen Ruiz and Jacob Glashoff used company time and equipment to search for women on internet dating sites.
The documents also show that two used the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System – a statewide police database – to screen the women they liked.
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Not that local law enforcement agencies couldn’t throw an impressive Victory Day parade. The 1033 program, which sends military vehicles, weapons and equipment downstream to law enforcement agencies for pennies on the dollar, has shifted $4.3 billion from the Dept. of Defense to hundreds of police departments across the United States since 1997. Here’s what the President is actually interested in seeing.
“Among other things, the president has asked for a review of whether these programs are appropriate,” said a senior administration official, who was not authorized to speak on the record about the internal assessment. The review also will assess “whether state and local law enforcement are provided with the necessary training and guidance; and whether the federal government is sufficiently auditing the use of equipment obtained through federal programs and funding.”
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Courtesy of California political reporter John Hrabe, California Assemblyman Ben Hueso, a Democrat representing the San Diego area, was arrested in the wee hours of the morning for allegedly driving under the influence. This came just hours after voting for legislation that would force more regulation on ride-sharing services like Lyft and Uber.
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The circumstances of the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, have brought that one police shooting into the national conscience. But many other Americans are killed by police and their deaths go unnoticed and mostly uncounted, despite a Congressional mandate.
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Are police officers getting worse or is this apparent increase in excessive force nothing more than a reflection of the increase in unofficial documentation (read: cameras) and public scrutiny? What we do know is that as crime has gone down, police forces have escalated their acquisitions of military gear and weapons. With options for lethal and less-lethal force continually expanding, it seems that deployment of force in excess of what the situation requires has become the new normal, but it’s tough to find hard data that backs up these impressions.
One of the reasons we don’t have data on police use of excessive force is because compiling this information relies on law enforcement agencies being forthcoming about these incidents. Generally speaking, it takes FOIA requests and lawsuits to obtain any data gathered by individual police departments. This shouldn’t be the case. In fact, as AllGov reports, this lack of data violates a federal law.
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A Ferguson police officer who helped detain a journalist in a McDonald’s earlier this month is in the midst of a civil rights lawsuit because he allegedly hog-tied a 12-year-old boy who was checking the mail at the end of his driveway.
According to a lawsuit filed in 2012 in Missouri federal court, Justin Cosma and another officer, Richard Carter, approached a 12-year-old boy who was checking the mailbox at the end of his driveway in June 2010. Cosma was an officer with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office at the time, the lawsuit states. The pair asked the boy if he’d been playing on a nearby highway, and he replied no, according to the lawsuit.
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We’ve been writing an awful lot lately about the militarization of police, but apparently some in Congress want to make sure that the American public can’t protect themselves from a militarized police. Rep. Mike Honda (currently facing a reasonably strong challenger for election this fall) has introduced a bizarre bill that would make it a crime for civilians to buy or own body armor. The bill HR 5344 is unlikely to go anywhere, but violating the bill, if it did become law, would be punishable with up to ten years in prison. Yes, TEN years. For merely owning body armor.
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Technology saves time and labor, but is as ultimately fallible as the humans it displaces. Thanks to the efficiencies of technology, mistakes can now be made faster than ever. Municipalities which have turned over traffic enforcement to cameras probably hoped to generate funds much faster than it could with an un-augmented police force. Instead, they’re finding themselves issuing refunds, deactivating faulty cameras, fighting with contractors and investigating corruption. Not much of a payoff.
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I try not to go for conspiracy theories generally, but this ongoing IRS nonsense involving conveniently disappearing emails potentially pertaining to the scandal involving targeting certain groups is making my skeptics beacon go off. The official story essentially involves a computer (server?) crash that obliterated the email data of several email accounts that would otherwise be of great interest to those trying to figure out who in the Obama administration knew what about how the IRS was operating. That crash somehow also involves the destruction of any local backups these IRS folks are required to keep as part of their job.
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In the wake of Michael Brown’s shooting death at the hands of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, a light was shone on the unbelievable lack of racial diversity within the Ferguson police department. It was revealed that while Ferguson’s population is 67% African-American, only three of the town’s 53 full-time police officers are black. The complete disconnect between the racial makeup of the community and the demographics of law enforcement patrolling Ferguson’s streets has been cited as a prime example of the simmering racial tensions in the town that boiled over in the aftermath of Brown’s killing.
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Anybody tuning in to the media coverage of the daily protests of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri can’t help but notice the intimidating police presence that makes the city look more like a battlefield than a suburban enclave.
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President Barack Obama came into office in 2009 promising a new era of unprecedented transparency in his administration. But when he leaves office, reporters may remember him for an effort that has largely turned out to be the opposite — and for being what one affected reporter has called the “greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation.”
