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… Linux (RHEL) 7, as well as its cousin CentOS 7, both of which use kernel version 3.10.

Terminix 1.3.5 Released With Quake Mode Improvements

Terminix is a GTK3 tiling terminal emulator. The application allows splitting terminals horizontally and vertically, arranging them using drag and drop, along with quite a few other useful features.

Xfce Gets A `Do Not Disturb` Mode And Per Application Notification Settings

The Xfce developers are busy porting Xfce applications …

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/11/13/gnome-3-22-2-released/feed/ 0 Links 1/11/2016: Linux Hallowee, Debian Drops PowerPC http://techrights.org/2016/11/01/debian-drops-powerpc/ http://techrights.org/2016/11/01/debian-drops-powerpc/#comments Tue, 01 Nov 2016 16:51:56 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=96530

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 6 ways to use open tools to better support Indian languages

    India is a large and a populated country that makes up a large base of Google consumers. So in recent years, Google’s widened support of world languages for its various products has been a blessing. It has specifically helped Indian people grow their use of and participation on the Internet.

    For one, Google Summer of Code helps students experiment with and build prototypes that enhance language-based software. Another way is through Google Translate, a web and app-based platform that provides machine translation from one language to another. It is predominantly maintained and serviced by volunteer contributions. Yet, there are more ways Google can support great inclusivity through the support of world languages; particularly people speaking South Asian-languages.

  • FreeDOS 1.2 RC1 Released
  • FreeDOS 1.2 RC1

    You may know that I am involved in many open source software projects. Aside from my usability work with GNOME, I am probably best known as the founder and project coordinator of the FreeDOS Project.

  • Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

    Today we’re thrilled to announce that Minoca OS has gone open source. We are releasing the entirety of the Minoca OS source code under the GNU GPLv3. We’re excited to build a community of users and developers around this new operating system, and we need help. You can check out the source at https://github.com/minoca/os. You can also check out our repository of third party source packages here. If you’re just looking to download the latest stable binaries of Minoca OS, head to the download page.

  • Minoca OS goes open source
  • What software documentation can learn from tabletop gaming

    That was it. Those were the (altered for the sake of this example) instructions. Three steps and one big shout that hey, don’t look now but you’re playing the game already, and you’re up and running.

    To be fair, there were a lot of nuances that those three steps did not in any way cover. Luckily, there were three more paragraphs that the author snuck in after the “You’re playing!” pronouncement, providing more details on the types of cards, what they mean, and so on.

    And there were lots of times during those first few games where we had to stop game play and scratch our heads, asking “Wait, we can’t play this card after that card can we? What happens now?” For an answer, we went back to the rules and looked in the little reference section on the back of the rule sheet, learning about the technicalities of the game as we went along.

    But you see, it tricked us; we didn’t feel like we were reading the instructions because we were actively playing the game. We weren’t reading instructions, as such; we were using the rules as reference. It was practically part of the game.

  • How Do We Encourage Technologists in the Public Interest?

    As I mentioned when the Recompiler interviewed me, my inspirations and role models in technology are technologists who serve the public interest. The person who introduced me to free and open source software, Seth Schoen, is a kind teacher and a rigorous thinker who deploys his software engineering expertise at the intersection of technology and activism. I was lucky enough to meet the right people early in my career so I see public interest technology as a desirable and viable career path AND something you can integrate into a career that doesn’t focus on nonprofit/government work — but not enough people know about it, and not enough institutions encourage it.

    How do we help encourage and employ more Seths, more Bruce Schneiers, more Eleanor Saittas, more Kelsey Gilmore-Innises? If you were to say “Sumana, that’s a pretty infosecurity-centric list there, what about people who are more about analytics to enable policy work, or the web developers at 18F, or –” then I would agree with you! This is a broad and deep field, and thus a broad and deep question.

  • Using Open Source to Roll Back Prices at Walmart

    What do you do when your e-commerce site adds at least a million new products every month, and sometimes more than a million in a single week? According to Jeremy King, who is senior vice president and CTO for Walmart Global eCommerce, one of the things you do is invest in open source, both as a user and as a developer. But how do you convince the suits in the front office to release code developed in house as open source?

    “The good part about WalmartLabs is that we sort of didn’t ask for permission,” he admitted last week before a crowd of over 2,000 at the All Things Open conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was being interviewed on stage by ATO’s master of ceremonies, community manager Jono Bacon, in a “fireside chat” during the opening day keynote sessions. “We sort of started off with that approach. As we got bigger, obviously you don’t open source a product that you’ve spent resources on for a couple of years without really talking to the enterprise, so it really was a baby step as you go in.”

  • LendingCalc.com’s PUFIN Open Source Blockchain Tech May Be Marketplace Lending Answer

    In the wake of recent company shakeups and growing pains in the marketplace lending industry, the need for better transparency and industry tools for all participants has become a critical concern. PUFIN, an online and open source project to create free and global loan identifiers using blockchain technology, aims to deliver order and uniformity in a secure environment to the marketplace.

    Recent entrants into the market are proposing systems that reserve the right to charge fees at any time. The idea of a free enticement that allows for charging fees later may be the basis for a slow or incomplete industry adoption of online loans.

    LendingCalc.com‘s Ben McMillan and Mike Mazier may have the open source answer: They have filed to patent a fee-free system to use blockchain technology to generate unique identifiers for loans in line with the US Treasury’s whitepaper “Opportunities and Challenges in Online Marketplace Lending.” The company is in the works to set up their system as an open source resource for the industry.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • 130 serious Firefox holes plugged this year

        Mozilla has shuttered more than 130 serious vulnerabilities reported by community hackers this year.

