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10.27.15

Links 27/10/2015: KDevelop 5.0.0 Beta 1, GParted 0.24

Posted in News Roundup at 5:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Stream It!

    An entertained home is a happy home, with the digital dream a real one, most homes have turned into a digital entertainment heaven. My home’s daily routine often revolves around keeping the tiny humans entertained streaming music, video and photos from a home Linux server (plus online services) around the home to a variety of devices. From the traditional TV with a Raspberry Pi media centre to Android tablets and Chromebooks, or through the Pi-powered projector for cinema-style fun.

  • A happy home

    As software improves we like to take advantage of new features. For a while we’ve been putting up with the closed-source Plex, but finally Emby has appeared and we’re basing our new home media heaven on this fully open source solution. So from a base Ubuntu server, you’ll be able to dish out transcoded video, music and photos around your home with the option of recorded TV without the hassle of MythTV. It’s a slick solution and one I’m sure you’ll love when you read about it.

  • Linux / Open Source on Churches

    I talked to church heads about this and open about open source alternative software getting their responses that they are not aware that there are available free open source sofware that they can use as an alternative to commercial software.

  • Solu Mini-PC Taps Linux for Organic Cloud UI

    A Finnish startup called Solu Machines is closing in on its Kickstarter funding for a smartphone-like mini-PC with a Linux-based, cloud-oriented operating system and a novel UI stack. Funding packages start at $388 for the Solu, which would join a fairly short list of mini-PCs with pre-installed Linux, and an even smaller group of ARM-based Linux mini-PCs. Solu is much more singular than that, however, in that it’s a battery-powered touchscreen device that can also drive a 4K display. It is not only replacing standard PC and phone paradigms with a fully cloud-based platform, but is also reinventing the user interface.

  • Desktop

    • Google Adds New “Chell” Chromebook & New Coreboot Graphics Library

      Google engineers have landed a bunch of new code this morning into Coreboot.

      Perhaps most interesting out of today’s Coreboot commits by Google is the addition of a Chell mainboard. Chell is based on the “Glados” Chromebook but with some minor changes. This “Chell” codenamed device will use an Intel Skylake SoC. Details beyond that are scarce at the moment.

    • Google’s CPUFreq “Interactive” Governor Looks To Go Mainline
    • Linux in the Office

      I work in an office which utilities many different devices and operating system, yet I only know of two places we use linux, and that’s not including embedded.

      When I started my current role as a PHP Developer, I was given a laptop and the general accessories, but was given the choice of what OS I wanted to use. From a linux background I wanted linux, but as the other developers used windows I went with windows.

    • Xiaomi Linux Laptop To Enter Production Early Next Year

      Xiaomi’s long-rumoured Linux laptop will enter production in the first part of 2016, a new report claims.

      Industry watcher Digitimes’ sources also reveal that China’s Xiaomi plans to launch two notebooks: one sporting a 12.5-inch display and another with a 13.3-inch display.

  • Server

    • rkt v0.10.0: With a New API Service and a Better Image Build Tool

      rkt v0.10.0 is here and marks another important milestone on our path to creating the most secure and composable container runtime. This release includes an improved user interface and a preview of the rkt service API, making it even easier to experiment with rkt in your microservices architectures.

    • Companies That Support Linux: Rausch Netzwerktechnik

      Rausch Netzwerktechnik is a distributor of individual and standard server and storage systems for the data center. The company is also developing one of the first solutions around the Kinetic Open Storage Project. We talked to Rausch Netzwerktechnik CEO Sebastian Nölting to learn more about the company and their involvement with open source.

    • Tales from the SRE trenches: Dev vs Ops

      Traditionally, Devs get frustrated when they want to release, but Ops won’t accept it. Ops thinks there will be problems, but it is difficult to back this feeling with hard data. This fuels resentment and distrust, and management is never pleased. Using error budgets based on already established SLAs means there is nobody to get upset at: SRE does not need to play bad cop, and SWE is free to innovate as much as they want, as long as things don’t break.

    • rkt 0.10.0 released. Comes with new API service and improved image build tool

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Plasma 5 Powers KaOS Productivity

        KaOS has a few known issues, but these mostly affect specific hardware configurations. For example, to use a GUID Partition Table, or GPT, on a BIOS system, make sure you set it up following a guide available on the KaOS website. The installer’s partitioner can only handle GPT correctly for the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface.

      • Plasma 5 will be the default desktop environment in Chakra

        We are excited to announce that in a couple of days Chakra will be switching to Plasma 5 developed by KDE for the default desktop environment. The restructuring of the repositories is almost done, we just need to test it for a while before making it available to everyone.

      • KDevelop 5.0.0 Beta 1 available!

        Hello all,

        I’m very glad to finally announce the first beta of KDevelop 5.0.0, based on Qt 5, KF 5 and Clang: https://www.kdevelop.org/news/first-beta-release-kdevelop-500-available

        Like I’ve said previously, I’m very thankful of the tons of contributors that made this step possible. From the early testers, over the many new KDevelop contributors who helped a lot in porting our code base to Qt 5 and KF5, to the people that worked on improving kdev-clang and all the other areas. It’s a great feeling to finally release this beast. A year ago, just after we started in this process, I still wasn’t too sure we can pull it all off. Now, look where we are Smile “Just” a few more weeks of polishing and I’m positively sure KDevelop 5.0.0 will be a really good milestone.

        That said, I also want to express my thanks towards the KDE e.V. which graciously sponsored our recent KDevelop/Kate sprint in Berlin. We rented a flat for the 8 hackers that visited Berlin and had a productive five days directly after the Qt World Summit. Personally, I worked on kdev-clang and polished it a bit more in the preparation of the first beta release. One handy feature I added is the display of size information about classes and member variables, displayed in the image to the right.

        If you want to give back to the KDevelop community, please consider a donation to the KDE e.v., which is used for our yearly developer sprints and the Akademy conference.

      • KDE Pulled In Around $162k USD Last Year

        KDE e.V. yesterday released their last quarterly report to end out 2014, which offer a look at their finances for the past year. I’ve also taken the liberty to do a cursory comparison against the GNOME Foundation’s finances for 2014.

      • KDevelop 5.0 Enters Beta With Qt5/KF5 Port

        The first beta of KDevelop 5.0 is now available. This huge update comes after more than a year of hard work and its code-base has been ported over to using Qt5 and KDE Frameworks 5.

        Besides the big step-up in using Qt5 and KF5, KDevelop has replaced its legacy C++ parser and semantic analysis plug-in with a more powerful one derived from LLVM’s Clang compiler and its extensive code analysis tools.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GParted 0.24 Adds ZFS & NVMe Detection

        For those using GParted as GUI-driven Linux disk partitioning, the GParted 0.24 release is now available with new features.

      • GUADEC 2016 to take place in Karlsruhe, Germany

        It is with pleasure that the GNOME Foundation is announcing that Karlsruhe, Germany, will host GUADEC in the summer of 2016.

      • Some ideas about this year’s Google Summer of Code

        After the GSoC, I’ve done some work related to the open source community in China. We have a organization called kaiyuanshe and they did some work to help promote open source. Last weekend they organized the Apache Roadshow in Beijing and I was one of the volunteers. Also, I gave a speech about my experience in GSoC on the conference. Although it’s not the GNOME community, but I think sometimes we should contribute to the open source world as a whole without caring which one it is. Hope our effort would enlarge the open source force in China.

  • Distributions

    • Arch Family

    • Ballnux/SUSE

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Given $83.375 Consensus PT
      • Citrix Forms OpenStack Partnership with Red Hat

      • Fedora

        • Getting Started with Fedora – Update

          Some time ago, I announced the ‘Getting Started with Fedora’ handbook which we had published in Czech. I also announced the plan to translate it to English, so that it can be translated to other languages. I asked around who could help me with that, especially to figure out the whole system how to get a translated print PDF from a document written in English. A couple of native speakers offered that they would help with proof reading, thank them for that, but first we need to figure out the whole system.

        • Looking for a Community Lead for Project Atomic

          One of the most exciting projects I’m getting to work with these days is Project Atomic. It touches on the full stack–from OS development to storage, to networking, containers, application development, and pretty much everything in between. Red Hat is working hard on the tools to develop, deploy, and manage containerized applications.

        • Fedora 20 Through Fedora 23 Benchmarks

          For your viewing pleasure today are some fresh benchmarks comparing the out-of-the-box performance of Fedora 20, Fedora 21, Fedora 22, and Fedora 23 RC3 out-of-the-box on an Intel Xeon system with AMD R600g graphics. Here’s a look at the Fedora Linux performance and that of the upstream Linux kernel / Mesa / GCC over the past two years.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Is SteamOS Any Faster Than Ubuntu 15.10 Linux?

          Over the past few days have been a number of SteamOS Linux gaming benchmarks, namely published so far are the 22-Way Comparison Of NVIDIA & AMD Graphics Cards On SteamOS For Steam Linux Gaming and 4K AMD/NVIDIA High-End GPU Comparison On SteamOS Linux. When seeing all of those SteamOS results, you may have started wondering: is SteamOS any faster/slower than say Ubuntu Linux? In this article are some benchmarks comparing SteamOS to Ubuntu 15.10.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) Development Has Started

            The Ubuntu developers have already started to work on the 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), and the first packages are beginning to land. It’s a long way to go until the stable launch in April 2016, but this is how it starts.

          • Ubuntu Touch with a Mouse Cursor Is Interesting and Cool at the Same Time

            One of the latest updates for Ubuntu Touch has brought a most coveted feature that was still missing, the mouse cursor. This will most likely land with OTA-8, which is scheduled to arrive in about five weeks.

          • Meet the Ubuntu family

            There are 9 members of the ‘Ubuntu family’ that are recognized as official flavors (i.e., Linux distributions that use the same operating system base but feature different desktop environments).

          • Linux Based Ubuntu Phones: Aquaris E4.5 and E5 Now In Market

            Ubuntu, Linux operating system is now built to provide the Linux server to desktops, phones, tablets and TV operating systems. Demand of Ubuntu phones in India is already increase by Linux system fans.

            The new phones released last month, which based on Linux operating system. And now in India Aquaris E4.5 and Aquaris E5 are available to purchase. Costumer can buy it from online website like Snapdeal.

          • Unity 8 Features Available Now For Ubuntu Touch OS

            The Ubuntu Touch OTA-8 software update, slated for a November 18 release date, is only a few weeks away and Cononical’s Lukasz Zemczak promised it would bring with it lots of new features and changes especially when it comes to Unity 8.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Resolving Tension

              A post on the Fridge today claims “both councils collaborated and resolved any tensions together”. The Ubuntu Community Council bullied me for asking questions that made Canonical feel uncomfortable and this is the only response to that. That bullying someone until they leave a project is the UCC way of resolving tensions leaves me speachless. That nobody else has commented in the Ubuntu project in public (I’ve had people in private tell me they’re wanting to leave Ubuntu and/or Canonical) confirms to me the project has a culture of fear.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Hardware

    • Console wars: Predicting this holiday season’s gaming winner

      Earlier this month, Sony announced that it was dropping the price of its PlayStation 4 game console by $50 to $349.99. The move put the PlayStation 4’s price in line with Microsoft’s Xbox One. The decision made clear what the price cut was desired to do: get gamers who have not yet moved to the company’s latest console to take the plunge this holiday season.

  • Security

    • The Zone 9 Bloggers are Free: but Ethiopia Still Thinks Digital Security is Terrorism

      The last of the Zone 9 Bloggers are finally free from jail, after nearly 18 months of detention for simply speaking out online. All the bloggers were acquitted of terrorism charges by the Ethiopian courts; one blogger, Befeqadu Hailu was found guilty of a single charge of “inciting violence” as a result of a confession made during his detention. He was released on bail last Wednesday. Given the time he has already served, he is unlikely to return to jail.

    • TrueCrypt Travails Continue

      The credibility of the TrueCrypt encryption application is in tatters following the discovery of two serious flaws in the code.

      Its anonymous developers abandoned the open source TrueCrypt project in May 2014, and since then no updates to the code have been released. At the time the developers advised users to switch to an alternative encryption program such as Microsoft’s BitLocker. Although TrueCrypt is still available for download, the developers suggest it should only be used to migrate data off TrueCrypt encrypted drives.

    • W3C Sets Up Web Payments Standards Group to Improve Check-Out Security

      W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), the regulatory body that oversees the creation of Web standards, has announced plans to set up a special group tasked with the responsibility of putting together a standardized API that will simplify the payment and check-out process, but also improve its overall security.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • NYT Claims Clinton ‘Emerging as Unrivaled Leader’ in Democratic Race

      Hmm. The “unrivaled leader” leads her closest rival, Bernie Sanders, by 7 percentage points in an average of recent polls in the first caucus state, Iowa. In the first primary state, New Hampshire, she trails Sanders by 2 points; it’s been two months since she had a clear lead over him there. (In an accompanying graphic, the Times ranks Clinton as No. 1 in New Hampshire polls—based on a different polling average that has her ahead by 0.2 percentage points.)

    • WSJ Misleadingly Hypes Obamacare Enrollment Numbers To Push GOP Health Care Plans

      The Wall Street Journal editorial board used sharply revised government estimates on the number of Americans expected to purchase health insurance through federal marketplaces to claim that Obamacare is failing and hype so-called Republican “alternatives” to the landmark health care reform legislation. The Journal’s fearmongering about the long-term viability of Obamacare failed to acknowledge that while enrollment via federal marketplaces is less than expected, millions of Americans are still gaining access to affordable health insurance coverage.

  • Censorship

    • Verizon’s Twisted Plan to Censor Your Internet

      Earlier this year, the Newseum Institute asked 1,000 Americans to name their rights under the First Amendment. A clear majority listed freedom of speech first — before freedom of religion, assembly, and other core civil liberties.

      And that makes sense. Protecting free speech is essential to the health of any functioning democracy.

      Free speech matters to the hundreds of millions of Internet users who exercise this right every time they connect with others online. But if you ask some of the lawyers working for the companies that sell you Internet access, they’ll insist that it’s more important to protect the free speech rights of phone and cable giants like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon.

    • Twitter hints at unblocking Politwoops accounts

      Politwoops, the site that saved and republished tweets first published and later deleted by politicians, may get back its access to the Twitter API. After disabling Politwoops’ developer accounts this summer, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last week hinted that the company might restore access to the Twitter streams.

    • Anti-Israel Activism Criminalized in the Land of Charlie Hebdo and “Free Speech“

      The post-Charlie Hebdo “free speech” march in Paris was a fraud for multiple reasons, as I wrote at the time. It was led by dozens of world leaders, many of whom imprison or even kill people for expressing prohibited views. It was cheered by many Westerners who feign upset only when free speech abridgments are perpetrated by Muslims, but not — as is far more common — by their own governments against Muslims.

  • Privacy

    • Microsoft Helping to Store Police Video From Taser Body Cameras

      Microsoft has joined forces with Taser to combine the Azure cloud platform with law enforcement management tools.

      [..]

      In order to ensure Taser maintains a monopoly on police body cameras, the corporation acquired contracts with police departments all across the nation for the purchase of body cameras through dubious ties to certain chiefs of police.

  • Civil Rights

    • Garters in a Twist

      The British constitution is appallingly undemocratic. The fact that an undemocratic chamber has fended off a proposal from an undemocratic executive which gained the votes of only 34% of the voting electors, is not a blow struck for democracy. It is however a temporary victory for human decency in mitigating an attack on the poor.

    • “She Had No Respect”: CNN Analyst Blames Student Who Was Thrown To The Ground By The Police For The Officer’s Actions
    • Black Lives Matter movement

      This week’s program addresses the Black Lives Matter movement, and other efforts to challenge police brutality. Devonte Jackson, organizer with the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) speaks about uniting Black communities against abuses by police and other agencies of government. Attorney Izaak Schwaiger summarizes a pending civil rights lawsuit on behalf of inmates at the Sonoma County, CA jail, who were subjected to a systematic beating by guards. Philosophy Professor Glen Martin of Radford University shares his ideas on how to build a world without police violence. And there’s a live call-in from police-brutality protestors in New York.

    • Obama officials at odds over Saudi airstrikes

      Saudi Arabia’s airstrikes in Yemen, conducted with U.S. assistance,
      are alleged to have killed at least 1,500 civilians, dividing members of the Obama administration over whether the U.S. risks being accused of abetting war crimes in a bombing campaign that could ultimately strengthen Islamist militants.

      Sources inside the administration say they are struggling to keep in check
      the opposing sides in Yemen, one of the clearest examples of the intensifying Saudi-Iran proxy war in the Middle East. But even as reports of civilian suffering and terrorist gains pile up, U.S. officials believe that reducing American support for the Saudis could make the situation even worse.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Tim Berners-Lee in plea to MEPs to protect net neutrality in Europe

      FATHER OF the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee has issued a stark warning to the European Union ahead of a crucial vote on net neutrality due to take place tomorrow.

      After the historic win for net neutrality supporters in the US earlier this year, tomorrow will see MEPs looking at plans for internet fast lanes in the UK and mainland Europe.

      Berners-Lee said in a blog post on the World Wide Web Foundation website: “When I designed the World Wide Web, I built it as an open platform to foster collaboration and innovation. The web evolved into a powerful and ubiquitous platform because I was able to build it on an open network that treated all packets of information equally. This principle of net neutrality has kept the internet a free and open space since its inception.”

    • Why Europe’s net neutrality plan is more controversial than US rules

      The European Parliament is scheduled to vote on net neutrality rules on Tuesday, and at first glance the proposed regulations appear very similar to ones already in place in the United States.

      Both the European proposal and the US rules prevent Internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic, and they impose a ban on “paid prioritization.”

    • Game over for real net neutrality? European Parliament votes in favor of disappointingly weak rules

      Today, members of the European Parliament voted on a proposal (PDF) for rules affecting how Internet traffic is managed, following the European Commission’s release of a draft agreement for regulation back in June. And Europe’s lawmakers have decided Europe doesn’t need a truly open, free Internet.

    • Net neutrality: EU votes in favour of Internet fast lanes and slow lanes

      The European Parliament has passed the flawed compromise text on net neutrality without including any of the amendments that would have closed serious loopholes. The vote, with 500 in favour, and 163 against, took place in a plenary session a few hours after a rather lacklustre debate this morning, which was attended by only 50 MEPs out of the European Parliament’s total of 751, indicating little interest in this key topic among most European politicians. The Greens MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht called the final result a “dirty deal.”

    • European Parliament delivers neither Net Neutrality nor an End to Roaming

      “Today’s vote on the Telecoms Single Market package in the European Parliament constitutes a broken promise both on the end of roaming surcharges and the establishment of net neutrality”, says Julia Reda, Member of the European Parliament for the Pirate Party and shadow rapporteur for the Greens/EFA group in the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee.

      “The European Parliament’s first reading position in April 2014 proposed far-reaching provisions for the introduction of net neutrality in Europe. In the end, not even the words ‘net neutrality’ survived the closed-door negotiations with the Commission and the Council. The text leaves open critical loopholes. Today, the Parliament decided not to adopt opposition amendments that could have fixed these shortcomings.

    • The European Union’s New Net Neutrality ‘Protections’ Are A Joke

      After months of negotiations (read: ISP lawyer and lobbyist rewrites), the European Union has voted to approve new net neutrality rules (pdf) that for many nation states may be worse than having no net neutrality protections at all. As we’ve noted, the rules ignore zero rating, carve out massive loopholes for “specialized services,” “class-based discrimination,” and even include provisions allowing ISP throttling and discrimination provided it’s addressing phantom congestion that hasn’t even happened yet. In short, these rules effectively protect ISPs looking to creatively violate net neutrality, not European consumers.

      European Parliament members completely ignored last-minute suggested amendments that would have closed these loopholes. They also completely ignored opposition to the rules by the likes of BitTorrent, EyeEm, Foursquare, Kickstarter, WordPress, Netflix, Reddit, Transferwise, Vimeo, the EFF and Tim Berners-Lee (who penned a lengthy blog post outlining his opposition to the rules). Similarly, only 50 MEPs out of the European Parliament’s total of 751 could be bothered to even attend a superficial “debate” preceding the approval vote.

    • European Parliament rejects amendments protecting net neutrality

      The EU has rejected legal amendments that would firmly protect the concept of net neutrality in Europe. The European Parliament voted in favor of new regulations which proponents say establish an internet “without discrimination,” but advocates for net neutrality say the laws contain a number of loopholes which could lead to the creation of a tiered internet service. The legislation also includes an end to roaming charges in Europe, although some critics say those laws are also less robust than they appear.

    • Net Neutrality: Major Setback for Free and Open Internet

      Today, the European Parliament voted the Telecommunication Single Market regulation text by 500 votes against 163, hereby ending the negotiations on this matter. Despite numerous citizen’s calls, despite repeated international calls to support the amendments, including Tim Berners-Lee’s, this ambiguous text leaves important loopholes and cannot ensure Net Neutrality1. Worst, it allows commercial discrimination. It is a profound disillusion for all those who, throughout the years, battled to ensure Net Neutrality in Europe.

    • EU Parliament adopts highly ambiguous Net Neutrality legislation

      The European Parliament has voted to adopt the Telecoms Single Market (TSM) regulation. The regulation was supposed to guarantee net neutrality in Europe.

      Unfortunately, MEPs have created large loopholes and left ambiguity in much of the legislation. Net neutrality is the principle whereby Internet access providers treat internet traffic equally. Because of the vagueness of the new regulations, telecoms regulators in EU Member States will now have to decide whether telecoms companies in their country will be able to prioritise different categories of data.

    • The EU Tried to End Roaming Fees and Ended Net Neutrality Instead

      The internet is a global network. That means if one part of the world decides to start pulling the wrong levers, we could be dealing with the consequences. And the European parliament just pulled a very big lever by voting down amendments to net neutrality rules that include dangerous loopholes.

    • EU Parliament rejects amendments protecting net neutrality

      European Parliament has voted for a package of EU internet traffic regulations, rejecting all amendments on net neutrality. The move was slammed by activists and companies alike, who say it will allow some to have faster internet access than others.

  • DRM

    • Siri Reserves Some Answers for Apple Music Subscribers Only

      Siri, the digital assistant found on Apple’s iOS devices, has become a familiar presence for many, and a prompt (sometimes even mischievous) answer to questions you ask it has always been forthcoming. But it seems Siri is now holding back some answers, only providing certain information to those users who pay for Apple Music.

Links 27/10/2015: Tanglu 4.0, Simplicity Linux 15.10

Posted in News Roundup at 8:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • A Miracle Comes to Linux

    Morgan’s parents will not allow any personal identification to go forth in the legal or scientific community until Morgan is considered an adult. At that time, he can allow various communities and professionals to make his case public, or not. Morgan is strict about allowing access to him. Bianca and Morgan remain close friends to this day. And no…I did not have to help David at all with the use of his new Linux computer. His brother will be looking into becoming a kernel maintainer as soon as he finishes “looking the whole Linux thing over.”

  • Desktop

    • I’m an artist who loves Linux

      One day I got a new fancy machine and booted CentOS on it. Then, instead of going for commercial software, I started using open source applications to make art. I started using Blender for all my 3D animation work, and GIMP and Krita for my painting needs. Recently I’ve started using MyPaint and love it. In short, once I found out about all the open source alternatives to the commercial applications, I never looked back.

    • Xiamoi’s Linux laptop will be available in early 2016

      Good news for anyone looking to avoid the Microsoft tax: Chinese electronics behemoth Xiaomi is reportedly planning to launch an affordable Linux laptop in early 2016.

      Xiaomi has made supply chain orders for 750,000 laptops, according to industry site Digitimes is reporting. It would be the first laptop made by the Xiaomi, and could give desktop Linux a mainstream user base across the planet.

    • The seduction of the new

      I don’t know about the Windows or Mac users’ reactions, but the Linux user’s always makes me smile as I recognize an attitude I see regularly and to some extent share. Free software users are always ready to upgrade, although their obsession is only partly rational.

    • On Being Ripped Off

      Given I had paid a lot of money for the Kaspersky Crystal Pure protection quite recently (and I think it was on an automatic renewal) I feel pretty ripped off. Am I being reasonable, or is it my fault for changing the operating system?

  • Server

    • SGI Introduces the New UV 300RL With Oracle Linux

      SGI (NASDAQ: SGI), a global leader in high-performance solutions for compute, data analytics, and data management and Gold level member in Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), today introduced the SGI UV 300RL. A new model in the SGI UV server line certified and supported with Oracle Linux, SGI UV 300RL provides up to 32 sockets and 24 terabytes (TBs) of shared memory. The solution enables enterprises that have standardized on Intel-based servers to run Oracle Database In-Memory on a single system to help achieve real-time operations and accelerate data analytics at unprecedented scale.

    • Cambridge Technology Enterprises Nominated for Oracle Linux and Virtualization Partner Award at Oracle OpenWorld 2015

      Cambridge Technology Enterprises Ltd has been nominated for the first Annual Oracle Linux and Virtualization Partner Award at Oracle OpenWorld 2015. The award ceremony will take place at Oracle OpenWorld on October 26, 2015 and will recognize CTE’s work with Oracle Linux and Virtualization.

    • Oracle OpenWorld 2015: Ellison Disses IBM, SAP as ‘Nowhere in the Cloud’

      Oracle CTO Larry Ellison kicked off Oracle OpenWorld 2015 in true Ellison style—with both guns blazing, pointing squarely at Oracle’s biggest competitors in the cloud space.

      “Our two biggest competitors in last two decades have been IBM and SAP and we no longer pay any attention to either one,” Ellison said during his keynote event Oct. 25. “It’s quite a shock. SAP is nowhere in cloud, and only Oracle and Microsoft is in every level of the cloud—applications, platform and infrastructure.”

  • Shows

    • Inside SparkFun’s Fellowship of the Things video series

      The Fellowship of the Things video series was conceived out of our passion for the burgeoning world of Internet of Things and connected projects, and our desire to showcase some of the SparkFun tools and products that fit particularly well into them. We somehow got permission to build an Internet of Things-dedicated apartment inside SparkFun HQ to use as a demo area for the projects, and so far it’s been a huge success!

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux Foundation Scholarship Recipient: Anthony Hooper

      The Linux Foundation regularly awards scholarships as part of its Linux Training Scholarship Program. In the five years that the Linux Foundation has hosted this program, it has awarded a total of 34 scholarships totaling more than $100,000 in free training to students and professionals who may not otherwise have access to these opportunities. In this continuing series, we share the stories of recent scholarship recipients with the hope of inspiring others.

      Whiz Kid scholarship recipient Anthony Hooper (age 23, from Jamaica) has been interested in technology since junior high. He says learning more about Linux is important to his future so he will be able to do what he deems is meaningful work. What Anthony loves most about Linux is the “sheer magnitude of collaborative work poured into the kernel over the years by individuals all over the world and companies who are even rivals themselves.” He says that being able to learn about the system and make a contribution to it, even a small one, would be nothing short of amazing.

    • Linux Kernel 4.2.5 Has Been Released with Many AMD GPU Improvements

      After only four days from the release of Linux kernel 4.2.4, Greg Kroah-Hartman announced on the last hours of October 26, 2015, the immediate availability for download of the fifth maintenance release of Linux kernel 4.2.

    • Linux 4.1.12
    • Linux 3.14.56
    • Linux 3.10.92

    • Graphics Stack

      • X.Org Server 1.18 RC2 “Amontillado” Released
      • NVIDIA GPU Offloading Support For GCC Is Still Up & Coming

        It’s been nearly two years that there’s been work going on for OpenACC 2.0 with GPU offloading for GCC, primarily geared for NVIDIA GPUs. That work continues taking shape and hopefully for GCC 6 the support will be in better standing.

      • Is Upgrading To Mesa 11.1-devel Worthwhile For Radeon R600g Users?

        With last week’s release of Ubuntu 15.10, Mesa 11.0 is part of the open-source graphics stack. Unfortunate for those with an AMD GCN GPU that uses the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver, Mesa 11.0 on Ubuntu 15.10 is built against an older version of LLVM that doesn’t allow the OpenGL 4.1 support to be exposed. For RadeonSI users, I’d say switching to Mesa 11.1-devel + LLVM 3.8 SVN is almost a must once installing Ubuntu 15.10, but is it worthwhile for R600g users?

    • Benchmarks

      • 4K AMD/NVIDIA High-End GPU Comparison On SteamOS Linux

        Continuing on from Friday’s article that was a 22-way comparison of AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards on SteamOS for Steam Linux gaming, which tested the hardware at the common TV resolution of 1080p, here are results for the higher-end Radeon and GeForce graphics cards at 4K.

        This article is structured quite similarly to Friday’s article but rather than testing at 1080p, the Steam Linux game tests were at 4K (3840 x 2160). Due to the increased resolution, not all twenty-two graphics cards were used for this article but only the higher-end AMD and NVIDIA GPUs.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • Cinnamon 2.8 and MATE 1.12 to Arrive In a Few Days, Says Clement Lefebvre

      Clement Lefebvre, the leader and maintainer of the popular Linux Mint operating system, as well as the Cinnamon and MATE desktop environments, sent his monthly report about the work done by the entire team.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • First Beta release of KDevelop 5.0.0 available

        We spent a lot of effort on keeping the porting bugs to a minimum, and our thanks go out to the many testers who have guided us in the process. Porting to KF5 and Qt 5 also cut down our dependencies, bringing us closer to a proper KDevelop on Windows and KDevelop on Mac OS X. If you want to see KDevelop 5 become a reality on these platforms, then please get in touch with us and help us iron out the last issues.

      • KDE e.V. Quarterly Report – 2014Q4

        The KDE e.V. report for the fourth quarter of 2014 is available (PDF). It features a compendium of all the activities and events carried out, supported and funded by KDE e.V. in that period, as well as the reporting of major events, conferences and mentoring programs that KDE has been involved in.

      • Add an “Archive” button in KMail

        I love the “archive” button in Thunderbird (which was adopted from GMail, I think…) and (so far) am enjoying KMail. However, I was missing the “read it, don’t need to do anything further with this email – so put it in my 2015 folder.”

      • Interview with Laura

        My name is Laura, and I currently live in Calgary, Alberta. Aside from 2D art, I model/sculpt with Blender, Maya, and ZBrush. I enjoy running and board sports, and I love science and cats!

      • My Wishion for KDE – Part 1 – Now

        KDE is mostly about people. We are a huge project with an almost 20 years old history. We’ve great infrastructure and values (Manifesto) and our software is targeted towards end-users and normal people. But do we really succeed and achieve what we want? Are there problems and what are they?

      • KDevelop 5.0 Open Source IDE Enters Beta, Ported to Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5

        After more than a year of hard work, Milian Wolff from the KDevelop project has had the great pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download and testing of the first Beta build of KDevelop 5.0.0.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GeoJSON in Maps

        For Maps 3.19.1 release we managed to land some support for showing a GeoJSON layer. This means that you can get a GeoJSON file from somewhere then open it with Maps.

  • Distributions

    • Learning Linux – Lesson Three: GNU/Linux Distributions

      While in the first lesson of our Learning Linux series you learned the basics of Linux and the difference between a GNU/Linux operating system and the Linux kernel, in the second one you found out how GNU/Linux OS works.

    • Happy Distrovus: 3 big Linux Distros released in 8 days

      Five days! We have just five tiny little days to fully feast upon Ubuntu 15.10 before we need to make room in our lives to take Fedora 23 for a full spin. Which, based on my testing of an earlier beta build, tells me that this is going to be a release worth paying some attention to.

      But those five days seem like an eternity compared to the mere THREE DAYS between the release of Fedora 23 and the Gold Master version of openSUSE Leap 42.1 on October 30th. Another gigantic release that is worthy of our attention.

    • Happy Distrovus, Kissing Kubuntu Kousins

      Today in Linux news, Brian Lunduke declared a new holiday to celebrate the autumn distribution release season. UnixMan Chris Jones reviewed Fedora 23 already, due for release November 3, and Jesse Smith reported on GhostBSD 10.1 in today’s Distrowatch Weekly. Bruce Byfield is still grumbling about his failed Debian upgrade and Canonical issued a statement today on their relationship with Kubuntu.

    • New Releases

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • Arch Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Singapore’s First Liberal Arts College Taps Red Hat and Dell for OpenStack-based Software-defined Datacenter

        Yale-NUS College was established in 2011 as a collaboration between Yale University and the National University of Singapore (NUS) to provide a new model for liberal arts colleges in Asia.

      • Dualtec Cloud Builders Selects Red Hat to Deploy Brazil’s First OpenStack-based Cloud
      • SF Hosts AnsibleFest Nov. 19

        First, Red Hat acquires Ansible two weeks ago, which is both no small feat and a coup for the folks in Raleigh. The acquisition was a smart, yet expected, move: It marries Ansible’s ease of automation to the wide portfolio of Red Hat clientele, driving down the cost and complexity of deploying and managing both cloud-native and traditional applications across hybrid cloud environments. In short, by writing a check, Red Hat expanded its leadership in hybrid cloud management.

      • Open source software’s implications beyond software

        Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, was sporting his awesome red shoes as he spoke to a crowded room at All Things Open last week. During his keynote on Day 1, he talked about how open source is a key part of the open organization, but what we’re all looking to achieve has implications far beyond software.

        Jim began his keynote by explaining why there is a need for the principles of open source in business. If we think of the world we come from and the world we are coming into we see that there is a long line of change. We have come from a world of mass manufacturing, where relatively uneducated people were typically doing rote tasks on assembly lines in a static environment where there was little sharing of information. Society has based a lot of our structure of managing businesses on this model, but if we think about how we live and work today things are much different.

      • Insider Selling: Red Hat CEO Sells $303,592.50 in Stock (RHT)

        Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) CEO James M. Whitehurst sold 3,930 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, October 19th. The shares were sold at an average price of $77.25, for a total value of $303,592.50. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 372,478 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $28,773,925.50. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this link.

      • FICO Chooses Red Hat to Deploy OpenStack, Management, and Storage Solutions for Agile Cloud Infrastructure

        Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that FICO, the predictive analytics and decision management software company, has deployed Red Hat software, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform, Red Hat CloudForms, and Red Hat Ceph Storage, as the basis of its cloud infrastructure. Moving to an OpenStack and Ceph-based cloud has not only helped FICO reduce time to market by 50 percent and lower costs by 30 percent compared to previous infrastructure implementations, but it has helped transform FICO into a Software-as-Service (SaaS) company, driving added sales to new and existing customers in expanded markets.

      • Fedora

        • Mark command usecase

          In the early days of DNF development, the original members of the team decided that the cool feature called clean_requirements_on_remove should have been enabled by default . This is exactly that feature of DNF which prevents your system from overblooting by installed, but no longer needed dependencies of packages.

        • Year of the Linux Desktop: Flock 2015 Summary

          Flock to Fedora 2015 was a conference full of incredible people with incredible ideas, and it was a tough decision to decide which sessions to attend of all the good options. One that caught my eye was the “When is the year of the Linux desktop?” talk by Red Hat software engineering intern Levente Kurusa. Some of the key talking points of his session were evaluating why this statement always seems to be “next year” and why this awesome idea never seems to gain much ground. Are we doing something wrong? Can we improve somewhere? All of this, and more, Levente aimed to cover in his talk. I was fortunate enough to be in attendance of this talk!

        • Fedora – A peek into IRC meetings using meetbot data

          fedmsg has a few meetbot-related topics corresponding to meetbot commands using which I gather daily,weekly and monthly IRC meeting data. You can construct queries for a time period by specifying by the start and end parameters for the query.Use count variable from JSON data dump to get total number of messages pertaining to our query. (Check out the meetbot-related fedmsg topics here and documentation for constructing queries for Datagrepper here ). You can also use Datagrepper Charts API for some basic visualizations. (Check it out here).

        • Getting started with Fedora

          In this post I would like to tell you about the process of creation of a book cover. Some time ago Jiří Eischmann had an idea of creating a user guide for potential new Fedora users.

        • DNF 1.1.3 and DNF-PLUGINS-CORE 0.1.13 Released

          New release of DNF stack (dnf, dnf-plugins-core, dnf-plugins-extras, hawkey and libsolv) is going to Fedora 21, 22, 23 and rawhide. Most of the fixes happened under the hood in DNF libraries. The emphasis was on stability and making smooth system upgrades. For more information take a look at release notes.

        • Globalization test days report for Fedora 23

          Each Fedora release, developers add interesting features and changes. The Fedora QA group puts in extra effort to make sure these features work well. The Fedora QA group runs test days, together with our development teams. Test days usually happen between Alpha and Beta test releases. These events are essential to help us find critical flaws.

    • Debian Family

      • Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 4 Drops The CD Sets

        The Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 4 release has various hardware support improvements, accessibility support by default is now enabled for GTK2 applications and improved for Qt4/Qt5 applications, and various other changes took place.

      • Debian 9 “Stretch” Installer Alpha 4 Drops Support for CDs, Adds Improvements

        The Debian Project, through Cyril Brulebois, announced the release and immediate availability for download and testing of the fourth Alpha build of the Debian GNU/Linux 9.0 “Stretch” installer.

      • Derivatives

        • SteamOS Switches To Linux 4.1, Latest Graphics Drivers

          SteamOS Brewmaster now has the Linux 4.1 kernel, which is a big upgrade over their earlier Linux 3.18 kernel. SteamOS Brewmaster also switches to using the Catalyst 15.9 proprietary graphics driver and has upgraded the NVIDIA binary blob too.

        • Major SteamOS Update Brings Linux Kernel 4.1, Updates Nvidia and AMD Drivers

          Valve announced a few minutes ago that the Brewmaster branch of their Debian-based SteamOS Linux operating system received a major update, version 2.49, that was pushed to the Beta channel.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Avengers Is an Excellent Resource for Users Who Want to Report Ubuntu Touch Bugs

            If you’re one of the thousands of Ubuntu Phone users, and you have encountered a bug that needs reporting, you might want to check out this excellent Wiki page that directs users to the proper channels for most of the components of the operating system.

          • Ubuntu 15.10 offers new UI and enhanced developer tools

            Ubuntu 15.10 has been revealed, with a new UI and re-fashioned developer tools, including the ability to preview apps with a converged phone, desktop and tablet experience.

            For Ubuntu Phone users, the update will be automatically rolled out, apparently demonstrating the platform’s “famous flow of updates to this new ecosystem.”

          • Ubuntu MATE Tools Could Bring Xubuntu, Lubuntu, and Ubuntu Server to Raspberry Pi 2

            Ubuntu MATE developers have been working on some tools that allowed them to build the distribution for the Raspberry Pi 2 platform, and they are looking to share those tools and to name them so that other projects can use them, like Xubuntu or Lubuntu.

          • Mycroft AI on Ubuntu’s Unity 8 Hits a Bump in the Road the Size of Python 3

            The Mycroft AI home automation solution that managed to gather enough funds on Kickstarter just a few months ago also promised an Ubuntu implementation of its Mycroft AI. It looks like those plans have hit a bump in the road for Unity 8.

          • Canonical Promises Easy, Secure Containerized Apps for Ubuntu with LXD

            Turn on, tune in, drop out—without Docker! That—or, uh, something like it—is the container management experience Canonical hopes to deliver by bundling LXD, the open source containerized app framework, into the latest version of Ubuntu Linux, 15.10, which was released a few days ago.

          • Kubuntu and Ubuntu Councils Issue Joint Statement

            A joint statement from the Kubuntu Council and the Ubuntu Council has been published today in an attempt to alleviate the questions raised after the departure of the Kubuntu release manager, Jonathan Riddell.

          • The Ubuntu-Powered Erle-Spider Drone Now Available for Sale

            The Erle-Spider drone that’s powered by Ubuntu and based on ROS, the Robot Operating System, is now available for purchase, outside of the previous crowdfunding campaign.

          • Superb Ubuntu MATE Gold Edition Proposed by User – Video

            An Ubuntu MATE user put together a “Gold Edition” of the distribution and made some propositions for the leader of the project, Martin Wimpress. As it turns out, he’s going to make some of those things happen.

          • Ubuntu 15.10 offers new UI and enhanced developer tools

            Ubuntu 15.10 has been revealed, with a new UI and re-fashioned developer tools, including the ability to preview apps with a converged phone, desktop and tablet experience.

            For Ubuntu Phone users, the update will be automatically rolled out, apparently demonstrating the platform’s “famous flow of updates to this new ecosystem.”

          • Is Ubuntu 15.10 a Fearless Werewolf or a Boring One?

            I believe that every Linux and Ubuntu user out there knows that Ubuntu 15.10 (codename Wily Werewolf) has been released, and it aims to become a better replacement for the previous version, Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet).

          • Unleashing the Werewolf

            Upgrading from Vivid to the latest version using the Update Manager was smooth and painless and took about two hours. The time required may vary depending on the speed of your Internet connection. When my PC rebooted after the upgrade, the only hint that I was using a new operating system was a watermark at the bottom of the startup screen. Then, I was taken back to the comfortable familiarity of my customized XFCE desktop so that I could resume where I had left off.

          • Here are the 9 New Ubuntu 15.10 Features You Should Know

            The stable edition of Ubuntu 15.10 wily werewolf is just released by canonical few days a ago and it now available to download and install on your computer. Lets take a look at the features that are implemented in the new release of ubuntu 15.10 and see what important packages have been updated.

          • System76 Users Can Now Upgrade to Ubuntu 15.10, Here’s How

            System76, the American hardware company behind those Ubuntu-powered laptops and desktop computers, announced earlier today, October 26, that all of their users can now upgrade to the recently released Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) operating system.

          • Ubuntu Linux Demonstrates New Cloud Application Store

            Ubuntu Linux founder Mark Shuttleworth announced new cloud application store capabilities at the OpenStack Tokyo Summit.

            TOKYO—In the OpenStack world, no operating system is more widely deployed than Ubuntu Linux. It’s a fact that Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu Linux, emphasized during a presentation at the OpenStack Summit here, while detailing new features that he hopes will further extend his lead.

          • Snappy Ubuntu Core 15.04 Receives Basic Support for Store Channels, More

            On October 26, Canonical’s Michael Vogt was happy to announce the release and immediate availability for download of the ninth maintenance update of the Snappy Ubuntu Core 15.04 operating system.

          • Massive Unity 8 Convergence Goodness Now Available for All Ubuntu Phone Users
          • Ubuntu Touch with a Mouse Cursor Is Interesting and Cool at the Same Time
          • Ubuntu 15.10 Review: Less Exciting & Largely Unchanged

            From a technological point of view, according to the release notes, a lot of efforts have been made to smoothen the transition from the Upstart (init daemon — a core utility that manages boot-up services & applications that work in the background called ‘daemons’) to Systemd which was first initiated with the Ubuntu 15.04 release. There’s also a technological preview of the upcoming Unity 8 desktop as well. Previously it was also mentioned that ‘TLP’ (a handy power usage optimizer) will also be shipped by default, but it has not made its way to this release due to unknown reasons.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Simplicity Linux 15.10 is now available to download!

              We are very pleased to announce the release of Simplicity Linux 15.10. Due to some issues users were finding with the 64 bit edition of Simplicity 15.7, we’ve decided to put our 64 bit releases on hiatus until we can resolve the issue.

              The two 32 bit bit editions of Simplicity 15.10 both feature the 4.1.1 Linux kernel and are based on the excellent LXPup. LXDE is used as the desktop, and wbar is used as a dock for preinstalled software and features.

              Netbook is our lightweight edition, which comes with fewer local apps and more cloud based applications. It’s a good starting point for anyone who might feel intimidated by Linux or people with older hardware.

            • Kubuntu 15.10 Gaming Impact With KDE Plasma 5 Compositing For R600 Gallium3D

              As mentioned in yesterday’s article with KDE Plasma 5 generally leading to a slower gaming experience than GNOME, Xfce, LXDE, and MATE, the issue comes down to KDE continuing to composite full-screen windows by default. This leads to a performance penalty as has been explained and tested in many articles before on Phoronix. For making things fair, it was a performance comparison of these Fedora 23 desktop environments out-of-the-box as representative what a new user would encounter and making the assumption the software vendor makes the best decisions regarding defaults. However, in the comments to yesterday’s article were several requests for running some fresh tests to show the impact of the full-screen window compositing versus when the compositing is suspended.

            • Simplicity Linux 15.10 Officially Released, Rebased on Linux Kernel 4.1.1 LTS

              The developers of the Simplicity Linux distribution have had the great pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download of the final release of Simplicity Linux 15.10.

            • Joint statement: Kubuntu Council + Community Council

              Members of both the Kubuntu and Community Councils have been approached by community members and asked what the relationship is between the each other. Both councils would like to confirm that the relationship is strong, and mechanisms are in place to ensure a healthy and open relationship between both councils. We would all like to point out that both councils collaborated and resolved any tensions together. We are all part of this one Ubuntu community, many of us have known each other for years and we all believe that everyone’s contributions are important, no matter which part of the project they ultimately land in. The two council are actively working on a number of concrete issues together and have decided to increase the frequency of meetings to better track progress.

            • Ubuntu Community Council + Kubuntu Issue Joint Statement

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • San Francisco could lead on open source voting

    Open source voting systems offer increased transparency by using nonproprietary software open to the public to review the source code, which counts the ballots and issues election results. Supporters say open source voting is needed to safeguard against election tampering.

  • An Experiment In Reviving Dead Open Source Projects

    Earlier this week I did a keynote at All Things Open. While the topic covered the opportunity of us building effective community collaboration and speeding up the development of Open Source and innovation, I also touched on some of the challenges.

    One of these challenges is sustainability. There are too many great Open Source projects out there that are dead.

    My view, although some may consider it rather romantic, is that there is a good maintainer out there for the vast majority of these projects, but the project and the new maintainer just haven’t met yet. So, this got me thinking…I wonder if this theory is actually true, and if it is, how do we connect these people and projects together?

    While on the flight home I started thinking of what this could look like. I then had an idea of how this could work and I have written a little code to play with it. This is almost certainly the wrong solution to this problem, but I figured it could be an interesting start to a wider discussion for how we solve the issue of dead projects.

  • Open source code isn’t a warranty

    So where does open source fit into this? Accidental bugs, sometimes significant, will continue to exist whether or not the source code is open. Heartbleed, ShellShock, and many other high-profile vulnerabilities in open source software tell us this is the case. Intentional misbehavior would become riskier in the open, but openness is only helpful to the degree we have some way of validating that the source code that has been provided is what’s actually running. This becomes increasingly important as cars become open systems, connected to our phones and to mobile Internet services.

  • LinkedIn open-sources PalDB, a key-value store for handling ‘side data’

    LinkedIn today announced that it is releasing a new key-value store — which is a category of database — under an open-source license. The software, which goes by the name PalDB, was designed to store what LinkedIn calls “side data” — essentially, data that’s needed for a certain very small piece of an entire application.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla props up its Open Source projects

        Open saucy browser maker Mozilla is spending a million dollars to make sure that the projects, upon which the company depends on do not collapse.

        One of the problems of Open Sauce software is that projects get dumped because they cannot find enough developers interested in maintaining them, or the money to keep them active. This is a problem for a big organisation like Mozilla which needs some projects to be kept going at all costs.

      • Mozilla Open Source Support Program

        The Mozilla Foundation has launched the Mozilla Open Source Support program with an initial allocation of $1million which will be shared between up to 10 projects that Mozilla relies on.

      • Mozilla pledges $1M in funds to open-source projects

        The Mozilla Foundation, the organisation behind open-source projects Firefox, Thunderbird, and others, has announced an initiative to give back to projects on which its own creations rely – and is beginning with an impressive $1 million in funding.