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For the last five years, New York Times journalist James Risen has been embroiled in a legal battle with the Obama administration over his refusal to reveal an inside government source. While that case (and the motivations behind it) is compelling, the leaked story that got Risen in trouble in the first place is one of the most spectacular CIA screw-ups in the agency’s history.
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“Since Obama was first elected in 2008, the ‘hope and change’ President has overseen the largest number of Pentagon arms and intelligence giveaways to local police in US history.”
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The background of a key negotiator in the battle over a Senate report on the CIA’s use of interrogation techniques widely denounced as torture has sparked concerns about the Obama administration’s objectivity in handling the study’s public release.
Robert Litt, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is a former defense lawyer who represented several CIA officials in matters relating to the agency’s detention and interrogation program. Now he’s in a key position to determine what parts of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 6,300-page report will be made public.
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The neocons – aided by their “liberal interventionist” allies and the U.S. mainstream media – are building new “group thinks” on the Middle East and Ukraine with many Americans having forgotten how they were duped into war a dozen years ago, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
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As the world marks the centennial of World War I, the guns of August are again being oiled by comfortable politicians and the fawning corporate media, both bereft of any sense of history. And that includes much more recent history, namely the deceitful campaign that ended up bringing destruction to Iraq and widened conflict throughout the Middle East. That campaign went into high gear 12 years ago today.
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Why did Kerry mislead the world on August 30 in professing to “know” that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical attack near Damascus on August 21? It is crystal clear that he did not know. Typically, Kerry adduced no verifiable evidence, and what his minions leaked over the following weeks could not bear close scrutiny. (See Robert Parry’s “The Collapsing Syria-Sarin Case.”)
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In an August 20 interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, former acting CIA General Counsel John Rizzo defends his role as the legal architect of the US government’s international campaign of detention and torture.
In the interview, Rizzo, who worked at the CIA from 1976 to 2009, declares that although the torture programs he approved “seemed harsh, even brutal,” he does not regret his support for their implementation.
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One of these techniques involved the used drive-by downloads to infect the computers of anyone who visited McGrath’s web sites. The FBI has been using malicious downloads in this way since 2002, but focused on targeting users of Tor-based sites only in the last two years.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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When antitrust stories make headlines—as the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger has—even well-intentioned analysis often confuses harm to competitors with harm to competition. Viewing antitrust law through a “competition” lens, as opposed to a “competitors” lens, is not intuitive: consumers are harmed not by being denied access to existing services, but by being denied new ones.
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When Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web 24 years ago he thought he’d created an egalitarian tool that would share information for the greater good. But it hasn’t quite worked out like that. What went wrong?
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DRM
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California Governor Jerry Brown signed historic legislation Monday, mandating that every smartphone sold in California after July 1, 2015, be equipped by default with a kill switch, a feature that can render the device useless if stolen.
Proposed by state senator Mark Leno and endorsed by a bevy of law-enforcement officials, the new law — the first of its kind in the nation — is designed to curb cell-phone theft in cities like San Francisco, where more than 65% of all robberies involve stolen phones, or Oakland, where it’s 75%.
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The California kill switch bill is a bill that requires all smartphones that have been manufactured after July 1, 2015 to include anti-theft measures if they are to be sold in the state of California.
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On Monday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a piece of legislation mandating that all smartphones come with kill-switch software automatically installed so that a user can remotely wipe his or her device if it gets stolen. The bill will affect all smartphones manufactured after July 1, 2015 to be sold in California.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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The folks over at EFF have yet another story of patents gone wrong. This time it’s from a guy named Peter Wolf, who owns a company called Photocrazy, that takes photos of sporting events like running and bike races, and then offers to sell people their photos by matching up their bib numbers. This kind of thing has been around forever, but because Peter Wolf paid a lawyer and said some magic words, he got some patents (specifically: 6,985,875; 7,047,214; and 7,870,035).
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Ryan Seacrest’s Typo (because it is never to be referred to simply as “Typo” in headlines or opening paragraphs), maker of physical keyboard accessories for iPhones, was sued by RIM (maker of formerly-popular Blackberry phones) for patent infringement earlier this year. The ailing phone manufacturer took issue with the keyboards made by Ryan Seacrest’s Typo, which it felt veered a bit too close to “looking damn near like a Blackberry keyboard.”
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About a month ago I wrote about James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins of the Center of the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School releasing a free download of an Intellectual Property Statutory Supplement (which normally big publishers try to sell for around $50). As noted, this was a kickoff for an even bigger project, an open coursebook in intellectual property. That Open Intellectual Property Casebook is now available. You can download the whole thing for free. If you want a nice printed copy, it’ll currently run about $24 on Amazon — which is about $135 less than other IP case books. The entire book weighs in at nearly 800 pages, so there’s a lot in there if you felt like delving into a variety of topics around copyright, trademark and patent law — including specific efforts by Congress around those laws and the way that the courts have interpreted them.