        The browser-backing outfit announced the statistics in a post covering its bug bounty program and broader information security efforts.

        More than 500 million users ran Firefox at the close of 2015. It’s since become the world’s second-most-used browser.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Road to LibreOffice 5.3

      With the availability of the LibreOffice 5.3 Alpha, we have entered the road to LibreOffice 5.3, the next significant major release of the best free office suite ever developed. The software is in the early stage of the final development cycle, and as such should be installed only by expert community members skilled in quality assurance tasks, or involved in launch activities. Although in Alpha stage, LibreOffice 5.3 has an outstanding Coverity Scan score, as confirmed on October 20, with 0.01 defects per 1,000 lines of code (the image on the left is a screenshot of the Coverity Scan dashboard). LibreOffice 5.3 will be officially announced at the end of January 2017.

  • CMS

    • The Wix Mobile App, a WordPress Joint

      Anyone who knows me knows that I like to try new things — phones, gadgets, apps. Last week I downloaded the new Wix (closed, proprietary, non-open-sourced, non-GPL) mobile app. I’m always interested to see how others tackle the challenge of building and editing websites from a mobile device.

      I started playing around with the editor, and felt… déjà vu. It was familiar. Like I had used it before.

      Turns out I had. Because it’s WordPress.

    • WordPress and Wix Are Fighting About Open Source Software

      So WordPress and Wix are fighting one another – and I’m not talking about them competing for customers. Instead, the two website building heavyweights are having a brawl via the blogosphere.

    • Attackers use patched exploits to hit Joomla! sites
    • Joomla websites attacked en masse using recently patched exploits

      Attackers are aggressively attacking Joomla-based websites by exploiting two critical vulnerabilities patched last week.

      The flaws allow the creation of accounts with elevated privileges on websites built with the popular Joomla content management system, even if account registration is disabled. They were patched in Joomla 3.6.4, released Tuesday.

    • Georgia state government earns national recognition for web accessibility

      Georgia’s enterprise web platform runs on Drupal 7, which includes many accessibility features in its baseline code and structure. That makes it easier for any new site to build in accessibility from day one. This comes with the caveat that not all modules are accessible, and plenty can be coded and designed without accessibility in mind, meaning that just using Drupal does not make a site accessible to users with disabilities. That said, even in its original implementation with Drupal 7 in 2012, Georgia’s web publishing platform was built to meet federal accessibility standards (Section 508, for those of you interested in the details).

      From there, when the product team wanted to improve the platform’s underlying code to meet the more modern WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility guidelines, they were working from a flexible and scalable base.

  • Healthcare

    • How open source can change the face of healthcare

      The significant advances being made in technology over the past decade have introduced world changing solutions that are revolutionising how businesses operate.

      However, it is not only business which is reaping the benefits of technologies in the fields of cloud, big data, the IoT, artificial intelligence and others, areas such as

      healthcare are also being boosted.

      Numerous companies such as IBM, Google, Microsoft and more have all invested significantly in the area and have made great strides in placing their technologies in this field.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • AMD’s HSAIL Front-End For GCC Might Finally Be Close For Merging

      There is finally an update on the proposed HSAIL front-end for GCC for supporting the BRIG binary form of the Heterogeneous System Architecture Intermediate Language.

      See that earlier article for more background information on the ongoing GCC HSA efforts that have been happening for a few years now. That HSAIL GCC front-end has been quiet since it was proposed back in May but now it looks like it may be close to going mainline.

  • Public Services/Government

    • France opens source code of three new simulators

      France is continuing to improve its fiscal transparency by opening the source code of three new algorithms, and has promoted use of this code through a hackaton called #CodeGouv.

      The three algorithms are used by the French administration to calculate:

      The cost of a car registration document which can change according to the geographical location or the type of vehicle;
      The legal bonus of an apprentice, which can vary according to the number of working hours;
      The penalty rate. The simulator assesses the interest the French administration should pay if payments are delayed.

      Read more

    • Slovakia: 40% ICT systems to use open source by 2020

      By 2020, 40% of public administration ICT systems in Slovakia should use open source software. The target for open source is part of the country’s ICT architecture, which was updated in September.

    • Nantes: ‘Surveys support switch to open source’

      When implementing free and open source desktop software, public administrations should gather feedback through user surveys, says Eric Ficheux, change management specialist at Nantes Métropole, France’s 6th largest city. “Good news comes only if you organise feedback”, he says, adding: “Survey data cannot be challenged by project opponents, and helps to defend against foul play.”

    • Ho Hum. Another City Switches To LibreOffice

      I knew that 15 years ago when OpenOffice.org came out with version 1.0. It’s still true today. Further, LibreOffice also works on GNU/Linux so another barrier to FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) has been broken.

  • Licensing/Legal

    • React’s license: necessary and open?

      React’s patent license (1) isn’t a bad idea, because the BSD license is not explicit about granting patent rights; and (2) probably meets the requirements of the Open Source Definition.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • What are the impacts of participatory budgeting in Europe?

    • Open Data

      • Slovakia to fully automate the publication of open data

        Slovakia will automate the publication of public sector information as open data as much as possible, and integrate this process in all government information processing systems. This is one of the main priorities in the National Concept of Public Information Services (Národná Koncepcia Informatizácie Verejnej Správy; NKIVS) that was adopted last month.

      • ODIC 2016: some case studies emerge in Open Contracting

        Start small, clearly demonstrate the impact, and adopt a standardised approach with civil society – these are among the lessons learnt arising from a session on Open Contracting, held as part of the Open Data International Conference (ODIC 2016). This event took place in Madrid at the beginning of October.