      • Mozilla Launches $1M Program for Open Source/Free Software Projects

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

    • Attunity Expands Big Data Management Platform to Support PostgeSQL

      Attunity Ltd., a provider of data management software solutions, has introduced the latest version of its data replication and loading solution. Designed to accelerate enterprise big data analytics initiatives, Attunity Replicate 5.0 automates big data movement to, from and between databases, data warehouses, Hadoop and the cloud, reducing the time and labor, and ultimately the cost of making big data analytics available in real time.

  • CMS

  • Business

  • BSD

    • GhostBSD 10.1: Ghost in the machine

      I like the GhostBSD project and its goal. I think, in the past, there has generally not been enough work done to make FreeBSD a good operating system for desktop use. FreeBSD works well in the role of a server operating system, it’s stable, fast and the project evolves in such a way that it is fairly easy to upgrade a FreeBSD system over time. However, FreeBSD (while it can be used as a desktop operating system) lacks many of the characteristics one might want on the desktop, such as a graphical installer, multimedia support, a graphical package manager and an attractive, pre-configured desktop environment. While these features can be added or enabled on FreeBSD, most users will want those tools to be in place and to just work right from the start.

  • Public Services/Government

  • Licensing

    • LLVM Developers Discuss Relicensing Code To Apache License

      However, shifting the license would break compatibility with the GPLv2 and could make this compiler less interesting to the BSD developers from contributing. LLVM Founder Chris Lattner issued the request for comments over possibly changing the license. The current licensing situation is also problematic for not being able to easily move code from LLVM to their Compiler-RT sub-project, since that’s licensed under both the UIUC and MIT licenses.

Leftovers

  • Hardware

    • Infrastructure Should Enable Not Block Business

      In the modern world, companies are decreasing their investment in commodities, whether it be software, hardware, or infrastructure. Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation explained in an interview. “Organizations have discovered that they want to shed what is essentially commodity R&D and software development that isn’t core to their customers and build all of that software in open source. The reason is there is simply too much software to be written for any single organization to do it themselves.”

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • US Has No Choice but to Coexist with Iran, CIA Director Said in 2007

      Iran “will be a major player on the world stage in the decades ahead” and the US has no choice but to “find a way to coexist” with the Islamic Republic, said CIA Director John Brennan in 2007, the WikiLeaks has revealed.

      According to a new revelation which the WikiLeaks posted Wednesday on its Twitter account, the organization claimed it had obtained a new document from an email account belonging to Brennan.

    • Washington Accuses Putin. Russian Airstrikes are Targeting “Our Guys” in Syria: CIA Operatives, Military Advisers, Mercenaries, Special Forces, … Instead of ISIS Terrorists

      The “Our Guys” category (“fighting for their lives”) not only includes bona fide “moderate terrorists” trained by the Western military alliance, it also includes countless Western military advisers, intelligence agents and mercenaries (often recruited by private security companies) operating on the ground inside Syria since March 2011.

    • US special forces and the CIA are using drones against al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria and Iraq

      The drone strikes – separate from the large air campaign run by U.S. Central Command – have significantly diminished the threat from the Khorasan Group, an al-Qaida cell in Syria that had planned attacks on American aviation, officials say.

    • Old hurdles and new haunt the Sept. 11 case at Guantanamo

      Colleen Kelly came to Guantanamo Bay with a sense of impatience, dismayed at the U.S. military’s floundering effort to try five detainees charged with roles in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

    • No mission creep: US troops wear ‘sneakers not boots’ on the ground in Iraq

      It is recognized that besides 35,000 US troops on the ground in Iraq, there are an unknown number of other Special Forces and CIA forces on the ground, says Phyllis Bennis, Director of the New Internationalism Project at IPS, Washington DC.

    • The New York Times Debunks Conservative Media’s “Vigilant Citizen” Concealed Carry Myth

      The New York Times editorial board debunked the prevalent conservative media myth that a “vigilant citizen packing a legally permitted concealed weapon” might “stop the next mass shooter.” To the contrary, the October 26 editorial cites a recent finding that individuals with concealed carry permits committed 579 shootings since 2007, claiming at least 763 lives, noting “the vast majority of these concealed-carry, licensed shooters killed themselves or others rather than taking down a perpetrator.”

    • Did Times Underplay Drone Program Leak?

      Using a cache of material from an intelligence source that some are calling a “new Snowden,” the start-up national security news site called The Intercept earlier this month published an ambitious investigative project, “The Drone Papers.”

      It exposes details about the inner workings of the American drone program, describing a bureaucratic “kill chain” that leads to the president. It also describes the shocking extent to which drones kill people who were not the intended targets in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan. (According to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the individuals killed in one five month period during an operation in Afghanistan were unintended targets.)

      The “Drone Papers” have been covered by many outlets around the world and in the United States since its publication. Among those that published stories on the project were NPR, CNN, PBS NewsHour, Newsweek, The Guardian and Quartz. The series was excerpted in the Huffington Post, which also ran a related story on the source.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • ​Climate Change Is Already Costing Us Billions of Dollars Every Year

      Climate change has already begun to cost us, and it’s only going to get worse.

      Hurricanes, intensified in size and frequency by climate change, are taking a massive financial toll already, according to a new paper. The study, published in Nature Geoscience this week, found that an increase in property dollar amounts lost over the past several decades in a case study was due to hurricanes intensified by global warming.

      Conducted by researchers from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma in Mexico and VU University in the Netherlands, the researched used statistical models to estimate the economic losses from storms from 1900 to 2005, taking into account societal change and wealth gains over the years. The findings suggest that between 2 and 12 percent of losses during the year 2005, the year Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, could be attributed to global warming.

  • Privacy

    • Silicon Valley’s opposition to cybersecurity bill mounts as US Senate prepares to vote

      Which matters more to you: curbing the onslaught of daily cyberattacks or protecting your online privacy?

      That will be the crux of the debate Tuesday as the US Senate prepares to vote on the latest version of a controversial cybersecurity bill.

      The aim of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) seems straightforward. The bill’s backers say it will create a system that lets companies share evidence of hackers’ footprints with one another and the US government, without the risk of being sued for breaking privacy-protection or antitrust laws.

    • Advertisers Should Take Responsibility for Annoying People and Driving Them to Use Ad Blockers

      The Interactive Advertising Bureau issued a remarkable mea culpa last week about the state of online advertising. In response to the rise of ad-blocking software, IAB VP Scott Cunningham said digital advertisers should take responsibility for annoying people and driving them to use ad blockers…

    • DOJ Claims Apple Should Be Forced To Decrypt iPhones Because Apple, Not Customers, ‘Own’ iOS

      The DOJ has filed its response to Apple’s claims that unlocking an iPhone 5 would be unduly burdensome. This ongoing dispute over an All Writs Act order (the act itself dates back to 1789) is also an ongoing dispute over the use of encryption-by-default on Apple phones running iOS 8 or higher.

      The argument started with one of the founding members of the “Magistrates’ Revolt” — Judge James Orenstein — who, back in 2005, challenged another All Writs order by the DOJ. A decade ago, Orenstein pointed out that the government’s use of these particular orders circumvented both the judicial system (by granting it powers Congress hadn’t) and the legislative system (which hadn’t created statutes specifically authorizing the actions the order demanded). Nothing has changed a decade later — not even the DOJ’s continued attempts to teach an old law new tricks.

    • While Most Of The Rest Of The Internet Industry Is Fighting Against CISA, Facebook Accused Of Secretly Lobbying For It

      However, the folks at Fight for the Future, who have been working hard to stop CISA, are now claiming that they have it on good authority that Facebook is one of the only internet companies secretly lobbying in favor of the bill and is asking people to sign its petition to convince Facebook to back down…

    • Two Intended Consequences CISA Supporters Will Be Responsible For

      Given that a majority in the Senate is preparing to vote for CISA, I wanted to lay out two intended consequences of CISA, so supporters will know what we will hold them responsible for when these intended consequences prove out:

      The government will lose power to crack down on providers who don’t take care of customers’ data.

    • Reading The Tea Leaves To Understand Why CISA Is A Surveillance Bill

      I’ve had a few conversations recently with people on Twitter who claim that CISA is “not a surveillance bill,” claiming that they’ve read the bill and there’s nothing about surveillance in it. It’s true that the bill positions itself as nothing more than a “cybersecurity” bill that clarifies a few things and then provides some immunity for companies who “voluntarily” share information. However, as I’ve said in response, in order to understand why it’s a surveillance bill, you have to look more closely at how CISA interacts with other laws and what the intelligence community is currently doing. Unfortunately, this isn’t always easy, because part of what the intelligence community is doing and how they’ve interpreted other laws remains secret. But, as you’ve probably heard, some of that has been leaking out over the past few years.

    • Clinton Private E-Mail Included CIA Source Identity: Yahoo

      Nothing indicates March, 2011 e-mail was marked classified when Clinton received it, though sensitive nature of it should have been red flag and it should not have been passed along, former CIA officer John Maguire tells Yahoo

    • CIA Steps Up Its Game in Cyberfight Against Hackers

      The CIA is making a great leap into the 21st century.

      As part of a broader reorganization, the clandestine agency this month launched its first new directorate in more than 50 years, designed to expand the agency’s cyber-espionage efforts and its fight against hackers. Director John Brennan called the move “a key milestone” in the CIA’s broader modernization efforts.

  • Civil Rights

    • CIA pulled officers from Beijing after breach of federal personnel records

      The CIA pulled a number of officers from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing as a precautionary measure in the wake of the massive cybertheft of the personal data of federal employees, current and former U.S. officials said.

    • CIA Use of Waterboarding Found to be More Extensive than Agency Admitted

      In these cases, men endured “water dousing” that, like waterboarding, could simulate a drowning sensation or chill a person’s body temperature through immersion in water, with or without the use of a board, causing them to suffer hypothermia.

    • Guantánamo war court grapples with how an ex-CIA ‘Black Site’ captive can be his own lawyer

      Lawyers and the judge at the Sept. 11 trial haggled over the mechanics on Tuesday of how a former CIA captive kept virtually incommunicado could defend himself at the five-man death-penalty trial.

      No date has been set for the trial of the alleged architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and four alleged co-conspirators. The question arose Monday after an alleged plot deputy, Walid bin Attash, asked the judge how he would go about representing himself.

    • Former CIA interrogator forced to resign from college post following exposé

      A former CIA interrogator says he was asked to resign from his college teaching post in Erie, Pennsylvania after Newsweek magazine ran a feature article about him earlier this month.

      David Martine, 59, told local Fox affiliate WJET-TV in a story broadcast Friday that Gannon University “demanded his immediate resignation” last week after publication of the article, which explored his 26-year career as a CIA interrogator and security agent. He said his dismissal was so abrupt he was “not able to transition any of his classes, or say goodbye to his students,” the station reported.

      A spokesperson for Gannon, a private Catholic college founded in 1925, would not say why Martine was forced out, telling WJET-TV: “It is university policy not to comment on personnel matters.”

    • NYPD Continues to Confuse Itself with the CIA

      The New York Police Department has said it has ended its practice of using informants to snoop on Muslim organizations in New York and New Jersey without any actual definable suspicion of terrorist activity attached to the targets.

      Instead it could very well be using vans with X-ray-emitting equipment (costing more than $700,000 each) to snoop inside vehicles and buildings. We don’t know the extent to which this is happening, nor whether it’s creating health hazards for anybody caught up in it, because the New York Police Department is refusing to provide any information and fighting against a court order that they do.

    • Kevin McKenna: The UK establishment’s in-built prejudice is still with us 80 years on

      The PM’s sneers at Corbyn betray just how attitudes have not really changed

    • JFK Assassination Plot Mirrored in 1961 France: Part 1

      What the colonial powers have done in Muslim countries is well known. Less well known are the machinations of Allen Dulles and the CIA in one of these colonial powers, France.

    • Saudi Arabia attacks Jeremy Corbyn over lack of ‘respect’

      The Labour leader has urged the Government to scrap a £5.9m prison consultancy contract with the repressive Middle Eastern regime

    • BBC Protects U.K.’s Close Ally Saudi Arabia With Incredibly Dishonest and Biased Editing

      The BBC loves to boast about how “objective” and “neutral” it is. But a recent article, which it was forced to change, illustrates the lengths to which the British state-funded media outlet will go to protect one of the U.K. government’s closest allies, Saudi Arabia, which also happens to be one of the country’s largest arms purchasers (just this morning, the Saudi ambassador to the U.K. threatened in an op-ed that any further criticism of the Riyadh regime by Jeremy Corbyn could jeopardize the multi-layered U.K./Saudi alliance).

      Earlier this month, the BBC published an article describing the increase in weapons and money sent by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf regimes to anti-Assad fighters in Syria. All of that “reporting” was based on the claims of what the BBC called “a Saudi government official,” who — because he works for a government closely allied with the U.K. — was granted anonymity by the BBC and then had his claims mindlessly and uncritically presented as fact (it is the rare exception when the BBC reports adversarially on the Saudis). This anonymous “Saudi official” wasn’t whistleblowing or presenting information contrary to the interests of the regime; to the contrary, he was disseminating official information the regime wanted publicized.

      [...]

      So the Saudis, says the anonymous official, are only arming groups such as the “Army of Conquest,” but not the al Qaeda affiliate the Nusra Front. What’s the problem with this claim? It’s obvious, though the BBC would not be so impolite as to point it out: The Army of Conquest includes the Nusra Front as one of its most potent components.

      [...]

      In other words, the claim from the anonymous Saudi official that the BBC uncritically regurgitated — that the Saudis are only arming the Army of Conquest but no groups that “include” the Nusra Front — is self-negating. A BBC reader, Ricardo Vaz, brought this contradiction to the BBC’s attention. As he told The Intercept: “The problem is that the Nusra Front is the most important faction inside the Army of Conquest. So either the Saudi official expected the BBC journalist not to know this, or he expects us to believe they can deliver weapons to factions fighting side by side with an al Qaeda affiliate and that those weapons will not make their way into Nusra’s hands. In any case, this is very close to an official admission that the Saudis (along with Qataris and Turkish) are supplying weapons to an al Qaeda affiliate. This of course is not a secret to anyone who’s paying attention.”

      [...]

      But what this does highlight is just how ludicrous — how beyond parody — the 14-year-old war on terror has become, how little it has to do with its original ostensible justification. The regime with the greatest plausible proximity to the 9/11 attack — Saudi Arabia — is the closest U.S. ally in the region next to Israel. The country that had absolutely nothing to do with that attack, and which is at least as threatened as the U.S. by the religious ideology that spurred it — Iran — is the U.S.’s greatest war-on-terror adversary. Now we have a virtual admission from the Saudis that they are arming a group that centrally includes al Qaeda, while the U.S. itself has at least indirectly done the same (just as was true in Libya). And we’re actually at the point where western media outlets are vehemently denouncing Russia for bombing al Qaeda elements, which those outlets are manipulatively referring to as “non-ISIS groups.”

    • IMF: Saudi Arabia is in danger of running out of money within five years

      Saudi Arabia has about $650 billion in foreign reserves to help it withstand the slump in oil prices. But at the country’s current rate of spending, it won’t take long before the supply of reserves runs out.

      According to a recent IMF report, the drop in oil prices from around $100 per barrel in 2014 to $45 per barrel this summer has already cost oil exporters in the Middle East roughly $360 billion this year. Without drastic action, several countries are at risk of using up their cash reserves within five years.

    • Rape victims in the UAE facing imprisonment for having extramarital sex, claims documentary

      A significant number of migrant women working in the UAE face prosecution and sometimes jail after being raped, a new documentary claims.

      The Zina laws, based on Islamic Sharia law, makes extra material sex illegal in the country; this includes adultery, fornication and homosexuality.

      A BBC Arabic documentary, Pregnant and Chains — to be screened at the BBC Arabic Film Festival this week — found “hundreds” of women have been imprisoned under these laws, including women who have been raped and women who are pregnant.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • MEPs Ready to Give in to Telcos

      Tomorrow, MEPs will vote during the plenary session the Telecom Single Market regulation which includes a part on Net Neutrality, more than a year after their very positive vote. On the pretext that the dispositions, to be voted tomorrow, are less harmful that the Council’s version, a large majority of the MEPs are ready to come back on the breakthroughs of the previous version by approving a text that has too many loopholes to be adopted without being amended as it will put at risk our fundamental rights and liberties.

    • Letter to MEPs: Net Neutrality, Will You Betray Yourselves?

      Tomorrow, MEPs will vote the the Telecom Single Market regulation text. If amendments to ensure Net neutrality are not adopted, then MEPs will have betrayed their own vote of April 2014 and the citizens who elected them.

    • The EU Prepares To Vote For Awful, Loophole-Filled Net Neutrality Rules

      On Tuesday, the European Union is expected to vote on new net neutrality rules, the end result of months of debate between the European Commission, European Parliament, and the EU Council. Of course just like here in the States, heavy lobbying pressure by ISPs has the lion’s share of politicians supporting loopholes that will let giant ISPs do pretty much everything they want. The rules at first glance look very similar to the flimsy, 2010 rules proposed in the U.S. back in 2010 — allowing ISPs to engage in anti-competitive shenanigans — provided the carrier vaguely insists it’s for the safety and security of the network.

    • Net Neutrality in Europe: A Statement From Sir Tim Berners-Lee

      Tomorrow, members of the European Parliament face a key vote on the future of the Internet. The proposed regulations in front of them are weak and confusing. To keep Europe innovative and competitive, it is essential that MEPs adopt amendments for stronger “network neutrality” (net neutrality).

      When I designed the World Wide Web, I built it as an open platform to foster collaboration and innovation. The Web evolved into a powerful and ubiquitous platform because I was able to build it on an open network that treated all packets of information equally. This principle of net neutrality has kept the Internet a free and open space since its inception.

      Since then, the Internet has become the central infrastructure of our time — every sector of our economy and democracy depends on it.

    • Net neutrality: Final countdown to keep the internet fair and equal

      The proposal before the Parliament has crucial loopholes. My colleagues and I are fighting until the last minute for an internet that is fair and equal.

    • The Gaps in Global Internet Governance Are Growing, According to New CFR Interactive

      With over 40 percent of the world’s population now online, the Internet has revolutionized the way the world communicates. But with fast evolving technology, a proliferation of actors with access to the Internet, and an absence of international consensus on what should be permissible, the gap between existing world arrangements and the challenges posed by the Internet is in fact widening, according to the latest addition to the Global Governance Monitor, a multimedia resource from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

    • New top-level domains a money grab and a mistake: Paul Vixie

      DNS is what makes the internet relevant, says Vixie, with ICANN caving in to demands from the companies it’s meant to be regulating indicating corruption.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Sony Filed a Copyright Claim Against the Stock Video I Licensed to Them

        For the past few years, people have been contending with more and more false copyright claims and ID matches on services such as YouTube. While these copyright claims often involve an audio match of copyrighted music, sometimes it is the visual content that is in question.

        Whether it’s still photography or motion imagery, your visual content can be flagged, blocked, or removed due to a copyright dispute. If you have original content on YouTube, this could happen to you.

      • Russian companies should block UDP traffic to fight piracy, says think tank

        A Russian Internet industry think tank has proposed making companies legally responsible for Internet traffic flowing on their networks if it uses the UDP protocol. Discouraging the use of UDP in this way is designed to stymie BitTorrent clients, most of which have switched from the more usual TCP protocol to the simpler, connectionless UDP, according to a report on the Cnews site (Google translation).

        The proposal forms part of a larger “media and information roadmap” (Russian PDF), which comes from the Internet Development Institute, set up earlier this year by organisations representing the main Internet, software, and media companies in Russia. The aims of the think tank are to create a forum for industry discussions, carry out research, and “dialogue with the authorities.”

      • Why can’t I fix my tractor?

        Down on the farm, there’s a controversy brewing, because farm equipment manufacturer John Deere doesn’t want farmers tinkering with the software on the farmers’ own tractors. Spark contributor Sean Prpick talks to Saskatchewan farmer Chris Herrnbock, who wants to see a more flexible and farmer-friendly policy rather than a copyright crackdown.

10.26.15

Links 26/10/2015: GUADEC 2016 Plans, Solus’ Budgie Desktop

Posted in News Roundup at 6:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Twitter Will Soon Fill Your Moments Feed With Ads

    Twitter is not waiting to monetize its two-week-old Moments feature, which will run its first ad this weekend.

    Advertisers will get their own Moments channel for 24 hours, where they can post and curate content (including images and video) as they see fit. The first to do so is a coalition of MGM, Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema, who are all banding together to push the movie Creed, which is a Rocky spinoff and not a documentary about the Christian rock band.

  • ‘1984’ is timely­—Big Brother’s threat remains

    Published in 1949, “1984” grapples with diverse themes, including the relationship between language and thought, the repression of individuality and the manipulation of information, according to Richard Chwedyk, an adjunct professor in the Creative Writing Department.

  • Manchester United pub The Trafford bans half-and-half scarves

    Half-and-half scarves have been banned from a supporters’ pub in the shadows of Old Trafford .

    Despite the enmity between United and City, hundreds of derby day matchgoers have snapped up the ‘tourist fans’ souvenirs, which many supporters regard as a symbol of the soulless commercialisation of football.

    But now The Trafford, on Chester Road, has banned the scarves and the popular boozer is refusing entry to supporters who turn up wearing them ahead of United home games.

    “No half & half scarves! No exceptions!! Please place them in the bin and clear your conscience,” the sign read on derby day.

  • SF Biz Finds New Hires Hard to Find

    While the boom in San Francisco has helped boost business, shops and restaurants are finding that they have no one to make the sales.

    “We’re desperate,” said Jefferson McCarley, the owner of Mission Bicycle.

    McCarley said he once chased a customer for two blocks down the street after thinking that his noticeably sunny attitude would make him good at sales. Unfortunately for Mission Bicycle, the man was a medical professional.

    Chewy Marzolo, who manages Escape From New York pizza on 22nd Street, is hiring a prep cook and has been looking for a few weeks. That used to be the easiest position to fill, “because until recently, that’s something that everyone here knew how to do,” he said. Signs in window would fill the position.

  • Science

    • The CIA’s Bold Kidnapping of a Soviet Spacecraft

      One day in late 1959 or 1960 — dates aren’t totally clear in declassified documents — a crack team of four CIA agents worked through the night in stocking feet taking apart a kidnapped Soviet Lunik spacecraft without removing it from its crate. They photographed every part and documented every construction element, then perfectly reassembled the whole thing without leaving a trace. It was a daring bit of espionage at the early years of the space race. Intended to level the playing field between two international superpowers, it was a heist that risked turning the cold war hot.

  • Botnets

  • Health/Nutrition

  • September News

    • Anonymous Browsing at the Library

      The good news is that the library is resisting the pressure and keeping Tor running.

    • New Hampshire Library Rejects DHS Fearmongering, Turns Tor Back On
    • Despite Law Enforcement Concerns, Lebanon Board Will Reactivate Privacy Network Tor at Kilton Library
    • This Is Why 335,000 Target Workers Are Getting Fitbits

      Target will be offering Fitbits to its employees in an attempt to improve their health and cut down on health care costs, Bloomberg reports.

    • Mt. Gox chief charged with embezzling bitcoin funds

      Japanese prosecutors have charged the former founder and CEO of bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox with embezzling the money of clients. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

    • Mt. Gox owner faces new embezzlement charges in Japan

      Late last week, Japanese prosecutors charged Mark Karpelès, the owner of famed Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, with embezzlement. Authorities there accused him of stealing millions of dollars worth of bitcoins from customers of Mt. Gox.

      This marks the second time Karpelès has been charged in Japan. In July 2015, he was accused of falsifying financial data. For now, the Frenchman remains behind bars in Tokyo.

    • Science “Pirate” Attacks Elsevier’s Copyright Monopoly in Court

      In a lawsuit filed by Elsevier, one of the largest academic publishers, the operator of Sci-Hub.org is facing millions of dollars in damages. This week she submitted her first reply to the court, scolding the publisher for exploiting researchers and blocking access to knowledge.

    • US Intelligence Is More Privatized Than Ever Before

      Almost 14 years to the day after the 9/11 terrorist attacks drove intelligence spending into the stratosphere, two of the largest business associations in the spying industry held a “summit” meeting to discuss the current state of national security. Two realities were immediately apparent.

    • Security guard ordered to give up drones after admitting to flying them over football matches

      A security guard has been banned from operating drone aircraft after admitting flying them over the Palace of Westminster, football stadiums and Buckingham Palace.

      Nigel Wilson has been ordered to forfeit the three drones and the cameras he fitted to them because he flew them over built-up areas in “flagrant disregard” for the safety of people below. It is the first time a person has been prosecuted for using drones.

    • It Only Took GM Five Years To Patch Dangerous Vulnerability Impacting Millions Of Automobiles

      For all the hype surrounding the “Internet of Things” (IOT), it’s becoming abundantly clear that the security actually governing the sector is little more than hot garbage. Whether it’s televisions that bleed unencrypted, recorded living room conversations, or refrigerators that expose your Gmail credentials, IOT developers were so excited to cash in on the brave new world of connectivity, security was an absolute afterthought. Entertainingly, that has resulted in many “smart” technologies being little more than advertisements for the fact that sometimes, it’s ok for your device to be as stupid as possible.

    • Lidl to pay recommended living wage

      Lidl has said it will become the first UK supermarket to implement the minimum wage as recommended by the Living Wage Foundation.

    • Conservation will be key in the takeover of National Geographic

      The Foxification of National Geographic startled a few lemurs in the American media jungle last week. A new joint venture, built on an axis which takes the globally known magazine and its televisual and digital assets from the not-for-profit sector and puts them under the control of the Murdoch family’s 21st Century Fox, caused initial shock and dismay. While outside the US National Geographic might be best known to consumers as the source of monkey pictures in dentists’ waiting rooms, it is a significant investor in science and research; and while the Murdoch millions boosting the endowment are welcome, the shadow of a different editorial line is not. But maybe for once those fears are misplaced.

    • EU puts fresh coat of paint on ISDS, now re-branded as “Investment Court System”

      The European Commission has unveiled its proposals to overhaul the controversial investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which grants foreign companies a privileged, extralegal system for suing governments over regulations and laws they claim would harm their investments. The Commission hopes the new approach will be included in the TTIP agreement currently being negotiated with the US. Problematically, the new proposals still grant exceptional legal privileges to foreign investors not enjoyed by domestic companies or the public.

      Speaking today in Brussels, the Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmström, said she wants to replace traditional ISDS tribunals with a new Investment Court System (ICS). Under the ICS, disputes between companies and countries would be decided by three judges drawn at random from a pool of 15—five from the EU, five from the US, and five from other nations—previously chosen jointly by the EU and US. The proceedings would be held in public, rather than in secret as with the current ISDS approach, which is based on ad-hoc tribunals formed of three specialist lawyers.

    • Sorry, Apple. Turns Out Designers Don’t Use iPads
    • iPad Pro not even an iPad replacement, let alone MacBook
    • Apple competitive edge ‘fading dangerously’: Ovum
    • Bug in iOS and OSX Allows Writing of Arbitrary Files Via AirDrop

      There is a major vulnerability in a library in iOS that allows an attacker to overwrite arbitrary files on a target device and, when used in conjunction with other techniques, install a signed app that the device will trust without prompting the user with a warning dialog.

    • John Oliver: If you’re forced to rely on “hideously broken” public defender system, “you’re f*cked”

      Oliver later discussed the ordeal of a Floridian who was arrested on a traffic violation and racked up over $600 in court fees in order plead “no contest.” “They may as well as charged him an irony fee,” Oliver said, “because as it turns out, being poor in Florida is really fucking expensive.”

    • ISPs don’t have 1st Amendment right to edit Internet, FCC tells court

      The Federal Communications Commission yesterday said it did not violate the First Amendment rights of Internet service providers when it voted to implement net neutrality rules.

      Broadband providers who sued to overturn the rules claim their constitutional rights are being violated, but the FCC disputed that and other arguments in a filing in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

    • Millions of UK emails on global virus plotters’ hitlist

      British cyber-security experts have uncovered a trove of hundreds of millions of email addresses being used as a hitlist by criminals stealing financial data from banks, government bodies and other corporates.

      Specialists at GCHQ have been alerting companies named in the files, as an international investigation seeks to track down those using it.

    • Snapchat’s latest feature: Pay to replay a message that disappeared

      The hot social-networking startup is offering customers in the US the opportunity to re-watch photos and videos they’ve already seen, part of the latest effort to expand its business.

    • Judge Slams Copyright Troll’s “Harassment” Tactics in Piracy Case

      Adult movie studio Malibu Media has received a slap on the wrist from New York federal judge Katherine Forrest. The company asked permission to interrogate the neighbors and spouse of an accused downloader, a tactic the court equates to harassment.

    • Conservative Party Pirated Labour Leader Supporter’s Video

      A controversial UK Conservative party video portraying the Labour party’s new leader in a negative light has been taken down by YouTube. The advert, which attacked incoming Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, contained copyrighted content not authorized for use by the Tories. In fact, the footage is owned by a staunch Corbyn supporter.

    • California’s low snowpack truly exceptional

      After two winters of extremely low precipitation, California is suffering through a severe drought, one exacerbated by unusually warm weather. The heat influences the drought in part by enhancing evaporation, ensuring that less of the limited precipitation stays in the ground. But it also changes the dynamics of how the precipitation falls. That’s because most of the precipitation comes in winter, and temperatures control whether it falls as rain or snow.

    • Sierra Nevada’s 500-year snowpack low deepens California drought

      The snow cover on the iconic US mountain range of Sierra Nevada has hit a 500-year low, with the snowpack in April this year just 5 per cent of the average volumes recorded for that month between 1951 and 2000.

    • The Dismal State of America’s Decade-Old Voting Machines

      As the US presidential election season heats up, the public has focused on the candidates vying for the nation’s top office. But whether Donald Trump will secure the Republican nomination is secondary to a more serious quandary: whether the nation’s voting machines will hold up when Americans head to the polls in 2016.

      Nearly every state is using electronic touchscreen and optical-scan voting systems that are at least a decade old, according to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law (.pdf). Beyond the fact the machines are technologically antiquated, after years of wear and tear, states are reporting increasing problems with degrading touchscreens, worn-out modems for transmitting election results, and failing motherboards and memory cards.

    • Mapping How Tor’s Anonymity Network Spread Around the World

      Online privacy projects come and go. But as the anonymity software Tor approaches its tenth year online, it’s grown into a powerful, deeply-rooted privacy network overlaid across the internet. And a new real-time map of that network illustrates just how widespread and global that network has become.

    • Diamond Open Access Gets Real: ‘Free To Read, Free To Publish’ Arrives

      All-in-all, this is an exciting development, and one that could have a major impact on scholarly publishing if it is taken up more widely. However, the fact that it took even its inventor over two years to create his first diamond open access title shows that it is likely to be a while before that happens.

    • How digital tech secured Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership victory

      How did an unknown no-hoper end up winning the race to become leader of the Labour Party by a huge margin? Digital technology seems to have played a key part. According to The Guardian, the campaign deployed its own special canvassing app, “which allows anyone in the country to set up a phone bank on their home computer—making calls, listing questions to be asked and providing a place for answers to be registered.” The app was specially created by a volunteer, many of whom were recruited through an extensive use of social media by Corbyn supporters.

    • Can Jeremy Corbyn Free Labour From the Dead Hand of Tony Blair?

      Once considered a fringe candidate, Corbyn won a huge mandate. But can he consolidate the party and keep new voters energized?

    • Federal Court Invalidates 11-Year-old FBI gag order on National Security Letter recipient Nicholas Merrill

      A federal district court has ordered the FBI to lift an eleven-year- old gag order imposed on Nicholas Merrill forbidding him from speaking about a National Security Letter (“NSL”) that the FBI served on him in 2004. The ruling marks the first time that an NSL gag order has been lifted in full since the PATRIOT Act vastly expanded the scope of the FBI’s NSL authority in 2001. Mr. Merrill, the executive director of the Calyx Institute, is represented by law students and supervising attorneys of the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, a program of Yale Law School’s Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression and Information Society Project.

    • Federal Court Finally Says That Gag Order On 11-Year-Old National Security Letter Should Be Lifted Already

      Five years ago, we wrote about a pretty big victory against National Security Letters (NSLs), which the government has long used to get around the 4th Amendment, demanding information from companies, complete with a perpetual gag order. In 2007, an anonymous ISP owner fought back, speaking out against the whole gag order thing, but not even being able to say what ISP he was associated with, because of that gag order. In 2010, Nicholas Merrill, of Calyx Internet Access, was finally able to admit that he was the one fighting the gag order — after reaching an agreement with the government (and that was after a number of trips back and forth between the district and appeals courts). Now, five years later, a federal court has finally ruled that the gag order, which was issued back in 2004, should be lifted, because the government has no “good reason” for keeping it in place and keeping the gag order would violate the First Amendment. You can read the redacted order here, which is an interesting read. Basically, a permanent gag order doesn’t really fit with that whole First Amendment thing we have here in the US — but the court prefers to focus on whether or not there’s any reason to keep the order in place now.

    • Calling All Network Engineers and Computer Scientists: Help Defend Net Neutrality

      Are you a computer scientist? A network engineer? Have you developed a new web-based protocol? If so, we want you to sign on to a statement [PDF] explaining to the DC Circuit Court that openness and neutrality are fundamental to how the Internet was designed and how it operates today.

    • Condé Nast Names Bob Sauerberg CEO

      Condé Nast president Robert A. Sauerberg Jr. will take over as CEO effective January 2016, with current chief exec Charles Townsend to become chairman of the publishing company.

      As part of the shuffle at the top, S.I. Newhouse Jr. will assume the role of chairman emeritus.

      Sauerberg, 54, joined the company in 2005 as executive VP. Previously he held senior leadership roles at Fairchild Fashion Media, including COO and CFO, and spent 18 years with the New York Times Co., eventually rising to CFO of its magazine group.

    • 2600 Explains Eloquently How Excessive Copyright Harms Everyone

      Last week, we wrote about how the famous hacker magazine 2600 received a copyright threat letter concerning the cover of its Spring 2012 issue (which, we noted, meant that the three-year statute of limitations had passed for a copyright claim anyway). But this was even worse, because the “claim” was over some ink splotches that were in the background of an image that the threat letter claimed copyright over, and which 2600 used a tiny bit of on its cover. Except… that the splotches themselves were actually from a Finnish artist going by the name Loadus, and licensed freely for either commercial or non-commercial use.

    • Cop Invents Device That Sniffs MAC Addresses To Locate Stolen Devices

      Now, the odds are small that police will run into conflicting, duplicate addresses, but this fact makes it impossible to guarantee that tracking down a MAC address actually means tracking down a stolen device. For that reason alone, L8NT’s architecture may be changed to grab more identifying info… which will lead to more questions about the constitutionality of the device, which will act like a low-level search of a home’s electronics. Its impact will also be blunted by the information it seeks, considering not every device is assigned a MAC address and addresses are unobtainable unless they’re turned on and connected to a Wi-Fi network.

    • Nearly 4 years after raid, Dotcom loses bid to delay extradition hearing
    • Dotcom Fails in Last-Ditch Bid to Delay U.S. Extradition Hearing

      The former operators of Megaupload have failed in a last-ditch effort to delay their U.S. extradition hearing. Kim Dotcom and his associates argued for more time to prepare but the Court of Appeal said it was confident a fair hearing would be forthcoming. In response, Dotcom branded the NZ judiciary a “US owned dancing bear”.

    • Presidential Candidate Lawrence Lessig Steps Up To Assist Kim Dotcom

      Professor Lawrence Lessig has provided an expert opinion in support of Kim Dotcom and his Megaupload co-defendants. In submissions filed today in New Zealand, the Creative Commons co-founder and U.S. presidential candidate concludes that the U.S. DoJ has not made a case that would be recognized by United States federal law and be subject to the US – NZ Extradition Treaty.

    • Larry Lessig Tells New Zealand Court That DOJ’s Case Against Kim Dotcom Is A Sham

      As Kim Dotcom’s extradition case appears set to finally be heard (after many, many delays), Dotcom has brought in some interesting firepower. Presidential candidate and famed legal scholar Larry Lessig has submitted an affidavit that completely destroys the DOJ’s case. He argues not only that Dotcom’s actions do not amount to any sort of extraditable offense, but that they don’t even seem to be against US law at all. If you’ve been following the case at all, you know that under the US/New Zealand extradition treaty, copyright infringement is not an extraditable offense. That’s why the US has lumped in a bunch of questionable claims about “conspiracy” and “wire fraud.” But most of those are just repeating the infringement claims in different ways.

    • Kim Dotcom

      The position of the United States is extreme and wrong. We must resist this extremism. Aaron’s death must mean at least that.

    • Ben Carson’s Lawyer Threatens CafePress Because Ben Carson Supporters Are Creating T-Shirts Supporting Carson

      Politics and intellectual property always get weird and silly, often during Presidential election season. Following on last year’s insanity in which Hillary Clinton’s PAC tried to take down parodies on CafePress and Zazzle, presidential candidate Ben Carson has apparently decided no one should possibly be allowed to create any kind of Ben Carson merchandise, except for the Ben Carson PAC, and he’s decided to list out every possible intellectual property argument he can think of: copyright, trademark, privacy rights. I’m almost surprised he didn’t find a way to include patents too.

    • Don’t believe the Carly Fiorina hype: Here’s every major problem with her performance in the GOP debate

      It was Carly Fiorina’s night last night. In the very crowded Republican clown car full of fatuous blowhards and screaming hawks, she stood out by being able to think on her feet quickly enough to use standard lines from her well honed, road tested stump speech to good effect as if they were spontaneous answers to the question. Compared to the others she seemed sharp and well-informed and the media dubbed her the big winner.

      Fiorina has come a long way since the days of the “Demon Sheep.”

    • 5 Unbelievable Ways Rich Assholes Get To Cheat Through Life

      Some rich people don’t hoard their cash or flaunt it as a status symbol so much as they use it as a dirty green cheat code. If life was a video game, they’d be the asshole kid with the turbo controller who can’t ever lose. Meanwhile, the rest of us have to watch them have fun from the sidelines, vainly hoping we’ll get a chance to touch the Super Nintendo before Mom comes to pick us up. (“Mom” in this case means the Grim Reaper, if that wasn’t clear.)

      Nowadays, excessive riches can get you more than bigger houses and hired help. People are using it to buy stuff that really shouldn’t be buyable.

    • Having Lost The Debate On Backdooring Encryption, Intelligence Community Plans To Wait Until Next Terrorist Attack

      In other words, Litt admits that his side has lost this battle, but he doesn’t want the administration to come out totally against legislation, because, you know, if there’s an attack, then maybe the idiots in the public will finally accept the intelligence community shoving backdoors down their throat. After all, such a plan worked out pretty well with the PATRIOT Act, which took a bunch of bad and rejected ideas and rushed them into law. In fact, it’s almost amazing that the law enforcement community didn’t get backdooring encryption into the PATRIOT Act back in 2001 in the first place…

    • White House Realizes Mandating Backdoors To Encryption Isn’t Going To Happen

      Over the last few months, I’ve heard rumblings and conversations from multiple people within the Obama administration suggesting that they don’t support the FBI’s crazy push to back door all encryption. From Congress, I heard that there was nowhere near enough support for any sort of legislative backdoor mandate. Both were good things to hear, but I worried that I was still only hearing from one side, so that there could still be serious efforts saying the opposite as well. However, the Washington Post has been leaked quite a document that outlines three options that the Obama administration can take in response to the whole “going dark” question. And the good news? None of them involve mandating encryption. Basically, the key message in this document is that no one believes legislation is a realistic option right now (more on that in another post coming shortly).

    • Verizon’s Screwing New Jersey Even Harder Than Previously Believed

      We’ve previously discussed how in 1993 Verizon conned the state of New Jersey into giving the telco all manner of subsidies and tax breaks in exchange for a promise to wire the majority of the state with symmetrical fiber. Fast forward to 2015, most of New Jersey remains on aging DSL, and the state decided it would be a wonderful idea to simply let Verizon walk away from its obligations. Of course this isn’t new: Verizon’s regulatory capture allowed it to do the exact same thing in Pennsylvania, and it’s currently busy trying to dodge New York City FiOS build out requirements as well.

    • FCC: Sorry, No — Net Neutrality Does Not Violate ISPs’ First Amendment Rights

      Back when Verizon sued to overturn the FCC’s original, flimsier 2010 net neutrality rules, the telco argued that the FCC was aggressively and capriciously violating the company’s First and Fifth Amendment rights. “Broadband networks are the modern-day microphone by which their owners engage in First Amendment speech,” Verizon claimed at the time. It’s an amusing claim given that the entire purpose of net neutrality is to protect the free and open distribution of content and data without incumbent ISP gatekeeper interference. Verizon ultimately won its case against the FCC — but not because of its First Amendment claim, but because the FCC tried to impose common carrier rules on ISPs before declaring they were common carriers.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Back to Benghazi: How Not to Have a Debate About US Foreign Policy

      In the 2012 presidential election, the biggest foreign policy issue was the killing of the US ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens in September of that year–an incident known by its location: Benghazi. Now, as we gear up for the 2016 presidential race, it looks like the biggest international issue is going to be–Benghazi.

      The world is a big place, though you wouldn’t necessarily figure that out if you learned about it solely through electoral politics; in the debates between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney and their running mates in 2012 (FAIR Media Advisory, 10/26/12), there were 14 questions raised about other countries, and only one of those questions (about China) had to do with anyplace outside the Middle East (broadly defined, from Pakistan to Libya). And three of the 14 questions had to do with Benghazi–as many questions as were asked about Afghanistan, where at the time the US had more than 60,000 troops engaged in a ground war.

    • VIDEO: Unbelievably clear drone footage of Damascus devastation

      Clear drone footage showing the ongoing Syrian army offensive against a rebel stronghold in Damascus.

    • Officials Claim CIA Drone War Against Syria a ‘Growing Success’

      The theory there is that if drones weren’t be launched willy-nilly at ISIS, they’d be more able to carry out major attacks, and thus the attacks are doing what they’re intended to do. Yet ISIS seems to continue to carry out major attacks across Syria on a regular basis, which makes these claimed results, like so many others, illusory.

    • Snowden And Ellsberg Hail Leak Of Drone Documents From New Whistleblower

      American whistleblowers hailed the release on Thursday of a collection of classified documents about US drone warfare as a blow on behalf of transparency and human rights.

      The documents anchored a multi-part report by the Intercept on the Defense Department assassination program in Yemen and Somalia. Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other rights groups said the report raised significant concerns about human rights violations by the US government, and called for an investigation.

    • Your Call: US Drone policy; Canada’s elections

      We’ll also talk about the new top-secret NSA documents detailing the US drone program, which were leaked to The Intercept. How are US media reporting on US drone policy? Join the conversation on the next Your Call, with Rose Aguilar and you.

    • 5 Disturbing Revelations in the New Drone Document Leak

      The above leak is a direct contradiction with President Barack Obama’s previous assertion to the American people that drone attacks have a “near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured.” While it’s clearly not panning out that way, the U.S. has a solution for that: automatically labeling anyone killed by a drone attack an “enemy” rather than a civilian.

      If proof emerges that one of the killed was definitely an unaffiliated civilian, the U.S. will change the designation, but the country does not seem to be trying to reclassify anyone it doesn’t have to in order to keep the civilian count low. Though it’s true that at least some of the people adjacent to suspected terrorists are probably associated with these activities and not necessarily “innocent,” the fact is that they haven’t even first been vetted as potential threats.

    • Wandering Eye: Drone assassinations, ‘Artist’s Statements of the Old Masters,’ and more

      Jeremy Scahill opens The Intercept’s big whistle-blower-driven piece on the drone assassinations with an important point: What we’re doing is extrajudicial killings. Assassinations. The U.S. has always done these (and torture too, of course), but until recently we’ve tried at least to maintain what the spy guys call “plausible deniability.” No more. Now we just renamed them “targeted killings” and claim the victims are an “imminent threat.” And we define imminent as “in the foreseeable future, possibly.” And of course we make a list. Scahill’s source is not comfortable with it: “This outrageous explosion of watchlisting — of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield — it was, from the very first instance, wrong,” the source told Scahill. The problem is not just moral, though, it’s practical. We’re killing people who could provide useful information if they were captured instead. And we’re relying too much on “signals intelligence” (i.e. the vast data sweeps the NSA specializes in) instead of “human intelligence.” We’re doing this because it’s convenient for war fighters. Incidentally, The Intercept uses the headline “The Kill Chain.” That’s the same one City Paper used a few years back when we tried to trace drone research through and by Johns Hopkins. The idea is to bring even more convenience in the future with autonomous drones that kill without human input. (Edward Ericson Jr.)

    • Colombia’s Bittersweet Peace Deal

      The Colombian government and the continent’s mightiest and longest-surviving guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, are set to finalize a bittersweet peace agreement next spring with no victors, millions of victims, and just enough justice to basically turn a page on decades of unrelenting bloodletting.

    • Canada will bow out of the air war in Iraq and Syria. But will the Liberals really end the combat mission?

      Of all the foreign problems facing prime minister-designate Justin Trudeau, the war in Syria and Iraq remains the most nettlesome.

      It is tied to almost everything.

      The Syrian refugee crisis that dominates headlines in Europe — and that made its way into the Canadian election campaign — is a direct result of that war.

      Canada’s fraught relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine is complicated by Moscow’s direct diplomatic and military involvement in Syria.

    • Tony Blair apologises for Iraq War mistakes and accepts invasion had part to play in rise of Islamic State

      Tony Blair has apologised for some of the mistakes that were made during the Iraq War, and says he recognises “elements of truth” behind opinion that the invasion caused the rise of Isil.

      In a candid interview with CNN, the former prime minister was challenged by US political broadcaster Fareed Zakar who accused Blair of being George Bush’s ‘poodle’ over the conflict.

    • Donald Trump’s baseless claim that the Bush White House tried to ‘silence’ his Iraq War opposition in 2003

      At The Fact Checker, we place the burden of proof on the speaker. Trump has not responded to repeated requests by us or other media outlets for proof of his early opposition to the invasion.

      Military action began on March 20, 2003. An extensive review of 2003 news coverage prior to March 20 surfaced just two references of Trump and his views on the invasion, as BuzzFeed News found during the GOP debate. The Huffington Post also wrote an analysis of Trump’s Iraq claims during the GOP debate, and again after Trump’s claims in October.

    • Veterans for Bernie Sanders: Why the anti-war candidate is so beloved by former soldiers

      When then-freshman Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders first arrived in Washington, D.C., he didn’t first tend to the great social democratic causes that he spent his life working on: a national living wage, health care for all, or expanding labor unions.

      Rather, the very first bill he introduced was H.R. 695 – the Guard and Reserve Family Protection Act of 1991. The purpose of the bill was to make sure that reserve and National Guard soldiers who were deployed to serve in the Gulf War were entitled to any pay they may have missed as a result of going to war, to ensure that their deployment wages were equal to their civilian wages.

    • TalkTalk hires BAE Systems to investigate cyber attack

      British broadband provider TalkTalk said on Sunday it had hired defense company BAE Systems to investigate a cyber attack that may have led to the theft of personal data from its more than 4 million customers.

    • Anderson Cooper: Opposing Illegal CIA Wars Is Unelectable

      A key reason that the US has so many wars is that big US media have a strong pro-war, pro-Empire bias.