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Copyrights
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TorrentFreak has a fun, if ridiculous, post about the near total failure of a digital music distribution company named Total Wipes to “wipe out” certain content via entirely bogus DMCA notices. In what appears to be one of the more egregious attempts out there to issue automated DMCA takedowns without anyone bothering to look at the sites in question, Total Wipes tried to remove all sorts of websites in trying to “protect” a track called “Rock the Base & Bad Format.” It appears that, as a part of that, any site that its automated systems turned up that had both “rock” and “base” on it was targeted for takedown. That was especially problematic for news stories about the death of DJ E-Z Rock, whose most famous track was “It Takes Two,” done in partnership with Rob Base. Note the problem: Base and Rock. That meant that Total Wipes targeted news stories about Rock’s death. It also targeted stories about rock climbing and a “rock” music festival on a military “base.”
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Nearly three years ago, Fight Copyright Trolls had an interesting post about a copyright lawyer named Mike Meier who “flipped sides” from defending people who had been hit with copyright troll demands to becoming something of a troll himself. It featured two screenshots, showing how Meier’s website quickly flipped from looking to help people who’d received a demand letter to a site that looked similar… but was clearly on the other side.
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Back in June we wrote about the ridiculous and cynical attempt by a number of big German newspaper publishers, in the form of the industry group VG Media, to demand 11% of Google’s gross worldwide revenue on any search that results in Google showing a snippet of their content. We noted the hypocrisy of these publishers seeking to do this while at the same time having done nothing to remove themselves from Google’s search — and, in fact, using Google’s tools to help them rank higher in search results. In other words, these publishers know that ranking high helps them… and yet then still demanded cash on top of that.
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Have a smartphone? Run for cover. Bizarre as this might sound, the cops are going to come after you if you so much as forward a song to a friend. Forget actually doing it, any plans to do so could land you in serious trouble too. You could be labelled a ‘goonda’ in the eyes of the State and find yourself behind bars.
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Over the weekend, Engadget had a post claiming that India has said it’s illegal to “like” blasphemous content. The headline there somewhat misstates what’s actually happening, but what’s actually going on is no less ridiculous. It is not all of India, but rather the state of Karnataka (which includes the city of Bangalore), which has passed a new law officially called “The Karnataka Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug-offenders, Gamblers, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders, Slum-Grabbers and Video or Audio Pirates (Amendment) Bill, 2014″ though it is being locally referred to as the Goonda Act. The main thing it has done is taken offenses under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and Indian Copyright Act, 1957, and let the government take people into preventative custody if they think you’re going to break one of those laws.
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The battle between Amazon and the French publisher Hachette is not just a spat about the price of books. Their row over ebook prices, which led to the online retailer freezing out pre-orders of Hachette books and has provoked angry words from authors such as Donna Tartt and Phillip Pullman, could determine the next chapter of the publishing industry.
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The City of London Police (notably, not the London Metropolitan Police and you will rue the day you ever make that mistake) have been both a law unto themselves and the UK’s foremost copyright cops… which would make them a copyright law unto themselves… or something. Name another law enforcement agency that has single-handedly done more to pursue the Pirate Bays of the world. I follow this sort of stuff pretty closely and no one else even comes close. Here’s a very brief rundown of the City of London’s efforts in the service of King Copyright.
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As a whole bunch of folks sent in, over in the UK, a guy named Philip Danks has been sentenced to 33 months in prison for camcording Fast and Furious 6 and then uploading it to the internet. As is all too often the case, the UK authorities more or less let the movie industry, in the form of FACT (the Federation Against Copyright Theft) run the entire investigation. FACT employees were involved in all facets, including controlling most of the interview after Danks was detained. If that seems… questionable, you have a point.
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Over the last few months, there’s been tremendous press attention paid to a little nothing of a company called Rightscorp, which has basically tried to become the friendlier face of copyright trolling: signing up copyright holders, sending threat letters to ISPs, hoping those ISPs forward the threats to subscribers, and demanding much smaller fees than traditional copyright trolls (usually around $20). The idea is by being (just slightly) friendlier, and keeping the fees much lower, they might be able to “make it up in volume.” The company has been subject to big profiles in Ars Technica, which calls it “RIAA-lite,” and Daily Dot, which referred to it as a “boutique anti-piracy firm.” Frankly, the only thing that Rightscorp has shown itself to be good at is getting press coverage — often through outrageous claims, such as saying it found a loophole in the DMCA that lets it send subpoenas to identify ISP subscribers without filing a lawsuit. Lots of copyright trolls think they’ve found that loophole, only to discover a court already rejected it.
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