        Open Contracting is a way to make public procurement more transparent to citizens and a way to avoid corruption. But only 10% of countries are aligned on an Open Contracting basic standard, it was noted during the session. Data are published in open format. The Open Contracting Partnership has developed a data standard for Open Contracting, the goal of which is to “reflect the complete contracting cycle”, according to the website.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Outdoor Gear Companies: It’s Time to Open-Source Your Technology

        Patagonia finally released the Yulex wetsuits this fall. Even more important, it also released the technology behind the rubber and the names of the factories that produced the suits. The company’s hope: to motivate other manufacturers to use fewer resource-intensive materials. “We knew from the beginning that we’re a very small player in the surf industry—there’s no way we’re going to disrupt that industry—but it was always our intention to invite other companies to use [the technology],” Hubbard says.

  • Programming/Development

    • Perl might be old school, but it continues to attract new users

      Earlier this year, ActiveState conducted a survey of users who had downloaded our distribution of Perl over the prior year and a half. We received 356 responses–99 commercial users and 257 individual users. I’ve been using Perl for a long time, and I expected that lengthy experience would be typical of the Perl community. Our survey results, however, tell a different story.

      Almost one-third of the respondents have three or fewer years of experience. Nearly half of all respondents reported using Perl for fewer than five years, a statistic that could be attributed to Perl’s outstanding, inclusive community. The powerful and pragmatic nature of Perl and its supportive community make it a great choice for a wide array of uses across a variety of industries.

      For a deeper dive, check out this video of my talk at YAPC North America this year.

Leftovers

  • The Great “Cultural Appropriation” Pumpkin: Psst, Halloween Belongs To The Irish

    Yale lecturer Erika Christakis and her husband, professor Nicholas Christakis, were uglied out of the university after she dared to offend the crypussies that pass for college students these days by sending out the mildest call to let people express themselves as they wish on Halloween.

    The thing about all these tiny little authoritarian screechers on campus — they should spend more time going to class and learning the stuff of Western culture that promotes logical thought. Because they don’t bother to do the slightest bit of, “Hmm, where does this argument I’m supporting lead?”

  • How the White House will hand over social media accounts to Clinton or Trump

    The White House just published an overview explaining its plans for a “digital transition” between the departing Obama administration and the incoming 45th president of the United States. It details how each White House social media account (and position-specific handles like @POTUS, @FLOTUS, and @VP) will be transferred to the victor of November 8th’s presidential election. Since Obama is the first commander in chief to have a presence on most of these apps, there’s not much in the way of precedent for figuring out how it’s all supposed to work. So the White House developed some of its own.

    For the big ones, the switchover will happen on inauguration day: January 20th. That’s when either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will assume the @POTUS Twitter account, for instance. The White House says that the account’s followers (currently over 11 million) will carry over to the next Oval Office occupant, but tweets will be zeroed out so that the 45th president can start fresh. President Obama’s @POTUS tweet history will be moved over to a new account, @POTUS44. That page is already live, though it’s currently protected.

  • Science

    • Finland to allow voters to cast votes online in all general elections

      “The Government intends to carefully look into the possibility of introducing electronic voting in general elections. The matter is associated with both advantages and disadvantages. It is good to examine online voting as a means to promote democracy ahead of the one-hundredth anniversary of Finland,” says Jari Lindström (PS), the Minister of Justice and Employment.

      The task force is expected to conclude its preparatory work by the end of next year.

      General elections include the municipal, parliamentary and presidential elections, the elections to the European Parliament, and the planned provincial elections. Voters in indicative referendums will also be allowed to cast their votes online, according to the Ministry of Justice.

  • Hardware

    • Steve Jobs would probably be rather upset with what Apple has become today

      This past week, Apple spent 82 minutes unveiling a new app, a computer screen made by another company, and three laptops with the same name. They weren’t exactly the major overhauls that many were hoping for, and the event comes not too long after the company released a new iPhone that looked much like the last two it put out, and its other notable innovations of late have been making its products in different sizes and unleashing a sea of dongles on the world.

      In an old interview that’s making the rounds online today, former CEO Steve Jobs explained, in his mind why companies like Xerox, a company that once had one of the most innovative research labs in the world, failed. He compared the product cycles and the corporate structures of strong, stable consumer brands, such as PepsiCo, which John Sculley, the CEO that once replaced him at Apple, previously ran.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Water, jobs, justice: an urgent demand to rebuild America’s water infrastructure

      During this year’s election, both major party candidates have discussed the need for massive infrastructure investments to upgrade everything from our highways and bridges to our airports. Unfortunately, there has been little conversation highlighting our nation’s urgent need to upgrade our aging drinking water and wastewater systems.

      While our interstate highway system officially turned 60 this year, some of the infrastructure delivering water to our communities is over a century old, and that includes the pipes—many made of lead. So it’s no surprise that there’s an urgent national health crisis unfolding before our eyes. Far beyond Flint, Mich., every week more information is revealed showing that millions of homes, schools, restaurants and small and large businesses in almost every state throughout the country are serviced by lead pipes or old crumbling water lines. According to a recent study by the Government Accountability Office, economically distressed cities with declining populations continue to have urgent water infrastructure needs: there are more Flints waiting in the wings if we don’t act.

    • America’s Legal Pot Economy Is Forced Underground

      Punctuated by sharp intakes of breath, Max Simon repeated himself softly, trying to mask a deep frustration. “We … are … a … media … company. We produce media.”