    • Indonesia: 50 Years After the Coup and the CIA Sponsored Terrorist Massacre. The Ruin of Indonesian Society

      Last year, I stopped travelling to Indonesia. I simply did… I just could not bear being there, anymore. It was making me unwell. I felt psychologically and physically sick.

      Indonesia has matured into perhaps the most corrupt country on Earth, and possibly into the most indoctrinated and compassionless place anywhere under the sun. Here, even the victims were not aware of their own conditions anymore. The victims felt shame, while the mass murderers were proudly bragging about all those horrendous killings and rapes they had committed. Genocidal cadres are all over the government.

      [...]

      After the 1965 coup backed by the US, Australia and Europe, some 2-3 million Indonesians died, in fact were slaughtered mercilessly in an unbridled orgy of terror: teachers, intellectuals, artists, unionists, and Communists vanished. The US Embassy in Jakarta provided a detailed list of those who were supposed to be liquidated. The army, which was generously paid by the West and backed by the countless brainwashed religious cadres of all faiths, showed unprecedented zeal, killing and imprisoning almost everyone capable of thinking. Books were burned and film studios and theatres closed down.

    • A CIA-Trained Tibetan Freedom Fighter’s Undying Hope for Freedom

      Ten years later, after he had completed his studies in Mussoorie in 1969, Tunduk volunteered for a secretive all-Tibetan unit in the Indian army called Establishment 22, which the U.S. CIA helped stand up and train when China attacked India in the 1962 Sino-Indian War. Tunduk went through six months of basic training, which included jump training taught by CIA instructors, whom Tunduk remembered as “blond and tall.”

      [...]

      The Chinese soldiers tied Tunduk’s father’s arms and legs behind his back, beat him, and then shot him in the head. Next, they painted a target in charcoal on Tunduk’s mother’s chest, suspended her by her arms from two wood poles, and used her for target practice, pumping her body with bullets long after she was dead.

    • ‘Operation Ajax’ Illustrates How the CIA Destroyed Democracy in Iran

      Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, was the farthest thing from a Communist, but painting him as reliant on Communist support was pivotal to turning public support against him and to building support at home in the US for his overthrow. But to what end? Why did the US turn from a supporter of Iranian democracy under President Truman, to plotting its destruction and imposing a dictatorship under President Eisenhower? Was it simply a paranoid (and wholly inaccurate) fear of Communism? Was it the ambitious, power-seeking aspirations of US intelligence agencies, keen on building their power-base and budgets by engineering the perception of fake threats to the US? Was it US corporate desire to control Iranian oil, in the face of efforts by Iran’s democratic government to nationalize its own resources (long plundered by western countries)?

    • UW Human Rights Center will sue CIA for stonewalling information request on assassinations

      A University of Washington human rights project is suing the Central Intelligence Agency for refusing to declassify and turn over documents relating to the U.S. role in El Salvador’s civil war and involvement in massacres by a retired Salvadorian colonel who was for a time the favorite of Americans.

    • US law student sues CIA over Salvadoran civil war documents
    • UW law student sues CIA over data on Salvadoran Army officer
    • Theft of Files Relating to Lawsuit about CIA’s Support of Human Rights Violations in El Salvador
    • Five Historical Reasons to Believe the CIA Could Have Been Behind the Break-In at UW

      We’re not sure how a question can be true or false, but to suggest that it’s implausible for the CIA to have burgled a professor’s office is patently ridiculous. This is an agency that, for nearly seventy years, has drugged, kidnapped, tortured, assassinated, burgled and bungled its way through history, banking heavily on the fact that clandestine operations, by definition, lack strong oversight.

    • Confidential files on El Salvador human rights stolen after legal action against CIA
    • Research files on El Salvador stolen from human rights group suing CIA over El Salvador
    • Files Incriminating CIA Stolen From Center For Human Rights Office, Break-In Happened During CIA Head’s Visit
    • Obscure Human Rights Professor Thinks The CIA Probably Broke Into Her Office And Stole Hard Drive
    • Professor Who Sued CIA Finds Office Burglarized, Data Stolen
    • Files for El Salvador lawsuit against CIA stolen from university office
    • US NGO researching El Salvador abuses has files stolen

      The Centre for Human Rights at the University of Washington said in a statement published on its website that the break-in could have been in retaliation for its work, pointing out a number of peculiarities about the incident.

    • Wandering Eye: The sample behind Drake’s ‘Hotline Bling,’ more bad news for the DC poor, and more

      On Wednesday, the Stranger posted a fascinating blog titled, “Two Weeks After It Sued the CIA, Data Is Stolen from the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights.” In short, the UWCHR filed a lawsuit against the CIA looking for information about war crimes committed in El Salvador (earlier in the month, the Stranger published “The University of Washington Is Taking the CIA to Court: Seeking Justice for Survivors of a Massacre in El Salvador, the Center for Human Rights Is Suing the Agency Over Withholding Public Records,” by Ansel Herz) and then last weekend, someone broke into the Center For Human Rights’ director’s office and stole her desktop and a hard drive containing information pertaining to this case. On top of the whole thing just looking sketchy as hell, UWCHR pointed out that there was no forcible entry and that there were plenty of other computers in the building to steal and that this theft “parallels between this incident and attacks Salvadoran human rights organizations have experienced in recent years.” Herz asked the CIA if they had anything to do with the theft, and they denied it. Herz also pointed out that the CIA “is an agency that assassinates people with drones, tortured prisoners, has helped to carry out bloody coup d’etats, and whose analysts were accused of hacking and stealing the data of senators who were investigating the agency just last year.” (Brandon Soderberg)

    • ACLU demands CIA disclose drone program details after document leak

      The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) pressed ahead on Monday with a lawsuit to compel the CIA to turn over basic details about the US program of clandestine drone warfare, a week after startling contours of the program emerged in a new leak by an anonymous intelligence source.

      The ACLU lawsuit seeks summary data from the CIA on drone strikes, including the locations and dates of strikes, the number of people killed and their identities or status. The ACLU also is seeking memos describing the legal reasoning underpinning the drone program.

    • Drone Disclosures, Official and Not

      As readers of this blog already know, last week The Intercept published a series of fascinating stories about the US drone campaign. The stories, and the official documents that accompany them, supply new details about the way the government chooses its targets, the way drone strikes are authorized, the way the government assesses civilian casualties, and the way the government judges the success or failure of individual strikes.

    • CIA pressed to disclose secret drone docs
    • Activist group to sue CIA over drone program

      The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has lodged a lawsuit compelling the CIA to turn over basic details about US drone strikes.

      The lawsuit was filed Monday a week after shocking contours of the program were revealed by an anonymous intelligence source.

    • CIA Pressured to Release Drone Strike Data in Fresh Lawsuit

      The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is pressing ahead with a lawsuit calling on the CIA to release crucial information about the US’ drone warfare program, amid calls for greater transparency into the intelligence agency’s actions.

    • US Advocacy Group Seeks CIA Video Tapes of Lethal Drone Strikes Released

      Advocacy group Consumers For Peace.org Director Nick Mottern claims that the videos of drone strikes launched by the US government against Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria should be released to the public.

    • ACLU Files New Appeal in Drone Lawsuit

      The Central Intelligence Agency is under renewed legal pressure to release “thousands” of records pertaining to its international drone war, following an appeal filed Monday by the American Civil Liberties in Washington, D.C. The motion comes just days after The Intercept published an eight-part series based on cache of secret documents detailing the U.S. military’s parallel reliance on unmanned airstrikes in the war on terror.

    • Drone Papers Aftermath: ACLU Demands Secret Program Data

      The ACLU on Monday filed an appeal brief demanding that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) hand over data on its secretive global drone program, including the identities of people killed by airstrikes carried out by the U.S. military in Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan.

    • ACLU demands CIA disclose details on drone program after document leak

      The American Civil Liberties Union is pressing forward with a lawsuit against the CIA demanding the agency turn over details about the U.S. drone program after a massive document leak revealed startling details about how targets are chosen and the number of civilians that have been accidentally struck.

    • Mothers of CIA officers killed in Benghazi condemn use of sons’ deaths for political gain

      The mothers have condemned as “callous” a Republican-led advert using their sons’ legacies to try to destroy Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign

    • Why Americans Should Closely Watch Unfolding Events in Guatemala, Part 2

      Guatemala’s current situation and tragic history can be traced back to the CIA-led coup in 1954 that ousted the democratically elected government of President Jacobo Arbenz and installed the military dictator Carlos Armas. Arbenz was an advocate for land reform and was loved by the poor. The wealthy hated him. And when the CIA couldn’t bribe him, they ousted him in a most humiliating way. Even after he went into exile, the agency used constant disinformation to smear him in every way imaginable until his strange death in a bathtub in 1971.

    • CIA Nemesis Allende Elected In Chile

      Salvador Allende was elected Chile’s president on 24th October, 1970.

      An avowed Marxist, and the first socialist leader of the South American country, Allende’s election went on to trigger one of the most controversial, tragic periods in Chile’s history.

      The US response to Allende’s election revealed the extent to which the North American superpower was willing to get involved in South American politics. To this day, documents are still classified about what actions the White House sanctioned in Chile as a means to remove Allende.

      [...]

      Democratically elected, Allende’s government was targeted by the United State’s for its socialist policies. Its successor, the dictatorship of Pinochet, was much more conservative, and allowed US investment back into Chile. It was also notorious for its brutal human rights violations.

    • 48 Years Since Che Guevara’s Execution by the CIA

      Guevara’s eyes were famously opened to the harsh reality of capitalism for those born less privileged than him when, as a medical student in his early 20s, he hopped on a motorcycle and went on a tour of South America. He found disease, destitution and illiteracy – along with the sort of compassion and generosity that appears to be inversely related to the amount of wealth one possess. From that point on, he labored to uplift the working class from Cuba to Guatemala to the Congo. And, although his death was premature, his legacy continues to serve as an inspiration to revolutionaries around the world today.

    • CIA chief’s emails expose Pakistan’s terror tactics in India

      The Wikileaks’ latest exposé on CIA Director John Brennan’s private emails reveals the role of Pakistan’s use of militant proxies for creating terror in India.

    • CIA Interventions in Syria: A Partial Timeline

      This partial timeline provides evidence that the U.S. government and Obama in particular bear a significant responsibility for the Syrian war and the results of that war. Obama approved elements of CIA plans that go back over 65 years. The CIA meddling is distinct from the Pentagon’s failed plan to train moderate rebels, not covered in this timeline.

    • CIA-Armed Rebels March On Assad Homeland

      Yesterday, two large rebel umbrella groups—Jaysh al-Fateh (Army of Conquest), a large consortium of Islamists which includes the official Syrian al-Qaeda franchise, and the Free Syrian Army, an admittedly catchall category but one that includes 39 CIA-vetted TOW recipients—announced a major counteroffensive.

    • Syria: Archbishop voices concern over CIA support for anti-Assad rebels

      Syrian Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo says he was disturbed to hear US Senator John McCain protesting that the Russians are not bombing the positions of the Islamic State, “but rather the anti-Assad rebels trained by the CIA.”

    • Iranians, Cubans and CIA-backed rebels: US media jumps on muddled Syria reports

      Citing activists and anonymous government sources, US media outlets claim that Russian airstrikes are deliberately targeting the US-backed rebels, as Iranian and even Cuban troops are streaming into Syria.

    • The CIA is supplying Syrian rebels with weapons to use against Russia

      The decision to help the rebels comes after growing frustration by the US with Russia, which has entered the war in support of Assad. While the US and Russia both agree that ISIS should be eradicated, the two countries do not agree on who should be in power in Syria.

    • Russian air strikes hit CIA-trained rebels, commander says

      Two Russian air strikes in Syria on Thursday hit a training camp operated by a rebel group that received military training from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, its commander said.

    • CIA Rebrands ‘Moderate’ Rebels: Now They’re the ‘Syrian Democratic Forces’!
    • McCain accuses Russia of attacking CIA-backed Syrian rebels

      Russia on Thursday escalated its military engagement in Syria, with warplanes carrying out a second day of heavy airstrikes in the wartorn country, as U.S. critics hurled fresh accusations at Vladimir Putin’s intentions in the region.

      Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, said that Russia is not focused on bombing Islamic State targets, and accused the country of targeting CIA-backed rebels seeking to topple Moscow’s ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad.

    • USA draws a line on protecting CIA-backed rebels in Syria

      Moscow says it targets only banned terrorist groups in Syria, primarily Islamic State.

    • Asio chief defied Gough Whitlam’s order to cut ties with the CIA in 1974

      The chief of Australia’s domestic spy agency, Asio, defied a direct order from then Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam in 1974 to sever all ties with America’s Central Intelligence Agency.

      Whitlam – hostile to US spy bases in Australia and angy with the CIA’s undermining of leftwing administrations, including Chile’s Allende government in 1973 – effectively forced the Washington-Canberra intelligence relationship underground until the dismissal of his government in late 1975.

      The decision by the director general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Peter Barbour, to ignore Whitlam’s directive is revealed in the latest volume of Asio’s official history by historian and former army officer John Blaxland.

    • America enabled radical Islam: How the CIA, George W. Bush and many others helped create ISIS

      Since 1980, the United States has intervened in the affairs of fourteen Muslim countries, at worst invading or bombing them. They are (in chronological order) Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosovo, Yemen, Pakistan, and now Syria. Latterly these efforts have been in the name of the War on Terror and the attempt to curb Islamic extremism.

      Yet for centuries Western countries have sought to harness the power of radical Islam to serve the interests of their own foreign policy. In the case of Britain, this dates back to the days of the Ottoman Empire; in more recent times, the US/UK alliance first courted, then turned against, Islamists in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. In my view, the policies of the United States and Britain—which see them supporting and arming a variety of groups for short-term military, political, or diplomatic advantage—have directly contributed to the rise of IS.

    • “Every president has been manipulated by national security officials”: David Talbot exposes America’s “deep state”

      This year’s best spy thriller isn’t fiction – it’s history. David Talbot’s previous book, the bestseller “Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years” explored Robert F. Kennedy’s search for the truth following his brother’s murder. His new work, “The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government,” zooms out from JFK’s murder to investigate the rise of the shadowy network that Talbot holds ultimately responsible for the president’s assassination.

      This isn’t merely a whodunit story, though. Talbot’s ultimate goal is exploring how the rise of the “deep state” has impacted the trajectory of America, and given our nation’s vast influence, the rest of the planet. “To thoroughly and honestly analyze [former CIA director] Allen Dulles’s legacy is to analyze the current state of national security in America and how it undermines democracy,” Talbot told Salon. “To really grapple with what is in my book is not just to grapple with history. It is to grapple with our current problems.”

    • US must explain CIA visits to red villages

      During the past few years, CIA operatives stationed in Thailand were frequently visiting the red villages in the North and Northeast of Thailand. Why?

    • Find, Fix, Finish: The Drone Papers

      Soon after he was elected president, Barack Obama was strongly urged by Michael Hayden, the outgoing CIA director, and his new top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, to adopt the way of the scalpel — small footprint counterterrorism operations and drone strikes. In one briefing, Hayden bluntly told Obama that covert action was the only way to confront al Qaeda and other terrorist groups plotting attacks against the U.S.

    • Former FBI, CIA officials encourage residents to ‘ask the hard questions’

      “9/11 could have been prevented and there really is not just one way, there’s probably at least half a dozen ways 9/11 could have been prevented,” Rowley said. “For starters, the CIA had been tracking two of the hijackers since they met in Kuala Lumpur two years before 9/11. And after all these years we still don’t know the answer to that main question. Why was this information not shared?”

    • Whistleblower, former CIA analyst urge questioning of candidates’ foreign policy views

      Coleen Rowley and Ray McGovern spoke to a full conference room at University Book & Supply as part of a nine-city Iowa tour dubbed “The Truth Shall Make You Free,” sponsored by the state’s three chapters of Veterans for Peace and 31 other organizations. They also spoke at the Waterloo Center for the Arts on Saturday.

    • John McAfee: US gov’t hack by China is an American nightmare — and the decline of an empire

      Our Founding Fathers feared democracy. From these fears, and in order to form a more perfect union, the Constitution and our Republic were born. This revolution in government was adopted in the wake of a tremendous fight for independence. Against all odds, our country was born out of a state of oppression and limited personal freedom. There are few points in history that exhibit such a level of individual responsibility and absolute freedom among the common man as there were during this Constitutional period.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Take that CIA and James Bond: Asterix loves Julian Assange!

      The US’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has accused Australian Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, the controversial anti-secrecy venture, of “malicious crime” in the leak of hacked emails of its director John Brennan. As the cult figure wanted in Sweden for questioning on a rape accusation, he says he is innocent. As he fights extradition from Ecuador’s diplomatically immune embassy in the UK, fiction lovers would logically expect James Bond to show up from somewhere in Her Majesty’s name.

    • Activists target Obama’s ‘Cheneyesque’ CIA director

      The CIA director is a prime target of attacks by civil libertarians and others concerned about privacy, torture and drone attacks.

    • WikiLeaks Releases Second Batch From CIA Boss John Brennan’s Email

      WikiLeaks released two more documents and a list of contacts from CIA Director John Brennan’s personal email account on Thursday — and again the material was neither classified nor revelatory.

      Six other documents were released by WikiLeaks on Wednesday, days after an anonymous hacker told the New York Post that he had gained access to Brennan’s AOL account. The account was also used by other members of the Brennan family.

    • FBI, Secret Service probe hack of CIA chief’s private emails

      The FBI and U.S. Secret Service have opened criminal inquiries into the hacking of a private email account used by CIA Director John Brennan and his family, the FBI said on Thursday.

      The investigations followed the posting on social media earlier this week by the hackers of data stolen from an AOL account. Intelligence officials said the account was used by Brennan and his family, but was not used to transmit or store government secrets.

    • Why Does Anyone Believe the CIA Chief’s Hackers Are Teens?

      Lots of headlines and news accounts are reporting that the people that hacked the AOL email account of CIA Director John Brennan are high-schoolers or teens, but the Observer could find little reporting on any effort to verify their ages.

    • Second batch of emails hacked from CIA director’s account reveals he warned of major flaws in US strategy for Afghanistan
    • ‘They can’t track us down’ – hackers who cracked CIA Director Brennan’s email to RT

      Part of a mysterious group of young hackers who stole confidential and work-related information from CIA Director John Brennan have spoken to RT, revealing why they targeted this senior official and what they’ve got planned for the future.

      The resulting embarrassment caused by the group who are believed to be in their early 20s, highlights not only the poor email security of a number of senior intelligence officials in the US, but also the secrets within – such as the security clearance application Brennan submitted to the CIA on enrollment, containing the most confidential information any person could wish to protect.

    • Secrecy and Hillary Clinton

      Over-classification of documents is the weapon of choice wielded by the U.S. government to punish whistleblowers and keep the American people in the dark about its actions around the world. But the well-connected, like Hillary Clinton, get special forbearance, notes Diane Roark.

    • This 19th-Century Invention Could Keep You From Being Hacked

      If the CIA’s Director John Brennan can’t keep his emails private, who can? Sadly, the fact that email and instant messaging are far more convenient than communicating via papers in envelopes or by actually talking on the phone, or (God forbid) face to face, these technologies are far more insecure. Could it be that the old ways protected both secrecy and privacy far better than what we have now?

    • Digital Dissidents

      Lauded as heroes by some, denounced as traitors by others, they’re the “digital dissidents” whose revelations have made headlines around the world.

      “Criticise me, hate me, but think about what matters in the issues. Right? Think about the world you want to live in.” Edward Snowden

      The decision by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden to reveal covert US surveillance programs exposed the massive capabilities of the US spy agency to monitor communications around the globe.

    • WikiLeaks posts data from CIA director’s email account

      CIA director John Brennan reportedly used his AOL account to store possibly classified — or, at very least, sensitive — materials.

    • Wikileaks Doxxes CIA Chief’s Wife and Daughters

      It will go down as one of Wikileaks’ more astonishing achievements that it managed to turn the director of the CIA—a man who some have vilified as the architect of the drone wars and an endorser of torture—into a sympathetic character.

    • What We Learned From the CIA Director’s WikiLeaked Emails

      WikiLeaks has vowed to release what will likely be even more tedious personal information in the coming days.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • “World in Danger: Fukushima” November 18th

      Three molten nuclear reactor cores are still missing and the radioactive contamination that this 300 ton mass of ‘corium’ continues to generate & release shows no signs of abating, in fact is increasing.

    • Former Koch Industries Official Says He Ghostwrote Letters On Behalf of Congressmen [Ed: older]

      The LinkedIn profile of a former officer of the company lends credibility to that argument. In it, he boasts that as part of the Koch Industries’ communication team, he helped write opinion columns and letters that were signed by members of Congress.

      Richard Tucker, a former communications manager at Koch Industries from August 2010 thro
      ugh March 2012, wrote in his LinkedIn profile that he was responsible for “op-eds and letters to the editor that were signed by company leaders, members of congress and citizen activists.” Tucker, a writer and editor for a number of conservative websites, said he also wrote “regular blog posts for company employees to help explain important Washington policy debates” and was a member of the “crisis communication team that produced swift responses to negative press coverage.”

    • Chinese-built reactor at Bradwell could have ‘major impact’ on estuary

      Conservation charities have expressed alarm at plans for a Chinese-built nuclear power station in Essex, with one saying the plant could have “major impacts” on the estuary location, a haven for birds and marine life.

      The new reactor in Bradwell, on the heavily protected Blackwater estuary, east of Chelmsford, could be confirmed this week during a state visit to Britain by China’s president, Xi Jinping.

      The conservation concerns come on top of worries over the security implications of Chinese involvement in the UK nuclear industry.

  • Finance

    • Screw meritocracy: reward the lazy and stupid

      It is time to admit the truth: meritocracy is BS. What we really have is a system run by people who create arbitrary measures of worthiness to perpetuate a status quo, a power structure that benefits them. Getting rid of the system and replacing it with one in which everyone’s unique gifts are valued equally — that would be meritocratic.

    • F*** a Wage, Take Over the Business: A How-To with Economist Richard Wolff

      In this interview, we discuss wages, a pertinent current topic with the ongoing struggle for $15/hr, stagnating worker incomes, and what will be TPP’s further attack on wages in the United States. More importantly, what began as a discussion of wages quickly developed into a much broader critique of the current system’s political economy, and a way to fundamentally alter the way we produce, distribute, and consume. It is not enough to bargain with capitalists. We must instead look to how workers can take over the means of production and employ them for the benefit and wellbeing of all.

    • Wealth therapy is a sick joke: Meet the 1 percenters finding solace in wealth redistribution

      In a political and economic system seemingly tailor-made for the 1 percent, backlash against “wealth therapy” — the trend of moneyed Americans seeking counsel through their Occupy-induced feeling of shame and isolation — is well-placed. While the top 0.1 percent of families in the United States possess as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, money psychologist Jamie Traege-Muney moaned to The Guardian that the movement wrongly “singled out the 1 percent and painted them globally as something negative.”

      But a growing cadre of this statistical owning class are now crafting a healthier relationship to the rabble at their doorstep. Responding to Occupy and other movement moments, young people with wealth are organizing the resources of their peers and families to level the playing field — and support one another in the process.

    • Dying to work for Amazon: Where’s the outrage for the exploited, vulnerable temp workers who make Bezos’s empire run?

      Earlier this week, Amazon dragged itself back into the news with a retort to the New York Times over the paper’s scorching coverage: The two-months later response reminded people how devastating the Times’ story on the company’s white-collar workforce had been. That piece that chronicled a demoralized, overworked office staff in painful detail was surely revisited by many readers.

      But a new story about the way Amazon treats workers lower down the food chain is even more poignant: “The Life and Death of an Amazon Warehouse Temp,” in the Huffington Post, spends most of its time on one 29-year-old man who died while toiling in a Virginia “fulfillment center.” The story’s detailed look at the life of Jeff Lockhart Jr. helps humanize the piece. But overall, what the rigorously reported and sharply written story exposes is a larger crisis among low-wage workers: One that’s being very profitably exploited by temp companies.

      The majority of the story concerns Lockhart, who came in as an Amazon temp after being laid off at a building supply store. A burly, 300-pound guy who married his high school sweetheart – they had three children between them – he worked as a “picker,” taking orders from a handheld scanner. He was fast and good. The constant labor at the speeds required, perhaps, was not especially healthy for a man of his size. One winter morning about 2 a.m., he went to eat “lunch” in his car, called his wife, and went back to work. “Less than an hour later,” reporter Dave Jamieson writes, “a worker found Jeff on the third floor. He had collapsed and was lying unconscious in aisle A-215, beneath shelves stocked with Tupperware and heating pads.”

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • O’Reilly Now Denies He Compared Black Lives Matter To Nazis

      BILL O’REILLY: “Bill, I disagree with your comparison of Black Lives Matter to American Nazis.” [I] did not make that comparison, Talli. Didn’t make it. I asked if the Republican group — if a Republican group — embraced a radical group like Stormfront, would that be acceptable? In light of the Democrats not having a problem with Black Lives Matter? It’s all about radicalism.

    • Ouch! Megyn Kelly has no time for Jeb Bush: Fox News anchor dismisses him on 9/11 and Trump

      Jeb Bush has evidently never seen the memo given to George W. Bush in August 2001 about Osama bin Laden’s determination to attack the United States and perhaps hijack airplanes.

      He went on Fox News last night to criticize Hillary Clinton over #Benghazi, but Megyn Kelly wanted to know why it was right to criticize Clinton for the deaths in Libya, but not his brother for the deaths on September 11. He insisted there was no double standard.

      “Not at all because if someone had evidence that there was a pending attack, there was — a lot of investigations after 9/11, if there was evidence that there was an attack that was pending and no one acted, of course there were have been criticism, but that’s not the case.”

  • Censorship

    • Singaporean teen vlogger Amos Yee says he and Joshua Wong are ‘completely different’

      Singaporean teenage vlogger Amos Yee has said that he and Scholarism convenor Joshua Wong are completely different, to which Wong responded by saying that Yee was braver than himself. The comments came after an article on Fusion featured the pair and named them as examples of “a new generation of teen activists who are shaking up politics in Asia”.

    • COMMENT: Setting the bar on acceptable speech

      What would you show your in-laws? A doodle of Lee Kuan Yew and Margaret Thatcher in a compromising position, perhaps? Or maybe not, as Justice Tay Yong Kwang raised just such a scenario in court recently. When one of teen blogger Amos Yee’s lawyers argued that the drawing was not obscene because it did not contain any genitalia, Tay’s response was that an image need not be explicit to be obscene, and that it was unlikely a young man visiting his girlfriend’s parents would show his prospective in-laws such an image.

    • Curbing ‘slash and burn’ teen bloggers [Ed: The mouthpiece of the Singapore regime]
    • Hong Kong’s distinct advantage is freedom, but for how long?

      He was born and raised in Hong Kong, has worked in Hong Kong, the Mainland and the United States, and is currently working in Singapore at a top-notch multinational corporation.

      According to Kwok, many expatriates in Singapore (including himself) share this sentiment: “Singapore is a nice place for work but it can hardly be our home.”

      But in the present day, is Hong Kong much better? The factors that have historically made Hong Kong such a stellar success include its positioning as an international city; its high safety standards; the quality of its workforce; its trusted systems and institutions; and a simple tax regime. But these advantages are fading and Singapore has outpaced Hong Kong in almost all of them. Even local tycoon Li Ka-shing has reportedly drawn up a “Plan B” to move at least part of his empire out of Hong Kong, and has asked Hong Kong to learn from Singapore.

    • Oxford University in censorship row as police seize copies of ‘offensive’ student magazine

      Oxford University is embroiled in a censorship row after police confiscated 150 copies of a controversial student magazine.

      The officers were called by student union leaders who claimed the No Offence magazine might upset rape victims and people from ethnic minorities.

      Editor Jacob Williams said he was prevented from distributing the magazines. He feared being arrested as Thames Valley Police decided whether he had committed a crime, but they have now decided that no further action will be taken.

    • Like oil and water, censorship and writers festivals don’t mix

      Warning not to hold sessions dedicated to honouring the victims of the mass killings of 1965 accompanied issuing of festival permit.

    • Censorship pressure is on: Writers Festival cancels sessions on 1965 killings

      Less than a week before the festival kicks off, organizers for the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival (UWRF) were forced to cancel a series of events discussing Indonesia’s controversial 1965 killings.

    • Netizen Report: Uganda Vows to Step Up Online Censorship

      A series of recent stories on Internet policy in Uganda paints a grim picture of the online-speech environment in the country. On October 6, Internal Affairs Minister James Baba announced plans to enforce new regulations governing the use of social media for Ugandans. Little more is known about the regulations at present, but the bill likely bodes poorly for Uganda’s tense speech environment. Advocates at Unwanted Witness, a local human rights and free expression organization, worry that the law will compound the chilling effects of already-existing cyber laws in the country such as the Computer Misuse Act, the Anti-Pornography law and the Communications Act.

    • Uber CEO accuses Chinese messaging app WeChat of censorship

      Chief executive Travis Kalanick claimed messaging app WeChat, whose owners invest in Uber rival Didi Kuaidi, blocks Uber-related news

    • Ukraine’s New Banned Websites Registry: Security Measure or Censorship Tool?

      When Ukraine’s Interior Minister announced the initiative to form a new cyberpolice unit on October 11, the focus of the media coverage—and of Minister Avakov’s statement—was very much on fighting online crime and beefing up the information security practices of the Ukrainian government. The launch was touted as successful, with over three thousand Ukrainians applying to join the cyberpolice force in the first 24 hours after the announcement. But amid the robust response to plans for the cybercrime unit, an arguably less popular element of the initiative flew under many Ukrainians’ radars.

    • Yemen rebels using Canadian software to censor Internet, report finds

      A Canadian software company is helping Yemen’s Houthi rebels expand the country’s Internet censorship regime in the midst of a bloody civil war, according to a new report from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

    • Researchers Accuse Canadian Internet Company of Helping Yemen Censor the Web

      The Yemeni civil war, which has killed more than 5,400 people in seven months, has been fought not only on the streets, but online as well.

      Houthi rebels, who have forced the government into exile, have been using technology provided by Canadian internet-filtering company Netsweeper to indiscriminately censor large swaths of the internet critical of the rebel group, according to new research.

    • Canadian Internet-filtering company accused of aiding censorship in war-torn Yemen

      Researchers at the Citizen Lab, an Internet-monitoring project at the Munk School of Global Affairs, say technology sold by Waterloo-based Netsweeper Inc. is increasingly being used to restrict access to websites on Yemen’s state-owned internet service provider, YemenNet.

    • ‘Liberal academics let censorship happen’
    • New research shows Twitter drastically under-reports its censorship

      Twitter “radically under-reports” censorship by Turkey, one of the world’s most prolific Internet censors, according to new research from the Association of Computing Machinery.

      Rocked by domestic and international unrest as well as an increasingly authoritarian government, Turkey’s government has in recent years frequently turned to mass censorship as an answer to unsolved political problems.

    • Coalition calls on Turkey to protect press freedom

      Following the conclusion of an Oct. 19 to 21, 2015 joint international emergency press freedom mission to Turkey, representatives of participating international, regional and local groups dedicated to press freedom and free expression find that pressure on journalists operating in Turkey has severely escalated in the period between parliamentary elections held June 7 and the upcoming elections.

    • Crackdown on media increases with new detentions, attacks, censorship, report says
    • Satellite operator’s political censorship hurts Turkey’s image, warn diplomats

      Former ambassadors and prominent politicians have warned against satellite operator Türksat AS’s censorship of Bugün TV, Kanaltürk, Samanyolu TV, S Haber, Mehtap TV, Irmak TV and Yumurcak TV, citing negative implications for the country’s image abroad, as well as violations of international law.

    • Court creates ‘preventive censorship’ to halt Nokta publication of AK Party meeting minutes
    • Censorship looms amid rise of Hindu nationalism in India

      In the last few weeks, at least 40 Indian writers have returned top literary prizes in protest of what they call a “climate of intolerance”. Novelists, poets and playwrights say that since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party came to power with the election of Prime Minister Modi, the country has seen a rise in Hindu nationalism that has led to less freedom of speech and respect for secular rights. Writer Sonia Faleiro, and Wendy Doniger, whose book on Hindus was withdrawn from publication in India, join us to discuss the current climate in India.

    • Egypt’s Censorship Authority questions Morgan Freeman’s presence in Egypt

      Egypt’s Censorship Authority contacted the Egypt’s National Security Agency asking to clarify the legal status of the Story of God crew’s presence in Cairo.

      The film is produced by National Geographic Channel with renowned American actor Morgan Freeman as its executive producer and host.

    • PNG government accused of censorship as it moves to crack down on social media dissent

      Papua New Guinea’s government is preparing to crack down on people who use social media sites to criticise politicians.

    • Book Banning in… New Jersey?

      It turns out that some people decided to celebrate the end of Banned Books Week at the beginning of this month by… well, trying to remove books from schools.

      We saw some two cases in New Jersey that demonstrated, once again, that some parents and administrators think the way to deal with literature that some find offensive is to get it out of the schools as fast as possible.

    • Voluntary Practices and Rights Protection Mechanisms: Whitewashing Censorship at ICANN

      Perhaps the toughest challenge facing any putatively multi-stakeholder governance process is its capture by vested interests. ICANN is a textbook illustration of this. Ever since its formation, public interest advocates have been engaged in a struggle to assert their influence within ICANN against an onslaught of intellectual property lobbyists, intent on stacking every committee and process with their own trademark, copyright and patent lawyers.

      IP owners have attempted to subvert the ICANN policy process by introducing vague language into ICANN’s contracts and then seeking to reinterpret them as mandates for draconian IP enforcement without court supervision. A key event was the introduction of a 2013 revision to ICANN’s agreement with registrars, that requires them to take unspecified enforcement measures against those who “abuse” domain names. This has led to demands from copyright and pharma interests that registrars cancel domain names allegedly used to host or sell allegedly infringing content, side-stepping the small issue of such allegations actually being reviewed by a court.

    • Portugal’s journalists under pressure from Angolan money

      In their search to invest their oil and diamond money in Europe, the Angolan oligarchy has bought strategic positions in the Portuguese media in recent years — a bid to gain prestige while silencing news concerning endemic corruption and human rights violations of the regime headed by José Eduardo dos Santos for the past 36 years

    • Internet censorship in Russia

      Russia has already blocked over 10,000 internet sites, describing them as propaganda for terrorism or pornography. But pages critical of the Kremlin have also been “deleted”.

    • South Africa’s “biggest protests since apartheid”

      South Africa’s government seeks to ban a hashtag as thousands of students protest about fees

    • Sloppy U.N. Cyberviolence Report Uses Damsels in Digital Distress to Cheer Censorship

      Why did the U.N. feel justified in recommending such illiberal censorship policies while providing such shoddy evidence to back their claims?

    • Joking About Syria on Venmo Will Get You in Trouble With Security

      When told at the wrong place at the wrong time, certain jokes can get you into big trouble. Jokes about sex at work. Jokes about bombs in an airport. And now: jokes about government conspiracies on Venmo.

    • Don’t Joke About Syria on Venmo Unless You Want to Get Flagged
    • Venmo investigates joke payment that mentions Syria
    • The Words That Will Get You in Trouble on Venmo
    • You probably shouldn’t crack jokes about Syria when you’re making a Venmo payment
    • Don’t Joke Around When Sending Venmo Payments
    • Artist Ai Weiwei banned from using Lego to build Australian artwork

      Chinese artist says toy company told him it ‘cannot approve the use of Legos for political works’ ahead of exhibition at National Gallery of Victoria

    • How free is the press in Germany?

      The Press Freedom Index 2015, published by Reporters Without Borders, ranks Germany 12th in terms of press freedom. The working environment for journalists is sound, according to their report. However, journalists researching far-right political issues are reported to be monitored by the federal government. If the data storage law is passed, that could push down Germany’s future ranking on the Press Freedom Index.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Talking Tough to Turkey

      When suicide bombers killed at least 97 people at a rally of pro-Kurdish activists and civic groups advocating peace between the Turkish government and the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Ankara on October 10, the government’s response was as rapid as it was troubling. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu swiftly imposed a temporary broadcast ban on images of the terror attack, and many in the country reported that Twitter had been blocked on some of the most widely used mobile networks, including Turkcell and TTNET.

    • U.N. Report Calls on Governments to Protect Whistleblowers Like Snowden, Not Prosecute Them

      The U.N. envoy charged with safeguarding free speech around the globe has declared in a dramatic new report that confidential sources and whistleblowers are a crucial element of a healthy democracy, and that governments should protect them rather than demonize them.

      The report by David Kaye, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, also highlights the harsh treatment of whistleblowers in the U.S., most notably former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who is living in Russia as fugitive from the U.S. government.

    • Has the “war on terror” turned us into the enemy?

      It’s hard to imagine a single American willing to shell out money to see a political documentary who doesn’t already know nearly everything they’ll be told in Imminent Threat, Janek Ambros’s omnibus about governmental overreach in the post-9/11 world. Certainly one could argue that the shortage of meaningful action on domestic spying, remote-control killing and suppression of dissent proves that more citizens must voice their disapproval. But this crudely crafted film will be one of the least effective voices in that ongoing debate; only the support of actor James Cromwell, who lends his name here as exec-producer, gives the doc a chance of attracting more than the usual rabble-rousing crowd.

    • Xi Jinping protesters arrested and homes searched over London demonstrations

      Dissidents from China and Tibet have accused British police of a significant overreaction after they were arrested under public order laws and had their houses searched following peaceful protests against the visiting Chinese president, Xi Jinping.

      Shao Jiang, a survivor of the Tiananmen Square massacre now based in the UK, said he was shocked to be tackled by police after holding placards in front of Xi’s motorcade in London, and to learn his home had been searched and computers seized while he was in custody.

    • Prison phone companies fight for right to charge inmates $14 a minute

      The Federal Communications Commission is about to face another lawsuit, this time over a vote to cap the prices prisoners pay for phone calls.

      Yesterday’s vote came after complaints that inmate-calling companies are overcharging prisoners, their families, and attorneys. Saying the price of calls sometimes hits $14 per minute, the FCC has now capped rates at 11¢ per minute.

    • Civil Rights Groups Welcome FCC Ruling On Prison Phone Fees

      On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission ruled that fees charged to inmates and their families for phone calls made from prison were “unconscionable and egregious.” The agency set caps for the first time on local and intrastate long distance calls, while further cutting fees for interstate calls. In some states, such calls once cost as much as $17 for a 15-minute conversation with added fees included; now, such calls will be capped at 11 cents per minute in state and federal prisons, only going as high as 22 cents per minute in small jails. Pricey add-ons, such as automated payments and paper-bill fees, have also been reined in significantly.

    • Wife of Missouri-born jailed ex-CIA whistleblower asks Obama for pardon
    • How “Progressive Media” Go Wrong: the Case of Jeffrey Sterling
    • Unprecedented News Conference: Wife of Imprisoned CIA Whistleblower to Speak Out
    • Wife Of Imprisoned CIA Whistleblower Looks To Obama For Pardon
    • Wife of convicted former CIA spy asks President Obama for pardon
    • Breaking Silence, Wife of Jailed CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling Seeks Presidential Pardon
    • Jeffrey Sterling’s Selective Prosecution Exposes CIA Double Standards

      Holly Sterling, the wife of a former CIA officer convicted of leaking details about a botched CIA plan to give flawed nuclear blueprints to Iran, has asked President Barack Obama to pardon her husband who was targeted for prosecution after accusing the CIA of racial discrimination and taking his concerns about the Iran scheme to congressional authorities.

      In a 14-page letter to President Obama, Holly Sterling recounted the personal nightmare of the US government’s relentless pursuit of her husband, Jeffrey Sterling, an African-American, after an account of the Iran operation – codenamed Operation Merlin – appeared in State of War, a 2006 book by New York Times reporter James Risen.

    • It’s Illegal To Tell the Truth

      John Kiriakou is an American patriot who informed us of the criminal behavior of illegal and immoral US “cloak and dagger” operations that were bringing dishonor to our country. His reward was to be called a “traitor” by the idiot conservative Republicans and sentenced to prison by the corrupt US government.

    • How the government scapegoats hackers to justify violating your privacy

      The anonymous hacker is quickly replacing the terrorist as the go-to bogeyman in the American cultural imagination. Like Islamist radicals, the kinds of hackers that have brought down the servers of corporate giants and government agencies are mysterious and stealthy, spreading fear and paranoia from a faraway land.

    • Jesselyn Radack speaks out for whistleblowers (transcript)

      “The Obama Administration has presided over the most draconian crackdown on national security and intelligence whistleblowers in US history.” Jesselyn Radack is the Yale graduate who defends those whistleblowers in court. She spoke out for Jeffrey Sterling at the National Press Club last week. Here is the video and transcript.

    • Topless Femen protesters ‘kicked during scuffles’ at Muslim conference about women

      Two topless feminist protesters from Femen have stormed the stage of a conference discussing women in Islam.

      A video of the incident appears to show one of the activists being kicked by a man as she is hauled off stage at the event in France.

      The two women are from the Femen activist group, whose members are known for protesting topless with writing across their chest.

    • Black Lives Matter: The Real War On Terror

      Journalist Ashoka Jegroo says that the movement against racialized police brutality aims to challenge state-sanctioned terror.

      It’s been more than a year since the murders of Mike Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in Staten Island at the hands of police. But the fire lit by their unjust deaths has yet to be extinguished. And once again, people are protesting.

    • Feds announce drone registration system

      The Federal Aviation Administration along with the Transportation Department has announced a drone regulation system requiring recreational drone users to register their devices, according to news outlets.

    • Police obtained Hager data without court order
    • Is This America? Chicago Police Detain Thousands of Black Men in Homan Square, CIA-Style Facility

      Is This America? Chicago Police Detain Thousands of Black Men in Homan Square, CIA-Style Facility

    • FBI Director Defends Baltimore Spy Flights, Says It’s Helpful To Know “Where Are People Gathering”

      FBI Surveillance flights over Baltimore and Ferguson as residents of those cities engaged in civil disobedience against racially-motivated police violence were lawful and useful, bureau Director James Comey claimed Thursday.

      Comey said that the missions were flown at the behest of local law enforcement in each case, as demonstrations raged against the killings of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray by city cops.

    • F.B.I. Chief Links Scrutiny of Police With Rise in Violent Crime

      The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said on Friday that the additional scrutiny and criticism of police officers in the wake of highly publicized episodes of police brutality may have led to an increase in violent crime in some cities as officers have become less aggressive.

    • CIA Agent Convicted in Italy for Kidnapping Detained in Portugal
    • Former CIA Operative Sabrina De Sousa Arrested in Portugal

      Sabrina De Sousa, a former CIA operations officer who was convicted in absentia along with other agency personnel for her role in a 2003 plot to kidnap a suspected Al-Qaeda terrorist in Italy, has been detained in Portugal.

    • Nicky Byrne: ‘I thought CIA torture story was a joke from Waterford Whispers’
    • This is why the CIA used Westlife to interrogate prisoners

      You might well enjoy hearing the ballad a few times in a day. But full volume continuously for days on end?

    • CIA Torture Update: German Human Rights Group Files Complaint Against Alfreda Frances Bikowsky In Khaled El-Masri Case
    • German human rights group files complaint against CIA ‘Queen of Torture’
    • ACLU sues CIA contractors on behalf of torture victims
    • Here the rain never finishes: exclusive CIA torture report from the ACLU – video
    • Torture by another name: CIA used ‘water dousing’ on at least 12 detainees
    • CIA Torture Update: Water Dousing Used On At Least 12 Detainees
    • Torture By Another Name: CIA Misled About ‘Water Dousing’
    • John Kiriakou will be at UNC-Chapel Hill on Tuesday night
    • Psychologists who devised CIA torture programme sued

      The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued writs against two psychologists who devised the CIA’s Bush-era interrogation programme on Tuesday (13 October), saying they encouraged the agency “to adopt torture as official policy”.

      James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, two former military psychologists, “designed the torture methods and performed illegal human experimentation on CIA prisoners to test and refine the programme,” the ACLU said in a statement. “They personally took part in torture sessions and oversaw the programme’s implementation for the CIA,” it added. ACLU also said the men enriched themselves to the tune of millions of dollars in the process.

    • CIA Prisoners Sue Psychologists Over Torture Contracts
    • Psychologists from Spokane Helped CIA to Set Up Its Interrogation Program
    • Cornell Professor Says Lawsuit Overdue Against Architects of CIA Detention Program
    • Psychologists Accused of “Criminal Enterprise” With CIA Over Torture
    • ACLU Sues Two Psychologists For Developing CIA Interrogation Program

      DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: The two psychologists named in the ACLU’s lawsuit are former CIA contractors James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.

    • CIA tortures: Will US be held accountable?

      There is a likelihood the CIA will sooner or later be brought to justice in the US and internationally for its brutal interrogation techniques, Ben Davis a member of the Advocates for US Torture Prosecutions told RT.

      Several letters from the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have been revealed by WikiLeaks. In one of them vice chairman Christopher Bond suggests that agencies should be able to use any interrogation means available to them, without waiting for explicit approval. Bond also suggests methods which should be prohibited.

    • EU countries faulted for not probing CIA renditions

      EU countries have not done enough to investigate the CIA’s detention, torture and rendition programs in Europe, MEPs were told Tuesday.

      The debate in the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee included testimony from activists critical of EU member countries’ responses to revelations in a 2014 report by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

    • German torture case against CIA official

      The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) on Oct. 19 filed a criminal complaint against a high-ranking CIA official for mistreatment of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen who was detained and allegedly tortured for four months in 2003. El-Masri was on vacation in Macedonia when he was mistaken for Khalid al-Masri, a suspect in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. El-Masri was then transported to Afghanistan where he was detained and questioned for four months under the direction of Alfreda Frances Bikowsky. At the time, Bikowsky was deputy chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Bin Laden Issue Station. ECCHR asserts in the complaint that the US Senate Torture Report ties Bikowsky to el-Masri’s detention, and ECCHR requests that the German federal prosecutor investigate.

    • Former CIA Interrogator Forced to Resign From College Post

      The Newsweek article focused on Martine’s relationship to the notorious November 2003 death of a captured terrorist suspect in Iraq known as “the Iceman,” because his corpse was put on ice and hooked up to an IV to make it look as if he were still alive when he was removed from Abu Ghraib prison. It also noted that Martine and other former interrogators had been repeatedly investigated by the CIA’s internal watchdog as well as a federal grand jury and neither charged nor exonerated.

    • The Small Brooklyn Publisher That Brought The CIA Torture Report To The World

      Dennis Johnson remembers a Melville House staff meeting on a Tuesday morning last winter, smack in the middle of the publishing industry’s busy holiday season. It was Dec. 9, and a few hours south of the publishing house’s Brooklyn office, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) was having a triumphant moment. After years of uphill battles, she was finally publicly releasing part of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s grueling interrogation report, an extended, often stomach-churning look at the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program.

      It was a long-awaited publication, a culminating moment in a yearslong political battle and a sobering day of reckoning for the American public. Except no one outside the Government Printing Office wanted to touch it.

    • CIA Interrogation Methods Continue To Come Under Fire

      It looks like it will take a lot to finally stop the CIA’s use of torture techniques. Hopefully this stint will force them to reinvent and polish their approach to gathering intelligence.

    • Bob Marley Now Soothes Man Who Was Allegedly Tortured With Westlife by the CIA

      Suleiman Abdullah Salim says he listens to Bob Marley to help cope after undergoing what a new American Civil Liberties Lawsuit alleges were unlawful CIA interrogation techniques that included the use of music as torture.

    • REVEALED: The boom and bust of the CIA’s secret torture sites

      In spring 2003 an unnamed official at CIA headquarters in Langley sat down to compose a memo. It was 18 months after George W Bush had declared war on terror. “We cannot have enough blacksite hosts,” the official wrote. The reference was to one of the most closely guarded secrets of that war – the countries that had agreed to host the CIA’s covert prison sites.

      Between 2002 and 2008, at least 119 people disappeared into a worldwide detention network run by the CIA and facilitated by its foreign partners.

      Lawyers, journalists and human rights organisations spent the next decade trying to figure out whom the CIA had snatched and where it had put them. A mammoth investigation by the US Senate’s intelligence committee finally named 119 of the prisoners in December 2014. It also offered new insights into how the black site network functioned – and gruesome, graphic accounts of abuses perpetrated within it.

    • Romania Backs ‘Secret CIA Jails’ Probe

      “There is no further evidence that Romania was complicit in the CIA’s covert detention programme. We stand by the conclusion of the parliamentary inquiries, which uncovered no evidence of wrongdoing. And no new evidence has emerged in the meantime,” MP Marius Obreja, the head of the Parliamentary Defence Committee, said on Saturday.

    • CIA’s European Prisons Back in the Spotlight
    • Romania Denies Complicity With CIA-Led Secret Detention Program
    • CIA: There Was a JFK Assassination Cover-Up

      At some point in the fall of 2014 the CIA quietly said, ‘we’ll just leave this here’ and published a bombshell PDF of a declassified article on George Washington University’s National Security Archive. The 2013 piece by CIA Chief Historian David Robarge is titled “[Director of Central Intelligence] John McCone and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy” and it basically admits that McCone—appointed by JFK to head the agency—was a little squirrelly in his testimony before the Warren Commission.

    • Yes, the CIA director was part of the JFK assassination cover up
    • Former CIA director was part of a ‘benign cover-up’ to withhold information from investigators about JFK’s assassination

      A former CIA director withheld information about President John F Kennedy’s assassination, according to declassified agency reports.

      The CIA reports, which were declassified last fall, claim that then-agency head John McCone and other top officials were part of a ‘benign cover-up’ surrounding the assassination of Kennedy in November 1963.

      The report’s author, CIA historian David Robarge, claims McCone withheld information to keep the Warren Commission focused on what the agency believed to by the ‘best truth… that Lee Harvey Oswald, for as yet undetermined motives, had acted alone,’ according to Politico.

    • The US is No ‘Safe Harbor’ for Citizens’ Data

      What happens to your Facebook data — your identity information, photos, links and “likes” — when you share it outside of the US? Plenty. Your data will flow from your computer, to the nearest servers of the company, and eventually land at Facebook’s home servers in California, where it will likely be mined by Facebook for commercial gain and subject to snooping by the NSA.

      What laws protect your information along the way? Not many. But a recent court ruling should change this for European Internet users.

      Until this month, a “Safe Harbor” regulatory policy agreement between the US and EU allowed companies like Facebook and Google to self-regulate the transfer of data between Europe and the US. It is now formally dead. Unilaterally approved by the European Commission in 2000, the policy allowed companies to promise that they would abide by EU privacy laws when handling the data of EU persons, without needing to provide explicit proof of their compliance. Among other things, it required companies to notify users of the collection and use of their data, allow them to opt out of its collection or transfer, and keep it secure.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Closing the Loopholes in Europe’s Net Neutrality Compromise

      Since our last update on the upcoming net neutrality regulation in the European Union, a further compromise proposal has been developed, which heads to a vote in the European Parliament on Tuesday next week. On its face, the draft regulation appears to hit all the most important points, including providing that “When providing internet access services, providers of those services should treat all traffic equally, without discrimination, restriction or interference, independently of its sender or receiver, content, application or service, or terminal equipment”.

    • European net neutrality threat needs urgent action, says US lawyer

      IT IS PANIC STATIONS across the Atlantic as the good people of America wake up to the threat to net neutrality in Europe.

      A sage lawyer, Barbara van Schewick, is warning about a vote in the European Parliament next week designed to preserve net neutrality, saying that it is likely to fall in such a way that reflects badly on trade and communications.

      Van Schewick, who is professor of law and director of Stanford Law School’s Centre for Internet and Society, said that parliament members have a few days to get their heads in order and adopt what she called “key amendments”.

    • EU net neutrality goes on the chopping block next week: Here’s how to fix it

      On Tuesday next week, October 27, the European Parliament will vote in Strasbourg on rules that are supposed to protect net neutrality in the EU. The proposed text emerged from the so-called “trilogue” meeting between the European Commission, European Parliament, and the EU Council held in June to reach a “compromise” text taking into account the differing views held by the three institutions. However, there are serious problems with the compromise rules, and in the run-up to the vote next week, digital activists are urging the public to contact MEPs to ask them to support amendments that will fix the main issues.

    • Slate Informs Its Readers That Confusing, Unnecessary, Anti-Competitive Broadband Usage Caps Are Simply Wonderful

      For years we’ve explained that broadband usage caps are a horrible idea. Not only do they hinder innovation and confuse the hell out of customers — but they simply aren’t necessary on modern, intelligently-managed networks. Caps are an inelegant and impractical way to handle congestion, and U.S. broadband consumers already pay some of the highest prices for broadband in the developed world (2015 OECD data), more than covering the cost of running a network (as any incumbent ISP earnings report can attest).

    • Google Partnering With Indian Railways To Provide Wi-Fi Hotspots: Report

      Internet access will be free for passengers after the system verifies a user’s mobile number with a one-time password sent by text message. However, only the first 30 minutes of usage will be on high-speed Internet, Telecom Talk reported.

    • “Killswitch” Documentary Is a Terriyfing Look at the Battle for Control of the Internet

      The Internet is many things, but above all it is power. The power to communicate and connect, to document and share. And like any source of power, there is a battle over who gets to control it. Every day in the headlines, we see the war over net neutrality between governments, private enterprise, hackers, and activists waging. At the core, it is a battle to preserve freedom of communication and protect the population from government surveillance.

    • The Web is Gummed Up

      This is a sad story to write, but it’s been percolating in the back of my mind for months if not years: The World Wide Web is gummed up with crap. This realization came into sharp focus today when I visited some media sites like cbc.ca and my CPU utilization when up to 100% and stayed there. Exactly why firefox was using so much CPU was a bit of a mystery. I had autoplay in firefox turned off, and there didn’t appear to be any reason why the CPU should be maxed out.

    • Urgent: Net Neutrality in EU under Threat; Please Write to your MEPs Now

      The long saga of net neutrality in the EU is approaching its end, and things aren’t looking good. The compromise text contains some huge loopholes, which I’ve written about elsewhere. The key vote is on Tuesday, so there’s still time for EU citizens to write to their MEPs.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Nina Paley Argues Why Copyright Is Brain Damage

        We first wrote about Nina Paley in 2009, upon hearing about the ridiculous copyright mess she found herself in concerning her wonderful movie Sita Sings the Blues. While she eventually was able to sort out that mess and release the film, she also discovered that the more she shared the film, the more money she made, and she began to question copyright entirely. She originally released the film under a ShareAlike license, promising to go after people who didn’t uphold the ShareAlike parts, but then moved to a full public domain dedication and has become quite vocal in recent years about not supporting any kind of copyright and even raising some important concerns about many forms of Creative Commons licenses.

      • The Pirate Party Is Now More Popular in Iceland than the Government

        The Pirate Party, a movement founded in Sweden nine years ago, is continuing to surge across Europe, now surpassing Iceland’s local coalition government in recent polls.

        The Pirates have been ahead in the polls for several months now, according to the Iceland Monitor. In March, the party was at 23.9 percent, making it the most popular party in the country. Now, at 34.2 percent, the Pirates have surged past the country’s current coalition Government, which includes the Independence Party at 21.7 percent and the Progressive Party at 10.4 percent.

      • Filmmaker Unions Want to Criminalize Streaming Piracy

        Two prominent filmmaker unions are urging the government to criminalize streaming piracy. The labor unions describe streaming as the preferred viewing experience and argue that those who stream copyrighted movies without permission should face prison.

      • Warning Illegal Downloaders is Too Expensive, Record Labels Complain [Ed: quite old]

        New Zealand’s three-strikes anti-piracy law is turning into a huge disappointment for copyright holders. The costs that are involved with sending warning notices and pursuing cases at the copyright tribunal are proving to be too expensive. As a result, only one file-sharer was punished this year.

      • Nintendo Hates You: Massive Takedowns Of YouTube Videos Featuring Mario Bros. Fan-Created Levels

        As of late, Nintendo’s relationship with YouTube and the YouTube community has been, shall we say, tumultuous. After rolling out a bad policy to share revenue with YouTubers on the basis that those personalities torpedo their reputations by promising only positive Nintendo coverage, claiming the monetization for a large number of “let’s play” videos uploaded by independent YouTubers, and even going so far as to lay claim to the review of a Nintendo game created by well-known YouTuber “Angry Joe”, Nintendo clearly seems to believe that YouTube is not so much an independent community as it is some kind of official public relations wing for the company. This is really dumb on many different levels, but chiefly it’s dumb because it breeds ill-will amongst fans, of which Nintendo used to have many.

      • Time To Say Goodbye To All Pre-1972 Music?

        As we’ve been covering over the past few years, there’s been a big battle going on over the copyright status of “pre-1972 sound recordings.” That may sound like a weird thing to be arguing over, but it’s due to a weird bit of history in US copyright law. You see, for a very long time, Congress believed that copyright law could not cover sound recordings. However, various states stepped in and either through explicit state law or through common law, created copyright-like regulations for sound recordings. When copyright was finally updated in the 1976 Copyright Act, pre-1972 works were left out of the federal copyright system, even as federal copyright law basically wiped out all state copyright law for everything else. This has created some weird issues, including that some songs that should be in the public domain under federal copyright law are locked up in perpetuity. A simple and reasonable solution to this would be to just move pre-1972 sound recordings under federal copyright law and level the playing field. But, the RIAA has resisted this. That might seems strange, until you realize that the RIAA and its friends saw this weird quirk of copyright law as a wedge issue with which to try to squeeze more money out of everyone.

      • Is Running a Pirate Site Worse Than Stealing £8.5m From a Bank?

        This week an Irish man was handed a four-year sentence for running a pirate linking site. The Court accepted that he led no lavish lifestyle. In contrast, a man who stole almost £9m from a bank and bought homes worth £1.4m, three Bentleys, three Aston Martins, a Porsche 911 and a Rolls Royce, was also jailed. He received just 3.5 years. Fair?

      • Pirate Party Beats Iceland’s Government Coalition in the Polls

        The Pirate Party in Iceland continues to gain support, causing a revolution in the local political arena. According to the latest poll the party now has over a third of all votes in the country, beating the current Government coalition.

10.23.15

Links 23/10/2015: New Verifone POS Suite Runs Linux, BlackBerry to Ship Linux November 6th

Posted in News Roundup at 7:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source design is ugly, here’s why

    In particular, Braithwaite said open source projects need design help in three key areas: User Experience, Branding, and Visual User Interface. But recruiting them isn’t going to be easy, Braithwaite said, because open source developers haven’t created an atmosphere where designers can feel like they’re part of a community. Open source communities can feel “highly ­exclusive,” Braithwaite said, adding: “It feels like a cool kids’ club that (designers) are not a part of ­ or maybe a really nerdy kids’ club.” Developers need to help motivate designers, he said.

  • Open source lessons for synthetic biology

    However, there are significant differences between the acceptance of open source software and open source biology, primarily boiling down to regulation and safety issues (after all, a badly written program can crash your computer, but a badly formed bacteria can kill you). The number of regulations that need to be followed when legally producing a transgenic organism are immense, particularly in ensuring that they are both non-harmful and unlikely to spread throughout the wild. These regulatory — and thus financial — burdens severely limit the degree to which any individual biohacker can take their ideas and develop them. Note, however, that this is individual biohackers — larger firms can naturally afford to bring developments through this stage to market. Can a larger firm thus make money from open source biology? We believe so, provided the company uses a method similar to Red Hat, Google, or Tesla, in using the open source component to drive customers toward their own market strength — for example, by releasing blueprints and software for lab automation, then selling that equipment and support.

  • TastyIgniter: An Open Source Platform to Manage a Restaurant

    Say you own a restaurant and you are ready to expand the reach of your services. You are thinking about incorporating online table reservations and ordering into your services but you have no idea what it entails. You like the idea but you don’t know how to code a website. There’s software you can install that will take care of all of that.

    What’s more? The software has features to aid kitchen management, customer and staff management, store management and internationalisation already built in.

    And it is free.

  • Swarm v. Fleet v. Kubernetes v. Mesos

    Most software systems evolve over time. New features are added and old ones pruned. Fluctuating user demand means an efficient system must be able to quickly scale resources up and down. Demands for near zero-downtime require automatic fail-over to pre-provisioned back-up systems, normally in a separate data centre or region.

  • Events

    • IoT and open source contributions keynote at All Things Open 2015

      One of my favorite things about the keynotes at All Things Open this year was that attendees didn’t have just one great speaker to listen to each morning—we had a few. I enjoyed hearing multiple stories and many insights from dynamic speakers all in one sitting.

    • FSF Blogs: Videos and photos from the FSF30 celebrations now available

      First, watch this video of FSF general counsel and Software Freedom Law Center President and Executive Director Eben Moglen’s talk, “FSF from 30 to 45,” given at the User Freedom Summit held at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. Moglen looks ahead to the crucial issues facing the free software movement in its next fifteen years.

      At the 30th anniversary party held in Boston, we had two recorded greetings from friends of the FSF who were unable to attend in person. One was by FSF member, BoingBoing co-editor, and EFF fellow Cory Doctorow. The other greeting was from computer scientist and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge.

      Check out the video of the performance of the Free Software Song and the Bulgarian folk song that inspired it, Sadi Moma Bela Loza, by members of the Boston Bulgarian singing groups Divi Zheni and Zornitsa. We will have more videos of other guest toasts and RMS’s address soon.

    • Ubucon Slated for SCALE 14X, Bassel Offered MIT Job & More…

      I don’t say enough good things about Ubuntu, so when they give me reason to, I’m on it. I also don’t talk enough about openSUSE either; good, bad or indifferent.

      [...]

      But Wait, There’s More: Speaking of SCALE 14x, you still have a week to submit a talk for the first-of-the-year Linux/FOSS show in the world (now before linux.conf.au and FOSDEM in 2016, by some stroke of scheduling luck). SCALE 14x is four days of Peace, Love and Linux at the Pasadena Convention Center from Jan. 21-24, 2016…Getting the computers to the kids is no easy feat, even when the truck is working: My good friend and FOSS Force colleague (not to mention Houston Astros fan) Ken Starks has an Indiegogo campaign to replace the now-deceased delivery vehicle for Reglue (Recycled Electronics and GNU/Linux Used for Education). Throw in a few bucks if you can.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla commits $1M to support free open-source software projects

        Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox browser, announced today that it has allocated $1 million to dole out grants to support free and open-source software projects around the world.

      • Mozilla Launches Open Source Support Program

        Today Mozilla is launching an award program specifically focused on supporting open source and free software. Our initial allocation for this program is $1,000,000. We are inviting people already deeply connected to Mozilla to participate in our first set of awards.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • How CERN uses OpenStack to drive their scientific mission

      One of the world’s largest scientific organization is using OpenStack to understand what makes up everything in our universe. CERN runs one of the most collaborative scientific projects on Earth, responsible for producing enormous amounts of data on a routine basis to make Nobel prize winning discoveries such as the Higgs boson has some pretty unique computing requirements.

    • OpenStack Security Groups using OVN ACLs

      It’s worth looking at how this has been implemented with OVS in the past for OpenStack. OpenStack’s existing OVS integration (ML2+OVS) makes use of iptables to implement security groups. Unfortunately, to make that work, we have to connect the VM to a tap device, put that on a linux bridge, and then connect the linux bridge to the OVS bridge using a veth pair so that we have a place to implement the iptables rules. It’s great that this works, but the extra layers are not ideal.

    • Oracle Puts OpenStack into Docker Containers

      There is a misconception among some people that Docker containers and OpenStack are competitive technologies. The truth is the exact opposite, and in fact, Oracle is now providing the best proof yet by using Docker images as a mechanism to actually install an OpenStack cloud.

    • OpenStack Addresses Network Orchestration Layer

      While the OpenStack community likes to present a unified front to the outside world, inside the various projects that make up the OpenStack framework, there is a lot of frustration with the Neutron networking component of OpenStack. Much of that frustration stems from the fact that after five years of effort Neutron still doesn’t scale particularly well. As such, many of the organizations that have embraced OpenStack wind up swapping in a commercial network layer of software to replace Neutron.

    • Exposing the Truth About OpenStack Cloud Deployments

      Lured by the siren song of better business agility and accelerated innovation, an increasing number of companies are considering or have already deployed private clouds as part of their IT strategy. Since emerging in 2010 as an open-source initiative to help organizations build cloud services on industry-standard hardware, OpenStack has garnered much attention, but its adoption in production environments has been tempered by an assortment of perceived limitations, both real and imagined.

    • Mapr Adds Apache Drill 1.2 to Its Hadoop Distro

      MapR announced it has added Apache Drill 1.2 to its Apache Hadoop distribution for additional analytics support.

    • MapR Delivers Apache Drill 1.2 in its Hadoop Distribution

      MapR Technologies which offers a popular distribution of Apache Hadoop that integrates web-scale enterprise storage and real-time database capabilities, has announced the availability of Apache Drill 1.2 in its Distribution as well as a new Data Exploration Quick Start Solution. The addition of Drill 1.2 comes right on the heels of MapR adding Apache Spark to its distribution.

  • Databases

    • Oracle MySQL 5.7 Database Nears General Availability

      Ahead of Oracle’s OpenWorld conference in 2013, the company first began to talk about a major new release of its open-source MySQL database. Now two years later, development on MySQL 5.7 is compete and general availability is set for October 26.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Template Management in LibreOffice 5

      If you’re a LibreOffice power user, you’ve probably ventured into the realm of templates. But, if you’ve upgraded to LibreOffice 5, you’ve probably noticed a few minor changes to the way this feature is managed. It’s not a profound or game-changing shift, but a shift nonetheless.

      Because many people overlook the template feature in LibreOffice, I thought it would be a good idea to approach template management for LibreOffice 5 as if it were a new feature…and one that should be considered a must-have for all types of users. So, sit back and prepare to discover that feature which will make your time with LibreOffice exponentially easier.

    • LibreOffice Developers Working on a New Toolbar Layout

      The LibreOffice developers are working on a new interface that aims to unify all the different toolbars. This is still under development, and it will be provided as an option and not as default.

    • UK licence deal to boost use of open source office

      Public administrations in the UK can get professional support for using LibreOffice, the open source office alternative, thanks to a licence deal by the UK’s central procuring agency Crown Commercial Service with Collabora, a UK-based ICT service provider.

    • First bug hunting session for LibreOffice 5.1

      Those who cannot join during the bug hunting session are always welcome to help chasing bugs and regressions when they have time. There will be a second bug hunting session in December, to test LibreOffice 5.1 Release Candidate 1.

    • LibreOffice 5.1 Is Working On New Features For A February Debut

      LibreOffice 5.1 is planned for release in early February while to catch some bugs early they’re organizing the first bug hunt from 30 October to 1 November. Builds of LibreOffice 5.1 Alpha 1 are already available for testing. More details via The Document Foundation’s blog.

    • finding UI crashes by fuzzing input events with american fuzzy lop

      As mentioned previously I’ve been experimenting using afl as a fuzzing engine to fuzz a stream of serialized keyboard events which LibreOffice reads and dispatches.

  • BSD

    • Deweloperzy OpenBSD: Dmitrij D. Czarkoff

      In 2005 I tried OpenBSD for the first time. I still recall how I was impressed by the fact that I only needed ifconfig (as opposed to ifconfig, iwconfig and wpa_supplicant on Linux) to configure my wireless network card.

    • Deweloperzy OpenBSD: Marc Espie

      Funny story actually. It was about 20 years ago, and I didn’t have any Internet access at home. I wanted to play with some Unix on my home Amiga, as I didn’t have root access on the suns at University. Getting anything on my Amiga was complicated, as I had to transfer everything through floppies. Turned out OpenBSD was the only OS with sane and clear instructions. NetBSD gave you so many different choices, I couldn’t figure out which one to follow, and Linux was a jungle of patches.

    • W^X enabled in Firefox port

      After recent discussions of revisiting W^X support in Mozilla Firefox, David Coppa (dcoppa@) has flipped the switch to enable it for OpenBSD users running -current.

    • Google Continues Working On CUDA Compiler Optimizations In LLVM

      While it will offend some that Google continues to be investing in NVIDIA’s CUDA GPGPU language rather than an open standard like OpenCL, the Google engineers continue making progress on a speedy, open-source CUDA with LLVM.

  • Openness/Sharing

Leftovers

  • What Is the Most Dangerous Gang in Prison?
  • Mythbusters hosts say 14th season will be last, announce farewell tour

    In 2016, Mythbusters hosts and stars Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage will warn viewers not to try this at home for the last time. The duo announced on Wednesday that the Discovery Channel TV series’ 14th season, which begins airing January 9, will be its last.

  • Angry Birds’ Rovio Cuts 213 Jobs, Axes Learning To Refocus On Games And Video

    After announcing in August that it would cut up to 260 jobs, Rovio — maker of the Angry Birds games — today released details of the final number: the Finland-based company is letting go of 213 employees, around 25% of staff, as it continues to restructure and cut away unprofitable parts of its business. The whole of the company is being affected, with the exception of those working on the production of The Angry Birds Movie in the U.S. and Canada.

  • The Chinese Internet Wants To Know About David Cameron And Pigs

    The state visit to the UK by president Xi Jinping has been seen as a success in China, although ordinary people on Weibo keep asking David Cameron about pigs.

  • Security

    • Fitbit can allegedly be hacked in 10 seconds

      Fitness-tracking wristband Fitbit, which has sold more than 20 million devices worldwide, and tracks your calorie count, heart rate and other highly personal information, can be remotely hacked, according to research by Fortinet. This gives hackers access to the computer to which you sync your Fitbit.

    • Adobe releases emergency patch for Flash zero-day flaw
    • Adobe confirms major Flash vulnerability, and the only way to protect yourself is to uninstall Flash

      Just one day after Adobe released its monthly security patches for various software including Flash Player, the company confirmed a major security vulnerability that affects all versions of Flash for Windows, Mac and Linux computers. You read that correctly… all versions. Adobe said it has been made aware that this vulnerability is being used by hackers to attack users, though it says the attacks are limited and targeted. Using the exploit, an attacker can crash a target PC or even take complete control of the computer.

    • Western Digital self-encrypting hard drives riddled with security flaws

      Several versions of self-encrypting hard drives from Western Digital are riddled with so many security flaws that attackers with physical access can retrieve the data with little effort, and in some cases, without even knowing the decryption password, a team of academics said.

      The paper, titled got HW crypto? On the (in)security of a Self-Encrypting Drive series, recited a litany of weaknesses in the multiple versions of the My Passport and My Book brands of external hard drives. The flaws make it possible for people who steal a vulnerable drive to decrypt its contents, even when they’re locked down with a long, randomly generated password. The devices are designed to self-encrypt all stored data, a feature that saves users the time and expense of using full-disk encryption software.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • WikiLeaks publishes e-mail from CIA director’s hacked AOL account

      WikiLeaks has released a cache of e-mails which the site says were retrieved from CIA Director John Brennan’s AOL account.

      The e-mails include Brennan’s SF86, a form that he had to fill out to get his current position and security clearance. The form, from 2008, “reveals a quite comprehensive social graph of the current Director of the CIA with a lot of additional non-governmental and professional/military career details,” according to WikiLeaks’ description of the document.

    • WikiLeaks Is Publishing the CIA Director’s Hacked Emails

      WikiLeaks may describe itself as an outlet for whistleblowers, but it’s never hesitated to publish stolen documents offered up by a helpful hacker, either. So it’s no surprise that it’s now leaked the pilfered files of the CIA’s director, John Brennan.

      On Wednesday, the secret-spilling group published a series of selected messages and attachments from a trove of emails taken from Brennan’s AOL account. Though WikiLeaks hasn’t revealed its source, there’s little doubt the files were handed off by the self-described teen hackers calling themselves CWA or “Crackas With Attitude,” who claim to have hacked Brennan’s AOL account through a series of “social engineering” tricks.

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Even corporate America wants campaign finance reform to stop crony capitalism

      Political corruption is eating our democracy out from the inside. Most Americans know that. But democratic and economic health can’t be easily disentangled. As it diminishes our public sphere and drowns out the myriad of citizen voices, it also sucks the energy and vitality from our economy. This causes pain to business owners.

      According to a recent report from the Committee on Economic Development, an old, white-shoe non-partisan organization that came out of the aftermath of World War II (and was a booster for the Marshall Plan), the United States economy is increasingly represented by crony capitalism, not competitive capitalism.

    • Fox Guest: Black Lives Matter Is A “Terrorist Group”

  • Privacy

    • Facebook Is The Borg

      For days, I had mysterious annoying bell dings on my Mac. It turns out that Facebook turned on sound notifications — entirely without my doing — for when people comment on posts.

    • Why Vietnam’s Communists Are Learning to Like Facebook

      Vietnam’s Communist government, which once blocked Facebook Inc., is now embracing the online tools of capitalism by establishing its own page on the social media website in order to reach young Internet-savvy users who turn to it for news and discourse.

    • The scientists encouraging online piracy with a secret codeword

      In many countries, it’s against the law to download copyrighted material without paying for it – whether it’s a music track, a movie, or an academic paper. Published research is protected by the same laws, and access is generally restricted to scientists – or institutions – who subscribe to journals.

      But some scientists argue that their need to access the latest knowledge justifies flouting the law, and they’re using a Twitter hashtag to help pirate scientific papers.

    • EFF’s Let’s Encrypt has support from super browser brothers

      A SECURITY CERTIFICATE EFFORT involving the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Mozilla, Cisco, Akamai, IdenTrust and the University of Michigan has lived up to promises to be in order by 2015.

    • Proposed German law: telecoms must store customer data on airgapped servers

      The German Bundestag (parliament) has passed a controversial law requiring telecoms and Internet companies to store customers’ metadata and to make it available to law enforcement agencies investigating “severe crimes.” Specifically, “phone providers will now have to retain phone numbers, the date and time of phone calls and text messages, and, in the case of mobile phones, location (approximated through the identification of cell phone towers).” In addition, “Internet providers are required to save the IP addresses of users as well as the date and time of connections made,” a post on the Lawfare blog explains.

    • DHS now needs warrant for stingray use, but not when protecting president

      As expected, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released its own stingray requirements. Agents must now obtain a warrant prior to deploying the secretive surveillance tool as part of criminal investigations. This new policy comes over a month after the Department of Justice released its own similarly policy.

      The new rules will apply to DHS, as well as agencies that fall under its umbrella, such as the Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    • CISA Moves Forward: These 83 Senators Just Voted To Expand Surveillance

      Well, it’s not a huge surprise that it moved forward, but the faux “cybersecurity” bill, which is actually a surveillance bill in disguise, CISA, has moved forward in the Senate via an overwhelming 83 to 14 vote. As we’ve discussed at length, while CISA is positioned as just a “voluntary” cybersecurity information sharing bill, it’s really none of those things. It’s not voluntary and it’s not really about cybersecurity. Instead, it’s a surveillance bill, that effectively gives the NSA greater access to information from companies in order to do deeper snooping through its upstream collection points. Even the attempts to supposedly “clarify” the language to protect data from being used for surveillance shows that the language is deliberately written to look like it does one thing, while really opening up the ability of the NSA and FBI to get much more information.

  • Civil Rights

    • Critics say air marshals, much wanted after 9/11, have become ‘bored cops’ flying first class

      At a price tag of $9 billion over the past 10 years, Duncan called the program “ineffective” and “irrelevant.”

      [...]

      Duncan acknowledged at an oversight committee last month that the program “has come to be a symbol of everything that’s wrong with the DHS, when 4,000 bored cops fly around the country First Class, committing more crimes than they stop.”

    • New ‘Car Safety Bill’ Would Make Us Less Safe, Block Security Research And Hinder FTC And Others

      The House Energy and Commerce Committee is pushing an absolutely terrible draft bill that is supposedly about improving “car safety.” This morning there were hearings on the bill, and the thing looks like a complete dud. In an era when we’re already concerned about the ridiculousness of how copyright law is blocking security research on automobiles (just as we’re learning about automakers hiding secret software in their cars to avoid emissions testing), as well as questions about automobile vulnerabilities and the ability to criminalize security research under the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act), this bill makes basically all of it worse.

    • Sheldon Whitehouse Freaks Out, Blames ‘Pro-Botnet Lobby’ For Rejecting His Terrible CFAA Amendment

      As we mentioned yesterday, one of the (many) bad things involved in the new Senate attempt to push the CISA “cybersecurity” bill forward was that they were including a bad amendment added by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse that would expand the terrible Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a law that should actually be significantly cut back. Senator Ron Wyden protested this amendment specifically in his speech against CISA. And, for whatever reason, Whitehouse’s amendment has been pulled from consideration and Whitehouse is seriously pissed off about it.

    • Why Internet Users Should be Very Angry about the TPP

      The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) exploded onto the Canadian media landscape last week, when negotiators from the 12 participating countries finally agreed on a deal. Even if you were paying attention, you might not have heard about the impacts on the Internet, since much of the focus was on the farming and auto sectors. But the TPP is about a lot more than dairy and cars – it’s also about our fundamental right to free expression.

    • Eritrean mistakenly killed opens old wounds in Israel

      Images of an Eritrean asylum seeker lying in a pool of blood as an angry mob kicks him has renewed debate in Israel over alleged racism and how to respond to violence.

      Habtom Zarhum, 29, was shot by a security guard this week at a bus station in the southern city of Beersheba after being mistaken for an assailant in an attack that killed an Israeli soldier.

      He later died of his injuries.

      Footage of Zarhum bleeding as an angry mob rains blows on his head and torso has spread rapidly on social media, prompting soul searching among Israelis over their response to a wave of attacks as well as their treatment of African migrants.

      One photo posted on Facebook shows Zarhum smiling with colleagues at a nursery where he worked.

    • Chase Madar on Prosecuting Police

      This week on CounterSpin: Nearly a year after 12-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by a Cleveland police officer, the county prosecutor is giving signs that he won’t be strenuously encouraging indictments, deflating the hopes of many that the officer, Timothy Loehmann, will face any punishment at all for the killing.

    • Rush Limbaugh Applauds Himself For Coining The Term “Feminazi”

  • YouTube/Internet

    • You Can Now Pay to Watch YouTube Without Ads

      Dubbed YouTube Red, the new service will offer ad-free versions of all current YouTube videos, as well as access to music streaming and additional exclusive content from some of the site’s top creators. It will cost $9.99 per month and launch on Oct. 28.

    • YouTube Red Doesn’t Want to Be Compared to Netflix

      YouTube believes its content, stable of talent and audience makes it an entirely new player in paid streaming.

    • Red Dawn

      An inside look at YouTube’s new ad-free subscription service

    • Europe’s ‘Net Neutrality’ Could Allow Torrent and VPN Throttling

      Next week the European Parliament will vote on Europe’s new telecoms regulation which includes net neutrality rules. While the legislation is a step forward for many countries, experts and activists warn that it may leave the door open for BitTorrent and VPN throttling if key amendments fail to pass.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Google Opposes Whole-Site Removal of “Pirate” Domains

        Google is rejecting calls from copyright holders to remove entire domain names from Google search based on copyright infringements. In a letter to the U.S. Government the company points out that this would prove counterproductive and lead to overbroad censorship.

10.22.15

Links 22/10/2015: *buntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf, Free Software in UK and French Government

Posted in News Roundup at 8:00 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • When my open source intern project went global

    Sure, I may have only contributed a couple hundred lines of code. In the long run, however, I know that my CI efforts will soon pull together better software that’s tested thoroughly, beginning with the community of developers themselves. I see that as indirectly contributing millions of lines of better code. I had an idea on how to do something better and took action on it, a freedom you won’t find in other types of organizations.

  • Why Southeast Asia should embrace the open source movement

    In the last five years, Southeast Asia has grown to become a big consumer of modern web technologies to create digital products and services. More and more tech companies from the US are opening offices here and many with the goal to build engineering and development offices for their regional needs.

  • How open source took me from a beginner coder to a credited contributor

    I’d like to share my experiences with Free Software Melbourne, its free software workshop, and, more importantly, what has happened since then because it’s kinda cool—it’s not what I expected.

    I consider myself a beginner programmer. Most of the time I have no idea what I am doing and no idea what the documentation is trying to convey. Lost is perhaps my most common emotion.

  • Orbbec Releases Open Source SDK to GitHub for Their Astra 3D Camera Technology

    The Orbbec Persee is basically a less expensive XBox Kinect on steroids, and the developers are committed to making sure that their technology is available for everyone to develop and improve. They say that they want to foster a culture of open source innovation where the developers and the creative coding community play an irreplaceable role in the evolution of gesture controls and the Persee hardware. To that end they have released an open source software development kit (SDK) on GitHub so anyone can download and develop software using the versatile and powerful smart 3D camera-computer.

  • Going Gonzo at ‘All Things Open’

    “Footballs in a basketball state,” I said wryly, looking down on a guy who was sitting across the table, absently playing with some small swag footballs imprinted with a company logo.

  • LookingGlass Simplifies Threat Intel with Contribution to Open Source Community
  • LookingGlass Open-Sources Threat Intel Engine

    LookingGlass Cyber Solutions has announced OpenTPX, a contribution to the open-source community to enable threat intelligence providers and security operations to integrate full context across their security portfolios.

  • SA firms wins international BOSSIE open source award

    Dev2, a software developer based in Hillcrest, has been awarded the prestigious 2015 BOSSIE open source aware.

  • Introducing TastyIgniter – Open source Restaurant Ordering & Reservation System

    I’m looking to release a stable version sometime this month after adding new features from user feedback. I’ve recently completed the user acceptance testing.

  • Coinprism releases an open source ‘transaction chain’

    The open source system is now used by companies such as NASDAQ…

  • Open Standards developer Coinprism releases enterprise blockchain
  • Coinprism Launches Open-Source Permissioned Ledger With Bitcoin ‘Anchors’
  • Coinprism Launches OpenChain, an Open-Source Distributed Ledger
  • Orbbec Releases SDK to GitHub for Open Sourced 3D Application Development
  • Orbbec Releases Open Source Version Of Astra SDK For Persee 3D Camera
  • Open source opens world of growth for startup companies

    The open source community holds dear the concepts of open exchange, participation, rapid prototyping, meritocracy, transparency, participation and collaboration, values emphasized among startups.

  • Open source leads the future of Cloud

    When looking to provide Cloud deployments, channel players are faced with a vast array of offerings from vendors all claiming to offer the ideal solution to a client’s needs. Being spoilt for choice, it has become increasingly difficult for partners to differentiate from competitors.

    As the model for Cloud providers expands to include private Cloud build-outs, container-based infrastructure and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions, partners need additional flexibility to better meet customer needs for Cloud-based technologies.

    As such, a complete set of unique Cloud services can help partners plan, build and manage a private or hybrid Cloud while still using a multi-vendor infrastructure.

  • Oceanography for Everyone: Empowering researchers, educators, and citizen scientists through open-source hardware

    Three years ago, Kersey Sturdivant and myself launched an ambitious crowdfunding project–the OpenCTD–with the plan to produce a low-cost, open-source CTD for thousands of dollars less than the commercial alternative. That campaign fizzled, bringing in barely 60% of our target goal. After taxes and fees, that amounted to about $3500 available to us to play around with. The OpenCTD wasn’t dead, but it was on life support.

  • Zepheira Upgrades Its Open Source Tools

    Zepheira updated Linksmith and Scribe, its open source linked data management tools, to have better scalability, linkability, and internal and external linking. Scribe is publicly available on GitHub. Students and alumni of the Zepheira Practical Practitioner Training class have exclusive access to Linksmith, but the results of their work with the tool may be publicly shared.

  • How do we keep track of ephemeral containers?

    Cloud-native computing relies on ephemeral containers instead of pinned servers. Executing applications within ephemeral containers solves resource scarcity challenges, but also creates a dynamic environment that requires new practices and tooling. To address these concerns, Ian Lewis of Google is giving a talk at this month’s OpenStack Summit in Tokyo, Japan entitled “In a world of ephemeral containers, how do we keep track of things?”

  • Freescale and KDDI R&D Labs Join Open Source NFV Project

    The OPNFV Project, a carrier-grade, integrated, open source flexible platform intended to accelerate the introduction of new products and services using Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), today announced that Freescale and KDDI R&D Labs have joined as Silver members while Morgan Richomme of Orange has been appointed to the Board of Directors as the first technical community representative. Launched just one year ago, the OPNFV project is supported by 19 Platinum and 36 Silver member companies committed to advancing the creation of a flexible, open source framework for NFV.

  • How Trade Agreements Harm Open Access and Open Source

    Mistakes like these are inevitable in a negotiation process that is closed to public review and which structurally excludes input from all affected stakeholders. We should therefore hardly be surprised that trade agreements are bad news for open access and open source. But neither should we accept it. These captured, undemocratic negotiations are a relic of a pre-Internet age, that no longer have any legitimate place in public policy making for the 21st century.

  • Rogue Wave releases open-source support survey

    As for making decisions about using open-source packages, availability of support, licensing flexibility and code security were the top three factors. Among reasons cited for seeking support were a lack of expertise regarding particular open-source packages, as well as integration and performance issues.

  • Deep into Drupal, Cisco starts to give back to open source community

    Cisco’s Jamal Haider acknowledged during a presentation this week that his team that works on the company’s open source-based customer support portal hasn’t given much back to the wider Drupal community yet, but he said this talk at the sold-out Acquia Engage conference in Boston is part of an effort to change that.

    And why not? Cisco has plenty of reasons – more than $400 million of them, in fact – to be grateful for Drupal since migrating its Support Community portal to the open source content management system early last year. Cisco started working on project requirements in 2013 with Acquia, a SaaS provider that has commercialized Drupal offerings.

  • Saying Goodbye to ‘All Things Open’ Until Next Year

    We knew going in there would be a record number of speakers this year — 131 according to a count on the ATO website — and we learned on our way out — at the closing ceremonies — that this year’s attendance topped 1,700, much more than last year and nearly doubling the attendance from the first ATO in 2013. Todd Lewis, the master of ceremonies for the event — his official title, chairperson, doesn’t begin to describe what he does — said that next year they’re aiming for 2,500, a number they probably have a good chance of hitting.

  • Walmart goes to war with Amazon over open source

    Sigh. Another day, another useless open source project.

    This time it’s Walmart, open sourcing its cloud technology to compete with Amazon Web Services (AWS). But, as David Linthicum writes, it’s open source for all the wrong reasons.

    More pertinently, it’s open source in all the wrong ways.

  • Bringing open source to Pentaho

    In any end-to-end proprietary platform, there’s fear in the community about support, accessibility and cost. However, thanks to acquisitions, Pentaho Corp. has showed it is ready to embrace a more open world.

  • Rogue Wave Software releases 2015 Open Source Support Report

    Rogue Wave Software released their 2015 Open Source Support Report, solidifying the company as a leader in the open source software (OSS) community and providing information on OSS package use that could only be gathered from their own database. Taking data from over 8,000 OSS packages, surveys, experiences, and experts from across different industries, this report brings a new level of visibility into OSS support reporting that has been lacking until now.

  • Non-free software can mean unexpected surprises

    I went to a night sky photography talk on Tuesday. The presenter talked a bit about tips on camera lenses, exposures; then showed a raw image and prepared to demonstrate how to process it to bring out the details.

    His slides disappeared, the screen went blank, and then … nothing. He wrestled with his laptop for a while. Finally he said “Looks like I’m going to need a network connection”, left the podium and headed out the door to find someone to help him with that.

    I’m not sure what the networking issue was: the nature center has open wi-fi, but you know how it is during talks: if anything can possibly go wrong with networking, it will, which is why a good speaker tries not to rely on it. And I’m not blaming this speaker, who had clearly done plenty of preparation and thought he had everything lined up.

    Eventually they got the network connection, and he connected to Adobe. It turns out the problem was that Adobe Photoshop is now cloud-based. Even if you have a local copy of the software, it insists on checking in with Adobe at least every 30 days. At least, that’s the theory. But he had used the software on that laptop earlier that same day, and thought he was safe. But that wasn’t good enough, and Photoshop picked the worst possible time — a talk in front of a large audience — to decide it needed to check in before letting him do anything.

  • Neo4j’s graph query language launches under standalone open-source license

    Neo Technology Inc. made a lot of new friends in the open-source ecosystem this morning after releasing the query language powering its hugely popular graph store under an open-source license. The move officially clears the way for other vendors to implement the syntax in their own systems.

    The openCypher project, as the startup refers to the free standalone implementation, already has several big-name supporters lined up on launch. The list includes providers such as Tableau Inc. and Tom Sawyer Software Inc. that have offered connectors for Neo4j long before the announcement of initiative as well as newcomers hoping to secure a seat on the graph bandwagon.

  • Notes from Flink Forward

    I was in Berlin last week for Flink Forward, the inaugural Apache Flink conference. I’m still learning about Flink, and Flink Forward was a great place to learn more. In this post, I’ll share some of what I consider its coolest features and highlight some of the talks I especially enjoyed. Videos of the talks should all be online soon, so you’ll be able to check them out as well.

  • IoT

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla Lands GTK3 Touch Event Support In Firefox

        Mozilla developers continue moving along with their support for the GTK3 tool-kit inside the Firefox web-browser.

        Firefox Nightlies/Aurora are built with GTK3+ on Linux. While there’s been the basic GTK+ 3 support, other items relating to this new tool-kit support still need to be finished up. One of the items now complete is handling touch events of this latest GTK+ version.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Celebrating diversity in the OpenStack community

      Egle Sigler, Kavit Munshi, and Carol Barrett are organizers and active members of OpenStack’s Diversity Working Group. The OpenStack Foundation has a deep commitment to fostering the diversity and inclusivity of the OpenStack community. The foundation’s Board of Directors created the group to formulate, deliver, and monitor programs to help increase the diversity of the community.

    • Oracle offers second release of OpenStack
    • Oracle offers up new OpenStack release as Docker instances

      Oracle has updated its Oracle OpenStack platform, almost a year to the day after it first released its own flavor of the open-source cloud-building fabric.

    • How the Big Tent conversation changed OpenStack

      Because “cloud” means different things to different people, and because OpenStack tries to be all those things, individual OpenStack deployments can look very different from one another depending on many criteria. The “big tent” conversation, which has been ongoing in the OpenStack community for some time, strives to provide all of the answers for all of OpenStack’s large audience.

    • How the hybrid cloud and open-source tech are changing IT

      The cloud is well on its way to becoming the standard model for IT, just sixteen years after it first formed. It couples flexibility, scale, and reliability to user-friendliness and ubiquity. It has created some of the world’s largest companies, as well as empowering some of the smallest. The cloud has changed the economics of providing and using services, bringing many new opportunities—and also a few teething problems, of course.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice, Leaping Lizards, and Liquid Lemurs

      Personal reports from the recent LibreOffice conference were few, but today Rajesh Ranjan shared his experience. Bruce Byfield today said, “Sometimes, losing a Linux desktop is the best way to appreciate it” as he muddles through the absence of KDE. Ubuntu celebrates its 11 year path to convergence as eWeek.com looks at upcoming 15.10 features. Elsewhere, Scott Gilbertson reviews openSUSE 42.1 and Jack Germain said Liquid Lemur Linux has promise.

    • Celebrating the success of LibreOffice in Denmark

      In late September, I attended my first LibreOffice Conference in Aarhus, Denmark. There were 150 participants from more than 30 countries present, and it was an incredible experience.

      Though the conference didn’t officially start until September 23, my work started the day before at what we called the “Community Day.” After a general get together, Native Language Project (NLP) community members met to discuss relevant processes, tools, resources, development, and marketing. In the evening, we rejoined the rest of the contributors for dinner.

  • Business

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

  • Licensing

    • Open Source Software and Regulatory Compliance

      The argument for open source in both cases rests on the belief that exposing the code to millions of eyeballs will ultimately make it more secure and just plain better overall. In the VW case, anti-copyright groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation are pushing for open source and an end to DMCA anti-circumvention provisions.

    • Still waiting on you, Apple…

      Back in July Apple promised to open source Swift. :) Well, Apple? What’s going on? Is this still the plan, Apple?

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Puri touts open-source innovation in the workplace

      Puri’s open approach to evolving her career has led her to report for Fortune, serve as an assistant solicitor general for the New York State Attorney General, work as a senior advisor to the president of the Empire State Development Corporation, run the nonprofit Scientists Without Borders, and help lead the Nike Foundation as its executive director for global innovation.

    • Thomson Reuters raises stakes in financial desktop software

      The firm suggests that the financial industry is increasingly turning to open technology standards to spur the innovation and flexibility institutions need to remain competitive in an increasingly complex business landscape.

    • Open Data

      • Christopher Allan Webber: Hitchhiker’s guide to data formats

        Of course, there’s more data formats than that. Heck, even on top of these data formats there’s a lot more out there (these days I spend a lot of time working on ActivityStreams 2.0 related tooling, which is just JSON with a specific structure, until you want to get fancier, add extensions, or jump into linked data land, in which case you can process it as json-ld).

    • Open Access/Content

      • Letter: Open source textbooks can combat rising prices

        My name is Meghan Healey. I’m an undeclared freshman. Being on this exploratory track, most of my textbooks were relatively cheap, but they were still more expensive than they should be. If all textbooks were as “cheap” as my American Politics class, students would still have to pay at least $150 in order to have a proper education. This $150 could have been spent toward my tuition, my meal plan, or a plentiful amount of other academic expenses. Geology Textbook: $50. Environmental Science Packet: $30. Sustainability Book: $10. Freshman Seminar: $20. iClicker 2 for American Politics: $60. American Politics Textbook: $90 My total? $260. What should it be? Priceless.

      • Affordable College Textbook Act Provides Major Impact on Future of America’s Higher Education

        new Congress legislation is advancing to seek the cost-effective reduction of university textbooks through appropriate grant programs that aim to promote the utilization of Open Education Resources (OER).

      • A Change to Textbooks Could Mark a Shift in America’s Future

        Two ideas are being proposed by Democratic Senators this week that if instituted would have a major impact on America.

        Democratic Senator Al Franken of Minnesota and Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois are co-sponsoring the Affordable College Textbook Act. This act would have college institutions apply for government cash to fund the creation of a textbook that could be shareable online.

      • Survey: ND college professors know ‘open source materials,’ but some have questions

        A survey of North Dakota faculty shows most have heard of “open source educational materials” – textbooks and other things available on line at little or no charge.

        “Open source” could save students a lot of money in textbooks.

    • Open Hardware

      • Open Source Toolkit: Hardware

        PLOS Collections joined forces with Andre Maia Chagas and Tom Baden of University of Tübingen, TReND in Africa and Openeuroscience to create a collection of Open Source Hardware projects with application in a laboratory setting. Open Source Toolkit: Hardware will be updated on a regular basis.