      Like many startup founders, the 34-year-old has a spiel right down to the enunciation and cadence. He gave his speech nine times, to nine different bankers. Eight rejected him. But it wasn’t venture capital he was seeking. It was a checking account.

      Simon is the founder of Green Flower Media LLC, a production company in Ojai, Calif., that sells educational videos about marijuana, with topics ranging from medicinal use to cannabis industry investing. He likens the platform to a cannabis-centric Lynda.com, the online-course company owned by LinkedIn. Shortly after Green Flower sold its first batch of videos, Simon received an e-mail from Chase Bank. The company’s corporate account was being shut down.

    • Flint, and Michigan, Brace for More Charges in Water Inquiry

      As Flint continues to suffer from a water crisis, one question percolates here in Michigan’s capital: Who will be charged next?

      So far, nine low-level or midlevel government officials have been criminally charged as part of the state investigation into the water’s contamination, which has been tied to lead poisoning in children and the deaths of 12 people from Legionnaires’ disease.

      In recent weeks, however, there have been growing indications that investigators are focusing on bigger targets, and they seem to be looking more intently at the state’s failure to respond to the Legionnaires’ cases.

      “Twelve people died,” said Bill Schuette, Michigan’s attorney general, who is leading the investigation. “That is certainly a high priority for us.”

    • Judge: Flint water allegations ‘shock the conscience’

      The State of Michigan can be sued over allegations that the contamination of Flint’s drinking water damaged the health of residents and hurt the value of their properties, a Michigan Court of Claims judge has ruled.

      Judge Mark Boonstra, in an opinion issued Wednesday, said that if proven true, allegations brought against Gov. Rick Snyder and other defendants by Melissa Mays and other Flint residents, “shock the conscience.”

      Boonstra dismissed two counts against the state, but said two other counts may proceed to trial.

      The lawsuit can proceed on allegations the state violated the due process clause of the state constitution by failing to protect Flint residents’ “bodily integrity,” Boonstra ruled. The suit can also proceed on allegations that state actions were a substantial cause of decline in Flint property values and the state “abused its powers” by “continuing to supply each water user with corrosive and contaminated water,” he said in a 50-page opinion released Thursday.

    • ‘Fix rooms’ plan for Glasgow drug addicts set for green light

      A controversial plan to set up so-called “fix rooms” to allow drug addicts to inject safely under supervision in Glasgow is likely to get the go-ahead.

      Members of the health board, the city council and police are expected to agree the idea in principle.

      The move aims to address the problems caused by an estimated 500 or so users who inject on Glasgow’s streets.

    • Doubts About the Promised Bounty of Genetically Modified Crops

      The controversy over genetically modified crops has long focused on largely unsubstantiated fears that they are unsafe to eat.

      But an extensive examination by The New York Times indicates that the debate has missed a more basic problem — genetic modification in the United States and Canada has not accelerated increases in crop yields or led to an overall reduction in the use of chemical pesticides.

      The promise of genetic modification was twofold: By making crops immune to the effects of weedkillers and inherently resistant to many pests, they would grow so robustly that they would become indispensable to feeding the world’s growing population, while also requiring fewer applications of sprayed pesticides.

      Twenty years ago, Europe largely rejected genetic modification at the same time the United States and Canada were embracing it. Comparing results on the two continents, using independent data as well as academic and industry research, shows how the technology has fallen short of the promise.

    • The Candy Hierarchy for 2016: Halloween’s best and worst treats

      The results of our survey are in. This year’s list of the most loved and hated Halloween treats has a surprise in store!

    • Chan Issues Clarion Call For Increased WHO Funding

      World Health Organization Director General Margaret Chan today warned of serious funding shortfalls for the current biennium endangering the implementation of certain programmes. Areas most in need of financing include non-communicable diseases (such as cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases), food security, and antimicrobial resistance. The high-profile Health Emergencies Programme is also underfunded and Chan proposed to ask countries to raise their assessed contributions at the next World Health Assembly.

    • Brazil, China, India, South Africa Put UN High-Level Panel On Medicines Access On TRIPS Council Agenda

      For next week’s World Trade Organization intellectual property committee meeting, the major developing economies have submitted a request to discuss the recently released report of the United Nations Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines, according to Knowledge Ecology International (KEI). A key element of the UN report was to make it harder for countries deter or discourage other countries from trying to use patent flexibilities built into the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) – something the major developing economies have been discouraged from doing in the past.

    • Michigan Mother: Hillary Clinton Receiving Advance Debate Question ‘Should Be an Automatic Disqualification’

      A Michigan mother is furious that now-DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile sent Hillary Clinton advance notice of her question at a Democratic presidential debate in Flint, Michigan this March.

      According to the latest Wikileaks release of John Podesta’s emails, Brazile tipped off Clinton to an incoming question from an audience member at the debate hosted by CNN — where Brazile was then a paid contributor.

      “One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash,” Brazile wrote in the email’s subject line. “Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint.”

      LeeAnne Walters, the woman who asked that question, said on her Facebook page Monday that she found the revelation “appalling.”

  • Security

    • DDoS of SN Underway [Updated]

      Right, so there’s currently a DDoS of our site specifically happening. Part of me is mildly annoyed, part of me is proud that we’re worth DDoS-ing now. Since it’s only slowing us down a bit and not actually shutting us down, I’m half tempted to just let them run their botnet time out. I suppose we should tweak the firewall a bit though. Sigh, I hate working on weekends.

    • AtomBomb: The New Zero-Day Windows Exploit Microsoft Can’t Fix?