      • Open Source Organelle Synthesiser Unveiled By Critter & Guitari

        The Organelle is equipped with a 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 processor and a range of intuitive controls together with a powerful and flexible sound engine that provides a limitless music machine that is capable of creating a huge variety of different sounds and tunes.

        [...]

        The entire system runs open source software and may be customized at every level.

      • Ultimaker releases open-source files for Ultimaker 2 Go and 2 Extended 3D printers

        The rise of 3D printing technology owes a lot to the open-source movement, whereby the source code for software and hardware blueprints are made available to be used or modified at absolutely no cost. It’s a movement that recognizes the power of the people, of collective minds working towards diverse goals, yet all with the same intentions of technological advancement, innovation and improvement. Honouring their commitment to the open-source movement as well as their long-standing tradition of releasing the blueprints for their 3D printers six months after going to market, Ultimaker today released the open-source files for their Ultimaker 2 Go and Ultimaker 2 Extended 3D printers. Files for the Ultimaker 2, Ultimaker Original, Original + and Heated Bed Upgrade as well as their Cura software are already available on their GitHub repository completely free of cost.

      • Latest Ultimaker 3D Printer Designs Released As Open Source Files
      • Ultimaker Releases Open-Source Files ff Their 3D Printers
      • Ultimaker releases open-source files for Ultimaker 2 GO and Extended 3D printers

  • Programming

    • Highlights of CppCon 2015
    • Top 4 Java web frameworks built for scalability

      If you’re writing a web application from scratch, you’ll want to select a framework to make your life easier and reduce development time. Java, one of the most popular programming languages out there, offers plenty of options.

      Traditional Java applications, particularly web-facing apps, are built on top of a Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework, which follows the MVC software architectural pattern. Starting with Apache Struts, MVC frameworks have been a staple of Java development including such popular frameworks as WebWork, Spring MVC, Wicket, and GWT. Typically these applications host the view code on the server, where it is rendered and delivered to the client (web browser). Click a link or submit a form in your browser and it submits a request to the server, which does the requested work and builds a new view, refreshing the entire display in your client.

Leftovers

  • Hardware

    • Happy 30th Birthday, NES!

      The Nintendo Entertainment System or NES is one of the most famous video game consoles ever made, and it has just turned 30. Why are we celebrating NES 30 years later? The answer is simple: because it’s still relevant.

    • Western Digital to acquire SanDisk for $19 billion

      If Dell-EMC merger was not enough for the tech world to digest, Western Digital shook the world with the largest acquisition in the storage space. The hard drive major is acquiring flash-based storage device player SanDisk for $19 billion.

    • Michael Dell berates Microsoft’s Nadella about high price of Surface tablet

      MICHAEL DELL has taken a sly dig at Microsoft, saying to CEO Satya Nadella that the prices of its hardware, such as the Surface, are “pretty high”.

      Speaking on stage during an interview with Nadella at Dell World 2015, Dell’s comments came in response to a question regarding whether Microsoft and Dell now see one another as rivals as both have expanded to offer products that they were not first renowned for.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Private Military Companies in Service to the Transnational Capitalist Class

      Globalization of trade and central banking has propelled private corporations to positions of power and control never before seen in human history. Under advanced capitalism, the structural demands for a return on investment require an unending expansion of centralized capital in the hands of fewer and fewer people. The financial center of global capitalism is so highly concentrated that less than a few thousand people dominate and control $100 trillion of wealth.

    • Assad flies to Moscow to thank Putin for Syria air strikes

      Syrian President Bashar al-Assad flew to Moscow on Tuesday evening to thank Russia’s Vladimir Putin personally for his military support, in a surprise visit that underlined how Russia has become a major player in the Middle East.

      It was Assad’s first foreign visit since the start of the Syrian crisis in 2011, and came three weeks after Russia launched a campaign of air strikes against Islamist militants in Syria that has also bolstered Assad’s forces.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Diesel cars emit up to four times more toxic pollution than a bus, data reveals

      A modern diesel car pumps out more toxic pollution than a bus or heavy truck, according to new data, a situation described as a “disgrace” by one MEP.

      The revelation shows that effective technology to cut nitrogen oxides (NOx) pollution exists, but that car manufacturers are not implementing it in realistic driving conditions.

      Diesel cars tested in Norway produced quadruple the NOx emissions of large buses and lorries in city driving conditions, according to a report from the Norwegian Centre for Transport Research. A separate study for Transport for London showed that a small car in the “supermini” class emitted several times more NOx than most HGVs and the same amount as a 40-tonne vehicle.

    • The Great Kowtow

      The Chinese are the imperial masters now. Cameron begs them to build a nuclear power station for which the British state guarantees it will pay double the market price for electricity produced, for twenty years. And a government which has just announced the extension of thought crime to the expression of non-violent or anti-violent thought deemed “extreme”, has no locus to talk about human rights, a concept at least as alien to Teresa May as it is to the Chinese Communist Party. Britain has its own war criminals like Blair and Straw running around, immune and very wealthy.

  • Finance

    • Fox Guest Pushes Back Against Bill O’Reilly’s Shaming Of Poor Parents

      JOHNSON-HUSTON: You are confusing an economic status of someone with their character, and people make mistakes in life, but you know what? My mother loved me and what you put forth was that people who are in these situations, that they’re abusing their children. I know people who have been abused. I was not abused and my mother did the right thing by me which was to put me in a more stable environment–

    • Wall Street Journal Column Pushes Myth That Tax Cuts Pay For Themselves To Attack Bernie Sanders

      Wall Street Journal editorial board member Jason Riley attacked Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders for supporting progressive income tax rates to fund government investments, falsely claiming that additional tax cuts for the wealthy are a better method of increasing tax revenue.

    • The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Stephen Harper’s legacy for trade lawyers

      According to Boscariol, Canada has been signing a “spaghetti bowl of trade agreements” and joining trading blocks for the simple reason that lots of other countries seem to be doing it. “If we don’t, we will lose preferential market access that other countries are getting by way of these deals. So we’ve got to be at the party,” Boscariol says.

    • Hypocrisy Alert: Speaker Vos and Rep. Craig Use Private Email, Too

      Wisconsin Republicans have been caught in the spin cycle with their latest attack on the state’s independent, nonpartisan Government Accountability Board (GAB), which oversees elections and ethics.

      The GAB, which is led by a board of retired judges appointed by the governor, has been widely regarded as a national model for nonpartisan election administration. But this week the Republican-led legislature seeks to dismantle it as payback for investigating Governor Scott Walker.

      “Political payback” doesn’t poll well, so Republicans have tried advancing a series of disingenuous arguments to justify the attack on the GAB: they say the GAB accepted “Mickey Mouse” on recall petitions (it didn’t), that the Walker probe had no legal basis (it did), that the board wasn’t informed of the staff’s work on the John Doe (it was), and an array of other false assertions.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Fox’s Bill O’Reilly Instructs The Benghazi Committee On How To Question Hillary Clinton
    • George Will’s Freedom to Be Unequal Depends a Lot on Government Coercion

      Got that? Bill Gates is incredibly rich because of his aptitude and attitude; the government’s willingness to arrest anyone who infringes on the patent and copyright monopolies it gave him has nothing to do with his wealth. We’re supposed to also ignore all the other millionaires and billionaires whose wealth depends on these government-granted monopolies.

      And we should ignore the Wall Street boys who depend on their banks’ too-big-to-fail insurance, or on the fact that the financial sector largely escapes the sort of taxation applied to the rest of the economy. And we shouldn’t be bothered by the fact that Jeff Bezos got very rich in large part from avoiding the requirement to collect sales taxes that was imposed on his brick-and-mortar competitors. And we need not pay attention to the tax scams that allow for much of the wealth of the private-equity crew.

    • The Kochs Want to End WI’s Era of Clean Government

      Following the bipartisan “John Doe” investigation into campaign finance violations by Governor Scott Walker, Wisconsin Republicans are out for revenge. And the Kochs have their back.

      This week, the Wisconsin state legislature will take up a trifecta of bills that will undermine the state’s long traditions of clean and transparent government.

      One bill will gut the state’s campaign finance laws and retroactively decriminalize the secretive campaign finance schemes that Walker engaged in during the recall elections, opening the doors to new levels of dark money in state elections.

      Another bill will cripple the the state’s nonpartisan Government Accountability Board–considered a model for other states–and turn it into a toothless, partisan agency. The board of nonpartisan retired judges will be replaced with partisan appointees that are guaranteed to gridlock (like the broken Federal Elections Commission), and gives the legislature power to cut funding for an investigation that it doesn’t like.

    • Voters in WI Want Money Out of Politics; Politicians Don’t Care

      Sixty one communities in Wisconsin, including some in the most conservative pockets of the state, have passed referendums expressing opposition to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United and declaring money is not speech. Poll after poll has shown that both Republican and Democratic voters want less money in elections and stronger donor disclosure laws.

      Wisconsin politicians, though, are opening the floodgates to an unlimited flow of secret money.

    • Fox, Daily Beast Stories on Cubans in Syria Lack One Thing: Evidence of Cubans in Syria

      Fox News (10/14/15) reported last week that Cuba has sent Gen. Leopoldo Cintra Frias and hundreds of troops to Syria to assist the Russian and Assad governments in “operating Russian tanks.” This explosive claim was soon echoed by James Bloodworth in the Daily Beast (10/16/15) and subsequently spread widely on social media.

      A Cuban troop presence in Syria would be a blockbuster story indeed—undermining the easing of tensions between Cuba and the United States while serving as a huge embarrassment for the Obama administration, which has spent much political capital restoring relations with the socialist island nation. There’s only one problem: The story is looking increasingly bunk.

  • Censorship

    • Letter to MEPs of LIBE Committee: Do Not Jeopardize Our Freedom of Speech!

      On Monday afternoon, members of the European Parliament’s LIBE Committee will vote on the Dati report on the “prevention of radicalisation and recruitment of European citizens by terrorist organisations”. This report contains dangerous provisions, which aim to make online platforms and hosts responsible for the distribution of messages glorifying terrorism, creating a high risk of pre-emptive censorship. Such provisions severely threaten European citizens’ freedom of speech.

  • Civil Rights

    • A Nazi Welcomed by the British Establishment

      This is the party symbol of Paribiy’s Social National Party, in case anybody doubts me. It is perfectly clear what Mr Paribiy stands for. That the Royal United Services Institute invites him to spread his views in the heart of Whitehall, says a great deal about the position of the right wing British establishment. Today, the British government proposes new legislation to close down mosques and bookshops deemed extreme, even if they advocate against violence and do not break the law. These are dangerous times – and the danger is from the right.

    • British activist Jacky Sutton found dead in Istanbul airport

      A British woman who was working as the Iraq director for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) has died in an Istanbul airport, the Foreign Office has confirmed.

      Former BBC journalist Jacky Sutton, 50, is understood to have been found dead in a toilet at the city’s main airport. The circumstances of her death are as yet unknown. Local media reported it appeared that Sutton, who was travelling to Irbil, northern Iraq, had killed herself after missing a flight connection, a claim colleagues said was unlikely.

    • IWPR

      The fact that IWPR accesses direct first hand knowledge of what really happens during conflicts, almost certainly holds the key to the death of Jackie Sutton. She was killed for something she knew. The official Turkish story that she killed herself in the airport in despair at missing a connecting flight, is risible.

    • The NRA Is Promoting An Article Suggesting “Radical” Democrats Will Be Hanged After Starting A Civil War Over Gun Rights

      The National Rifle Association is promoting an article that suggested “radical” Democrats will attempt to confiscate firearms in the United States and trigger a civil war where “the survivors of the Democrat rebellion” are ultimately hanged.

      In an October 17 post, conservative gun blogger Bob Owens claimed that if the “radical left” attempts to “impose their ideas on the American people” — which Owens claims includes gun confiscation — “it would end poorly and quickly” for them after they are confronted by “armed free citizens.”

    • Two Weeks After It Sued the CIA, Data Is Stolen from the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights

      Earlier this month, I wrote about a landmark lawsuit filed by the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) against the Central Intelligence Agency seeking information about possible war crimes committed in El Salvador during that country’s civil war. Over the weekend, someone broke into the office of Angelina Godoy, the center’s director.

      “Her desktop computer was stolen, as well as a hard drive containing about 90 percent of the information relating to our research in El Salvador,” the center said in a statement today.

    • ‘There’s a Conversation Happening About the Inequities of the Criminal Justice System’

      JJ: I think it’s interesting that California law enforcement, who will now have to record race/ ethnicity data on stops and what happens after that, are sort of complaining–well, some of them, anyway–“This will cause us to racially profile. We didn’t do it in the past, but now if we have to actually report race and ethnicity of the people we arrest, that will lead us to think about it in a way we weren’t thinking about it before.” There’s always a kind of push back on the collection of information, but it seems to me that from reporters’ perspective, and policy advocates’ perspective, more information ought to be non-controversial, in a way. We ought to all be able to be behind more sunlight.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Net Neutrality in Europe: Now or Never!

      The European Parliament will vote next Tuesday the text on Net Neutrality. Following months of trialogue negotiations, during which the Council has sought to undermine all the provisions in favour of Net neutrality, an unsatisfying compromise has been reached. The final vote on 27 October during the plenary session shall set out the rules that will be applied in France and in all other Member States. In April 2014, the European Parliament had voted a text with very strong provisions in favour of Net Neutrality. Such a vote had been possible only thanks to the important mobilisation of European citizens.

10.21.15

Links 21/10/2015: UK Government Kicks Out Microsoft, France’s Citizens Vote for FOSS

Posted in News Roundup at 5:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux Users, Start Your Engines

    Simple. Linux and FOSS have a wide cast of Coopers and Shelbys making high performance versions of mass-produced distros, building on the foundation of one of the “big three” Linux distros to make fire-breathing, pixel-burning distros; distros that are the digital equivalent of vehicles that are more than just for taking the kids to soccer practice or zipping over to the grocery store.

    In fact, many of the less-than-mainstream distros out there — most of the nearly 300 Linux and BSD distros, as a matter of fact — are more than just a developer “scratching an itch.” In many cases, it’s a matter of chopping and channeling, boring out the engine, adding high performance parts, aerodynamic devices like spoilers and air dams, and even painting a flame or two on the side.

  • Meet Solu, a Gorgeous and Revolutionary Mini PC Powered by Linux – Video

    A group of Finnish developers are convinced that Solu, a revolutionary, beautiful and minimalist computer, will change the way you think about computing.

  • What Features Did Windows 10 Steal From Linux?

    Three months have passed since Microsoft launched its new OS, the Windows 10, which will be the last edition of Windows. This means that, from now on, the developers will release only updates and will continue to improve this platform. But what did Windows 10 bring new? Of course, many features. But are they… new, or inspired from other OS? Let’s see what Microsoft stole from Linux.

  • Linux: When Uniformity is Good

    We’ve been in this bid’ness for ten years now. The business of giving Linux-powered computers to kids who cannot afford this technology, or any technology for that matter. And so far so good. There have been some lessons learned along the way. Some of those lessons small but valuable. Some of those lessons so painful that we had no choice but to change the way we do things. And never doubt…there were uh, spirited discussions about this change. Yeah, we’ll stick to “spirited”. I’ve been to football matches in Great Britain and Germany that couldn’t come close to such levels of “spirit.” So which thing could bring about this measure of “spirited” discussion?

  • Desktop

    • GALPon Minino Another Lightweight Linux Distribution For 10+ Years OLD Computers

      Here we have “GALPon minino” another Linux distribution that is based on Debian and designed for computers older than 10 years or more. The distro comes with LXDE Desktop Environment and a set of applications that fulfills the day-to-day needs of the users without slowing down the machine.

    • Linux is about choice, control, and learning something new

      For me Linux is about choice, control, and learning something new. I think that’s one reason it’s not as “easy” for some people. Some prefer a mouse with just one button because there’s less to confuse. Personally, I’d rather have a 20-button mouse for more flexibility and spend two hours making it work my way. And yes, I run Gnome 3 because I like it, not because I have to.

    • System76 Releases The Wild Dog Pro, Their First Skylake Linux PC

      Our friends at System76 today announced the release of their first Skylake system. This first computer using Intel’s latest-generation processors is a desktop that’s part of the Wild Dog Pro family.

      The new System76 Wild Dog Pro features a Skylake CPU with options for a Core i5 or i7, Intel HD Graphics 530 or NVIDIA graphics up through a GeForce GTX 980, up to 64GB of DDR4 memory, and SSD options.

    • System76 unveils Skylake-powered Wild Dog Pro with Ubuntu Linux 15.10 ‘Wily Werewolf’

      Linux-based operating systems are wonderful for many reasons, such as being lightweight and secure. One of my favorite aspects, however, is the open and customizable nature. Ubuntu, for example, is one of the best operating systems, but if you do not like the default Unity environment, you can simply choose another — not so with Windows or OS X.

    • System76 Launches Wild Dog Pro Powered by Ubuntu 15.10 and Intel Skylake

      System76 just revealed the new Ubuntu 15.10-powered Wild Dog Pro desktop with the 6th Generation Intel Core ‘Skylake’ processor is available in their stores.

  • Server

    • ONOS, ODL closer to cooperating on open source controller

      Two open source groups building separate software-defined networking (SDN) controllers are now part of the Linux Foundation, increasing the likelihood of cross-project collaboration.

      This week, the Open Networking Lab (ON.Lab) placed its Open Networking Operating System (ONOS) project under the foundation. ONOS developers are building a carrier-grade SDN open source controller.

    • Greater collaboration would be a boon for open networking projects

      With so many projects, though, it seems that eventually there will have to be some consolidation among the projects … or at least an overall standard that everyone can agree on. Last week, ON.Lab’s ONOS project was added to the ever-growing list of Linux Foundation projects. It joins several other open source networking projects that are Linux Foundation projects, including the OpenDaylight Project, OPNFV and IO Visor.

    • ONOS chief architect hopes to add clustering features over the next year

      Now a Linux Foundation project, the Open Network Operating System project is likely to attract more attention.

      On the CloudRouter Project’s blog, Thomas Vachuska, ONOS’s chief architect, indicated that since ON.Lab launched the open source software-defined networking project in December 2014, several collaborators and contributors have joined. The number is growing, he noted. It will probably do so more rapidly now that ONOS is a Linux Foundation project.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 4.3-rc6

      Things continue to be calm, and in fact have gotten progressively calmer. All of which makes me really happy, although my suspicious nature looks for things to blame. Are people just on their best behavior because the Kernel Summit is imminent, and everybody is putting their best foot forward?

      Or maybe this just ended up being one of those rare painless releases when nothing bad happens.

      That would be lovely.

    • Exclusive Interview: Max Ogden of HyperOS

      HyperOS is a nifty solution for those who want to run their own containerized environment on desktops or laptops for development purpose. HyperOS supports Linux, Mac, and soon Windows and is intended to be used primarily as a end-user CLI tool on workstations. We reached out to Max Ogden who leads the development team.

    • GROBR: a drama queen quits the Linux community

      Sharp, who had been maintainer of the USB 3.0 tree, came to prominence two years ago when she attacked Linux creator Linus Torvalds, who is also head of the kernel project, for his verbal attacks on other developers who erred in their coding. It turned out that she had planned this to perfection.

      The whole episode bears some re-examining, especially in light of the fact that since the 2013 exchange between Sharp and Torvalds, the latter has not spoken a word against anyone. The Linux Foundation, his employer, took note of the exchange by putting some curbs on him in the form of what it called a code of conflict which was merged into the kernel itself.

    • Media Advisory: Linux Foundation Releases Episode 2 in World Without Linux Series

      The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development, today announced the immediate release of episode 2 in its World Without Linux digital video series.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Intel minions create fast open source graphics

        Chipmaker Intel has set its minions the task of creating a high-performance software rasteriser for the Linux Mesa 3D Graphics Library.

        Mesa currently uses swrast, LLVMpipe, and Softpipe drivers as software rasterisers that run OpenGL on the CPU rather than any dedicated GPU. But apparently Intel’s minions have been developing a new, high-performance software rasteriser.

      • Intel Has Developed a Super Fast Linux Software Rasterizer Called OpenSWR

        Intel employees Tim Rowley and Bruce Cherniak have published a very intriguing announcement on the Mesa 3D Graphics Library development mailing list, informing us about their new software project developed within a small team at Intel.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Plasma 5.5 Will Have a Quicklaunch Applet, New Bluetooth Devices KCM

        KDE developer David Rosca has published an interesting article on his blog to inform us all about the work he has done on the upcoming and highly anticipated KDE Plasma 5.5 desktop environment.

      • Some thoughts on the quality of Plasma 5

        Last week we got quite some criticism about the quality of KDE Plasma 5 on the Internet. This came rather surprising for us and is at least in my opinion highly undeserved. So far what we saw is that Plasma has a high quality – probably better than previous iterations of what was known as the KDE Desktop Environment – and got lots of praise for the state it is in. So how come that there is such a discrepancy between what we see and what our users see?

      • 19 Years of KDE History: Step by Step

        KDE – one of most functional desktop environment ever. It’s open source and free for use. 19 years ago, 14 october 1996 german programmer Matthias Ettrich has started a development of this beautiful environment. KDE provides the shell and many applications for everyday using. Today KDE uses the hundred thousand peoples over the world on Unix and Windows operating system. 19 years – serious age for software projects. Time to return and see how it begin.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GNOME 3.20 Arrives on March 23, 2016, Here’s the Full Release Schedule

        Now that GNOME 3.18 has been introduced and it already has a first point release, and many of us GNU/Linux users are starting to upgrade our old GNOME 3.16 desktop environments to the new and improved version, the time has come to learn some information about the next major release, GNOME 3.20.

  • Distributions

    • Reviews

      • The friendly face of Linux Lite 2.6

        I greatly enjoyed my time with Linux Lite 2.6. The distribution does a lot of things well, is easy to set up and use and the project offers us a lot of beginner friendly documentation. Linux Lite provides a great balance of speed, user friendliness, features and stability.

        I like that Linux Lite manages to live up to its name by using few resources while still looking nice, the distribution manages to provide a stable base while shipping with up to date desktop applications and it offers good hardware support too. It is especially nice to see a distribution provide a control panel similar to the OpenMandriva Control Centre. This is one of the features I have most wanted to see adopted by distributions outside of the OpenMandriva family and it’s nice to see Linux Lite take the lead on this one.

        Lite ships with a good deal of functionality, providing users with most of the desktop software they are likely to need without, I’m happy to report, bogging down the application menu with a lot of extras, I feel a good balance was struck with regards to the default applications. Plus, I like that Lite offers us multimedia support out of the box.

        Mostly, what I appreciated about Linux Lite was the distribution’s sense of polish. I don’t mean visually, though I did enjoy Lite’s default look, I mean polish in the sense that the little details were addressed. Most distributions will have some small bugs or quirks or little annoyances. Perhaps too many notification messages or an application that won’t launch or the software manager will not always run properly because PackageKit refuses to relinquish its lock on the package database. Linux Lite, by contrast, offered a smooth, pleasant experience. The one bug I ran into was with the system installer locking up when I attempted to use Btrfs as my root file system. Otherwise, I had a completely trouble-free experience with Lite. The documentation was helpful, the system was responsive, no applications crashed, there were no annoying notifications and the package manager worked as expected. I came away from my trial with Lite sharing the opinion that Linux Lite deserves more credit than it gets.

      • Liquid Lemur Linux Floats Fluid Desktop Design

        Developer Edward Snyder recently released the second alpha version of Liquid Lemur Linux 2.0. It offers a hybrid desktop experience that combines the Window Maker window manager with elements of the Xfce desktop.

    • New Releases

    • Arch Family

      • Manjaro 15.09 (Bellatrix) Receives One of the Biggest Updates So Far

        The developers of Manjaro 15.09 (Bellatrix) have issued yet another update for the operating system, and they say that it’s one of the biggest ones made available so far. One look at the changelog makes it clear why that is the case.

      • 5 Ways to Make Arch Linux More Stable

        Arch Linux has a reputation for being unstable and hard to use. The distribution is bleeding edge, so its public perception is understandable. It is because of this fact that we’ve decided to compile a list of the top five ways to improve the stability of Arch.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Rescatux 0.40 Beta 1 Live CD Adds SELinux Support, Based on Debian 8 Jessie

          Adrian Raulete has informed Softpedia about the release of the first Beta build of his upcoming Rescatux 0.40 Live CD, which can be used for performing system administration tasks on both GNU/Linux and Windows PCs.

        • The status of the Devuan project, presented at Opennebula

          tomorrow our fellow VUA Alberto Zuin will be presenting Devuan at the OpenNebula conference 2015 in Barcelona…

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) Release Candidate Images Out Now

            Canonical has started seeding the RC (Release Candidate) ISO images of the anticipated Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) operating system to testers worldwide to hunt down the last remaining bugs for the October 22 release.

          • The First Malicious App Enters The Ubuntu Touch Store & Quickly Removed

            First malicious app entered the ubuntu touch app store
            If you’re using Ubuntu Touch then this is for you. Recently the first malicious app has entered into the Ubuntu touch store by bypassing the security measurements. The app does some malicious activities and changes the default flash screen without any permission. Fortunately, the app called “test” has been quickly removed from the store after being noticed.

          • Attacker slips malware past Ubuntu Phone checks

            Canonical has issued a security advisory to all fifteen people who installed a particular Ubuntu Phone app.

            While its reach might be trivial, the bug itself was serious: someone worked out how to bypass checks that are supposed to protect the Ubuntu Phone operating system’s single-click app installation process.

          • Ubuntu Touch OTA-7 Update Released, Brings Improved App Startup Times

            Canonical has announced that the latest OTA-7 update for Ubuntu Touch has been released, and users should start receiving the notifications. It’s a phase system, and not everyone will be prompted at once to upgrade.

          • Canonical Prepares Ubuntu 15.10 Linux Open Source OS for Final Release

            Ubuntu 15.10, aptly code-named Wily Werewolf, will officially debut this week from Canonical, bringing with it a surprising number of new features. Here’s what to expect in the newest version of the popular Linux-based open source operating system.

          • Ubuntu 15.10 Is Coming This Week & AMD’s Catalyst Chokes On Its Kernel

            Ubuntu 15.10 is set to be released on Thursday, but those dependent upon the AMD Catalyst proprietary graphics driver for Linux gaming or the like might want to hold off on upgrading… While there is the latest Catalyst driver packaged and it’s been patched to work against the Wily Werewolf’s default Linux 4.2 kernel, it doesn’t seem to work reliably.

          • Ubuntu UI Toolkit Updated to Help You Build and Design Apps for Ubuntu Phones

            Ubuntu community member Kevin Feyder has shared with us an update to the Ubuntu UI Toolkit, an open-source project designed from the ground up to help Ubuntu application developers and designers build and design apps for Ubuntu phones.

          • GPS Navigation App for Ubuntu Phones Has Just Become Amazing – Gallery

            After announcing at the end of August 2015 that the next major release of the uNav GPS navigation app for Ubuntu Phones would be amazing, Marcos Costales has had the pleasure of announcing the immediate availability of uNav 0.30.

          • AMD Radeon R9 290: Ubuntu 15.04 vs. 15.10 – Don’t Expect Much Better Performance

            While thwarted by some open-source Radeon DRM issues, here are some Radeon R9 290 “Hawaii” graphics card benchmarks between Ubuntu 15.04 vs. 15.10 for those curious.

            In still working through a larger comparison and also now running into the lack of working AMD Catalyst support on Ubuntu 15.10, tonight to share are just some Radeon R9 290 “Hawaii” GPU numbers under Ubuntu 15.04 and Ubuntu 15.10 out-of-the-box.

          • Ubuntu Celebrates 11 Years Since “Warty Warthog” Release

            Just 11 short years ago, Mark Shuttleworth was announcing the release of Ubuntu 4.10 “The Warty Warthog.” It changes the way people were using Linux distribution, and it’s still to this day a force in the open source world.

          • Canonical Takes the Wraps Off Ubuntu 15.10 Linux Distro

            Canonical, the lead commercial sponsor behind the open-source Ubuntu Linux distribution, is set to debut its latest release on Oct. 22. Ubuntu 15.10, also referred to as the Wily Werewolf, follows the Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet release that debuted April 23. Ubuntu 15.10 includes an updated Firefox 41 Web browser, LibreOffice 5 office suite and other desktop tools. The desktop itself has been further refined for stability and performance to help improve the user experience. One of the only user-visible changes on the desktop is the use of Gnome overlay scroll bars, which provide a more streamlined approach to window scrolling in Ubuntu 15.10. On the server side, Ubuntu 15.10 now includes the new OpenStack Liberty cloud release that debuted last week. The LXD container hypervisor also gets a boost in the new Ubuntu 15.10 release, providing users with the ability to scale container deployments securely. Sitting underneath server and desktop editions of Ubuntu 15.10 is the Linux 4.2 kernel that Linus Torvalds unveiled on Aug. 30. Here’s a look at key features in the Ubuntu 15.10 Linux distribution release.

          • Ubuntu 15.10 Is Going Through Final Testing

            Canonical is ready to release a new version of Ubuntu, 15.10, and it’s doing some final testing. The new version should arrive in just a couple of days.

          • Canonical Explains Its Convergence Goals

            Canonical’s converge goal has been a lofty one right from the start, but the company didn’t fully explain what they really wanted with it. Their goals for convergence changed over the years, and only now they point out exactly what’s this convergence all about.

          • Ubuntu 15.10 Now Supports Steam Controllers After Being Patched

            Ubuntu 15.10 will ship with support for the Steam Controller after the developers have fixed a couple of problems that prevented this particular device to work.

          • The Impact Of Switching To Linux 4.3 + Mesa-11.1/LLVM-3.8 On Ubuntu 15.10

            Yesterday I posted some performance results of a Radeon R9 290 tested on Ubuntu 15.04 and Ubuntu 15.10 out-of-the-box. In this article are some numbers when upgrading the Ubuntu 15.10 installation to use the non-standard Linux 4.3 Git kernel as well as Mesa 11.1-devel Git that’s built against LLVM 3.8 SVN for the newest open-source AMD Linux experience.

          • Canonical Patches Two Linux Kernel Vulnerabilities in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

            Canonical announced earlier today, October 20, that they’ve released updated kernel packages for the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system, patching two security vulnerabilities.

          • Canonical Releases Important Security Patches for Ubuntu 15.04 and 14.04 LTS

            After announcing the general availability of a new kernel version of its Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system, Canonical published details about an important security patch for the kernel packages of Ubuntu 15.04 and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

          • Ubuntu Touch OTA-7 Fully Deployed, Developers Begin Work on OTA-8

            In the last hours of October 20, Canonical’s Łukasz Zemczak sent in his daily report to inform us all about the things that happened in the Ubuntu Touch world since the release of the OTA-7 software update on October 19, 2015.

          • Ubuntu UI Toolkit Updated To Help Build Better User Interface

            Ubuntu community member Kevin Feyder recently shared an update regarding Ubuntu UI Toolkit, an open-source project designed from the ground up to facilitate Ubuntu application developers so they can best design and build apps for Ubuntu powered phones. The toolkit also has Suru Icon Template in it that allows users to create consistent icons for their Ubuntu phone apps.

            “If anyone is interested in building or designing for the Ubuntu phone. I just updated my vector ui toolkit. You can find it at: https://github.com/halfsail/Ubuntu-UI-Toolkit ,” said Kevin Feyder in a Google+ post.

            There are also the Ubuntu Ui Patterns, a set of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) images that help application developers create mockup layouts for the Ubuntu Phone, and Device Stickersheet, a collection of Ubuntu devices that help mocking the UI.

          • Ubuntu celebrates 11th birthday, looks ahead to smartphone/desktop convergence

            11 years ago the first version of Ubuntu was released: Ubuntu 4.10 Warty Warthog. Later this week Canonical will release Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf.

          • Ubuntu 15.10 Release Candidate Available For Final Bug Testing

            Canonical has started sending out Release Candidate ISO images of Ubuntu’s next iteration, the Wily Werewolf (version 15.10) to testers worldwide so they can find out the bugs and report back prior to the official October 22nd release date of the OS.

            Ubuntu 15.10 is currently in the Final Freeze stage of development, which means that the OS will not get any new features and updates, except for fixes for critical security vulnerabilities and major bugs that might be discovered during the testing period of the Release Candidate images.

          • Ubuntu Phone Faces First Security Attack against Open Source Mobile OS

            Ubuntu Phone, the open source mobile OS from Canonical, has suffered its first security vulnerability in the form of an attack that gave hackers root access to Ubuntu-based smartphones.

          • Ubuntu to-do list

            EVERY time I install a new version of Ubuntu, I go through the same routine of installing extra programs that give me the convenience and extra functionality I need on my home computer. I’ve not been terribly organized about it, however, and often end up doing a number of online searches each time to recall what it was I did to get those applications and utilities onto my machine.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Sonic Pi uses code to compose a dance party

      Sam Aaron is a live coder who considers programming a performance. He created Sonic Pi, an open source live coding synthesizer that lets people use code to compose and perform in classical and contemporary styles ranging from canons to dubstep. By day, Aaron works as a research associate at the University of Cambridge. By night, he codes music for people to dance to.

    • 5 Things Only a Raspberry Pi 2 Can Do

      The latest edition of the pint-sized computer is awesome. It’s faster, bolder, and comes with a souped-up CPU and double the RAM. Simply put, it’s a significantly more capable machine. But you probably already knew that.

      The iterative nature of hardware releases means that each new arrival is inevitably faster and more powerful than what preceded it, but often without any meaningful difference. But the Raspberry Pi 2 is radically different. It can do a whole lot more than what preceded it.

    • Rugged, wireless-capable COM runs Linux on Sitara AM57x

      CompuLab unveiled a COM based on TI’s new Cortex-A15 based Sitara AM57x SoC, with options for onboard wireless, up to 32GB flash, and -40 to 85°C operation.

      When it ships in December, CompuLab’s “CL-SOM-AM57x” computer-on-module will closely follow the BeagleBoard-X15 as one of the first embedded boards to integrate TI’s newly announced Sitara AM57x system-on-chip. Aimed at industrial automation and control IoT applications, the Linux-supported CL-SOM-AM57x COM is available with an optional “SB-SOM-AM57x” carrier board. The COM and carrier board are also available pre-integrated, as the “SBC-AM57x” sandwich-style single board computer (see farther below).

    • Raspberry Pi 2 doppelganger runs Linux on 1.8GHz Atom x5

      Aaeon launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a Raspberry Pi form-factor “Up” SBC, that runs Linux and Android on a quad-core, 1.84GHz, Intel Atom x5 SoC.

      Embedded board maker Aaeon Europe, a subsidiary of Asus, went to Kickstarter to launch “Up” SBC with the same 85.6 x 56.5mm footprint, port layout, and expansion interface as the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B. Instead of a 900MHz Broadcom ARM SoC, however, the Up board features an x86-based Intel Atom x5-Z8300 system-on-chip from the 14nm Cherry Trail generation clocked to 1.33GHz or 1.84GHz.

    • Watch: Juju Status Flasher on Ubuntu Snappy Core with Raspberry Pi 2

      Matt Williams has shared with us a proof-of-concept project, which has been in the works for some time now and aims to help developers combine the power of the Juju orchestration tool with the innovative Ubuntu Snappy Core operating system.

    • Tiny Snapdragon 600 module includes WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS

      The tiny 50 x 28mm “Inforce 6401 Micro SOM” module runs Android 4.4 or Ubuntu on a Snapdragon 600 SoC, and offers built-in WiFi-ac, BT 4.0, and GPS/GLONASS.

      Inforce Computing’s “Inforce 6401” computer-on-module has the same 50 x 28mm footprint and many of the same features as its higher-end Inforce 6501 COM, which runs on a quad-core 2.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 805. The 6401 model instead adopts the Snapdragon 600 (formerly S4 Pro) SoC, which has enjoyed wide adoption in embedded circles.

    • DragonBox Pyra Linux Handheld Now Available To Pre-Order (video)

      First unveiled back in 2014 in its first edition, the latest version of the DragonBox Pyra Linux handheld gaming console is now available to pre-order price at €290 or roughly $330.

      Unfortunately the final price of the Linux handheld will be more than the pre-order deposit pricing but as yet has not been revealed by the systems developers.

    • PHYTEC Announces a New System-on-module (SOM) Based on the New Sitara™ AM57x Processor Family from Texas Instruments

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source Tracked Robot Supports STEM in Africa

    We’d bet most Hackaday readers won’t need the software, anyway. The robot clearly uses RC servos for the drive and the little arm at the front, so controlling it directly from the Arduino ought to be easy enough. If you don’t want to roll your own, Senegal-based Azibot is taking preorders for kits for $99. We were a little surprised you couldn’t kick in a little more when you ordered to subsidize other kits for schools in need.

  • My Free and Open Source Photography Workflow

    After several years of trial and error, I finally have a complete RAW photography workflow in Linux that I am happy with.

    The applications in this workflow aren’t just native to Linux, they are also free, open source software (FOSS). There is no need to dual boot, use WINE or a virtual machine. It’s a pure FOSS photography workflow running in Linux.

  • Coinprism Launches Open Source Distributed Ledger

    lockchain technology company Coinprism has released Openchain, an open source, distributed permissioned ledger that targets enterprise and financial institutions.

  • Imply launches with $2M to commercialize the Druid open-source data store

    Some of the first few people to work on the Druid open-source data store are today launching a new startup, Imply, with $2 million in seed funding from Khosla Ventures.

    Think of this as the next big-data startup to spin out, in the vein of Hadoop-oriented Hortonworks (former Yahoo), Kafka startup Confluent (former LinkedIn), and Drill startup Dremio (former MapR). In this case, Imply is spinning out of advertising analytics startup Metamarkets.

  • Apache HTTP Server Adds HTTP/2 Support for Speed and Security

    Apache HTTP Server, the open source web server that controls around half of the market, has become the latest platform to support HTTP/2, a major security- and efficiency-focused revision of the protocol computers use to download information from the web.

  • AllSeen Alliance Adds Security Updates to Open Source IoT Platform

    The AllSeen Alliance claims to have made open source Internet of Things (IoT) development more secure with the latest update to its AllJoyn IoT framework, Security 2.0. The new feature brings authentication, device authorization and encryption enhancements to the platform.

  • Open Source Survey Cites Value

    Open source practices have been revolutionizing the way we build software for a while now. Besides providing a wealth of low-cost and well-built components, open source software has been the catalyst behind some of the most exciting new technology developments of our time: cloud computing, software-defined networking, online software delivery and more. Open source practices are also beginning to impact hardware engineering via initiatives such as the maker movement, 3D printing and low-cost platforms such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi.

  • The Impact of Netflix’s Open Source Software Development

    Much of Netflix’s success can be attributed to the open source environment that it has created for its products and services. Since Netflix began to realize the benefits of making its software available through open source, the company has released more than 50 projects for input on its Github page. And due to its open source preference, usage and success in code software development, Netflix has assisted in legitimizing open source as a powerful tool for many organizations.

  • Apple…Google…AllSeen Alliance: Is the Internet of Things Getting Fragmented?
  • AllSeen Alliance’s IoT Framework Gets Major Security Enhancements
  • Walmart’s cloud is open source for the wrong reasons

    Walmart Stores is entering into cloud computing … kinda. Last week, Walmart announced it will open-source the cloud technology it has built up following its acquisition of OneOp about two years ago. (Walmart maintains a 2,000-person presence in Silicon Valley.) Walmart says it will upload the source code to GitHub by 2016.

    For Walmart, this is all about putting a dent in the growth of its major rival Amazon.com. Amazon has been giving Walmart fits on the retail side for the last decade. Now Walmart is moving the battle to the cloud, with Walmart basically declaring that Amazon Web Services means cloud lock-in that enterprises can avoid if they use the open source Walmart technology instead.

  • Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) Plans To Open Source Its Cloud Management Platform

    There are serious cloud projects going on at Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT)’s WalmartLabs, and the company has indicated its willingness to freely share whatever it is cooking in the cloud. Wal-Mart intends to open source the cloud management technology that its WalmartLabs team in Silicon Valley is developing. With Wal-Mart involved in cloud publishing, disruption of cloud can be seen reaching far.

  • Affectio Societatis

    There is a mystery of sorts about the reasons people have (or think they have) to contribute to a Free and Open Source Software project. It seems very few people can explain it and it continues to puzzle everyone in the industry, the press and the governments alike.

  • Events

    • Tizen Developer Summit 2015 Bengaluru – Inaugural Keynote
    • Linaro Connect US ’15

      One of the items that came out of Linux plumbers for me was discussion on the future of the Ion memory manager for Android. While not as relevant to my day to day work anymore, I still have a lot of background knowledge and input to give. Linaro Connect happened a little over a month after plumbers and I was up there for the week, mostly for Ion and other ARM talks. (Non-technically, being at Linaro Connect also meant I could avoid the chaos in my apartment from an impending move. Yay for convenient excuses!)

    • LinuxCon Europe 2015 in Dublin

      The second day was opened by Leigh Honeywell and she was talking about how to secure an Open Future. An interesting case study, she said, was Heartbleed. Researchers found that vulnerability and went through the appropriate vulnerability disclosure channels, but the information leaked although there was an embargo in place. In fact, the bug proofed to be exploited for a couple of months already. Microsoft, her former employer, had about ten years of a head start in developing a secure development life-cycle. The trick is, she said, to have plans in place in case of security vulnerabilities. You throw half of your plan away, anyway, but it’s good to have that practice of knowing who to talk to and all. She gave a few recommendations of which she thinks will enable us to write secure code. Coders should review, learn, and speak up if they feel uncomfortable with a piece of code. Managers could take up on what she called “smells” when people tend to be fearful about their code. Of course, MicroSoft’s SDL also contains many good practices. Her minimal set of practices is to have a self-assessment in place to determine if something needs security review, have an up-front threat modelling that is kept up to date as things evolve, have a security checklist like Mozilla’s or OWASP’s, and have security analysis built into CI process.

    • Second Round of systemd.conf 2015 Sponsors

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • UK Government Kicks Out Microsoft Office and Adopts LibreOffice

      The UK Government is looking to shed its dependency on proprietary software and entered into a new commercial deal with an open source software company Collabora Productivity that adapts LibreOffice for the use in enterprise environments.

    • Government Open Source Office deal set to provide major savings

      UK Government buyers have signed a new commercial deal for Open Source office applications on desktop, mobile, and cloud. The “Cloud Transition Agreement” between the Crown Commercial Service (CCS), an executive arm of the Cabinet Office, and British Open Source software firm Collabora Productivity, states the Government’s commitment to Open Source and Open Document Format, and offers major cost savings for public sector bodies.

    • LibreOffice 5.1 Arrives in February 2016, First Bug Hunting Session Announced

      The Document Foundation, through Italo Vignoli, has had the great pleasure of announcing that the first bug hunting session for the upcoming LibreOffice 5.1 office suite will take place between October 30 and November 1, 2015.

    • Upcoming Features of LibreOffice 5.1

      We reported earlier that The Document Foundation non-profit organization announced the first bug hunting session for the upcoming LibreOffice 5.1 open-source office suite.

  • CMS

    • What’s top of mind for a Drupal web developer at Georgia Tech

      That both open source and education have core commitments to sharing knowledge freely and to impacting the world for good through collaboration. We also share a similar challenge of how to encourage many small and unique contributions to a very large-scale project. There is some fascinating work going on in India to create social infrastructure in and around schools that makes Drupal knowledge and community easier to build and sustain.

  • BSD

    • An OpenBSD History Lesson to Mark the Open Source OS’s 20th Birthday

      OpenBSD, the open source Unix-like operating system that today mostly lives in Linux’s shadow, turns 20 this month. To mark the occasion, here’s some historical background on one of the only major “open source” operating systems to have survived without embracing the GNU GPL license.

    • Deweloperzy OpenBSD: Vadim Zhukov

      I’m a 30 years old programmer/sysadmin with wide range of interests from Moscow, Russia. I’m working in IT industry for about half of my life, and last few years I’m also a freelance teacher at Moscow State University of Information Technologies, Radiotechnics and Electronics (ex. Moscow State Institute of Radio Engineering, Electronics and Automation). I have a daughter (best one in the world, of course), which was born at October, 18 – you may call this a Fate. :)

    • EuroBSDCon 2014 Videos Online

      No, that’s not a typo; the videos for EuroBSDCon 2014 are finally online.

    • Deweloperzy OpenBSD: Ingo Schwarze

      Since 2001, so for almost three quarters of its history by now. Originally, it was pure chance. A coworker who used to run various Linux distributions repeatedly got his boxes rooted. Instead of properly securing them, he proposed to try OpenBSD. I said i didn’t care much which system he used. At that time, i was used to working on many different Unix and Unix-like systems (DEC OSF/1, Ultix, HP-UX, AIX, SuSE Linux, Debian GNU/Linux …) and OpenBSD looked like just another Unix-like system, so why not.

    • Linux Top 3: Robolinux 8.2, Bodhi Linux and OpenBSD 5.8

      Lots of changes debut in the new OpenBSD 5.8 release including some interesting security updates.

    • Microsoft taps open source LLVM compiler for cross-platform .Net

      Consider the LLILC project. Rather than reinvent the wheel, Microsoft’s new compiler for its CoreCLR .Net runtime leverages an existing cross-platform compiler framework: LLVM. Now six months into the project, its maintainers — a foundation comprised largely but not exclusively of folks from Microsoft — reports “great progress” with LLILC, but also “much still to do.”

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • France’s citizens vote in favour of open source

      France’s citizens are in favour of their public administrations’ use of free and open source software. France should also implement this type of software in education, according to the results of a public consultation on France’s Digital Republic bill (La République numérique). After twenty days of public debate and voting on proposals, the consultation ended on Sunday. La République numérique – the Digital Republic – drew 147,710 votes, received 8501 proposals and attracted 21,330 participants.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Spain shares database model of school student records

      Spain’s Ministry of Education has made public a database model for school student records. By sharing the technical specifications for storing and querying the student records, the ministry is encouraging the interoperability of software solutions.

    • Open Data

      • Governments should open APIs to core services

        Governments should build or help build application programming interfaces (APIs) to their core eGovernment services, says Kimmo Mäkinen, development manager at Finland’s Ministry of Finance. “We must offer an open API’s for software developers, not just the end-user interface”, he said.

    • Open Access/Content

      • InFocus: Should NIU adopt an open-source textbook program?

        The Affordable College Textbook Act, a bill reintroduced by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) on Oct. 8, would encourage universities to support pilot programs that create digital and print open-source textbooks. Universities participating in the programs would be required to create digital educational resources that would be printable and available free of charge, according to the act.

      • Letter: Open source textbooks can combat rising prices

        My name is Meghan Healey. I’m an undeclared freshman. Being on this exploratory track, most of my textbooks were relatively cheap, but they were still more expensive than they should be. If all textbooks were as “cheap” as my American Politics class, students would still have to pay at least $150 in order to have a proper education. This $150 could have been spent toward my tuition, my meal plan, or a plentiful amount of other academic expenses. Geology Textbook: $50. Environmental Science Packet: $30. Sustainability Book: $10. Freshman Seminar: $20. iClicker 2 for American Politics: $60. American Politics Textbook: $90 My total? $260. What should it be? Priceless.

    • Open Hardware

      • Ultimaker Releases Open Source Files for Ultimaker 2 Go and Extended

        For Dutch 3D printer manufacturer Ultimaker, being open sourced has been part of who the company was since the very beginning, and their early success can easily be traced directly back to their loyal community of users. Their first 3D printer, the Ultimaker Original, was already a great 3D printer and remains (despite being four years old) one of the most reliable 3D printers available today. And from the very beginning Ultimaker has encouraged their community to help them make the Original better, and they certainly have. In fact, many of the improvements created by the community for their personal Originals were implemented into their next 3D printer, the Ultimaker 2 and the resulting Ultimaker 2 family of 3D printers.

  • Programming

    • File::Slurp is broken and wrong

      If your needs are average (which is the case for most people), I’d recommend Path::Tiny. This provides a well-balanced set of functions for dealing with file paths and contents.

Leftovers

  • Steve Ballmer Says He Owns 4% Stake in Twitter

    Former Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer has acquired a 4 percent stake in Twitter Inc., giving him a bigger holding than the social-media company’s new CEO, Jack Dorsey.

    “Glad I bought 4% past few months,” the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team tweeted Friday. He praised Dorsey, who was appointed last week, for making the company “leaner, more focused.”

  • Steve Ballmer Buys Into Twitter

    In a tweet sent on Thursday evening, Mr. Ballmer, the former chief executive of Microsoft, said he had acquired a 4 percent stake in Twitter, becoming one of the single-largest outside shareholders of the company. He also praised one of the company’s new products, Moments, which organizes tweets on specific topics.

  • Northern EU leaders to discuss government modernisation

    Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur Davið Gunnlaugsson has invited his colleagues from the Nordic countries, the Baltic states and the United Kingdom to discuss government modernisation. The Northern Future Forum is to take place in Reykjavík on 28 and 29 October and will focus on simpler, smarter and innovative public services.

  • Hardware

    • Good luck repairing anything in the new iMac

      If you’ve read our review of the new iMac, you already know that a majority of what’s really new about Apple’s latest all-in-one is its accessories. The destructive folks over at iFixit say that the 21.5-inch model has what “looks like” an LG ultra-HD display and a Texas Instruments chip, while the fan and HDD are the same — the speakers are too. The logic board is where the surprises come in, and they might not make you too happy. Configure a machine without flash storage or a Fusion Drive? You won’t be able to add one at a later date because those don’t include an onboard connector to do so.

    • Is Apple’s new 4K iMac a total ripoff?

      Apple delivered the 4K iMac many fans have been waiting for this week, but it’s not quite the all-in-one powerhouse some were expecting. Look past its beautiful design and you’ll find a lot of drawbacks you probably wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) expect to get with a $1,500 computer.

  • Security

    • Tuesday’s security updates
    • Why Aren’t There Better Cybersecurity Regulations for Medical Devices?

      This summer, the Food and Drug Administration warned hospitals to stop using a line of drug pumps because of a cybersecurity risk: a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to remotely deliver a fatal dose to a patient. SAINT Corporation engineer Jeremy Richards, one of the researchers who discovered the vulnerability, called the drug pump the “the least secure IP enabled device I’ve ever touched in my life.”

      There is a growing body of research that shows just how defenseless many critical medical devices are to cyberattack. Research over the last couple of years has revealed that hundreds of medical devices use hard-coded passwords. Other devices use default admin passwords, then warn hospitals in the documentation not to change them.

    • Congress Introduces Provision That Could Make Vehicle Security Research Illegal

      Far too often Congress proposes tech legislation that is either poorly researched or poorly drafted (or both). Fortunately, most of the bills don’t advance. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to dissuade Congress from constantly writing these types of bills. The House Energy and Commerce Committee released such a bill last week. It’s only a discussion draft and hasn’t been introduced as a formal bill yet, but its provisions would not only effectively put the brakes on car security research, but also immunize auto manufactures from FTC privacy enforcement when (not if) they fail to secure our cars. It’s a classic one-two punch from Congress: not understanding something and then deciding to draft a bill about it anyway.

    • Crypto researchers: Time to use something better than 1024-bit encryption

      It’s possible for entities with vast computing resources – such as the NSA and major national governments – to compromise commonly used Diffie-Hellman keys, and over time more groups will be able to afford cracking them as computing costs go down.

    • The first rule of zero-days is no one talks about zero-days (so we’ll explain)

      How do you defend yourself against the unknown? That is crux of the zero-day vulnerability: a software vulnerability that, by definition, is unknown by the user of the software and often its developer as well.

      Everything about the zero-day market, from research and discovery through disclosure and active exploitation, is predicated upon this fear of the unknown—a fear that has been amplified and distorted by the media. Is the world really at threat of destabilisation due to lone-wolf hackers digging up vulnerabilities in popular software packages and selling them to whichever repressive government offers the most money? Or is it just a classic case of the media and megacorp lobbyists focusing on the sexy, scary, offensive side of things, and glossing over the less alluring aspects?

    • List of Linux System Hardening Resources

      My recent post about how quickly newly commissioned Linux systems can be attacked and possibly compromised led to a bunch of e-mail queries about resources which explain how to lock down a variety of Linux distributions. Most such guides are distribution specific because, while the basic principles are always the same, there are significant differences between distributions and even versions of the same distribution that make writing a generic guide difficult at best.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • A ‘second Snowden’ leaks to the Intercept about ‘drone wars’

      The same reporters who received documents from former NSA worker Edward Snowden are now publishing information from a second governmental source.

    • A Second Snowden Has Leaked a Mother Lode of Drone Docs

      It’s been just over two years since Edward Snowden leaked a massive trove of NSA documents, and more than five since Chelsea Manning gave WikiLeaks a megacache of military and diplomatic secrets. Now there appears to be a new source on that scale of classified leaks—this time with a focus on drones.

    • Ramstein ‘involved US drone programs,’ says former US drone operator

      A former US drone operator says the US Ramstein airbase in Germany had a key role to play in US drone strikes. Brandon Bryant was answering questions from a parliamentary committee investigating the NSA.

    • Former US drone operator to get German whistleblower award

      A former U.S. Air Force drone sensor operator, who spoke to German media about Ramstein Air Base’s alleged role in the U.S. drone war, is one of two people being honored Friday with a biennial “whistleblower award” in Germany.

      Brandon Bryant and French molecular biologist Gilles-Eric Seralini, whose research showed the popular herbicide Roundup to be toxic to animals, will each receive a prize of 3,000 euros from the Federation of German Scientists and the German Section of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms. The awards were to be presented at a ceremony Friday in Karlsruhe.

    • The Oil Weapon: 42 Years After the OPEC Oil Embargo

      Forty-two years ago today, a series of events on the other side of the world culminated in the strategic and crippling use of oil as a political weapon. As a result, the United States entered into the most devastating economic recession to hit the nation since the Great Depression.

    • Pakistan seeks explanation from former defence minister who said Osama bin Laden was given shelter in the country

      A massive political storm has been stirred in Pakistan over former defence minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar’s revelations that the top authorities in the country knew about the presence of Osama bin Laden. Former Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif are disturbed by the statements made by Chaudhry and the government has ordered an inquiry against him.

    • Ted Cruz’s Closest Counselors Are Neocons

      There’s a lot about Ted Cruz that should worry constitutionalists considering voting for the senator in the presidential election of 2016.

      Recently, Infogram published brief but illuminating biographies of several of Cruz’s key foreign policy advisors. The information disclosed in these revelations could trouble many constitutionalists otherwise keen on the senator and who rely on him to restore the rule of law to the White House.

    • AP Interview: MSF says bombing of Afghan hospital no mistake

      The head of an international medical charity whose hospital in northern Afghanistan was destroyed in a U.S. airstrike says the “extensive, quite precise destruction” of the bombing raid casts doubt on American military assertions that it was a mistake.

      The Oct. 3 attack on the compound in Kunduz city, which killed at least 22 patients and hospital staff, should be investigated as a possible war crime, said Christopher Stokes, general director of Doctors Without Borders, which is also known by its French abbreviation MSF.

    • Smoking gun emails reveal Blair’s ‘deal in blood’ with George Bush over Iraq war was forged a YEAR before the invasion had even started

      A bombshell White House memo has revealed for the first time details of the ‘deal in blood’ forged by Tony Blair and George Bush over the Iraq War.

      The sensational leak shows that Blair had given an unqualified pledge to sign up to the conflict a year before the invasion started.

      It flies in the face of the Prime Minister’s public claims at the time that he was seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

      He told voters: ‘We’re not proposing military action’ – in direct contrast to what the secret email now reveals.

    • Butt dials behind surge in 911 calls

      When San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management realized that the number of 911 calls coming in had been dramatically increasing since 2011 — straining staff and city resources, and potentially creating dangerous delays for callers — officials wanted to find out why.

    • Terror offenders to be barred from working with children under David Cameron’s new counter-terror strategy

      New counter-extremism strategy will see people convicted of terrorism treated like sex offenders to protect young people

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Fact checking the first Democratic debate

      CNN aired the first Democratic presidential debate Tuesday featuring five candidates, including former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

      Not every candidate uttered facts that are easily fact checked, but following is a list of 13 suspicious or interesting claims. As is our practice, we do not award Pinocchios when we do a roundup of facts in debates.

    • Fox News Gets Suckered: 11 Outrageous Lies by Their ‘Terror Analyst’ Who Was Actually a Con Man

      Con artist Wayne Simmons created an elaborate life story. It is fake. He identified as a CIA outside paramilitary special operations officer. He wasn’t. He wrote a book claiming he worked in the CIA for 27 years. He didn’t.

      Fox News took him at his word. So did the U.S. government. Simmons worked as a subcontractor for the government multiple times, and was even invited to train at an Army facility. He ended up receiving security clearance and served as an intelligence advisor to senior military personnel overseas. So much for background checks.

    • 6 signs the new Hillary is still the old Hillary

      During Tuesday’s Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton tried to display a new and more progressive version of the Hillary who Americans have seen for years: as First Lady, U.S. Senator, 2008 presidential candidate and Secretary of State.

    • If Larry Lessig is elected president, and campaign reforms pass, he won’t resign

      Lawrence Lessig, one of the country’s foremost tech legal scholars, announced Saturday that he would be making a key modification to his quixotic campaign for president.

      If elected, the Harvard Law professor would plan to stay on as president—rather than resign immediately (as he had previously promised) after the passage of his as-yet-undrafted Citizen Equality Act. The bill would be designed to increase voting access, end partisan gerrymandering, and reform campaign finance, among other reforms.

      Why the change?

    • Larry Lessig Dumps His Promise To Resign The Presidency In An Attempt To Get People To Take His Campaign Seriously

      We’ve written a few times about Larry Lessig’s somewhat wacky campaign for President, which was premised on the idea that it was a “referendum” campaign, where his entire focus would be to push Congress into putting in place serious campaign finance reform and then resigning from the Presidency. As we noted, the whole thing was a bit of a gimmick. And apparently that gimmick hasn’t been working too well. Earlier this month, Lessig noted that he was being shut out from the Democratic debates, despite being a Democrat running for President and polling roughly on par with a few of the other nobodies in the campaign. The problem is that the Democratic National Committee apparently chose to ignore the campaign and because it refused to officially “welcome” him to the campaign, pollsters aren’t including him and thus he didn’t have enough polling data to be invited to the debate.

  • Privacy

    • Germany’s intelligence community allegedly spied on friendly states
    • German spy scandal deepens

      The German intelligence service has spied on European and American embassies in ways that may have been beyond its mandate, German media ARD and Spiegel Online reported on Wednesday (14 October).

    • German intelligence service accused in new espionage scandal

      Germany’s intelligence service, already accused of spying on behalf of Washington, allegedly took the initiative of spying for several other allied countries, such as France and the United States, reveal German media on Thursday.

    • Germany’s BND spied on allies: Report

      – Der Spiegel claims German secret service BND carried out digital surveillance targeting friendly nations, including France and US

    • Germany Surveillance Scandal 2015: US, France Spied On Illegally By Intelligence Agency BND
    • Spiegel Online reported that the Germany’s Federal Intelligence Agency (BND) spied on EU institutions and France and the US

      BND embroiled in another scandal as Spiegel Online reported that Germany’s intelligence agency was spying on EU institutions, France and the US until late 2013, on its own and not on behalf of the NSA.

    • Germany spied on USA, France until late 2013

      Spies at Germany’s BND foreign intelligence service snooped on the communications of friendly states’ embassies and government offices, including EU members and the USA, as recently as 2013, media reports claimed on Wednesday.

    • Germany’s secret services ‘spied on France, US’

      Germany’s secret service, already under fire for having allegedly spied for Washington, had also spied for its own account on allies including France, German media claimed Thursday.

    • Has the NSA balkanized the cloud market?

      Much of Canadian data stays in Canada, German data in Germany. Data can’t be carted over the borders into that skanky NSA-monitored data sieve called the USA.

    • EU Court Declares NSA Surveillance Illegal

      As expected, the European Union court has thrown out an agreement, forged in 2000, that allows virtually uninhibited data sharing and transfer between the United States and EU countries and is the legal basis for National Security Agency’s on-line surveillance and data capture programs.

    • Private NSA Army is Attacking YOU!

      They are freelancers with no oversight or rules. They are only accountable to themselves and their employers. These freelancers thrive on their ability to remain hidden from the public eye. In reality, they could be your socially inept, angry neighbor down the street who is afraid of their own shadow in person. But give them a keyboard and they’ll take your job, your bank account and your freedom.

    • First Firms Blocked Porn. Now They Scan for Child Sex Images

      The first alarm came within a week. It meant an Ericsson AB employee had used a company computer to view images categorized by law enforcement as child sexual abuse.

      “It was faster than we would have wanted,” says Nina Macpherson, Ericsson’s chief legal officer.

      In a bid to ensure none of its 114,000 staff worldwide were using company equipment to view illegal content, in 2011 the Swedish mobile networks pioneer installed scanning software from Netclean Technologies AB. While many companies since then have adopted similar measures, few have been willing to discuss their experience publicly.

    • IAB: It’s time to tackle the web advertising elephant in the room

      THE INTERACTIVE ADVERTISING BUREAU (IAB), which ought to know about these things, has said that online advertising has failed the consumer and needs a rethink.

      The alarm has been sounded at a time when ad blocking is high on the news and public agendas. The sometimes controversial issue of ad blocking is a relevant topic at publishing houses large and small, and the IAB, the organisation created to concern itself with the medium and the message, is on the case.

      “Through our pursuit of further automation and maximisation of margins during the industrial age of media technology, we built advertising technology to optimise publishers’ yield of marketing budgets that had eroded after the last recession,” the IAB said in a bold statement about its Lean Ads programme.

    • Lawrence Lessig interviewed Edward Snowden a year ago

      Last year, US president candidate in the Democratic Party Lawrence interviewed Edward Snowden. The one hour interview was published by Harvard Law School 2014-10-23 on Youtube, and the meeting took place 2014-10-20.

    • Users complain Facebook is causing iPhone batteries to drain

      Facebook’s iPhone app is consuming large amounts of battery charge even when it is not open, users have complained.

      Users say the app records long periods of background activity, even when settings such as background refresh are disabled.

      One user, product developer Matt Galligan, wrote that the Facebook app was not “sleeping properly when I hit the home button” and that the “problem may not be an easy fix for Facebook and the way their app is built”.

      Analysis of the Facebook app by iOS developer Jonathan Zdziarski indicated that Facebook’s location tracking of users could be at least partially to blame for the battery drain.

    • Security News This Week: The NYPD Doesn’t Want You to Know About Its X-Ray Spy Vans

      This week we found out that as many as 90 percent of people killed by US drones weren’t the intended targets, thanks to a ‘second Snowden’ who leaked a motherload of documents to The Intercept. The Democratic presidential candidates discussed Edward Snowden during the Democratic presidential debate, but only long-shot candidate Lincoln Chafee said he would welcome him home without any charges. French hackers showed they can remotely take control of Siri and Google Now by using radio waves from as far as 16 feet away. We took a look at the many ways cops could hack into your iPhone even without a backdoor. It’s not all bad news, though: Tech companies like Apple may have a new legal defense for resisting the government’s orders to unlock devices.

      And that’s not all. Each Saturday we round up the news stories that we didn’t break or cover in depth at WIRED, but which deserve your attention nonetheless. As always, click on the headlines to read the full story in each link posted. And stay safe out there!

    • Facebook warns users of potential state-sponsored attacks

      Facebook will now warn people if it has a strong suspicion an account is being targeted by a nation-state.

    • What America Fears

      Chapman University has just come out with its second annual Survey of American Fears, and while you don’t want to read too much into the rankings—the vast array of fear-producing stimuli means we’re inevitably comparing apples and oranges, if not elephants and elevators—the answers are revealing.

      [...]

      What to make of that list? For one thing, the survey of 1,500 American adults (which was designed to reflect the population as a whole) confirms the truism that we have a strong distrust of government. Note that fear of corrupt public servants tops the list, with 58 percent of respondents saying they were either afraid or very afraid of this phenomenon.

      [...]

      Fear of a terrorist attack has apparently waned in the years since 9/11. Although high on the list (at number four), only 44.4 percent of respondents said they were afraid or very afraid of such an event.

    • German parliament okays law to store telephone and Internet data

      German telecom companies will be obliged to keep telephone and Internet data for up to 10 weeks to help fight crime under a new law passed by parliament on Friday after a long political wrangle over possible infringements of individuals’ rights.

      Under the data retention law, companies will be required to keep data on the timing and duration of telephone calls, as well as online traffic through IP addresses. Location data from mobile phones may only be stored for four weeks.

    • Third Circuit to the City of New York: Being Muslim is not Reasonable Suspicion for Surveillance

      Being Muslim can’t be the basis for law enforcement surveillance. That was the message from the Third Circuit on Tuesday when it told the plaintiffs in Hassan v. The City of New York that their lawsuit could go forward. The plaintiffs are suing over the New York Police Department’s suspicionless mass surveillance operation revealed by the Associated Press in 2011.

    • LINE Messenger Adds End-To-End Encryption

      Online privacy is a really delicate topic, especially after various reports revealed how the NSA and other governments have been spying on users all over the internet. We use instant messaging every day and for most of us concerned about our privacy, an encrypted messaging systems are very much welcomed. LINE is one of the most popular messaging systems out there and, although not the first one, the Japanese company has just announced a new feature called Letter Sealing to further protect messages as they are being sent. If you are asking yourself, “Letter sealing? What?”, this is like the seal kings would put on medieval times to send their letters somewhere – a bold name to End-To-End encryption technique.

    • Can You Hear Me Now? How Police Track Your Cellphone

      He took every step very carefully and made sure he covered his tracks. But on Aug. 3, 2008, Daniel Rigmaiden was arrested by the FBI near his apartment in northern California.

    • Six times Bernie Sanders showed his ‘socialist’ street cred

      Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders did not mince words at the first Democratic debate in Las Vegas, where he talked about Wall Street, NSA surveillance and climate change.

    • Scott Ludlam’s Top Five Tips On Dodging Tomorrow’s Data Retention Laws

      With data retention laws about to kick in, New Matilda speaks to its major parliamentary opponent about what it means for online freedoms and how to beat the system. Max Chalmers reports.

    • Congress Should Declassify the Legislative Negotiations Over the FISA Amendments Act

      On October 5, Third Way and the R Street Institute sent a joint request to the respective leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees. The letter asks the committees to declassify records of the legislative negotiations leading up to passage (and subsequent reauthorization) of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) of 2008.

    • Tech, cyber voices emerge in wide-open Speaker race

      Both support the Email Privacy Act, which would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before accessing private email accounts.

      The bill has amassed over 300 co-sponsors, but hasn’t come close to getting a floor vote.

      Chaffetz is also a co-sponsor of the GPS Act, which would force investigators to get a warrant when seeking electronic location data.

    • Manipulating Reality: Facebook is Listening to You

      One thing we have become all too used to is that our reality can be manipulated to create the appearance of something else entirely. Invading another country is defensive, rigged elections are passed off as democracy in action, more guns (or more nuclear weapons) ensure the peace, trade and foreign investment increase jobs at home. Orwellian logic has become commonplace.

    • This group is trying to convince the next Edward Snowden to blow the whistle

      We recently told you about the NSA’s recent (and very weird) love notes being spread online. But there’s a new organization called Intelexit that’s not feeling the love at all.

      In fact, Intelexit’s goal is to get intelligence workers – particularly those at the NSA – to quit their jobs. And, if they’d like to be whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, Intelexit will help with counseling, legal support and media planning.

    • The Hacking Quandary

      This summer, two different events affected two different worlds. First, Milan-based Hacking Team — a small group of programmers who customize malware to gather intelligence — was itself hacked, and more than 400GB of its internal data was leaked. A few days later, a South Korean intelligence officer who had been implementing tracking software killed himself, and his suicide note allegedly referred to Hacking Team. As a result, many professionals in software development and espionage are pondering their future.

    • The Chinese-US Anti-Spying Pact Yields Its First Results
    • US-China cyber espionage treaty ‘will do nothing’: FireEye boss
    • Europe vs. USA on privacy
    • Max Schrems Provides In-depth Analysis Of Safe Harbor Ruling
    • MPs’ communications at risk of ‘incidental collection’
    • GCHQ can spy on MPs’ private communications
    • British Court Rules UK Politicians Are Fair Game for GCHQ Spies
    • GCHQ given green light to spy on MPs, court rules
    • Wilson Doctrine has ‘no legal effect’, tribunal rules
    • Court says UK politicians don’t get protection from snooping
    • Cybersecurity in 1989: Looking Back at Cliff Stoll’s Classic The Cuckoo’s Egg
    • Take With a Pinch of Salt

      The second and more important thing is that Mr Lucas is an old-fashioned journalist who can be lumped into that group that is, not very flatteringly, called the Old Boys Club in the UK. Consequently he is friends with some CIA, NSA and GCHQ veterans, alludes to giving talks at such institutions, has blurbs for this book from a former US Secretary of Homeland Security and a former Director of GCHQ on the back. This obviously comes with all kinds of caveats particularly when the book is about subjects as political as cyber warfare and hacking. One of those caveats is his conspiracy theory, shared by many conservatives in the West, that Edward Snowden is a Russian spy which made him say, “If Snowden had approached me with these documents, I would have marched him down to Bow Street police station and asked them to arrest him”.

    • Korea monitors Google’s privacy issue

      The nation’s online communication watchdog is considering taking tough measures against Google which is suspected of leaking users’ personal information to third parties.

    • Living in a data glass bowl

      “You are the data: You are the queries you ask, the addresses you provide, the emails you answer, the transactions you carry out, the conversations you have. There is an inexhaustible amount of data that we leave online, leaving us vulnerable to various threats,” says Nikhil Pahwa of the internet watchdog Medianama.

    • We’ve Just Learned the Origins of Illegal Surveillance in the United States Go Back to the 1930s

      Half a century before either Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning was born, American military codebreakers and U.S. telecommunications companies collaborated on a secret electronic surveillance program that, as newly declassified documents reveal, they knew to be illegal. The program, approved at the highest levels of the U.S. government, targeted messages sent by foreign embassies in Washington, DC, in the years leading up to World War II, and was dramatically expanded after the war.

    • Norman Solomon: Clinton’s Debate Comments on Snowden “Give Hypocrisy a Bad Name”

      At Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate, candidates offered differing views on what should happen to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for exposing illegal mass surveillance. “He stole very important information that has unfortunately fallen into a lot of the wrong hands,” said front-runner Hillary Clinton. “So I don’t think he should be brought home without facing the music.” The four other candidates expressed appreciation for Snowden’s leaks and said his exposure of wrongdoing should be taken into account. We get reaction from Norman Solomon, longtime activist and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

    • UN: lack of whistleblower protection has ‘chilling’ effect on exposing wrongdoing

      People who expose wrongdoing on national security and intelligence issues around the world are often given weak or no protection and are often subject to retaliation, creating a “chilling effect on people speaking out”, a United Nations report has found.

    • Europe has more privacy than U.S.

      U.S. law gives the National Security Agency a green light to collect a staggering amount of personal data from phone and Internet users around the world, most of whom aren’t even remotely connected to terrorists. This week, however, a European court said the NSA’s shotgun approach to surveillance violated Europeans’ privacy rights. And because the European Court of Justice has no jurisdiction over the NSA, it took out its displeasure on the Internet.

    • Government will no longer seek encrypted user data

      The Obama administration has backed down in its bitter dispute with Silicon Valley over the encryption of data on iPhones and other digital devices, concluding that it is not possible to give US law enforcement and intelligence agencies access to that information without creating an opening that China, Russia, cybercriminals, and terrorists could also exploit.

    • Administration Won’t Seek Holes In Encryption… But That’s Just THIS Administration

      I don’t normally recommend Lawfare, seeing as it’s generally filled with NSA apologia and has been known to host the complaints of FBI directors who apparently just don’t have enough outlets for crypto-related spleen-venting. But Hoover Institute cyber-policy/security scholar Herb Lin makes a few good points about the administration’s decision to brush that backdoor dirt off its shoulders.

    • Edward Snowden And Black Lives Matter Activist DeRay Mckesson Had A Great Dialogue About Surveillance

      NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson had a spirited discussion about their respective causes on Twitter Monday night, trading points on the relationship between police and state violence and surveillance.

    • Snowden keynote at Bard conference stresses privacy

      “Privacy isn’t about something to hide, it’s about something to lose,” Edward Snowden told attendees at the “Why Privacy Matters: What Do We Lose When We Lose Our Privacy?” conference hosted by the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College.

      Snowden, whose keynote delivered via satellite from Russia and was punctuated by applause, contended that the technology and apps being used today – even lunch cards on college campuses — especially those that use geolocation are creating “perfect records of private lives being aggregated and stored.”

    • MPs want govt to report on findings over NSA mass surveillance

      The parliamentary Intelligence Oversight Commission asked the government on Wednesday for a comprehensive briefing on its findings pertaining to the mass surveillance operation in which the US National Security Agency and its German counterpart BND allegedly also spied on Slovenian citizens between 2005 and 2008.

    • Mass surveillance: EU citizens’ rights still in danger, MEPs say

      Too little has been done to ensure that citizens’ rights are protected following revelations of electronic mass surveillance, say civil liberties MEPs in a resolution passed on Tuesday. They urge the Commission to come up immediately with alternatives to Safe Harbour, following the ruling by the European Court of Justice. They are also concerned about the surveillance laws in several EU countries.

    • Why Has a European Court Banned Sending Personal Data Across the Atlantic?

      In a decision on October 6 that was as shocking as it was predictable, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) invalidated the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor for westward bound international transfers of personal data.

    • NSA Leak Exposes Truth About America’s Drones

      Between January 2012 and February 2013, the drone strikes in Northeastern Afghanistan killed 200 people, with only 35 of whom were intended targets. Nearly 90% of innocent lives were taken for the 10% of terrorists America wished to destroy.

    • Trust – in a system built in stone

      We need to gain distance from the state, even as we make claims. And the claims we make should serve a dual purpose.

    • Politicians panic after law change could leave them open to surveillance

      The world of politics is filled with people who many would consider to be out of touch with real life. All too often politicians are treated differently, and this has certainly been the case when it comes to NSA and GCHQ surveillance of phone and internet traffic. In the UK a court has ruled that a ban on intercepting politicians’ communication is not valid.

    • Germany Confronts Deadly Result of Providing Metadata to NSA (Die Zeit, Germany)

      Bald, bearded, with tattooed arms and a T-shirt – Brandon Bryant appears out of place among the people in suits of the German Bundestag. On Thursday he testified before the NSA Committee [of Inquiry] about his earlier work with the U.S. Air Force, including his day-long observations from the air and killing people with Hellfire missiles; the “manhunt,” as he called it.

      But it wasn’t only Bryant’s appearance that set him apart from the others in the hearing room. It was if reality were bursting forth into what is otherwise theoretical debate on surveillance and selectors, antennae signals and those who carry them. The 29-year-old Bryant was at the receiving end of all that government-collected data. He was the one to pull the trigger, making sure that missiles hit preselected targets identified through the use of secret service-collected surveillance.

    • Twitter v. NSA Lawsuit Appears at Last Gasp

      A federal judge said Tuesday that she will dismiss Twitter’s lawsuit against the National Security Agency because of the “new landscape” created by legislation that limits government surveillance – but asked Twitter to amend its claims anyway.

    • A Penn prof co-wrote this paper that explains how the NSA could be breaking trillions of secure connections

      Penn professor Nadia Heninger, whom TechCrunch once dubbed “the Chuck Norris of the crypto world,” is one of 14 researchers behind a paper that’s making waves in the internet security community.

      The report, which won the prize for best paper at the this week’s ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, suggests a solution to what the authors called a “technical mystery.” If the rumors of the National Security Agency’s mass decryption powers are true, how is the agency doing it? The answer has to do with a flaw in a method of secure communication, as well as the NSA’s multi-billion-dollar budget.

    • A Penn prof co-wrote this paper that explains how the NSA could be breaking trillions of secure connections
    • How Soviets used IBM Selectric keyloggers to spy on US diplomats

      A National Security Agency memo that recently resurfaced a few years after it was first published contains a detailed analysis of what very possibly was the world’s first keylogger—a 1970s bug that Soviet spies implanted in US diplomats’ IBM Selectric typewriters to monitor classified letters and memos.

    • Athens knew of CIA, NSA involvement in 2004 wiretaps

      It was the morning of 9 March, 2005. Panayiotis Tsalikidis was heading to have coffee with his brother Costas in Kolonos, downtown Athens, before a meeting. As he entered the building, he heard his mother screaming: “Cut him down!”

      He entered the apartment and saw his brother’s body hanging in front of the bathroom door. “I immediately called my wife and asked her to bring a high-definition camera so I could take some pictures on the spot, because I didn’t believe it was a suicide,” says Panayiotis today.

    • Cybersecurity expert urges government-business dialog

      When Keith Alexander arrived in Tampa in 1998 to take over as director of intelligence for U.S. Central Command, he spent the first six days walking around MacDill Air Force Base, checking out his new surroundings.

      “Then on the seventh day — and this isn’t biblical — but on the seventh day, al-Qaida bombed the two embassies, and it all went down hill after that and I never saw the sun again while I was here.”

    • Former NSA director calls for tighter cyber security at USF event

      When Sony pictures was hacked last year, it brought cyber attacks to the forefront. This is an issue that is growing with time.

      That’s why a cyber security conference at U-S-F is crucial in the fight against cyber attacks.

    • NSA’s Former Head Lawyer on Snowden and Cybersecurity

      …NSA’s legal chief while the agency experienced the Snowden leaks and subsequent government surveillance debate.

    • Senate Pushes Forward With CISA As Internet Industry Pulls Its Support

      Despite the fact that most of the internet industry has recently come out against the ridiculous faux-cybersecurity bill CISA, the Senate today began the process of moving the bill forward with a debate. The arguments were pretty much what you’d expect. The supporters of the bill, such as Senators Dianne Feinstein and Richard Burr, went on and on about how the bill is “voluntary” and about various online hacks (none of which would have been stopped by CISA — but apparently those details don’t matter). Senator Ron Wyden responded by pointing to all the internet companies coming out against the bill, and saying (accurately) that they’re doing so because they know the public no longer trusts many of those companies, and they don’t want a bill that will almost certainly be used for further surveillance efforts.

    • Tech Industry Trade Groups Are Coming Out Against CISA. We Need Individual Companies To Do The Same

      As if “national security” weren’t enough, now Congress is trying to use “cybersecurity” as an excuse to chip away at our right to privacy—and it’s riding on the coattails of incidents like the Experian and OPM breaches. Once again for continuity, it bears repeating that the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) would not have stopped the recent high-profile security breaches.

    • Bernie Sanders Would ‘Absolutely’ End NSA’s Mass Telephone Surveillance

      “I’d shut down what exists right now [which] is that virtually every telephone call in this country ends up in a file at the NSA,” Sanders told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “That is unacceptable to me.”

  • Civil Rights

    • You Think the NSA Is Bad? Meet Former CIA Director Allen Dulles.

      In a new book, David Talbot makes the case that the CIA head under Eisenhower and Kennedy may have been a psychopath.

    • What Do We Really Know About Osama bin Laden’s Death?
    • Foreign Office faces living wage row after cleaners claim they are dismissed over pay complaint

      The Government is facing a hypocrisy row over living wage targets after a group of Foreign Office cleaners claimed they were laid off for complaining about their pay packets.

    • Disciplinary investigation for FCO cleaners after pay appeal to Hammond

      Cleaners at the Foreign Office (FCO) have been put under disciplinary investigation after they sent a letter to Philip Hammond requesting to be paid the London Living Wage.

    • Mouth Wide Shut

      Barack Obama was, in 2008, the anti-torture candidate.

    • Forty years of whistleblowing: from anti-war activists to Snowden

      On March 8, 1971, eight anti-war activists burglarized an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. Documents stolen from the office exposed a secret counterintelligence program — COINTELPRO — which, among other things, gave federal agents the authority to conduct domestic surveillance on U.S. citizens, eerily similar to what Edward Snowden would reveal more than 40 years later. But unlike Snowden, the eight anti-war activists were never caught, and their identities remained a mystery for decades.

    • Wife of Missouri-born jailed ex-CIA whistleblower asks Obama for pardon

      The wife of a Missouri native and CIA whistleblower serving time in federal prison for leaking classified information is asking President Obama to pardon her husband, Jeffrey Sterling.

      In a press conference that included other CIA whistleblowers or their lawyers leveling allegations of a double standard involving former General David Petraeus and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, St. Louis resident Holly Sterling said her husband was both the victim of an Obama administration “shrouded in mis-truth and secrecy,” and the target of a prosecution based on race.

    • Washington Persecutes America’s Greatest Patriots

      John Kiriakou is an American patriot who informed us of the criminal behavior of illegal and immoral US “cloak and dagger” operations that were bringing dishonor to our country. His reward was to be called a “traitor” by the idiot conservative Republicans and sentenced to prison by the corrupt US government.

    • ANU academic Jacky Sutton dies in Turkey; colleagues, family unconvinced cause was suicide

      The colleague of an ANU academic found dead in Turkey has called for a full investigation into her friend’s death, saying she is “unconvinced” the cause was suicide.

      The BBC is reporting that Jacky Sutton, 50, a former journalist from their newsroom, was found dead in a toilet in Istanbul’s main airport on Saturday.

      Asked directly about Ms Sutton’s death, the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office confirmed that a British National had died in Istanbul.

    • Bank’s severance deal requires IT workers to be on call for two years

      SunTrust Banks in Atlanta is laying off about 100 IT workers as it moves work offshore. But this layoff is unusual for what it is asking of the soon-to-be displaced workers: The bank’s severance agreement requires terminated employees to remain available for two years to provide help if needed, including in-person assistance, and to do so without compensation.

      Many of the affected IT employees, who are now training their replacements, have years of experience and provide the highest levels of technical support. The proof of their ability may be in the severance requirement, which gives the bank a way to tap their expertise long after their departure.

    • Body Cameras Are Everywhere, But Recordings Remain Locked Up Tight

      All over the nation, police departments are deploying body cameras. But there’s no guarantee the public will have any access to the footage. As Kimberly Kindy and Julie Tate of the Washington Post report, the ultimate goals of greater accountability and transparency are routinely being thwarted by law enforcement agencies.

    • Saudi prince avoids felony charges in sex assault case near Beverly Hills

      Los Angeles County prosecutors said Monday they will not file charges against a Saudi prince arrested on suspicion of sexual assault at a compound on the edge of Beverly Hills, citing insufficient evidence.

      Majed Abdulaziz Al-Saud, 29, was arrested last month after a female worker accused him of trying to force her to perform a sex act on him inside a Beverly Glen residence he was renting, police said. Police alleged there were multiple victims, and within days of Al-Saud’s arrest three women sued him in civil court.

      Although prosecutors said there was not enough evidence for felony charges, the case was referred to the L.A. city attorney’s office, which could charge him with a misdemeanor. Officials in that office said they would have to review the case before making any decisions.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Protecting the 97%

      Today’s wireless networks are sophisticated and complex, but what our customers want is simple – to access their information and entertainment with a simple click. To make this happen, we’ll continue to take a responsible and thoughtful approach in how we manage our network resources. Whether we’re adding capacity to a cell site, upgrading our network to deliver even faster speeds, or implementing today’s QoS technique, our goal is simple – to provide a great network experience to our customers.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • MPAA Asks Government to Facilitate Private Anti-Piracy Deals

        The MPAA has asked the U.S. Government for help in its efforts to reach private anti-piracy agreements with search engines, domain name registrars and hosting services. The Hollywood group believes that these three industries have shown “lagging progress” and should do more to deter online copyright infringement.

      • YouTube paywall looms

        Google is expected to announce this week that some YouTube videos will only be available to subscribers.

        It’s no secret that YouTube is funding content development, putting some fairly serious money into projects involving its most popular talent.

        But according to Re/code, some of this new content will be revealed at a YouTube event on Wednesday 21 October (US time), and it will only be available to paying YouTube subscribers.

      • Language Matters: All The Copyright Lobby’s Subtleties

        We’ve discussed industrial protectionism and content vs container before. To wrap up the theme, I’d like to look at the more subtle points of lobbyist language, which are just as devious – if you copy them, you’re working against your own liberties.

        The copyright industry doesn’t just choose positive phrases to describe their specific “innovations”. They also try to establish sayings, phrases, and other combinations of words to make them uttered so often they become colloquilalisms, and yet, have very strong values embedded into them. This is very subtle, but just as important to understanding proper usage of the copyright monopoly, industrial protectionism, and digital restriction measures. It may not be those words that win the mindset, but the words in between – small words like left, right, black, and white.

10.18.15

Links 18/10/2015: OpenBSD 5.8 Released, OpenBSD 20th Birthday

Posted in News Roundup at 8:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Twitter cuts 336 jobs so fast an ex-employee learns fate by “no access” notice

    On Tuesday, Twitter’s recently returned CEO Jack Dorsey sent a letter to all employees, notifying them that 336 jobs would be cut—around eight percent of the company’s workforce.

    [...]

    In a follow-up tweet, Teeuwisse clarified that he worked from home and HR called him, but the call went to voicemail. Apparently, HR decided to remove him from the corporate network despite the lack of person-to-person contact.

  • Electronic Beowulf 4.0

    It is a pleasure to report that Kevin Kiernan, one of the world’s foremost Beowulf scholars and editor of Electronic Beowulf, was inducted into the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame on 9 October 2015. To coincide with this event, we have made Electronic Beowulf 4.0, available as a free online digital academic resource, which will be of interest not only to scholars of Anglo-Saxon England but to all interested in the history of the text of this celebrated poem.

    [...]

    In addition to providing standard digitised images of the Beowulf manuscript (Cotton Vitellius A. xv); it includes over 130 ultraviolet images, and over 750 backlit images that reveal hundreds of letters, which are covered by the nineteenth-century restoration frames. These were installed to protect the manuscript after fire damage in 1731, for more information on the fire damaged items in the Cotton Collection check out this blog post by my colleagues in Collection Care.

  • Boris Johnson rugby tackles schoolboy in Japan: His other sporting slips
  • Guardian braces for cutbacks after ‘difficult’ year

    The Guardian is preparing for steep editorial cuts after a slowdown in advertising sales. Job losses are highly likely, insiders at the media company said.

    “This is shaping up to be one of the most difficult … periods we’ve faced in many years,” David Pemsel, Guardian Media Group’s chief executive, said in an internal memo obtained by POLITICO.

    Spending on new hires, salaries, travel and other expenses will be reined in as the company tries to reduce its losses, Pemsel added. He did not mention job cuts in the e-mail but several people at the company said there will need to be a reduction in the workforce to stem the red ink.

  • Huffington Post’s US Traffic Tanks In 2015, As BuzzFeed And Vice Media Grow

    The Huffington Post has seen a major decline in its monthly traffic coming from within the U.S. over the past year, while competitors such as BuzzFeed and Vice Media continue to grow, according to data provided by comScore to International Business Times. In September of last year, HuffPost pulled in around 113 million unique visitors and hit 126 million last November, but then steadily bled visitors into 2015 and throughout the year. Last month, it was down to 86 million.

  • Be careful who you fire: Twitter’s culling of engineers is shocking

    Culling engineering jobs is a bizarre act in a field where, such is the intense competition for staff, poaching is commonplace

  • Hardware

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • Netgear Publishes Patched Firmware for Routers Under Attack

      After a pair of very public disclosures in the last two weeks, Netgear published new firmware for vulnerabilities in its routers that have been publicly exploited.

    • Adobe just fixed a major security flaw in Flash, so it’s time to update your software
    • Adobe Patches Criticial Flash Vulnerability
    • Good news: Adobe bangs out Flash patch fast. Bad news: Google’s defenses were useless
    • All Windows affected by critical security flaws

      Microsoft has issued a cumulative patch for a set of critical flaws affecting all supported versions of its Windows operating system, to protect against remote code execution flaw in its Internet Explorer web browser.

    • Hacker Who Sent Me Heroin Faces Charges in U.S.

      A Ukrainian hacker who once hatched a plot to have heroin sent to my Virginia home and then alert police when the drugs arrived had his first appearance in a U.S. court today, after being extradited to the United States to face multiple cybercrime charges.

    • Think Apple OS X is below the malware radar? Think again

      Instances of Apple OS X malware are soaring this year, already totaling more than five times the number tallied over the previous five years combined, according to an in-house Bit9 + Carbon Black report.

      Instances totaled 180 from 2010 through 2014, but have already reached 948, according to “2015: The most Prolific Year in History for OS X Malware”, the results of a 10-week study of malware crafted for the operating system.

    • Malware, restoring data: What keeps data center techies up all night

      A majority of organizations polled in a data center and cloud security survey are dissatisfied with their malware containment and recovery times.

      More than half (55 per cent) of survey respondents were dissatisfied with the length of time it takes them to contain and recover from hacker infiltrations and malware infections, with more than 17 per cent of respondents needing more than a week to contain an contagion. About 37 per cent reported containment times of up to eight hours.

    • Who’s Behind Bluetooth Skimming in Mexico?

      In the previous two stories, I documented the damage wrought by an organized crime gang in Mexico that has been systematically bribing ATM technicians to install Bluetooth skimming components that allow thieves to steal card and PIN data wirelessly. What follows is a look at a mysterious new ATM company in Mexico that sources say may be tied to the skimming activity.

    • Tracking Bluetooth Skimmers in Mexico, Part II

      I spent four days last week in Mexico, tracking the damage wrought by an organized crime ring that is bribing ATM technicians to place Bluetooth skimmers inside of cash machines in and around the tourist areas of Cancun. Today’s piece chronicles the work of this gang in coastal regions farther south, following a trail of hacked ATMs from Playa Del Camen down to the ancient Mayan ruins in Tulum.

    • How the NSA can break trillions of encrypted Web and VPN connections

      For years, privacy advocates have pushed developers of websites, virtual private network apps, and other cryptographic software to adopt the Diffie-Hellman cryptographic key exchange as a defense against surveillance from the US National Security Agency and other state-sponsored spies. Now, researchers are renewing their warning that a serious flaw in the way the key exchange is implemented is allowing the NSA to break and eavesdrop on trillions of encrypted connections.

    • How is NSA breaking so much crypto?

      There have been rumors for years that the NSA can decrypt a significant fraction of encrypted Internet traffic. In 2012, James Bamford published an article quoting anonymous former NSA officials stating that the agency had achieved a “computing breakthrough” that gave them “the ability to crack current public encryption.” The Snowden documents also hint at some extraordinary capabilities: they show that NSA has built extensive infrastructure to intercept and decrypt VPN traffic and suggest that the agency can decrypt at least some HTTPS and SSH connections on demand.

    • Here’s Why Cybersecurity Experts Want Public Source Routers

      “In our letter [PDF], the scientists and engineers most deeply concerned with the internet have finally spoken with one voice, loud enough, maybe, to make a difference,” Dave Taht, co-founder of Bufferbloat, an initiative to improve router performance, told Motherboard. Taht, who lead author of letter to the FCC, said that manufacturers often ship routers that are vulnerable to known exploits, putting consumers and the wider internet at risk as soon as the routers are turned on. Making the matter worse is how few consumers bother to upgrade their firmware if patches are released.

    • Security advisories for Wednesday
    • HP perfomance monitor can climb through Windows

      Crimp nasty privilege escalation bug by running it in Linux instead says Rapid7

    • Why Cybersecurity Experts Want Open Source Routers

      A coalition of 260 cybersecurity experts is taking advantage of a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) public comment period to push for open source Wi-Fi router firmware.

    • Internet daddy Vint Cerf blasts FCC’s plan to ban Wi-Fi router code mods

      Vinton Cerf has added his name to a campaign begging the FCC to scrap plans to ban custom firmware on Wi-Fi routers and other wireless devices.

    • Have your say on the FCC’s plan to lock down WiFi routers

      You may know that you can replace your WiFi router’s software with an open source version like DD-WRT or Tomato to make it more secure or powerful. However, the US wireless regulator (FCC) only seems to have figured that out recently, and is not happy with your ability to boost the signal power excessively on such devices. As such, it proposed changes to regulations, with one document suggesting it may ban or restrict third-party software altogether. That caught the eye of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which created an online petition asking the FCC to make changes.

      The EFF petition says that “router manufacturers are notoriously slow about updating their software — even with critical security fixes on the way. Under the FCC’s proposal, you could have no alternative to running out-of-date and vulnerable firmware.” It’s referring, in part, to an FCC demand that manufacturer’s “describe in detail how the device is protected from ‘flashing’ and the installation of third-party firmware such as DD-WRT.”

    • Technology Community Responds to FCC Rules Banning WiFi Router Firmware Modification
    • The world needs open source routers
    • FCC Should Mandate Open Source Router Firmware And Fast Security Updates, Say Internet Experts
    • 260 ‘Net Experts Urge FCC to Embrace Open, Transparent RF Rules

      A coalition of 260 leading Internet technology experts are warning the FCC to tread carefully when it comes to updated FCC rules governing RF devices. In a filing (pdf) with the FCC, experts like Vint Cerf (co-creator of the TCP-IP protocol) and Dave Farber (former Chief Technologist of the FCC) warn the agency that the FCC’s latest proposal for updated RF device guidance, as currently written, could potentially make the Internet slower, less secure and prevent users from maintaining and modifying devices they own.

    • Vint Cerf, hundreds of researchers, call on FCC to mandate open-source router firmware

      The FCC is currently inviting open comments on its plan to require router manufacturers to lock down device firmware as a means of ensuring that consumer devices can’t operate in certain frequency bands or at power levels that violate FCC guidelines. While these requirements are made to guarantee that limited spectrum is allocated fairly and in a manner that minimizes interference, many have raised concerns that locking down devices in this way will prevent open source firmware projects from continuing as well as hampering critical security research.

      Now, a group of more than 250 researchers and developers, including the Internet’s grandpa, Vint Cerf, have sent the FCC a letter proposing an altogether different set of rules that would actually mandate open-source firmware while simultaneously protecting the FCCs original goals. There are multiple reasons, the letter argues, why open-source firmware updates are a necessary part of securing the Internet against attack.

    • Hackers Can Silently Control Siri From 16 Feet Away

      Siri may be your personal assistant. But your voice is not the only one she listens to. As a group of French researchers have discovered, Siri also helpfully obeys the orders of any hacker who talks to her—even, in some cases, one who’s silently transmitting those commands via radio from as far as 16 feet away.

    • Is Apple’s security honeymoon on OS X ending?