      There’s a new zero-day Microsoft Windows exploit in the wild by the name of AtomBomb, and Microsoft may not be able to fix it.

    • New code injection method affects all Windows versions [iophk: “watch the ‘news’ play this one down or ignore it; full product recall is needed at this point”]

      Researchers at cyber-security firm enSilo have discovered a method of code injection in all versions of Windows that cannot be eliminated as it is part of the operating system design.

      The design flaw allows for code injection and is dubbed AtomBomb as it makes use of the system’s atom tables.

      As Microsoft defines it, “An atom table is a system-defined table that stores strings and corresponding identifiers. An application places a string in an atom table and receives a 16-bit integer, called an atom, that can be used to access the string. A string that has been placed in an atom table is called an atom name.”

      In a blog post describing the method of attack, enSilo’s Tal Liberman wrote: “Our research team has uncovered a new way to leverage mechanisms of the underlying Windows operating system in order to inject malicious code. Threat actors can use this technique, which exists by design of the operating system, to bypass current security solutions that attempt to prevent infection.”

    • British parliament members urge Obama to halt hacking suspect’s US extradition

      This week, culture minister Matt Hancock and more than 100 fellow MPs (Members of Parliament) have signed a letter calling on president Barack Obama to block Lauri Love’s extradition to the US to face trial over the alleged hacking of the US missile defence agency, the FBI, and America’s central bank.

      Love—an Asperger’s syndrome sufferer from Stradishall, Suffolk—was told in September at a Westminster Magistrates’ Court hearing that he was fit to be extradited to the US to face trial in that country. The 31-year-old faces up to 99 years in prison in the US if convicted. According to his lawyers, Love has said he fears for his life.

    • Security advisories for Monday
    • Tug of war between SELinux and Chrome Sandbox, who’s right?

      Over the years, people have wanted to use SELinux to confine the web browser. The most common vulnerabilty for a desktop user is attacks caused by bugs in the browser. A user goes to a questionable web site, and the web site has code that triggers a bug in the browser that takes over your machine. Even if the browser has no blogs, you have to worry about helper plugins like flash-plugin, having vulnerabilities.

    • Trick or Treat! Google issues warning of critical Windows vulnerability in wild

      Recently, Google’s Threat Analysis Group discovered a set of zero-day vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash and the Microsoft Windows kernel that were already being actively used by malware attacks against the Chrome browser. Google alerted both Adobe and Microsoft of the discovery on October 21, and Adobe issued a critical fix to patch its vulnerability last Friday. But Microsoft has yet to patch a critical bug in the Windows kernel that allows these attacks to work—which prompted Google to publicly announce the vulnerabilities today.

      “After 7 days, per our published policy for actively exploited critical vulnerabilities, we are today disclosing the existence of a remaining critical vulnerability in Windows for which no advisory or fix has yet been released,” wrote Neel Mehta and Billy Leonard of Google’s Threat Analysis Group.”This vulnerability is particularly serious because we know it is being actively exploited.”

      The bug being exploited could allow an attacker to escape from Windows’ security sandbox. The sandbox, which normally allows only user-level applications to execute, lets programs execute without needing administrator access while isolating what it can access on the local system through a set of policies.

      But by using a specific type of call to a legacy support Windows system library generally used for the graphics subsystem—win32k.sys—malicious code can escalate its privileges and execute outside of the sandbox, allowing it to execute code with full access to the Windows environment. Win32k.sys has been a problem before: Microsoft issued a warning back in June about a similar privilege escalation problem that had not yet been exploited, and another arrived in August.

    • DDoS defenses emerging from Homeland Security

      Government, academic, and private-sector officials are collaborating on new ways to prevent and mitigate distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, based on research years in the making but kicked into high gear by the massive takedown this month of domain name system provider Dyn.

    • US DMCA rules updated to give security experts legal backing to research

      The US government has updated and published a new list of exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a move perhaps long-overdue which will protect cybersecurity professionals from prosecution when reverse-engineering products for research purposes.

      On October 28, the US Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress published the updated rules on the federal register.

      The DMCA regulations now include exceptions relating to security research and vehicle repair relevant to today’s cybersecurity field. For the next two years, researchers can circumvent digital access controls, reverse engineer, access, copy, and manipulate digital content which is protected by copyright without fear of prosecution — within reason.

    • Stop being the monkey’s paw

      This story got me thinking about security, how we ask questions and how we answer questions. What if we think about this in the context of application security specifically for this example. If someone was to ask the security the question “does this code have a buffer overflow in it?” The person I asked for help is going to look for buffer overflows and they may or may not notice that it has a SQL injection problem. Or maybe it has an integer overflow or some other problem. The point is that’s not what they were looking for so we didn’t ask the right question. You can even bring this little farther and occasionally someone might ask the question “is my system secure” the answer is definitively no. You don’t even have to look at it to answer that question and so they don’t even know what to ask in reality. They are asking the monkey paw to bring them their money, it’s going to do it, but they’re not going to like the consequences.

    • Tyfone looks to open-source to solve IoT security issues

      It came as no surprise to Tyfone CEO Siva Narendra when tens of millions of Internet connected devices were able to bring down the Web during a coordinated distributed denial of service attack on Oct. 21.

      Narendra’s Portland-based company Tyfone has been working on digital security platforms to safeguard identity and transactions of people and things for years.

      Narendra says mobile devices in conjunction with the cloud have brought new levels of productivity to our lives. Internet of Things devices (the common name given to these connected items) are poised to bring even greater levels of productivity and cost-savings to businesses, and safety and convenience to our everyday lives.