      Apple scored unforgettable hits against Microsoft with its Mac vs. PC ads, which anthropomorphized Windows as a sneezing, miserable office worker.

      Security experts always knew that the campaign was a clever bit of marketing fluff, one that allowed Apple to capitalize on Microsoft’s painful, years-long security revamp.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Washington Post Reduces Palestinian Victims to a Word Problem

      There’s a lot going on in this paragraph. The heretofore unmentioned Palestinian dead come in at the back end of a sentence about Israeli fatalities, to whose numbers are added dozens of wounded so it is not immediately obvious that there are three-and-a-half times as many dead on one side as the other.

    • ‘How Many Afghans Have to Grow Up Knowing Nothing but War?’ – CounterSpin interview with Phyllis Bennis on US bombing of Doctors Without Borders
    • New Edward Snowden? Whistleblower leaks documents on US drone killings

      Classified documents, leaked to investigative news website The Intercept, have revealed the inner workings of the secret US drone program in Yemen and Somalia.

      A source from within the US intelligence community leaked the documents which appear to undermine American claims that drone strikes have been precise.

      The whistleblower, who has already been labelled as the new ‘Edward Snowden’ on social media, said the public has the right to know about the process by which people are placed on ‘kill lists’ and “ultimately assassinated on orders from the highest echelons of the US government.”

      The source told The Intercept: “This outrageous explosion of watchlisting — of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield — it was, from the very first instance, wrong.”

      The leaked papers appear to show that drone strikes were often carried out based on insufficient and unreliable intelligence and when executed, often compromise further gathering of intelligence.

      The documents reveal that in Afghanistan, drone strikes on 35 targets killed at least 219 other people.

    • The Drone Papers

      From his first days as commander in chief, the drone has been President Barack Obama’s weapon of choice, used by the military and the CIA to hunt down and kill the people his administration has deemed — through secretive processes, without indictment or trial — worthy of execution. There has been intense focus on the technology of remote killing, but that often serves as a surrogate for what should be a broader examination of the state’s power over life and death.

    • The US Could End Saudi War Crimes in Yemen – It Just Doesn’t Want To

      The Saudi-led coalition is guilty of systematic war crimes in Yemen, and the US bears legal responsibility because of the use of arms purchased from the United States, an Amnesty International report charged in early October.

      But although the Obama administration is not happy with the Saudi war and has tremendous leverage over the Saudis, it has demonstrated over the past several weeks that it is unwilling to use its leverage to force an end to the war. And it now appears that the administration is poised to resupply the munitions used by the Saudis in committing war crimes in Yemen.

    • Taliban waged a calculated campaign against women in Kunduz

      The Taliban occupation of Kunduz may have been temporary, but what they did to Afghan women’s rights could prove to be lasting.

      In a methodical campaign, the Taliban relentlessly hounded women with any sort of public profile, looted a high school, and destroyed the offices of many of the organizations that protected and supported women in Kunduz.

      Among those who have fled are the women who ran a shelter for female victims of violence, who Taliban commanders say are “immoral.”

    • The Problem With Using Metadata to Justify Drone Strikes

      The US military maintains that its drone program delivers deadly “targeted strikes” against its enemies overseas, and yet, reports of civilians being killed by drones keep pouring in.

      Secret documents prepared as part of a Pentagon report on the US drone program in Yemen and Somalia, obtained by The Intercept, reveal the reason for this apparent contradiction: The US military is over-reliant on signals intelligence, or SIGINT—such as cell phone records, or metadata, of who is called and when, as well as the content of phone and online communications—when selecting targets for drone strikes.

      This kind of intelligence is often supplied by foreign governments, is difficult to confirm on the ground in Yemen and Somalia, and is easily gamed by adversaries, the Intercept report on the documents alleges. Basically, it’s unreliable until a human confirms it. But in Yemen and Somalia, signals intelligence makes up more than half of the intel that goes into marking someone for death, the documents state.

    • U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies

      In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • UK refuses Assange safe passage to hospital

      The UK government on Wednesday denied WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange safe passage from Ecuador’s embassy in London to a nearby hospital to diagnose shoulder pain. The 44-year-old Assange has been granted asylum from Ecuador, and he has been holed up at the embassy there since 2012 as Swedish authorities wish to question him about an alleged sexual-assault.

      The British decision, announced by the Public News Agency of Ecuador and South America, came as Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño told state TV that the UK should honor the request to enable Assange to “benefit from the right of asylum that we have granted him, as should be done in a respectful international relationship.” Assange has been at the embassy for three

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Volkswagen to recall 500,000 pollution-hiding cars in US

      German carmaker Volkswagen has been ordered by US regulators to recall half a million cars because of a device that disguises pollution levels.

    • A Wet Winter Won’t Save California

      As wildfires rage, crops are abandoned, wells run dry and cities work to meet mandatory water cuts, drought-weary Californians are counting on a savior in the tropical ocean: El Niño.

      This warming of the tropical Pacific occurs about every five years, affecting climate around the globe and bringing heavy winter precipitation to parts of California. The state experienced two of its wettest years during two of the strongest El Niños, in 1982-83 and 1997-98.

    • Cameron gives top environment policy job to oil man ahead of major climate talks

      Environmentalists slam appointment of ex-Schlumberger consultant as energy and environment adviser just months before global climate summit in Paris

    • Why America’s Deadly Love Affair with Bottled Water Has to Stop

      This spring, as California withered in its fourth year of drought and mandatory water restrictions were enacted for the first time in the state’s history, a news story broke revealing that Nestlé Waters North America was tapping springs in the San Bernardino National Forest in southern California using a permit that expired 27 years ago.

    • The GOP’s bullsh*t campaign: Why they’re drowning the country in an ocean of lies

      If you’re searching for advice on using the Internet without losing your mind, the classic xkcd web comic “Duty Calls” remains the gold standard. After all, no matter how much technology changes, as long as there are humans using it, the Internet will be full of people; and many of them will be wrong. So unless you figure out a way to log-off — and, more important, stay logged off — you’re just going to have to find a way to deal.

    • 26 more elephants killed with cyanide in national park in Zimbabwe

      Rangers in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park have discovered the carcasses of 26 elephants at two locations, dead of cyanide poisoning along with 14 other elephants who were found last week, officials said Wednesday.

      Patrolling rangers discovered the carcasses Tuesday, according to Bhejani Trust and the National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority. Bhejani Trust undertakes joint animal monitoring and welfare work with the parks agency

    • Norwegian Prime Minister demands global carbon price and end to fossil fuel subsidies

      Erna Solberg, the Norwegian Prime Minister, has called on the world to immediately set a global carbon price and phase out fossil fuel subsidies in order to better drive investment in low carbon technologies.

      Speaking at a conference hosted by the Norwegian British Chamber of Commerce in London today, Solberg argued Norway’s 26 year old carbon tax had been crucial in helping to drive development of “climate friendly” technologies.

    • New Concern Over Quakes in Oklahoma Near a Hub of U.S. Oil

      A sharp earthquake in central Oklahoma last weekend has raised fresh concern about the security of a vast crude oil storage complex, close to the quake’s center, that sits at the crossroads of the nation’s oil pipeline network.

      The magnitude 4.5 quake struck Saturday afternoon about three miles northwest of Cushing, roughly midway between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. The town of about 8,000 people is home to the so-called Cushing Hub, a sprawling tank farm that is among the largest oil storage facilities in the world.

      Scientists reported in a paper published online last month that a large earthquake near the storage hub “could seriously damage storage tanks and pipelines.” Saturday’s quake continues a worrisome pattern of moderate quakes, suggesting that a large earthquake is more than a passing concern, the lead author of that study, Daniel McNamara, said in an interview.

    • VW

      Do you know the name Michael Horn? He’s the CEO of Volkswagen of America. You know what’s going on with Volkswagen, right? Dieselgate? The fact that the software that controls the Diesel engine in some of their cars was specifically written to defeat emissions tests? Yeah, apparently that software could detect when an emission test was being run, and could put the engine into a mode where it emitted one fortieth of the noxious nitrogen oxides of it’s normal operation.

      [...]

      I think that argument is even more asinine than Michael Horn’s. They knew. And if they didn’t know, they should have known. They had a responsibility to know.

      If we had a real profession, those programmers would be brought before that profession, investigated, and if found guilty, drummed out of the profession in disgrace.

  • Finance

    • How Reaganomics is Still Hurting the Middle Class

      Thom talks income inequality and Reaganomics with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s Sarah Badawi and radio host and author Ari Rabin-Havt. In tonight’s Conversations with Great Minds, Thom discusses capitalism and the climate with award-winning journalist Naomi Klein, author of the new book “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.”

    • Donald Trump isn’t rich because he’s a great investor. He’s rich because his dad was rich.

      “It takes brains to make millions,” according to the slogan of Donald Trump’s board game. “It takes Trump to make billions.” It appears that’s truer than Trump himself might like to admit. A new analysis suggests that Trump would’ve been a billionaire even if he’d never had a career in real estate, and had instead thrown his father’s inheritance into a index fund that tracked the market. His wealth, in other words, isn’t because of his brains. It’s because he’s a Trump.

    • Capitalism and Its Regulation Delusion: Lessons From the Volkswagen Debacle

      Volkswagen (VW), we now know, systematically evaded pollution control regulations. Over the last decade it defrauded 11 million buyers of its diesel-engine vehicles, fouled the planet’s environment and thereby damaged the health and lives of countless living organisms. Regulation-defeating deception gave VW diesel autos competitive advantages over other companies’ diesel products and thereby enhanced its profits, the driving purpose of capitalist corporations.

    • Political Economy

      I hardly know where to start to deconstruct his speech, but one fact stands out. Osborne purported to give an overview of Britain’s economic crash and “recovery”, without making a single mention of the banking crisis or bankers’ corrupt and greedy practices as the cause of the crash, of vast banking bailouts by the taxpayer and the rapid contraction of the economy. That banker behaviour was of course accelerated by Gordon Brown’s extreme banking deregulation, but that was Brown’s great blunder, not the levels of public spending.

    • After Democratic Debate, Right-Wing Media Miss The Tax Cut Elephant In The Room
    • Now the Tories are allowing big business to design their own tax loopholes

      Last Monday, as the prime minister rehearsed his Manchester conference speech, a story appeared in this newspaper that showed you who really runs this country – and how. It revealed that one of Britain’s largest companies, AstraZeneca, paid absolutely no corporation tax here in both 2013 and 2014, despite racking up global profits in those years of £2.9bn.

    • US, Australia & Canada Decide Screw Over Poor Nations Because Big Pharma’s Not Happy With TPP

      With the conclusion of the negotiations for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement now in place, there has been some ridiculous whining from the pharmaceutical industry which got almost everything it wanted in the agreement, but wasn’t quite able to get a few things, including a 12 year patent-like exclusivity on biologics. And, because of that hissy fit, apparently, the USTR and its counterparts in Australia and Canada have agreed to help out Big Pharma in another arena. Jamie Love is reporting that this week there’s a meeting at the WTO this week to explore granting a special exemption on patent rules for developing nations (i.e., those who often need drugs the most, while also being the least likely to be able to afford them). It’s silly to enforce patents in these countries, because doing so would not only lead to almost no business at all, but (more importantly) because lots of people will die or, at the very least, suffer needlessly.

    • Who’s down with TPP?

      TTP is causing a lot of consternation. Critics say the agreement benefits developed countries at the cost of developing countries. They also argue that negotiations have been suspiciously secret. Proponents argue that TPP will reduces barriers to trade, support economic and job growth, improve IP protection and, ‘create new 21st century trade rules.’

      [...]

      While the economic arguments are against term extension, there is evidence that public domain content spurs innovation and new content. Under the agreement, “The Parties recognise the importance of a rich and accessible public” and recognise the importance of good registers. Despite this, the agreement’s copyright terms will reduce the public domain.

      There are also provisions for making the circumvention of DRM illegal (and everyone knows how much consumers looooove DRM) and vague liability for ISPs. Not in the leaked draft are the different copyright terms for corporations, which were discussed earlier, presumably as life-support for Mickey Mouse.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Sanders Goes After Media’s Most Sacred Cow

      One of the biggest audience responses during the October 12 Democratic presidential debate came when Bernie Sanders agreed with Hillary Clinton that focus on her email server was a distraction. But as Lee Fang at the Intercept (10/14/15) pointed out, TV coverage only stressed part of that story, the part about the political impact of Sanders expressing solidarity with Clinton.

    • Pundits Thought Clinton Beat Sanders–but Did Viewers?

      What the Times and these pundits failed to mention is the fact that every online poll we could find asking web visitors who won the debate cast Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders as the winner—and not just by a small margins, but by rather enormous ones.

    • USTR Fishing For Academics To Astroturf In Favor Of TPP

      Now that the TPP deal is done, it appears that the USTR has decided to focus on pushing propaganda, rather than legitimately discussing the details with the American public.

    • Why Is Lawrence Lessig Missing From Tonight’s CNN Debate?

      CNN’s decision to exclude Democratic presidential candidate and tech policy icon Lawrence Lessig from tonight’s debate in Las Vegas is drawing strong criticism from his supporters and other prominent voices from across the political spectrum.

      The Harvard law professor and campaign finance reform crusader, who is best known in tech circles as one of the nation’s top authorities on internet policy and digital copyright law, is running a highly unusual single-issue campaign aimed at rooting out what he calls the corrupting influence of money in politics.

    • Lawrence Lessig’s Attack Lines for Tuesday’s Debate—Had He Been Invited

      Lawrence Lessig sounded irritated as he spoke by phone while on a train Saturday morning. The Harvard professor turned political rabble-rouser, who launched his presidential campaign a month ago, has already raised more than a million dollars and started hiring political operatives. But CNN has not invited him to participate in the Democratic debate on Tuesday night.

    • More Americans support Bernie Sanders than Donald Trump

      For all of the attention paid to the Republican primary — thanks in large part to the classy marquee name of Donald Trump — it’s worth pointing something out: More Americans currently support Hillary Clinton than Trump, which you probably already knew. But it’s safe to assume that more Americans also support Bernie Sanders.

      We looked at this a bit back in May, when the Sanders phenomenon was first emerging. But it’s worth revisiting now that he has surged.

    • LET’S DO PUNCH DEPT.
    • Business Whines That Even EU’s Mild, Unsatisfactory Reform Of Corporate Sovereignty Goes Too Far

      Last month Techdirt wrote about the attempt by the European Commission to deflect the growing EU resistance to the inclusion of a corporate sovereignty chapter in TAFTA/TTIP by turning it into a more formal Investment Court System (ICS). We pointed out some major problems with the proposal, and noted that the US Chamber of Commerce had already rejected the idea out of hand. We now have a response from BusinessEurope, one of the main lobbying organizations in the EU with 40 members in 34 countries.

  • Censorship

    • NJ Legislator Wants State’s Cops To Be The New Beneficiaries Of Hate Crime/Bias Laws

      It’s not enough. It’s dangerous out there for cops these days.* So, in the interest of making things even safer for our underprotected boys/girls in blue, a New Jersey politician is introducing legislation that would fold cops in to the state’s “hate speech/bias” laws.

    • Twitter is suspending accounts that share sports GIFs or highlights without permission

      Twitter has been coming down hard on accounts that share GIFs or video footage of sports highlights without permission. It temporarily suspended the @Deadspin account on Monday, and the @SBNationGIF account is still suspended at the time of writing.

    • China—not online porn—is why Playboy is dumping nude photographs

      Playboy’s recent decision to stop publishing nude photos marks a watershed moment in media, as the porn pioneer buttons up and turns its back on what made it famous. But the company’s core has had little to do with pornography for a long time.

      Over the course of a decade, Playboy has steadily transformed itself from a publishing company to a company that sells bunny drawings to T-shirt manufacturers. Revenues from licensing Playboy merchandise went from $37 million in 2009 to $65 million in 2013‚ marking about half the company’s revenues at the time (paywall).

    • 2,800 Cloudflare IP Addresses Blocked By Court Order

      When SOPA was imminent, Internet users expressed concerns that web blocking might “break the Internet”. The legislation didn’t pass, but according to data just published by a web-blocking watchdog in Russia, a similar law means that 2,800 of Cloudflare’s IP addresses are now on the country’s blocklist.

    • Yee ‘openly defied directions of the court’

      In their submissions yesterday, Yee’s lawyers said that it was not their client’s “dominant intention” to wound the religious feelings of Christians. Instead, his dominant intention was to critique Mr Lee.

    • Thai Arthouse Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul Laments Local Censorship

      Thailand has experienced a dozen military coups since it became a constitutional monarchy in 1932. While the country has one of the more prosperous economies in Southeast Asia and remains a hotspot for international tourists, many Thais feel that political violence is a persistent, latent threat to civic order.

    • Apichatpong Weerasethakul: I won’t censor my work for Thailand

      The Palme D’Or-winning Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul has said he does not want his new film to be screened in in his home country, for fear of the reaction of the ruling military junta.

      Speaking at the London film festival, which screened Cemetery of Splendour earlier this week, Weerasethakul told the BBC he would be forced to self-censor the film if he wanted to show it in Thailand. The drama centres on a group of soldiers who fall ill with a mysterious sleeping sickness, and it has been viewed by critics as a metaphor for the country’s societal travails.

    • Thai film director decries censorship

      An award-winning Thai film director has told the BBC he does not want his latest film shown in Thailand as he would be required to self-censor.

      Apichatpong Weerasethakul, winner of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or prize in 2010, said Thais did not have “genuine freedom”.

      The film, Cemetery of Splendour, evokes political uncertainty in Thailand.

      Thailand’s army seized power in a coup last year and has since increased censorship in the country.

    • Got a question about sex, violence and censorship on television?

      The organization lobbies the Federal Communication Commission and various broadcasting networks regarding the content of television programming, and encouraged advertisers to withdraw their support of programs they deem offensive or contain overly violent, sexual or suggestive content.

    • The story of censorship in America

      Conservatives once wanted to ban Playboy magazine, violent rap lyrics and offensive depictions of Jesus. Leftists then were right to fight such bans, but today leftists encourage censorship in the name of “tolerance.”

    • American Publishers Take a Stand Against Censorship in China

      This may be remembered as the year China’s publishing industry truly went global. In May, a large delegation of Chinese publishers attended BookExpo America, a major publishing trade event, as international guests of honor. And on Thursday, the Publishers Association of China, a government-backed industry group, was admitted to the International Publishers Association, a Geneva-based federation of more than 60 organizations whose mission includes promoting the freedom to publish.

    • 12 American Publishers Sign Pledge to Fight Chinese Censorship

      The PEN American Center has recruited 12 American publishing houses to a pledge. According to the press release, these companies have sworn to “monitor and address incidents of censorship in Chinese translations of books by foreign authors.”

    • American Publishers Take a Stand Against Censorship in China

      Earlier this year, PEN released a report on the censorship of foreign authors works when translated for the Chinese market, which included recommendations for those looking to publish there. That report came ahead of the 2015 BookExpo America, where China was honored as the guest of honor. PEN’s report did much to stoke conversation about weighing the appeal of China’s enormous book market with the government censorship required for entry.

    • No book censorship at Sharjah book fair

      The vision and directives of Dr Shaikh Sultan have contributed towards promoting the culture, knowledge and love of the written word, not only in the UAE but also in the Arab region and the world. The Sharjah book fair has now risen to be amongst the top fairs in the world, said Ahmed bin Rakkad Al Ameri, Chairman of the Sharjah Book Authority, on the sidelines of the Frankfurt Book Fair

    • China Tightens TV Censorship after Cleavage Controversies

      China’s state media regulator, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT), is tightening up censorship of TV soaps and dramas to ensure that costumes remains decidedly demure and storylines hew towards “socialist core values” rather than courtly innuendo.

    • Privatizing censorship in fight against extremism is risk to press freedom

      Allowing ill-defined “extremist” content to be removed without judicial oversight or due process can too easily be used by states interested in limiting independent reporting and staving off public policy debates.

    • No to Government Censorship, Yes to Free Speech!

      Siaosi Sovaleni plans to bring this flawed technology and introduce “Internet Censorship” to Tonga.

    • Government censorship – a concern that should not be ignored

      There is no disputing the excellent efforts by the Hon. Minister to ensure Children’s Cyber-Safety (Parliament passes Bills to control internet access) is the centrepiece of this bill amongst others. There is never a place for online child-abuse material in any society, Tonga included.

    • Activists Beat Censorship in Lumberton, NJ

      Congratulations to the students, parents, and teachers in Lumberton, New Jersey, who have proven that grassroots action makes a difference.

    • The new PC priests of Irish censorship

      After Irish Independence, a state body with the unimprovable title of The Commission on Evil Literature was set up, followed shortly after by the Censorship of Publications Act.

    • Natasha Tripney: Was school cancellation censorship or child protection?

      On October 13, the Out of Joint co-production of Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s new play Jane Wenham: The Witch of Walkern, based on the story of one of the last women to be put on trial for witchcraft in England, was due to be staged at Ipswich High School for Girls. Instead, the performance was cancelled relatively late in the day, as reported in The Stage, due to “grave reservations” over its portrayal of child sex abuse, a decision Out of Joint’s artistic director Max Stafford-Clark branded “spectacularly perverse.”

      Co-produced with Watford Palace Theatre and the Arcola Theatre, the play’s tour includes 10 performances overseen by Eastern Angles, a regional touring theatre company based in the east of England, of which the Ipswich High School date was part. This collaboration was something of a new venture for both Eastern Angles and Out of Joint. It was important to Stafford-Clark that the play should tour this part of the country because the story it tells is so tied up in East Anglian history. In the 17th century, Suffolk was the stomping ground of the notorious Matthew Hopkins, self-styled ‘Witchfinder General,’ and while the Pendle Witch Trials are perhaps lodged more firmly in the collective imagination, the largest single witch trial in England actually took place in Bury St Edmunds in 1645. Walkern itself is in East Hertfordshire, but Wenham’s story, which takes place in 1712, in the time of Queen Anne, when the witch craze though fading was still alive in people’s memories, is part of the landscape of this part of England.

    • Rushdie decries censorship in keynote speech at Frankfurt Book Fair

      The world-famous novelist has called freedom of speech a fundamental right in his keynote address at the annual literary festival. His words come after Iran boycotted the event because of his presence.

    • Rushdie Condemns Censorship as Iranians Boycott Frankfurt Book Fair

      “Limiting freedom of expression is not just censorship, it is also an assault on human nature,” Mr. Rushdie said in his speech, according to Agence France-Presse. “Expression of speech is fundamental to all human beings. We are language animals, we are story-telling animals.” He added, “Without that freedom of expression, all other freedoms fail.”

    • Rushdie warns of new dangers to free speech in West
    • Rushdie: ‘free speech is a part of human nature’
    • Salman Rushdie: Without free speech, all freedoms fail
    • Apple News blocking is a reminder of the ethical minefield facing tech firms in the Chinese market
    • Censorship is the enemy of change

      It is without doubt, as we are constantly told, that we now live in the ‘information age’. With a click of a button, or the swipe of a finger, we can now access, share and follow more stories, content and information from across the world than previous generations could have ever imagined.

      However, as the age-old maxim goes, with great power comes great responsibility. And as we continue in our race to becoming an all-knowing, all-seeing population, we have also become a part of an extremely divisive and important debate: Should the information and media we consume so readily be censored and vetted when it comes to violent and graphic content?

      As is often the case, this debate is rarely black and white. Of course, certain forms of censorship are ostensibly necessary. For example, the use of a television watershed and various forms of film classification boards are in place to avoid unsuitable content being easily accessed by children. However, when it comes to the news outlets and mass media targeted at mature audiences, is such policy really suitable?

    • China leads the way in Internet censorship requests

      From Jan. 1 to June 30, the Chinese government asked Microsoft to remove 165 items from the web, according to the company’s annual transparency report released on Wednesday. That compared to 21 requests from other countries, which included 11 from the United States, five from Germany, two each from the United Kingdom and Russia, and one from Austria.

    • Hillel Int’l champions animal rights activist to cover for its censorship of human rights

      Pro-Israel organizations have championed a number of progressive causes as a form of hasbara, or propaganda, seeking to immunize the Israeli occupation from criticism. These include environmentalism– greenwashing– and LGBTQ rights — pinkwashing. The latest effort is a case of veg-washing.

    • Dave Helling: Censorship shouldn’t be an issue in Kansas school finance case

      Last week, the Shawnee Mission School District told the Kansas Supreme Court that the state’s cap on local spending for education should be lifted. The cap, it said, “has led to a crippling loss of teachers, loss of foreign language programs, larger class sizes, closure of neighborhood schools and loss of property values.”

      The spending cap was put in place to make Kansas’ school funding system more fair for every student. The court is trying to figure out if the scheme has accomplished that goal.

      [...]

      “Ceilings on education are but censorship by another name,” the brief says.

    • Baby Boomers Share Blame for Today’s Censorship-Happy Students

      It’s fun and important to mock the jumped-up Joe Stalins who have seized power in student associations across the West and who are banning songs, hats, newspapers, and people that piss them off. But it isn’t enough. Too often we treat this scourge of student censorship as a sudden, almost malarial hysteria infecting campuses—the fault of a uniquely intolerant generation corrupting a hitherto healthy academy with their demands to be Safe-Spaced from hairy ideas. But this is wrong. These ban-happy brats are actually the bastard offspring of… well, of some of the people now criticizing them. They are Complacency’s Children, the angry logical conclusion to liberals’ failure over the past 30 years to kick back against a creeping culture of intolerance.

    • EU, Germany express concern on Keneş’s arrest ahead of key visits

      On the eve of separate visits by EU commissioners and the German chancellor to Ankara this week, officials from the European Commission and the European Parliament have expressed their concerns about the arrest of Today’s Zaman Editor-in-Chief Bülent Keneş, with the German Bundestag also joining in the growing chorus of those condemning the political pressure on the media and media professionals.

    • Purdue University Erases Video Of NSA Surveillance Speech To Obey Government Censorship Rules

      Purdue University erased a video of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Barton Gellman’s campus address on Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency because his presentation included classified government documents, Gellman said.

      Gellman, a former Washington Post reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Edward Snowden and the NSA’s mass surveillance programs, gave a keynote speech Sept. 24 at Purdue’s technology conference, “Dawn or Doom.” His talk was live-streamed and organizers promised to provide a permanent link to the video on the school website after the talk, Gellman said. But the school, located in Lafayette, Indiana, never provided the link, Gellman wrote in a piece posted on the website of the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.

      “It turns out that Purdue has wiped all copies of my video and slides from university servers, on grounds that I displayed classified documents briefly on screen,” Gellman wrote. He said he was told that the university at one point pondered destroying the projector he borrowed as well.

    • Lincoln Book Festival: There’s nothing new in newspapers censoring themselves – it’s gone on years

      In my research for my forthcoming book, War on Wheels, on the story of the mechanisation of the army in the Second World War, I read many accounts of captivity written by those who had spent years as prisoners of war.

      They were allowed to write home, but in the knowledge that everything they wrote would be seen by their captors. The result was letters that revealed nothing of the dreadful conditions under which they were forced to live.

    • A history of nudity: Playboy’s censorship is a throwback to the medieval era

      Playboy is to abolish the nude. Many people will celebrate this, even if the magazine once seen as the bible of sexual liberation is getting out of the business of soft porn because it has been outdone by the internet, and not for any idealistic feminist reason.

    • Debate team, library staff argue censorship

      In the 2013 school year, 666 of 1241 schools in Texas protested or challenged books according to the Robert R. Muntz Library staff. Two commonly known books that have been banned or challenged are World War Z and A Christmas Carol. To bring attention to the issue of banned books, a public debate focusing on “Censorship of Offensive Material in an Academic Environment Does More Harm than Good” was organized and held at the Cowan Center on September 29th.

    • Newspapers should not practice censorship

      Recently a letter writer demanded that The Morning Call engage in the irrational and immoral practice of censorship — specifically censorship of scientific measurements and observations (i.e., scientific facts) which refuted the global warming crisis theory and the predictions of its flawed computer climate models.

      As the great scientist, Sir Isaac Newton, pointed out, valid scientific theories must be built upon measurements/observations. NASA satellites during the past 18 years have measured no significant global warming, despite an 11 percent increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Neither the theory nor its computer models predicted this huge pause in global warming, proving that both are grossly flawed.

    • Censorship not warranted

      Today, they are regarded as classics, but “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Fahrenheit 451” were once banned for being too controversial. More recently, “Friday Night Lights” was rejected for its depiction of profanity and racism, and the Harry Potter series is banned in several countries for allegedly promoting witchcraft.

    • Opposition politicians slam censorship of TV stations

      Reaction continues to grow after Digital satellite platform Teledünya, cable provider Digiturk, online TV streamer Turkcell TV+ and Treasury backed Tivibu have all joined the political bandwagon and censored the networks, citing an audacious terror investigation launched by a public prosecutor. The platforms’ actions have violated contractual agreements both with viewers and with the channels, and have drawn condemnation from rights groups, opposition politicians, and scores of citizens who have cancelled their subscriptions.

    • Indian Languages Festival to discuss creativity and censorship in Tamil
    • For freedom of speech, these are troubling times

      This most fundamental of principles is under attack – from over-zealous law making, online witch hunts, and a profit-driven media offensive on the BBC

    • UK porn filters still shunned by public, despite wider roll-out

      Around a quarter of UK broadband subscribers (24 percent) have opted to allow their ISPs to block pornographic content, according to an online survey by the broadband comparison site Broadband Genie. Just over half (54 percent) said that they did not use the porn filters, while another 22 percent said they didn’t know. Although there was no attempt to conduct the survey rigorously, and it was relatively small—2,491 respondents took part—it offers useful indications about the public’s uptake of filters not available elsewhere.

      According to the Broadband Genie numbers, the main reason people chose to opt out of the filtering system was that they did not want their access “hindered in any way” (40 percent), while 15 percent of those who rejected the blocks were worried about censorship. Another 11 percent said they did not need the filtering, because they had their own software to do the job.

    • Je Suis Charlie, Toronto Film Festival, review: A powerful eulogy for the victims

      Documentary attempts to put the attacks and French society in context

    • Apple Censors Mobile App Content in China, Even if Users Seek Privacy

      How committed is Apple (APPL) to user privacy and freedom? Not very, it seems—at least for users in China, where the company has blocked access to its News app for iOS mobile devices.

      As its name implies, News is an app for aggregating and reading news on iPads and iPhones (presumably for people who haven’t yet discovered Google News or other free, web-based news aggregators). The app is only available to install for Apple users in the United States. (Apple is currently testing the product in the United Kingdom and Australian markets.) Once it’s installed, however, it can be used from any location.

    • MPA Reveals 500+ Instances of Pirate Site Blocking in Europe

      MPA Deputy General Counsel Okke Visser has revealed that European instances of site blocking on copyright grounds now exceed 500. During a presentation in the UK yesterday, Visser highlighted 13 countries that are implementing web blockades, including latest addition Iceland, which blocked The Pirate Bay this week.

  • Privacy

    • IPT ruling on Wilson doctrine opens way for devolved parliament and assemblies to challenge surveillance

      The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) has ruled that the Wilson Doctrine does not protect MPs and peers’ communications from surveillance by the intelligence agencies.

    • GCHQ allowed to spy on MPs and peers, secret court rules

      The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the UK body that hears complaints about intelligence agencies, has ruled that the communications of MPs and peers are not protected by the Wilson Doctrine, which was thought to exempt them from surveillance by GCHQ and other intelligence agencies. Back in July, the UK government had already admitted that the Wilson Doctrine “cannot work sensibly” when mass surveillance is taking place, but today’s decision goes further by explicitly rejecting the idea of any formal immunity from spying.

    • Thieves steal cyclists’ bikes by following apps that track their routes

      Social media apps which track cyclists’ routes are believed to be behind a sharp rise in high-value bike thefts.

      The mobile phone apps, which allow cyclists to post details of their routes on the internet, are giving thieves the chance to track down top-of-the-range bikes to their owners’ sheds and garages.

      The apps, such as Strava, Endomondo and MapMyRide, record what make and model bike the cyclist is using, so thieves know the value of the bikes.

    • Why Does Facebook Keep Suggesting You Friend Your Tinder Matches?

      A year ago, shortly after breaking up with her boyfriend of three years, Emma Lauren decided to jump back into the dating scene, starting with an OkCupid account. Her first date went disastrously: the dude showed up late, looked nothing like his profile picture, spent the entire time talking about 9/11 conspiracy theories, and berated her for smoking a cigarette before he tried to kiss her at the end of the night. She didn’t speak to him again, and later blocked his phone number after he became belligerent because she didn’t reply to his texts.

    • It could be worse

      So this week the usual folks have been all over China’s proposal to use big data techniques to assign every citizen a Citizen Score. And while a tiny ethics-free part of my soul weeps for joy (hey, I never expected parts of Glasshouse to come true!) the rest of me shudders and can’t help thinking how much worse it could get.

      So, let’s start by synopsizing the Privacy Online News report. It’s basically a state-run universal credit score, where you’re measured on a scale from 350 to 950. But it’s not just about your financial planning ability; it also reflects your political opinions. On the financial side, if you buy products the government approves of your credit score increases: wastes of time (such as video games) cost you points. China’s main social networks feed data into it and you can lose points big-time by expressing political opinions without prior permission, talking about history (where it diverges from the official version—e.g. the events of 1989 in Tiananmen Square—hey, I just earned myself a negative credit score there!), or saying anything that’s politically embarrassing.

      The special social network magic comes into play when you learn that if your friends do this, your score also suffers. You can see what they just did to you: are you angry yet? Social pressure is a pervasive force and it’s going to be exerted on participants whether they like it or not, by friends looking for the goodies that come from having a high citizen score: goodies like instant loans for online shopping, car rentals without needing a deposit, or fast-track access to foreign travel visas. Also, everyone’s credit score is visible online, making it easy to ditch those embarrassingly ranty cocktail-party friends who insist on harshing your government credit karma by not conforming.

      [...]

      First a micro-example: The Chinese government could conceivably to abolish it’s Great Firewall once the citizen score is enacted. Instead, it could require ISPs to log all outgoing internet connections; the UK’s GCHQ already does this via the KARMA POLICE program (and that name could be a big hint about where this is going). By monitoring what people are looking at, you can then reward or punish their habits. The 50 Cent Party demonstrates that they’ve got the human resources to actively track internet activities; members could be rewarded for identifying hostile foreign web sites, and non-members could then earn penalty points on their citizen scores for looking at those sites. By rendering the firewall transparent they could paradoxically improve enforcement: looking at dodgy sites on the internet would get you shunned by family, friends, and workmates out of self-interest.

    • Camgirl OPSEC: How the World’s Newest Porn Stars Protect Their Privacy Online

      I spoke with a well-established camgirl, NataliaGrey, of the popular website MyFreeCams, about how she keeps herself safe online. The first step is protecting your location.

    • If You’re Not Paranoid, You’re Crazy

      Then there was this peculiar psychic incursion. One night, about a year before my phone suggested I eat more walnuts, I was researching modern spycraft for a book I was thinking about writing when I happened across a creepy YouTube video. It consisted of surveillance footage from a Middle Eastern hotel where agents thought to be acting on behalf of Israel had allegedly assassinated a senior Hamas official. I watched as the agents stalked their target, whom they apparently murdered in his room, offscreen, before reappearing in a hallway and nonchalantly summoning an elevator. Because one of the agents was a woman, I typed these words into my browser’s search bar: Mossad seduction techniques. Minutes later, a banner ad appeared for Ashley Madison, the dating site for adulterous married people that would eventually be hacked, exposing tens of millions of trusting cheaters who’d emptied their ids onto the Web. When I tried to watch the surveillance footage again, a video ad appeared. It promoted a slick divorce attorney based in Santa Monica, just a few miles from the Malibu apartment where I escaped my cold Montana home during the winter months.

    • Judge Calls Bluffs On Encryption Debate; Asks Apple To Explain Why Unlocking A Phone Is ‘Unduly Burdensome’

      Things on the Crypto War 2.0 battlefront just got a little more interesting. The administration won’t seek backdoors and neither will Congress. The intelligence community has largely backed away from pressing for compliance from tech companies. This basically leaves FBI director James Comey (along with various law enforcement officials) twisting in his own “but people will die” wind.

      Comey continues to insist encryption can be safely backdoored. He claims the real issue is companies like Apple and Google, who hire tons of “smart people” but won’t put them to work solving his “going dark” problem for him. As pretty much the entirety of the tech community has pointed out, holes in encryption are holes in encryption and cannot ever be law enforcement-only.

    • Majority of ISPs not ready for metadata laws that come into force today

      The vast majority of Australian internet service providers (ISPs) are not ready to start collecting and storing metadata as required under the country’s data retention laws which come into effect today.

      ISPs have had the past six months to plan how they will comply with the law, but 84 per cent say they are not ready and will not be collecting metadata on time.

      The Attorney-General’s department says ISPs have until April 2017 to become fully compliant with the law.

    • Australia accessed NSA spy data more than UK over 12 months: Edward Snowden document

      Australian intelligence authorities accessed private internet data gathered by the US National Security Agency even more than their British counterparts over a 12-month period, according to a previously unreported document released by Edward Snowden.

      The document relates to the NSA’s PRISM program, which takes chunks of users’ online activity directly from companies like Google.

      In the 12 months to May 2012, Australia’s electronic spy agency, the ASD, then known as DSD, produced 310 reports based on PRISM. The UK produced 197.

      Eric King from British activist group Privacy International found the document and told Lateline he was astonished.

      “What we’ve now found out is that DSD, the Australian intelligence services, were using PRISM, they were having access directly to Google, Apple, Facebook and other big US companies which are right into heart of their customer’s data and pulling that out,” he said.

      “The fact that [Australia] had a third more than even Britain used is astonishing to my mind.”

    • How Is the NSA Breaking So Much Crypto?

      There have been rumors for years that the NSA can decrypt a significant fraction of encrypted Internet traffic. In 2012, James Bamford published an article quoting anonymous former NSA officials stating that the agency had achieved a “computing breakthrough” that gave them “the ability to crack current public encryption.” The Snowden documents also hint at some extraordinary capabilities: they show that NSA has built extensive infrastructure to intercept and decrypt VPN traffic and suggest that the agency can decrypt at least some HTTPS and SSH connections on demand.

    • Germany vows tougher control of spy agency after new revelations

      Germany’s justice minister has called for tighter control of the national foreign intelligence agency, after media reported its spies had targeted the embassies of allied countries without the government’s express permission.

      Heiko Maas told the Rheinische Post newspaper in an interview to be published on Friday that a fundamental reform of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) was needed.

      “Parliament must get all the necessary means for an effective control of the intelligence services,” he added.

    • The Guardian view on surveillance: licence to pry on parliament

      Two years ago Edward Snowden let citizens know that their privacy wasn’t all it seemed. Records were routinely being kept on the websites they visited, the texts they sent and the numbers they called. Even search terms and passwords could sometimes be harvested as “bulk data”, making it possible in principle to weave an intimate portrait from disparate electronic traces.

      There were shockwaves around the world, from Washington to Berlin. Westminster, however, shrugged off the news, with many MPs more interested in taking pot-shots at Mr Snowden, and sometimes the Guardian, than in engaging with the substance of what he had to say. If parliamentarians were less than excited about snooping, then – on the-personal-is-the-political principle – it could be because they didn’t imagine that it affected them. The Wilson doctrine – the 50-year-old prime ministerial promises that MPs’ communications wouldn’t be tapped – gave that hunch some basis. Today, however, the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT) told them bluntly that the doctrine had no force in law. Now it is the politicians’ turn to discover that their privacy isn’t all that it had seemed.

    • Facebook has poached a senior Microsoft exec to lead its marketing in Europe

      Facebook has hired Microsoft’s UK chief marketing officer Philippa Snare as its marketing director for business in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

    • Researchers Find ‘Impossible to Trace’ Spyware in 32 Countries

      In the summer of 2014, an anti-surveillance “digilante” only known as PhineasFisher hacked into the servers of the controversial company Gamma International, makers of the FinFisher government spyware, and exposed some of its secrets to the world.

      The breach revealed the company’s customer list as well as details of its products. For some, this was going to seriously damage the company. But a year later, FinFisher is alive and well as a now-separate company. In fact, it has more customers than previously reported, according to a new investigation by Citizen Lab, a digital watchdog at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.

    • If The NSA’s Not Complaining About Encryption, It’s Likely Because It Has Already Found A Way In

      The NSA hasn’t said much (well… compared to the FBI) over the past several months about the default phone encryption offered by Google and Apple. This lack of public outcry has to do with the NSA’s capabilities, rather than a sudden interest in ensuring people around the world have access to secure communications. If it truly felt the world would be a better place with safer computing, it wouldn’t have invested so much in hardware implants, software exploits and — its biggest black budget line — defeating encryption.

      Where there’s no smoke, there’s a great deal of fire which can neither be confirmed nor denied. The NSA has very likely punched holes in encryption in existing encryption. But how does it do it? A brute force attack on encryption would be largely futile, even with the computing power the agency possesses. Alex Halderman and Nadia Heninger at Freedom to Tinker have a theory, and it involves a “flaw” in a highly-recommended encryption algorithm.

    • The NSA may have been able to crack so much encryption thanks to a simple mistake

      The NSA could have gained a significant amount of its access to the world’s encrypted communications thanks to the high-tech version of reusing passwords, according to a report from two US academics.

    • Could a simple mistake be how the NSA was able to crack so much encryption?

      Most encryption software does the high-tech equivalent of reusing passwords, and that could be how the US national security agency decrypted communications

    • Inside China’s plan to give every citizen a character score

      WHERE you go, what you buy, who you know, how many points are on your driving licence: these are just a few of the details that the Chinese government will track – to give scores to all its citizens.

      China’s Social Credit System (SCS) will come up with these ratings by linking up personal data held by banks, e-commerce sites and social networks. The scores will serve not just to indicate an individual’s credit risk, for example, but could be used by potential landlords, employers and even romantic partners to gauge an individual’s character.

      “It isn’t just about financial creditworthiness,” says Rogier Creemers at the University of Oxford, who studies Chinese media policy and politics. “All that behaviour will be integrated into one comprehensive assessment of you as a person, which will then be used to make you eligible or ineligible for certain jobs, or social services.”

    • How to Protect Yourself from NSA Attacks on 1024-bit DH

      In a post on Wednesday, researchers Alex Halderman and Nadia Heninger presented compelling research suggesting that the NSA has developed the capability to decrypt a large number of HTTPS, SSH, and VPN connections using an attack on common implementations of the Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm with 1024-bit primes. Earlier in the year, they were part of a research group that published a study of the Logjam attack, which leveraged overlooked and outdated code to enforce “export-grade” (downgraded, 512-bit) parameters for Diffie-Hellman. By performing a cost analysis of the algorithm with stronger 1024-bit parameters and comparing that with what we know of the NSA “black budget” (and reading between the lines of several leaked documents about NSA interception capabilities) they concluded that it’s likely NSA has been breaking 1024-bit Diffie-Hellman for some time now.

    • Freedom Equals Surveillance
    • Google, Facebook and Other Giants Oppose New Bill Over Privacy Threats

      Facebook, Google, Yahoo and a number of open source advocates are joining the rally cry against a controversial new bill proposed in the U.S. called the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015. Some experts are saying that, if passed, the bill could have a seismic impact on individual privacy and privacy at businesses.

    • How ACLU project director Ben Wizner got a firsthand look at the scope and severity of surveillance issues — as Edward Snowden’s lawyer

      Ben Wizner got a call in January 2013 that would revolutionize his professional career.

      The call was from a journalist and filmmaker, Laura Poitras, whom he had known for years. She had received an email from someone who claimed to be a senior intelligence official.

      “She came to me in order to seek advice,” Wizner says via phone from New York. “She wasn’t sure, and I wasn’t sure, whether the writer was a real person, a crank, or even something more sinister.”

      The writer turned out to be a former CIA employee and government contractor named Edward Snowden. The rest turned out to be history.

      Snowden, with help of journalists around the world, released information about the National Security Agency that had not previously been discussed in public — most notably, that the NSA was collecting telephone data in bulk, including the numbers dialed by Americans and how long the calls lasted. Snowden now lives in Russia, but he has said he would one day like to return home.

    • EU Digital Commish: Ja, we should have done more about NSA spying

      Europe’s outspoken digi Commissioner, Günther H-dot Oettinger has admitted that the European Commission did too little, too late in reaction to Edward Snowden’s NSA spying revelations.

      Following a landmark ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) striking down the EU-US data sharing Safe Harbor agreement on Tuesday, Oetti told German daily Der Spiegel that “a mandatory government agreement would be the best solution” but that he didn’t believe it was likely to happen.

      The second-best option is a re-negotiated arrangement, said Oettinger, for once sticking to the Commission official line. He said clarity was urgently needed for “the many medium-sized companies that are now feeling insecure”.

    • ‘Are you a traitor?’ The BBC Panorama interview with Edward Snowden
    • BBC’s Panorama attacks Edward Snowden

      As well as smearing Snowden, the aim of the documentary was to head off opposition to upcoming UK government legislation, in which even more spying powers are being handed over to an already vast and all-embracing intelligence apparatus.

    • Edward Snowden: NSA Spying on Porn Habits, not Terrorists
    • Why one Utah lawmaker is calling Edward Snowden a ‘traitor’
    • Why one Utah lawmaker is calling Edward Snowden a ‘traitor’
    • Rep. Chris Stewart calls Edward Snowden ‘destructive traitor’
    • Officials in Utah defend NSA’s role fighting cyber-attacks
    • Officials in Utah defend NSA’s role fighting cyber-attacks
    • Officials in Utah Defend NSA’s $1.7 Billion Data Center

      The National Security Agency’s massive data center in Utah isn’t being used to store Americans’ personal phone calls or social media activity, but plays a key role in protecting the country from cyber-attacks by hostile foreign governments, U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah said Tuesday.

      Stewart’s comments came during a national security conference he hosted on the University of Utah campus in Salt Lake City. NSA Utah director Dave Winberg was among the speakers, but didn’t talk specifically what happens at a $1.7 billion data center south of Salt Lake City. He instead focused his remarks on the NSA’s global purpose.

    • Microsoft Gave NSA Access To Encrypted Messages Including Skype, Says Snowden

      According to leaked internal memos given to The Guardian, the U.S. government’s National Security Agency (NSA) worked with Microsoft in order to enable them to read personal messages sent over Skype as well as Outlook email, and its predecessor Hotmail

    • Research Shows How NSA Exploits Flaws to Decrypt Huge Amounts of Communications Instead of Securing the Internet

      According to an award-winning paper presented at a security conference earlier this week by a group of prominent cryptographers, the NSA has likely used its access to vast computing power as well as weaknesses in the commonly used TLS security protocol in order to spy on encrypted communications, including VPNs, HTTPS and SSH. As two of the researchers, Alex Halderman and Nadia Heninger explained, it was previously known that the NSA had reached a “breakthrough” allowing these capabilities. The paper represents a major contribution to public understanding by drawing a link between the NSA’s computing resources and previously known cryptographic weaknesses.

    • On its way: A Google-free, NSA-free IT infrastructure for Europe

      This really wasn’t in the script. All conquering, “disruptive” Silicon Valley companies were more powerful than any nation state, we were told, and governments and nations would submit to their norms. But now the dam that Max Schrems cracked last week has burst open as European companies seek to nail down local alternatives to Google, Dropbox and other Californian over-the-top players.

      They don’t have much choice, says Rafael Laguna, the open source veteran at Open Xchange.