    • Google just disclosed a major Windows bug — and Microsoft isn’t happy

      Today, Google’s Threat Analysis group disclosed a critical vulnerability in Windows in a public post on the company’s security blog. The bug itself is very specific — allowing attackers to escape from security sandboxes through a flaw in the win32k system — but it’s serious enough to be categorized as critical, and according to Google, it’s being actively exploited. As a result, Google went public just 10 days after reporting the bug to Microsoft, before a patch could be coded and deployed. The result is that, while Google has already deployed a fix to protect Chrome users, Windows itself is still vulnerable — and now, everybody knows it.

      Google’s disclosure provides only a general description of the bug, giving users enough information to recognize a possible attack without making it too easy for criminals to replicate. Exploiting the bug also depends on a separate exploit in Adobe Flash, for which the company has also released a patch. Still, simply knowing that the bug exists will likely spur a lot of criminals to look for viable ways to exploit it against computers that have yet to update Flash.

    • AtomBombing: A Code Injection that Bypasses Current Security Solutions

      Our research team has uncovered new way to leverage mechanisms of the underlying Windows operating system in order to inject malicious code. Threat actors can use this technique, which exists by design of the operating system, to bypass current security solutions that attempt to prevent infection. We named this technique AtomBombing based on the name of the underlying mechanism that this technique exploits.

      AtomBombing affects all Windows version. In particular, we tested this against Windows 10.

    • Disclosing vulnerabilities to protect users

      On Friday, October 21st, we reported 0-day vulnerabilities — previously publicly-unknown vulnerabilities — to Adobe and Microsoft. Adobe updated Flash on October 26th to address CVE-2016-7855; this update is available via Adobe’s updater and Chrome auto-update.

      After 7 days, per our published policy for actively exploited critical vulnerabilities, we are today disclosing the existence of a remaining critical vulnerability in Windows for which no advisory or fix has yet been released. This vulnerability is particularly serious because we know it is being actively exploited.

      The Windows vulnerability is a local privilege escalation in the Windows kernel that can be used as a security sandbox escape. It can be triggered via the win32k.sys system call

    • The next president will face a cybercrisis within 100 days, predicts report

      The next president will face a cybercrisis in the first 100 days of their presidency, research firm Forrester predicts in a new report.

      The crisis could come as a result of hostile actions from another country or internal conflict over privacy and security legislation, said Forrester analyst Amy DeMartine, lead author of the firm’s top cybersecurity risks for 2017 report, due to be made public Tuesday.

      History grades a president’s first 100 days as the mark of how their four-year term will unfold, so those early days are particularly precarious, said DeMartine. The new commander in chief will face pressure from foreign entities looking to embarrass them early on, just as U.S. government agencies jockey for position within the new administration, she said.

    • Hackforums Shutters Booter Service Bazaar

      Perhaps the most bustling marketplace on the Internet where people can compare and purchase so-called “booter” and “stresser” subscriptions — attack-for-hire services designed to knock Web sites offline — announced last week that it has permanently banned the sale and advertising of these services.

      On Friday, Oct. 28, Jesse LaBrocca — the administrator of the popular English-language hacking forum Hackforums[dot]net — said he was shutting down the “server stress testing” (SST) section of the forum. The move comes amid heightened public scrutiny of the SST industry, which has been linked to several unusually powerful recent attacks and is responsible for the vast majority of denial-of-service (DOS) attacks on the Internet today.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • WikiLeaks Reveals Team Hillary’s Libya Spin: It Would Be Syria Without Clinton’s War

      In the lead-up to Hillary Clinton’s marathon testimony before Congress on Benghazi in October 2015, her presidential campaign prepared to make some eye-popping claims—including that Libya would have turned into Syria without U.S. intervention.

      That’s according to an internal talking-point memo released in Tuesday’s dump of WikiLeaks emails. WikiLeaks says those emails were hacked from the inbox of Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. The Clinton campaign is not commenting on whether or not the emails are doctored, and blames the Russian government for the hack.

    • Media Roll Out Welcome Mat for ‘Humanitarian’ War in Syria

      As she marches toward the US presidency, Hillary Clinton has stepped up her promotion of the idea that a no-fly zone in Syria could “save lives” and “hasten the end of the conflict” that has devastated that country since 2011.

      It has now been revealed, of course, that Clinton hasn’t always expressed the same optimism about the no-fly zone in private. The Intercept (10/10/16) reported on Clinton’s recently leaked remarks in a closed-door speech to Goldman Sachs in 2013…

    • Shahid Buttar and Selling Empire, War and Capitalism with Peter and Mickey

      In the first half of the program, Shahid Buttar discusses the chapter he wrote for Censored 2017, “Ike’s Distopian Dream,” where he examines the many ways that President Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex has proven correct.For the second half of the program, Mickey and Peter survey some of the other chapters of Censored 2017, particularly Peter’s chapter, “Selling Empire, War and Capitalism,” a look at the advertising / public relations industry, and how its influence extends far beyond peddling consumer products.

    • Whistleblower exposes how NATO’s leading ally is arming and funding ISIS

      A former senior counter-terrorism official in Turkey has blown the whistle on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s deliberate sponsorship of the Islamic State (ISIS) as a geopolitical tool to expand Turkey’s regional influence and sideline his political opponents at home.

      Ahmet Sait Yayla was Chief of the Counter-Terrorism and Operations Division of Turkish National Police between 2010 and 2012, before becoming Chief of the Public Order and Crime Prevention Division until 2014. Previously, he had worked in the Counter-Terrorism and Operations Division as a mid-level manager for his entire 20-year police tenure, before becoming Chief of Police in Ankara and Sanliurfa.

      In interviews with INSURGE intelligence, Yayla exclusively revealed that he had personally witnessed evidence of high-level Turkish state sponsorship of ISIS during his police career, which eventually led him to resign. He decided to become a whistleblower after Erdogan’s authoritarian crackdown following the failed military coup in July. This is the first time that the former counter-terrorism chief has spoken on the record to reveal what he knows about Turkish government aid to Islamist terror groups.

    • Inside Palantir’s War With the U.S. Army

      Palantir is the Palo Alto, California, data analytics company co-founded and backed by billionaire Peter Thiel. It had won seed funding and praise from the Central Intelligence Agency a few years earlier and had become a darling among the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a few other government customers. Its employees were at the Pentagon to show off the company’s ability to compile disparate data streams and display the information graphically for non-technical consumers; Palantir hoped to win a big contract.

      But the conversation went poorly. The slacks and dress shirts with a few buttons undone that Palantir executives wore may have been a step up for sunny California where hoodies are the norm but were a sign of disrespect at the Pentagon, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Senior officials, including U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Dean Popps, were not impressed, this person said.

      They told Palantir: “Don’t come to the E-ring without a tie unless your name is Gates or Buffet,” said the person, referring to the portion of the Pentagon occupied by senior officials. “They couldn’t get over the tie thing. They didn’t care about the technology.”

    • German Magazine Uses Daesh Propaganda Video to Show All is Well in Mosul

      In an almost four-minute video, political editor of Spiegel Online Christoph Sydow tried to defend the editorial policy of his magazine regarding the developments in Aleppo and Mosul. However, the shots demonstrated in his video turned out to be the propaganda materials of Daesh terrorists.

      The video was supposed to be a response to critical letters of Spiegel Online readers and their comments on social networks. Many of them accused the magazine of spreading propaganda and presenting the situation in the Middle East in a biased manner.

    • CIA Releases Controversial Bay of Pigs History

      The CIA today released the long-contested Volume V of its official history of the Bay of Pigs invasion, which it had successfully concealed until now by claiming that it was a “draft” and could be withheld from the public under the FOIA’s “deliberative process” privilege. The National Security Archive fought the agency for years in court to release the historically significant volume, only to have the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2014 uphold the CIA’s overly-broad interpretation of the “deliberative process” privilege. Special credit for today’s release goes to the champions of the 2016 FOIA amendments, which set a 25-year sunset for the exemption: Senators John Cornyn, Patrick Leahy, and Chuck Grassley, and Representatives Jason Chaffetz, Elijah Cummings, and Darrell Issa.

      Chief CIA Historian David Robarge states in the cover letter announcing the document’s release that the agency is “releasing this draft volume today because recent 2016 changes in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires us to release some drafts that are responsive to FOIA requests if they are more than 25 years old.” This improvement – codified by the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 – came directly from the National Security Archive’s years of litigation.

    • Still fighting the last war: Syria and the Western peace movement

      The anti-war movement is struggling to find its place in a multipolar world in which stopping the war requires new thinking

      When I was five years old, a very small Vietnamese man came to my bedside to say goodnight. He was the Vietnamese ambassador, and he had a very kindly, wrinkled smile, and, as I later discovered, both he and his wife were veterans of the very long war in Vietnam against foreign occupiers. He himself had crawled under barbed wire fences to set explosives under French war planes during the early 1950s. His wife, also diminutive, had been the 16-year-old leader of an anti-aircraft unit that helped bring down enemy planes during the conflict, which back in 1973 was still ongoing.

    • Sweden declares WWII hero Raoul Wallenberg dead, 71 years after he disappeared in Hungary

      Sweden declares WWII hero Raoul Wallenberg dead, 71 years after he disappeared in Hungary.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Utilities In Florida Are Using A Fake Consumer Group To Hamstring Solar Competition

      Earlier this year, we noted how traditional utilities were playing extremely dirty in Florida to try and derail efforts to ramp up solar competition and adoption in the state most likely to benefit from it. After all, the vision of a future where competition is rampant, customers pay less money, and solar users actually get paid for driving power back to the grid gives most of these executives heartburn. As a result, utilities have gotten creative in the state, launching fake solar advocacy groups that actually function to pollute public discourse and derail any amendments intended to help solar grab a larger foothold in the state.

    • Fracking Linked to Cancer-Causing Chemicals, New YSPH Study Finds

      An expansive new analysis by Yale School of Public Health researchers confirms that numerous carcinogens involved in the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing have the potential to contaminate air and water in nearby communities.

      Fracking is now common in the United States, currently occurring in 30 states, and with millions of people living within one mile of a fracking site. The study suggests that the presence of carcinogens involved in or released by hydraulic fracturing operations has the potential to increase the risk of childhood leukemia. The presence of chemicals alone does not confirm exposure or risk of exposure to carcinogens and future studies are needed to evaluate cancer risk.

    • Stein Campaign Condemns ‘Violent Repression of Peaceful Protests Against DAPL’

      The conflict surrounding the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline escalated dramatically Thursday, October 27. Water protectors at Treaty Camp, a new frontline in the path of the pipeline along Highway 1806, were forced off the land in a dramatic and often violent manner by police. The large police action included armored, military vehicles, pepper spray, high-velocity bean bags and tear gas. Shortly after the disturbing confrontation Jill Stein, Green Party nominee for the Presidential Election, and running mate Ajamu Baraka released a statement condemning the actions being used in North Dakota:

      “The Stein/Baraka campaign is horrified and outraged at the militarized repression of water protectors at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota. Police and private security forces have engaged in violent actions against peaceful earth defenders who have come to protect the land and water from the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

    • Two more Honduran land rights activists killed in ongoing violence
    • NASA Scientists Suggest We’ve Been Underestimating Sea Level Rise

      About 71 percent of the Earth is covered by water, so measuring sea level changes around the world is no small feat. Up until now, scientists believed they knew how much global sea level had risen during the 20th century. This number has hovered around 0.6 inches per decade since 1900, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and has been partly driven by warming ocean temperatures.