    • When NSA employees leave to start their own companies

      Adam Fuchs and his small team labored for years inside the National Security Agency on a system that would enable analysts to access vast troves of intelligence data and spot hidden patterns.

      “We very much had a startup feel,” Fuchs said. The team worked in an office at Fort Meade with ideas scrawled across whiteboards and old furniture scattered around.

      Their work helped analysts identify terrorist groups. But the ordinarily secretive NSA did something else with the technology: Figuring that others could make use of it, too, the agency released it to the world for free.

      And that was when those who had built the tool saw an opportunity. Half eventually left the agency to develop it on the outside. Fuchs and others founded a company.

    • NSA may have had ability to bypass ‘unbreakable’ encryption for years
    • How to Protect Yourself from NSA Attacks on 1024-bit DH

      In a post on Wednesday, researchers Alex Halderman and Nadia Heninger presented compelling research suggesting that the NSA has developed the capability to decrypt a large number of HTTPS, SSH, and VPN connections using an attack on common implementations of the Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm with 1024-bit primes. Earlier in the year, they were part of a research group that published a study of the Logjam attack, which leveraged overlooked and outdated code to enforce “export-grade” (downgraded, 512-bit) parameters for Diffie-Hellman. By performing a cost analysis of the algorithm with stronger 1024-bit parameters and comparing that with what we know of the NSA “black budget” (and reading between the lines of several leaked documents about NSA interception capabilities) they concluded that it’s likely NSA has been breaking 1024-bit Diffie-Hellman for some time now.

    • This Common Cryptography Method Is Alarmingly Vulnerable
    • Snowden: NSA, GCHQ Using Your Phone to Spy on Others (and You)

      You are a tool of the state, according to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

      The NSA in the U.S., and its equivalent in the UK, GCHQ, are taking control of your phone not just to spy on you as needed, but also to use your device as a way to spy on others around you. You are a walking microphone, camera and GPS for spies.

    • Edward Snowden: Governments Want to Own Your Phone Instead of You
    • Could Nosey, Tracker and Dreamy Smurfs expose your digital life?
    • Snowden discusses a scary way spies can hack your smartphone and gain ‘total control’
    • The NSA sure breaks a lot of “unbreakable” crypto. This is probably how they do it.

      The paper describes how in Diffie-Hellman key exchange — a common means of exchanging cryptographic keys over untrusted channels — it’s possible to save a lot of computation and programmer time by using one of a few, widely agreed-upon large prime numbers. The theoreticians who first proposed this described it as secure against anyone who didn’t want to spend a nearly unimaginable amount of money attacking it.

    • Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders call for Edward Snowden to face trial

      Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders sparred over Edward Snowden during Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate with both calling for him to face trial, but with the Vermont senator saying he thought the NSA whistleblower had “played a very important role in educating the American people”.

    • Sanders would ‘absolutely’ end NSA spying
    • Hillary Clinton Is Wrong About Edward Snowden
    • Sanders would ‘absolutely’ end NSA wiretapping program
    • Some Democrats Deserve Praise for NSA and Snowden Stances. Hillary Clinton, Not So Much.
    • 4 out of 5 Democratic candidates agree—Snowden should face the courts
    • Snowden Broke US Law, Should Stay in Exile – Hillary Clinton
    • No, Hillary, Edward Snowden Didn’t Have Whistleblower Protections
    • Clinton ‘Out of Touch’ With Whistleblowers Reality – Ex Snowden Attorney
    • What Did Clinton Mean When She Said Snowden Files Fell Into the “Wrong Hands”?
    • Hillary Clinton wants Edward Snowden to stand trial
    • Hillary’s Attack on Snowden Was Devoid Of Facts
    • Sanders’ Snowden Response Proves He Doesn’t Want a “Revolution”
    • Snowden Says Hillary Clinton’s Bogus Statements Show a “Lack of Political Courage”
    • Why Hillary Clinton is Wrong About Edward Snowden
    • Snowden hits back at Clinton
    • Hillary Clinton claims Edward Snowden had whistleblower protections, didn’t use them

      That’s not accurate, we found. While American law does shield government whistleblowers, it wouldn’t necessarily apply in Snowden’s case.

    • GCHQ and NSA Spying on Pakistan?

      Last week, Edward Snowden made several statements about the NSA, as he usually does, and the U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ claiming that these agencies wish to control the phones of the public. Lost in much of the typical nonsense one expects to hear from Mr. Snowden, there was the claim that these two signals intelligence agencies were actively engaged in spying on Pakistan. More specifically, Snowden claimed that the eavesdropping was conducted through an exploit in the Cisco routers employed by the Pakistanis.

    • Fallout from EU-US Safe Harbour ruling will be dramatic and far-reaching

      In the wake of last week’s dramatic judgement by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which means that transatlantic data transfers made under the Safe Harbour agreement are likely to be ruled illegal across the EU, there has been no shortage of apocalyptic visions claiming that e-commerce—and even the Internet itself—was doomed. Companies are already finding alternative, if imperfect, ways to transfer personal data from the EU to the US, although a very recent data protection ruling in Germany suggests that one approach—using contracts—is unlikely to withstand legal scrutiny. But what’s being overlooked are the much wider implications of the court’s ruling, which reach far beyond e-commerce.

      The careful legal reasoning used by the CJEU to reach its decisions will make its rulings extremely hard, if not impossible, to circumvent, since they are based on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. As the European Commission’s page on the Charter explains: “The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU brings together in a single document the fundamental rights protected in the EU.” Once merely aspirational, the Charter attained a new importance in December 2009: “with the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, the Charter became legally binding on the EU institutions and on national governments, just like the EU Treaties themselves.”

    • Edward Snowden attorney: ‘Pick your misdemeanor’
    • Facebook’s Like Buttons Will Soon Track Your Web Browsing to Target Ads

      Facebook’s ad targeting algorithms are about to get a new firehose of valuable and controversial personal data.

    • With Little Fanfare, FBI Ramps Up Biometrics Programs (Yet Again)—Part 1

      Being a job seeker isn’t a crime. But the FBI has made a big change in how it deals with fingerprints that might make it seem that way. For the first time, fingerprints and biographical information sent to the FBI for a background check will be stored and searched right along with fingerprints taken for criminal purposes.

    • With Little Fanfare, FBI Ramps Up Biometrics Programs (Yet Again)—Part 2

      As Privacy SOS reported earlier this month, the FBI is looking for new ways to collect biometrics out in the field—and not just fingerprints, but face recognition-ready photographs as well.

    • Sheriff: We’ll get judicial approval—not a warrant—when using stingray

      The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department (SCSD) announced a new cell-site-simulator policy earlier this week, saying that it would seek “judicial authorization” when deploying the devices, which are also known as stingrays.

      In a press release, the largest law enforcement agency in California’s state capital region touted that it was the “first law enforcement agency in the country” to release such a policy.

    • AVG Proudly Announces It Will Sell Your Browsing History to Online Advertisers

      AVG, the Czech antivirus company, has announced a new privacy policy in which it boldly and openly admits it will collect user details and sell them to online advertisers for the purpose of continuing to fund its freemium-based products.

      This new privacy policy is slated to come into effect starting October 15, and the company has published a blog post explaining the decision to go this route, along with the full privacy policy’s content, so users can read it in advance and decide on their own if they want to use its services or not.

    • South Korea-backed app puts children at risk

      Security researchers say they found critical weaknesses in a South Korean government-mandated child surveillance app — vulnerabilities that left the private lives of the country’s youngest citizens open to hackers.

    • Why I Quit My Facebook Quitting

      Most of the time, though, my slips were accidental. I discovered (again this year) that social software is embedded everywhere. My Facebook log-in doubled as my log-in for my ride-sharing app (Uber), my jogging music app (RockMyRun), my house-sharing app (Airbnb), and my bike-riding app (MapMyRide). And then there was Rise, the social app I use to send photos of my meals to a professional dietician, who advises me to leave off the chocolate and add a bit of spinach. Wasn’t that basically a social app?

    • UL creating standard for wearable privacy and security

      UL, formerly called Underwriters Labs, soon expects to certify wearables for safety and security, including user privacy.

      Founded in 1894 and more commonly known for certifying appliances for electrical safety, UL is developing draft requirements for security and privacy for data associated with Internet of Things devices, including wearables. A pilot program is underway, and UL plans to launch the program early in 2016, UL told Computerworld.

    • Germany will make telcos share customer data with the police

      Germany once again requires telcos and ISPs to make user data available to law enforcement, after a previous law and the EU directive on which it was based were declared unconstitutional.

      Even as the European Union attempts to tighten privacy laws, law-enforcement interests have won a battle in Germany: a new law forces communications service providers there to once again make data about their customers’ communications available to police.

    • Online advertisers admit they “messed up,” promise lighter ads

      The online advertising business, which has for years struggled against a rising tide of ad blockers by deploying ever-heavier and more-invasive ads, this week publicly acknowledged the error of its ways.

      “We messed up,” begins the post by Scott Cunningham of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), which represents 650 advertising and tech companies that produce 86 percent of all Internet ads in the US.

    • Reports: Department Of Transportation To Require All Drones Be Registered
    • U.S. Will Require Drones to Be Registered
    • Report: Feds Will Require All Drones to Be Registered

      If you unpack a shiny new drone on Christmas morning, it’s possible you’ll have to get Uncle Sam’s permission before you can fly it.

      NBC News is reporting that the federal government will soon announce new requirements for drones, the most severe of which is that consumer drones will need to be registered with the Department of Transportation.

    • UK Politicians To Hold ‘Emergency Debate’ After Spy Tribunal Says GCHQ Is Permitted To Put Them Under Surveillance

      Now we can see what moves legislators to take swift action against domestic surveillance. It all depends on who’s being targeted.

    • Why ORG is offering to help protect MPs’ communications

      The Wilson Doctrine is named after former Prime Minister Harold Wilson who in 1966, following a spate of scandals involving the alleged telephone-bugging of MPs, told the House of Commons that MPs’ phones would not be tapped. In 2002, Tony Blair said that the policy also applied to the “use of electronic surveillance by any of the three security and intelligence agencies”. In the aftermath of the Snowden revelations, Parliamentarians have asked repeatedly for the Government to clarify whether the Wilson Doctrine still applies. In addition, Caroline Lucas MP and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb asked the IPT whether the Wilson Doctrine prohibited the interception of their communications – including their confidential correspondence with constituents.

  • Civil Rights

    • Domestic Abuse Victims Evicted for Calling Police

      Municipalities across the United States are evicting domestic abuse victims from their homes. Officials term these evictions as “nuisance evictions,” which occur when too many police calls are made to a specific residence.

    • No, Hillary, Edward Snowden Didn’t Have Whistleblower Protections

      That doesn’t take into account cases such as Thomas Drake’s, a former senior NSA executive who obeyed the law while trying to report problems within the NSA and found himself on the wrong side of a major investigation. He now works at an Apple store outside of Washington, DC. Admittedly, the law is fairly complicated, but as Politifact pointed out in January 2014, when the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald said Snowden did not have any whistleblower protections under the Espionage Act, his claim was “mostly true.” Greenwald received the classified information from Snowden.

    • BLOWING THE WHISTLE ON THE UC BERKELEY MATHEMATICS DEPARTMENT

      In response to the many people who have asked me whether I am leaving Berkeley, it is true that the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department has fired me. More precisely, the then Chair of the Mathematics Department, Arthur Ogus, emailed me on October 31st 2014 saying that my employment would be terminated in June 2016. I have asked the campus authorities to review the circumstances leading up to that decision and overrule it. I have filed a formal grievance, viewable here, with the aid of my union representative, and a meeting is scheduled for October 20th, 2015 with representatives from the UC Berkeley campus administration. My contract entitles me to a written response within 15 days of that meeting, by November 4th, 2015. I will be communicating the response I receive at this URL when I receive it.

    • Relatives of Black Man Shot by Off-Duty Officer in Texas Question Police Actions

      For 15 minutes, a man shot by an off-duty officer here lay bleeding from two gunshots in his abdomen as the responding officers stood by without providing first aid. At one point, as the victim, a 53-year-old black man, raised his head, an officer used his foot to keep the man’s face on the pavement, according to a dashboard camera video supplied to The New York Times recently by the man’s relatives.

      From the time the episode was first reported, at 2:17 a.m. on July 9, 2014, and including the time the man, Charles K. Goodridge, lay unaided on the ground, it took more than an hour for him to arrive at an emergency room. An hour after his arrival at the hospital in an ambulance, he was dead.

    • How The Tribune Company And The DOJ Turned A 40 Minute Web Defacement Into $1 Million In ‘Damages’

      Last week we wrote about Matthew Keys being found guilty of three CFAA charges which will likely lead to some amount of jailtime for him (the prosecution has suggested it will ask for less than 5 years). While Keys still denies he did anything he’s accused of, the prosecution argues that he took a login to the Tribune Company’s content management system, handed it off to some hackers in an internet forum and told them to mess stuff up. And… so they made some minor vandalism changes to an LA Times article. It took the LA Times all of 40 minutes to fix it. Even if we assume that Keys did do this, we still have trouble seeing how it was any more than a bit of vandalism that deserves, at best, a slap on the wrist. Its ridiculous to say that it’s a form of felony hacking that requires a prison sentence. As we noted in our original article, the Tribune Company and the feds argued that the damage cost the company $929,977 in damage, well above the $5,000 threshold for the CFAA to apply. We still have trouble seeing how the $5,000 could make sense, let alone nearly a million dollars. And it’s important to note that the sentencing guidelines match up with the dollar amount of the “damages” so this actually matters quite a bit for Keys.

    • Iranian media says Post correspondent Jason Rezaian convicted

      Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, imprisoned in Tehran for more than 14 months, has been convicted following an espionage trial that ended in August, Iranian media reported Monday. The verdict — belated and opaque — was strongly condemned by the journalist’s family and colleagues, as well as the U.S. government.

    • Law Enforcement And The Ongoing Inconvenience Of The Fourth Amendment

      The Fourth Amendment somehow still survives, despite the government’s best efforts to dismantle it… or at the very least, ignore it.

      Law enforcement agencies seemingly have never met a warrant they didn’t like. They’ll do everything they can to avoid getting one, even though the process appears to be little more than [INSERT PROBABLE CAUSE] [OBTAIN WARRANT].

      New Jersey was one of the last states to pay lip service to the warrant requirement for vehicle searches, but recently overturned that because it seemed to be too much of an inconvenience for officers (and drivers [but really just officers]). The court noted that the telephonic warrant system no one had bothered using didn’t seem to be working very well, and so the warrant requirement had to go.

      Everywhere else, there’s any number of ways law enforcement officers can avoid seeking warrants. Exigent circumstances, bumbling ineptitude/warrant-dodging d/b/a “good faith,” the Third Party Doctrine, coming anywhere near a national border, dogs that always smell drugs, the superhuman crime-sensing skills of patrolmen, etc.

    • Family sues Eaton County over son’s traffic-stop death

      The family’s decision comes four months after Eaton County Prosecutor Doug Lloyd determined that Sgt. Jonathan Frost’s actions were lawful when he shot and killed Deven Guilford during a traffic stop.

    • 8 Things You Don’t (Want To) Know About TSA Checkpoints

      If you’ve been on an airplane in the last few decades, you’ve had a close encounter of the TSA kind. We’re all annoyed about taking our shoes off, throwing out our sweet pocket machetes, and emptying all of our delicious exotic liquids just to please The Man. We sat down with someone who spent most of the last decade working for the TSA, and he explained to us just what it was like being inside that most hated of organizations …

    • Google, Facebook and peers criticize CISA bill ahead of Senate consideration

      A trade group representing Facebook, Google, Yahoo and other tech and communications companies has come down heavily against the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015, a controversial bill in the U.S. that is intended to encourage businesses to share information about cyberthreats with the government.

      The Computer & Communications Industry Association claims that the mechanism CISA prescribes for the sharing of cyberthreat information does not adequately protect users’ privacy or put an appropriate limit on the permissible uses of information shared with the government.

      The bill, in addition, “authorizes entities to employ network defense measures that might cause collateral harm to the systems of innocent third parties,” the CCIA said in a blog post Thursday.

    • Law-abiding activist faces deportation from UK

      A political activist arrested but not charged during peaceful protests is facing illegal deportation from the UK, his lawyer has claimed.

      It is thought to be the first case of its kind and has raised serious concerns that the right to peaceful protest, which is enshrined in English law, is being eroded.

      Daniel Gardonyi, 34, is Hungarian but has lived in the UK for several years. He is self-employed and has been involved in several high-profile protests, including the occupation of Friern Barnet library in north London and the Sweets Way housing occupation in the borough of Barnet.

    • Holocaust Scholar Debunks Controversial Claims Connecting Gun Control To The Holocaust

      A professor of history and Holocaust studies debunked Ben Carson’s suggestion that fewer people would have been killed in the Holocaust had there been greater access to guns in an op-ed for The New York Times, explaining that such assertions “are difficult to fathom” for anyone “who studies Nazi Germany and the Holocaust for a living.”

      Ben Carson has come under fire after an October 8 interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer where he claimed that the number of people killed in the Holocaust “would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed.” Carson’s comments were immediately called out as “historically inaccurate” by the Anti-Defamation League, but Fox News figures continuously stood by the controversial comments, which parroted an old right-wing media talking point.

    • Teen prosecuted as adult for having naked images – of himself – on phone

      North Carolina high schooler and his girlfriend face legal proceedings over selfies as both the adult perpetrators and minor victims

    • Anger after Saudi Arabia ‘chosen to head key UN human rights panel’

      Wife of imprisoned blogger Raif Badawi says move amounts to “a green light to flog him”

    • Gunshots Fired From Sheriff’s Helicopter Kill Pursuit Suspect; NB 215 Fwy Shut Down

      A police pursuit led to a wrong-way crash and fatal gunshots fired from a Sheriff’s Department helicopter Friday afternoon, leaving three people hospitalized and prompting the closure of all lanes of the northbound 215 Freeway just south of the Cajon Pass.

    • China Makes Big Push To Get American Tech Companies To Agree To Its Rules

      China is a big — and quite appealing — market. I think just about everyone recognizes that. But it’s also a troubling market for a variety of reasons, and American tech companies have struggled with how to handle China. Beyond the fact that China often requires American firms to “partner” with a local Chinese firm, China often helps local firms get a leg up on American firms. And, then, of course, there’s the whole “Great Firewall” censorship issue, and concerns about the Chinese government’s desire for greater surveillance powers. Google famously left China about five years ago after it got tired of pressure to change its search results. However, just recently it was reported that Google has (at least somewhat) caved to China with a plan to bring a censored version of the Android Play store to China.

    • Why Backdoors Always Suck: The TSA Travel Locks Were Hacked And The TSA Doesn’t Care

      The TSA, it appears, is just simply bad at everything. The nation’s most useless government agency has already made it clear that it is bad at knowing if it groped you, bad at even have a modicum of sense when it comes to keeping the traveling luggage of citizens private, and the TSA is especially super-mega-bad at TSA-ing, failing to catch more than a fraction of illicit material as it passes by agents upturned noses. And now, it appears, the TSA has demonstrated that it is also bad at pretending to give a shit.

    • CIA torture flights have landed at Prestwick at least 19 times

      The revelation will prove embarrassing for the SNP, which last year called for a full judicial inquiry into Britain’s role in the extraordinary rendition of suspected terrorists.

      Police Scotland are also pursuing a lengthy investigation into claims that rendition flights made refuelling stops in Scotland during the early years of the war on terror.

      Glasgow Prestwick was bought by the Scottish Government for £1 in November 2013, in a move that safeguarded hundreds of jobs in and around the struggling airport.

    • He claimed to be ex-CIA and was quoted as an expert on Fox News. Prosecutors say it was a lie.
    • Fox News guest analyst arrested for lying about working for CIA

      A Fox News guest terrorism analyst was arrested on Thursday after a grand jury indicted him on charges of falsely claiming to have been a CIA agent for decades, US prosecutors said.

    • Fox News analyst arrested for lying about working as a CIA agent

      A Fox News guest terrorism analyst was arrested on Thursday after a grand jury indicted him on charges of falsely claiming to have been a CIA agent for decades, US prosecutors said.

      Wayne Simmons, 62, of Annapolis, Maryland, bogusly portrayed himself as an “Outside Paramilitary Special Operations Officer” for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1973 to 2000, the US Attorney’s Office for Virginia’s Eastern District said in a statement.

      [...]

      He has appeared on Fox News, a unit of 21st Century Fox Inc , as a guest analyst on terrorism since 2002 and has a wide presence among conservative groups, a profile on Amazon.com said.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • How IMDb Can Be Older Than the First Web Browser

      Here’s a riddle: the Internet Movie Database, the now-ubiquitous website that tracks pretty much every speck of info about movies and TV, will celebrate its 25th birthday on Saturday. But the 25th anniversary of the proposal that gave birth to the World Wide Web won’t come around till November. That means that the website is older than the web.

    • Telstra partners with HP for network function virtualisation

      Australian telco Telstra has partnered with HP, F5, and Nuage to announce a proof of concept for a multi-vendor, open NFV solution.

    • A lucky accident: Net neutrality changed the world for the better, let’s keep it that way

      The concept of network neutrality was unplanned, an accident even, but a lucky one that did more to encourage internet innovation than any purposeful master plan ever could have done.

      The first architects of the internet, primarily researchers in the US, wanted to build a network that would scale, and they decided the best design for such a network would have smart end points (computers) and a ‘dumb’ network that did one thing only, but did it really well, and that was to forward packets as fast as possible. In contrast, the telephone network had dumb end devices (think rotary handsets) but a smart network that handled end-to-end reservations, accounting, billing and other processing.

    • Welcome to hell: Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook and the slow death of the web

      You might think the conversation about ad blocking is about the user experience of news, but what we’re really talking about is money and power in Silicon Valley. And titanic battles between large companies with lots of money and power tend to have a lot of collateral damage.

  • DRM

    • The Obscure 1789 Statute That Could Force Apple to Unlock a Smartphone

      Law enforcement have asked a magistrate judge in the Eastern District of New York to compel Apple, Inc. to unlock (and possibly decrypt) an iPhone. In response, Magistrate Judge James Orenstein has asked Apple to brief the court on “whether the assistance the government seeks is technically feasible and if, so, whether compliance with the proposed order would be unduly burdensome.”


    • There’s No DRM in JPEG—Let’s Keep It That Way

      If you have ever tried scanning or photocopying a banknote, you may have found that your software—such as Adobe Photoshop, or the embedded software in the photocopier—refused to let you do so. That’s because your software is secretly looking for security features such as EURion dots in the documents that you scan, and is hard-coded to refuse to let you make a copy if it finds them, even if your copy would have been for a lawful purpose.

    • Making The Case Against Adding DRM To JPEG Images

      Earlier this year, we wrote about a plan to add DRM to the JPEG standard, meaning that all sorts of images might start to get locked down. For an internet where a large percentage of images are JPEGs, that presents a potentially serious problem. We did note that the JPEG Committee at least seemed somewhat aware of how this could be problematic — and actually tried to position the addition of DRM as a way to protect against government surveillance. However, there are much better approaches if that’s the real purpose.

    • The iPad and your kid—digital daycare, empowering educator, or something bad?

      Researchers want to find out, but the subject (and related science) is complicated.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • With Dotcom Absent, Extradition Hearing Won’t End Today

        Although it was due to end today there’s no end in sight for the extradition hearing of Kim Dotcom and his co-accused. After a series of delays and adjournments the case continued this week, but on occasion without the Megaupload founder present due to a reported bad back.

      • Big Win For Fair Use In Google Books Lawsuit

        For years, Google has been cooperating with libraries to digitize books and create a massive, publicly available and searchable books database. Users can search the database, which includes millions of works for keywords. Results include titles, page numbers, and small snippets of text. It has become an extraordinarily valuable tool for librarians, scholars, and amateur researchers of all kinds. It also generates revenue for authors by helping them reach new audiences. For example, many librarians reported that they have purchased new books for their collections after discovering them through Google Books. Nonetheless, for almost a decade the Authors Guild has argued that its members are owed compensation in exchange for their books being digitized and included in the database.

      • Google book-scanning project legal, says U.S. appeals court

        A U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday that Google’s massive effort to scan millions of books for an online library does not violate copyright law, rejecting claims from a group of authors that the project illegally deprives them of revenue.

        The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York rejected infringement claims from the Authors Guild and several individual writers, and found that the project provides a public service without violating intellectual property law.

        The authors sued Google, whose parent company is now named Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), in 2005, a year after the project was launched.

      • BREAKING: 2nd Circuit confirms that Google Books Library Project is fair use

        Some libraries agreed to allow Google to scan only public domain works, but others also permitted the scanning of in-copyright content. Overall, libraries agreed to abide by the copyright laws with respect to the copies they make.

        Litigation ensued between the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the Authors’ Guild on the one hand, and Google on the other hand.

      • How Bad Copyright Law Makes Us Less Safe… And How Regulators Have It All Backwards

        For quite some time we’ve pointed out how problematic Section 1201 of the DMCA is. That’s the part of the law that says it’s copyright infringement to simply circumvent any kind of “technological protection measure” even if the reasons for doing so are perfectly legal and have nothing to do with infringement at all. And, of course, we now have the big “1201 Triennial Review” results that are about to come out. That’s the system that was put in place because even Congress realized just how stupid Section 1201 was and how much innovation and research it would limit — so it created a weird sort of safety valve. Every three years, the Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress would work together to come up with classes of technology that are magically “exempted” from the law. Now, normally, you’d think that if you have to come up with exemptions, there’s probably something wrong with the law that needs to be fixed, but that’s not the way this worked.

      • Piracy Claims Are No Basis to Terminate Internet Accounts, Court Hears

        The copyright infringement notices rightsholders send to Internet providers should not lead to account terminations, the EFF and Public Knowledge have told a federal court in Virginia. Both groups submitted their opinion in the case between Cox and two music groups, stating that the interests of millions of subscribers are at risk.

      • ISP Will Disconnect Pirates Following Hollywood Pressure

        Following pressure from Hollywood studios including Viacom, Paramount, and MGM, an Italian ISP is now warning its customers of severe consequences if they persistently share copyright infringing content. In emails to subscribers the ISP warns that accounts will be permanently closed in order to protect the company.

      • Online Piracy Drops in Australia, Thanks to Netflix

        For the first time in years, online piracy rates have dropped significantly in Australia. The downswing coincides with the launch of Netflix, which played a key role as most consumers who say they are pirating less cite legal alternatives as the main reason.

      • Digital Orphans: The Massive Cultural Black Hole On Our Horizon

        Imagine you are a researcher in 2050, researching the history of the Black Lives Matter movement. But you’ve stumbled across a problem: almost every Tweet, post, video or photograph with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter that you want to use in your work is an orphan work (i.e., works whose owners are impossible to track down, but are still covered by copyright). You’d like to ask permission but all you’ve got to go on are usernames from defunct accounts. Where do you go from here?

        [...]

        Instead, the Copyright Office proposes to “solve” the orphan works problem with legislation that would impose substantial burdens on users that would only work for one or two works at any given time. And because that system is so onerous, the Report also proposes a separate licensing regime to support so-called “mass digitization,” while simultaneously admitting that this regime would not really be appropriate for orphans (because there’s no one left to claim the licensing fees). These proposals have been resoundingly criticized for many valid reasons.

      • Are Users to Blame When Pirate Site Admins Go to Jail?

        Who is to blame when torrent and streaming site operators end up in jail?

      • Copyright Scares University Researchers From Sharing Their Findings

        For most researchers the main goal is to publish their research in credible academic journals. Getting published is a victory for them, but one that comes with a downside that’s seldom discussed. In order to get their work accepted they have to sign away their copyrights, which means that they can’t freely share the fruits of their labor.

      • Dotcom case sets Crown back $5.8m

        Crown lawyers have spent nearly 30,000 hours and counting on the Dotcom extradition case.

      • Spammers Flood Google With Fake Takedown Notices

        Google is facing a never-ending flood of takedown requests from copyright holders but there’s also another problem cropping up. Spammers are now submitting takedown notices as well, in the hopes it will indirectly drive traffic to stores selling dubious and counterfeit products.

      • The Pirate Bay Blacklisted By 600 Advertising Companies

        The Pirate Bay and several other locally significant ‘pirate’ sites have been placed on an advertising blacklist. The initiative is the fruit of a collaboration between anti-piracy group Rights Alliance and Swedish Advertisers, an association of advertisers with more than 600 member companies.

      • No Library For You: French Authorities Threatening To Close An App That Lets People Share Physical Books

        It’s not necessarily a new idea. Nearly four years ago, we asked a similar question right here at Techdirt. And even after centuries of having public libraries, we sometimes still see authors lash out at them. And, indeed, you see some weird situations like when people put up little personal libraries in their front yards, people have tried to shut them down, but for being “illegal structures” rather than over the horror of the free lending of books. And you could argue that various attacks on parts of copyright law on the internet really are attacks on the modern form of a library.

10.14.15

Links 14/10/2015: ONOS Liaises With Linux Foundation, New CentOS

Posted in News Roundup at 5:23 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 7 open-source password managers to try now that LogMeIn owns LastPass

    Some LastPass users were clearly not pleased to find out last week that the password management app had been acquired by LogMeIn. Fortunately, there are several alternatives to choose from.

    Sure, there are premium options like Dashlane, Keeper, Passpack, 1Password, and RoboForm, but there are also free password management systems that anyone can inspect and even contribute to. No matter what you use, the idea is to be more secure than you would be if you were to just use “password” as the password for every app you sign up for.

  • Framing Free and Open Source Software

    Having just passed its thirtieth birthday, the Free Software Foundation has plenty to celebrate. Having begun as a fringe movement, free and open source software has become the backbone of the Internet, transforming business as a side-effect. Yet for all is accomplishments, the one thing it has not done is capture the popular imagination. As a result, I find myself wondering how free and open source software might present itself in the next thirty years to overcome this problem.

  • Best Quality and Quantity of Contributions in the New Xen Project 4.6 Release

    I’m pleased to announce the release of Xen Project Hypervisor 4.6. This release focused on improving code quality, security hardening, enablement of security appliances, and release cycle predictability — this is the most punctual release we have ever had. We had a significant amount of contributions from cloud providers, software vendors, hardware vendors, academic researchers and individuals to help with this release. We continue to strive to make Xen Project Hypervisor the most secure open source hypervisor to match the security challenges in cloud computing, and for embedded and IoT use-cases. We are also continuing to improve upon the performance and scalability for our users, and aim to continuously bring many new features to our users in a timely manor.

  • How I learned the difference between a community and an audience

    It’s not every day that your CEO gives you a telephone ring, so I definitely remember the day mine phoned me. He’d called to tell me about a puzzling voicemail he’d just received.

    I was a consultant for a tech community website and the team was rolling out a major site renovation. Our goal was to modernize the look and functionality of the site and, equally importantly, better monetize it so it could survive and thrive in the long term.

    Apparently, however, not everyone welcomed the changes we’d made. In fact, that’s why the CEO was calling me: an active and passionate member of the website’s community, someone irked by our alterations, had found his home phone number and called him directly to protest. And he wanted me to intervene.

  • IBM Adds Node.js Debugging to Bluemix

    After building up its Node.js expertise with its StrongLoop acquisition, IBM has added Node.js debugging capabilities to its Bluemix PaaS.

  • Xen Project 4.6 released with enhanced security to match challenges in cloud computing, IoT
  • Xen Project Virtualization Updated With Improved VMI and Security
  • Xen 4.6 strengthens security and Intel support
  • Xen 4.6 Open Source Linux Hypervisor Brings NSA’s Virtual Trusted Platform Module

    Earlier today, October 13, the Xen Project, through Liu Wei, had the great pleasure of informing the world about the immediate availability for download of the Xen 4.6 open-source Linux hypervisor software.

  • Events

    • Midokura to Present on Open Source Networking at All Things Open 2015
    • Dedoimedo at LinuxCon & CloudOpen 2015!

      Once again, you may have noticed a certain dose of quietness on Dedoimedo in the last week. For a good reason, because I was away in Dublin, Ireland, attending LinuxCon and its co-located sister events. Presenting. On OpenStack. Yay.

      So let me tell you a few more details on how it all went. Should be interesting, I guess, especially some of the camera footage. Anyhow, if you care for one-man’s retelling of the Three Days of the Condor, I mean Mordor, I mean Dublin, oh so witty I am, then please, keep on reading this lovely article. Right on.

    • Citizen cloud thoughts, after fOSSa 2015

      I had (at least) three big reasons to be at the fOSSa 2015 conference, a couple of weeks ago. Two already covered elsewhere and one, “Citizen Cloud: Towards a more decentralized internet?”, that deserves its own separate post. Before getting to that, however, let me quickly remind the first two reasons: first, I and Wouter Tebbens had to present a great research project we of the Free Knowledge Institute are working on, that is Digital Do-It-Yourself (DiDIY). I described the social, cultural and economical characteristics of DiDIY, and Wouter its main legal issues, like Right To Repair. More about the “Digital DIY” side of fOSSa 2015 is here. We also wanted to check out what others are doing about Open Education, as you can read from Wouter here, and from me here. On to Citizen Clouds now.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Katharina Borchert to Join Mozilla Leadership Team as Chief Innovation Officer

        We are excited to announce that Katharina Borchert will be transitioning from our Board of Directors to join the Mozilla leadership team as our new Chief Innovation Officer starting in January.

      • Mozilla, GSMA Publish Study on Mobile Opportunity in Emerging Markets

        Mozilla has released a new report — mzl.la/localcontent — co-authored with the GSMA. Titled “Approaches to local content creation: realising the smartphone opportunity,” our report explores how the right tools, coupled with digital literacy education, can empower mobile-first Web users as content creators and develop a sustainable, inclusive mobile Web.

      • Rust programming language for speed, safety, and concurrency

        Rust is a systems programming language that got its start in 2010 with Mozilla Research. Today, one of Rust’s most ardent developers and guardians is Steve Klabnik, who can you find traveling the globe touting it’s features and teaching people how to use it.

        At All Things Open 2015, Steve will give attendees all they need to know about Rust, but we got an exclusive interview prior to his talk in case you can’t make it.

  • Databases

    • Couchbase CEO on rise of NoSQL

      NoSQL benefits from open source in a number of ways. Open source projects often innovate faster than proprietary projects due largely to the openness of the community. Open source communities share and spread knowledge about the use of key technologies across companies and industries. This allows NoSQL developers to leverage the contributions from many outside developers.

      Open source also allows for a more natural market adoption process. NoSQL technology can be adopted much more rapidly because it can be downloaded and tried for free for exploration or small usage.

  • OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice

  • Business

    • Concurrent Announces Open-Source Transparent Caching Solution

    • Semi-Open Source//Openwashing

      • Microsoft’s Prajna Open Source Project to Play in the Big Data Pool [Ed: openwashing a proprietary software hook. Sam Dean repeats the "loves Linux" lie]

        Now, Microsoft is working on a brand new open source platform, under an Apache license, that seeks to allow developers to easily build cloud computing services and mobile applications that can analyze big streams of data. It is called Prajna, and the code is now on GitHub.

      • An inside look at open source at Facebook

        Christine Abernathy, developer advocate for the Facebook open source team, will be speaking at All Things Open this month. In this interview, she tells us more about how Facebook open sources projects at scale and what challenges lie ahead for the open source team there.

        Christine also references the TODO group, which in the past year has seen its members ship 1,000 open source projects. The TODO group is “an open group of companies who want to collaborate on practices, tools, and other ways to run successful and effective open source projects and programs.” TODO stands for talk openly develop openly.

  • Funding

    • Startup DataVisor Nabs $14.5 Million to Fund Spark-based Security

      DataVisor, a startup company that is building big things around Apache Spark, has announced that it has secured $14.5 million in Series A funding, led by GSR and NEA, to purportedly help protect consumer-facing websites and mobile apps from cyber criminals. The young company’s founders spent years working on computer security at Microsoft Research, and are now focused on big data.

  • BSD

    • Why Samsung’s Open-Source Group Likes The LLVM Clang Compiler

      Samsung is just one of many companies that has grown increasingly fond of the LLVM compiler infrastructure and Clang C/C++ front-end. Clang is in fact the default compiler for native applications on their Tizen platform, but they have a whole list of reasons why they like this compiler.

    • LLVM Is Pursuing A Community Code of Conduct

      While the LLVM community tends to be very respectful to one another and I’m having a hard time thinking of when things have ever gotten out of hand in their mailing list discussions, they are now pursuing a Community Code of Conduct.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • SFLC Files Comment with FCC Arguing Against Overbroad Rules Prohibiting User Modification of Software on Wireless Devices

      On Friday, October 9th, 2015 the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) submitted a comment with the United States Federal Communications Commission, which has proposed a number of revisions to its rules and regulations concerning approval of wireless devices. Notice of Proposed Rule Making, ET Docket No. 15-170. SFLC takes the position that the Commission does not possess the legal authority to adopt a rule that regulates the software running in devices that does not affect the operation of RF transmitters or create interference. SFLC further argues that, even within the scope of the Commission’s regulatory jurisdiction, the Commission must tread carefully to avoid over-regulating radio frequency device software to the detriment of user innovation and after-market software modification. SFLC also urges the Commission to issue a policy statement (1) supporting the use of community developed or free software in networking devices; (2) recognizing the overwhelming social benefits generated from the high-quality software produced by non-profit communities; and (3) stating that preferring proprietary software over software whose source code is publicly available does not meaningfully enhance the security of software.

    • SFLC Confronts FCC, OSI Supports GPL Enforcement Principles

      Today in Linux and Open Source news the Software Freedom Law Center filed a comment with the FCC arguing against overly-broad regulations that eliminate Open Source alternative on wireless devices. Elsewhere, My Linux Rig interviewed FOSSforce’s Larry Cafiero and Rafael Laguna released Halloween wallpapers for Lubuntu.

    • IceCat 38.3.0 release

      This is a major release upgrade following the Extended Support Release upstream cycle, moving from v31.x-ESR to v38.x-ESR. All the features in previous releases have been preserved, along with extra polish and improvements in privacy.

    • Ada Lovelace Day: Marina Zhurakhinskaya and Outreachy

      Working as a senior software engineer at Red Hat on the GNOME Project, I was very impressed by the talent of the project contributors, by how rewarding it is to work on free software, and by the feeling of connectedness one gets when collaborating with people all over the world. Yet, at GUADEC 2009, of approximately 170 attendees, I believe I was one of only eight women. Of the software developers working on the entire GNOME project at the time, I was one of only three.

    • 30 Years of Free Software Foundation: Best Quotes of Richard Stallman
    • GNU Spotlight with Brandon Invergo: Sixteen new GNU releases!

      16 new GNU releases in the last month (as of September 24, 2015):

      autogen-5.18.6
      cpio-2.12
      ddrescue-1.20
      gdb-7.10
      gettext-0.19.6
      global-6.5.1
      gnupg-2.1.8
      gnutls-3.4.5
      help2man-1.47.2
      libgcrypt-1.6.4
      libmicrohttpd-0.9.43
      libtasn1-4.7
      linux-libre-4.2-gnu
      parallel-20150922
      sipwitch-1.9.10
      ucommon-6.6.0

    • [FSFE PR][EN] FSFE convinces 1125 public administrations to remove proprietary software advertisements

      The campaign began in 2009 with the intent of removing advertisements for proprietary PDF reader software from public institutions’ websites. To start it all off, volunteers submitted 2104 “bugs”, or instances of proprietary PDF software being directly promoted by public authorities, and the FSFE listed[2] them online. Since then, hundreds of Free Software activists took action by writing to the relevant public institutions and calling for changes to their websites. We received a lot of positive feedback from the institutions thanking us for our letters, and to date, 1125 out of the 2104 websites (53%) edited their websites by removing links to proprietary PDF readers, or adding links to Free Software PDF readers.

    • GLib now has a datagram interface

      For those who like their I/O packetised, GLib now has a companion for its GIOStream class — the GDatagramBased interface, which we’ve implemented as part of R&D work at Collabora. This is designed to be implemented by any class which does datagram-based I/O. GSocket implements it, essentially as an interface to recvmmsg() and sendmmsg(). The upcoming DTLS support in glib-networking will use it.

  • Public Services/Government

    • 21 October: session on public sector modernisation

      Five experts plan to challenge some of our traditional assumptions about the role of the public sector at the ‘Public Sector Modernisation: Open(ing) Governments, Open(ing) minds’ session on Wednesday 21 October. The experts will elaborate on questions like ‘How can governments meet the expectations of 21st century citizens?’ and ‘How is the information revolution going to further transform our governments?’.

  • Licensing

    • The importance of community-oriented GPL enforcement

      The Free Software Foundation and Software Freedom Conservancy have released a statement of principles on how GPL enforcement work can and should be done in a community-oriented fashion. The president of the Open Source Initiative, Allison Randal, participated as a co-author in the drafting of the principles, together with the leadership of FSF and Conservancy.

      The Open Source Initiative’s mission centers on advocating for and supporting efforts to improve community best practices, in order to promote and protect open source (founded on the principles of free software). While the OSI’s work doesn’t include legal enforcement actions for the GPL or any of the family of licenses that conform to the Open Source Definition, we applaud these principles set forth by the FSF and Conservancy, clearly defining community best practices around GPL enforcement.

  • Programming

    • Google Introduces New Developer Tools for Cloud Platform

      Google’s Cloud Datalab and Cloud Shell continue company’s efforts to help developers with apps running on Cloud Platform.
      The developer community has been a key focus area for Google in its strategy to drive broader enterprise adoption of the company’s Cloud Platform service.

    • 2013 and internship

      My college days were coming to an end with placements all around. I was sure to work in a startup. One fine day, I saw a job posting on hasjob on 12th December 2012 that boldly said “HackerEarth is buidling its initial team – Python/Django enthusiast needed”. The idea made me apply to HackerEarth and after a few rounds of email with Sachin and Vivek. I landed up in a remote intern position.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Open Document Format: Using Officeshots and ODFAutoTesting for Sustainable Documents

      One of the many benefits of open source software is that it offers some protection from having programs disappear or stop working. If part of a platform changes in a non-compatible way, users are free to modify the program so that it continues to work in the new environment. At a level above the software, open standards protect the information itself. Everybody expects to be able to open a JPEG image they took with their digital camera 5 years ago. And, it is not unreasonable to expect to be able to open that same image decades from now. For example, an ASCII text file written 40 years ago can be easily viewed today.

Leftovers

  • Twitter Slashing Costs With Workforce Layoffs

    The cuts come as reinstalled CEO Jack Dorsey looks to boost Twitter’s fortunes after nearly a decade of financial losses.

  • Twitter cuts more than 300 staff

    Twitter is laying off up to 336 staff, with Jack Dorsey swinging the axe at the social network just a week after being appointed permanent chief executive.

  • 11 times the Windows blue screen of death struck in public

  • Science

    • Ada Lovelace Day: Celebrating the Achievements of Women in Technology

      Ada Lovelace was born two centuries ago this year, and is widely recognized as a visionary who saw the potential of computational machines long before the development of the modern computer – a prescience often credited to her devotion to metaphor-heavy “poetical” science. Lovelace’s mother provided her daughter with a thorough mathematical education, both to dissuade her from following in the footsteps of her father – the famed poet Lord Byron – and to provide her with intellectual and emotional stability. At age seventeen, Lovelace witnessed a demonstration of Charles Babbage’s difference engine, and eventually worked with him as he devised the analytical engine, furnishing Babbage with her own original set of groundbreaking notes.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • ‘MH17 hit by BUK missile’

      Flight MH17 was confirmed shot down in eastern Ukraine by a Russian-made anti-aircraft missile on July 17, 2014, in a final report by the Dutch Safety Board, but the 15-month investigation did not say who fired it.

  • Finance

    • Labour’s Dead Center

      Jeremy Corbyn, a long-time leftist dissident, has won a stunning victory in the contest for leadership of Britain’s Labour Party. Political pundits say that this means doom for Labour’s electoral prospects; they could be right, although I’m not the only person wondering why commentators who completely failed to predict the Corbyn phenomenon have so much confidence in their analyses of what it means.

      But I won’t try to get into that game. What I want to do instead is talk about one crucial piece of background to the Corbyn surge — the implosion of Labour’s moderates. On economic policy, in particular, the striking thing about the leadership contest was that every candidate other than Mr. Corbyn essentially supported the Conservative government’s austerity policies.

      Worse, they all implicitly accepted the bogus justification for those policies, in effect pleading guilty to policy crimes that Labour did not, in fact, commit. If you want a U.S. analogy, it’s as if all the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination in 2004 had gone around declaring, “We were weak on national security, and 9/11 was our fault.” Would we have been surprised if Democratic primary voters had turned to a candidate who rejected that canard, whatever other views he or she held?

    • Finishing What Thatcher Started

      The UK Trade Union Bill is a brazen attempt to crush worker power and restrict democratic rights.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Privacy

    • One Year Later, Hundreds of Tor Challenge Relays Still Active

      As of this month, 567 relays from our 2014 Tor Challenge are still up and running—more than were established during the entire inaugural Tor Challenge back in 2011. To put that number in perspective, these nodes represent more than 8.5% of the roughly 6,500 public relays currently active on the entire Tor network, a system that supports more than 2-million directly connecting clients worldwide.

  • Civil Rights

    • British Government cancels Ministry of Justice contract with the Saudi prison system

      The Government has cancelled a contract that would have seen the Ministry of Justice provide prison services to Saudi Arabia, Downing Street has said.

      The £5.9m deal, which Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn recently called on David Cameron to scrap, was controversial because of the autocratic kingdom’s weak human rights record.

      The commercial venture would have seen the trading arm of the National Offender Management Service, JSi, provide development programmes for the country’s prison service.

    • CIA torture survivors sue psychologists who designed infamous program

      Survivors of CIA torture have sued the contractor psychologists who designed one of the most infamous programs of the post-9/11 era.

    • Former U.S. Detainees Sue Psychologists Responsible For CIA Torture Program

      The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on Tuesday morning on behalf of three former U.S. detainees against the psychologists responsible for conceiving and supervising the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation program that used systematic torture.

    • Time’s up on Gitmo, Mr. President: To make good on his promise, Obama must veto the defense authorization bill

      Do you remember when the President first said he wanted to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay?

      “I would very much like to end Guantanamo,” he said in 2006. I’m talking, of course, about President George W. Bush.

      At the time, I was a senior Defense Department counterterrorism official. My colleagues and I had been trying to transfer or release Guantanamo detainees since 2002, when we had discovered that an overwhelming majority had neither intelligence value nor value for prosecution. Most were not taken off the battlefield, as we had been told. Many were just victims of circumstance.

      Of course, Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, campaigned on closing the prison — and on his second day in office signed an executive order pledging to shut it down within a year. More than seven years later, this prison is still open — 114 people still languish there, down substantially from its height of 775.

    • How Many More FBI Documents Contain the Phrase ‘Mohammed Raghead’?

      We asked the agencies for every document that mentioned or referred to Mohammed Raghead. More than a year later, the FBI responded by turning over 56 pages of heavily redacted documents; the NSA and CIA are still processing our request. The FBI said it found a grand total of 86 pages, but redacted and/or withheld information on national security and privacy grounds, because they are considered “deliberative,” and because disclosure of the withheld material could reveal law enforcement techniques and procedures. Some Mohammed Raghead–related records, according to the FBI, originated with other government agencies and were sent to them for review for a final decision on whether they could be released.

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