      But a new study, published this month to Geophysical Research Letters, found evidence to suggest that historical sea level records have been off—way off in some areas—by an underestimation of 5 to 28 percent. Global sea level, the paper concluded, rose no less than 5.5 inches over the last century, and likely saw an increase of 6.7 inches.

      The reason for this discrepancy was uncovered by earth scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. By comparing newer climate models with older sea level measurements, the team discovered that readings from coastal tide gauges may not have been as indicative as we thought. These gauges, located at more than a dozen sites across the Northern Hemisphere, have been a primary data source for estimating sea level changes during the last several decades.

  • Finance

    • How the British Brexit Economy Works

      1) A containerful of shoddy training shoes are produced in China, shipped to UK, sorted by lowly paid British zero hours workers and put on shelves of High Street sports shop.
      2) While this is happening, sterling plunges 25%.
      3) Coachload of Chinese tourists visit sports shop attracted by collapsed pound sterling. They exclaim “Wow Western trainers! And so cheap”. They buy them to take back to China as gifts for family members they don’t like that much.
      4) Declare a Brexit sales boom!

    • Theresa May’s ‘just managing’ families set to be worse off

      Low-earning families that Theresa May has promised to help will be thousands of pounds a year worse off by 2020 because of rising inflation, lower wage growth and Tory social security cuts, according to new analysis of their post-Brexit economic prospects.

      Those who the prime minister describes as “just managing” – and who are her key priority, she says – are in line for substantial falls in real incomes unless the chancellor, Philip Hammond, steps in to help them in his autumn statement on 23 November.

      Pressure is growing on Hammond from senior Tories to reverse the decisions to slash benefits, which were announced last year by his predecessor George Osborne, in order to assist those who May said on entering Downing Street were “working around the clock” but still struggling to get by.

    • How Minnesota’s governor performed an economic miracle by raising tax on the rich and increasing minimum wage

      By every measure, Minnesota governor Mark Dayton’s five year run as governor has been a stellar success: while Tim Pawlenty, his tax-slashing, “fiscally-conservative” Republican predecessor presided over a $6.2B deficit and a 7% unemployment rate (the mere 6,200 jobs added under Pawlenty’s 7-year run barely registered), Dayton added 172,000 new jobs to the Minnesota economy, brought Minnesota down to the fifth-lowest unemployment rate in the country, and brought the average Minnesotan income up to $8,000 more than the median US worker, while posting a $1B budget surplus.

      How did Dayton do it? He raised the state income tax on individuals earning more than $150K, from 7.85% to 9.85%; he raised Minnesota’s minimum wage and guaranteed equal pay for women.

    • CETA Signed Off As Wallonia Folds Under Pressure

      Democracy and civil rights took a crushing blow today. Shortly after news surfaced that Wallonia folded under the pressure, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) has been signed.

      One of the many secret trade deals floating around is known as CETA. While proponents say these trade agreements are simply about trade, the details suggest that such agreements are much more about pushing laws than actual trade.

      Last year, we dug into some of these details and found a number of provisions that adversely affects digital rights. This includes censorship through site blocking, account termination through a three strikes law, unlimited damages for copyright infringement, and provisions that allow border patrols to seize your cell phone at the border.

      Other concerns raised revolve around ISDS (Inter-State Dispute Settlement) that sets up an international tribunal for major multi-national corporations. The purpose is to allow corporations to sue governments if laws are passed that get in the way of profits and future potential profits. Examples raised in the past revolve around warning labels on cigarette packages, regulations on price for pharmaceuticals, and rulings against oil extraction and pipelines.

    • Swiss rail stations will sell bitcoins at ticket machines

      Switzerland is stepping up its bitcoin fascination in a big way. Railway operator SBB (with the help of SweePay) is launching a 2-year trial for a service that lets you exchange Swiss francs for bitcoin at any of the company’s ticket machines in the country. Scan a QR code with your phone and you can get between 20 to 500 francs ($20 to $505) of digital currency at any time. If you want to go shopping without using cards or physical cash, you can do it right after you leave the train station.

      There are some big catches involved. You need to have a Swiss phone number to get bitcoin, so you’re not completely anonymous… and of course, you’re out of luck if you’re not a resident. You also can’t buy tickets with bitcoin at the machines, so don’t think your bitcoin mining operation will pay for your next trip to Zurich.

    • No, CETA is NOT approved yet
    • Canada and E.U. Sign Trade Deal, Bucking Resistance to Globalization

      The European Union and Canada signed a far-reaching trade agreement on Sunday that commits them to opening their markets to greater competition, after overcoming a last-minute political obstacle that reflected the growing skepticism toward globalization in much of the developed world.

    • Icelandic women walk off the job 14% early to protest 14% pay-gap

      On October 25, thousands of Icelandic women went home at 2:38PM, after 86% of their work-days had passed, to protest the fact that they only earn 86% of their male counterparts’ wages.

      They turned out for a mass demonstration that echoed the 1975 protests over pay equity, which saw over 90% of the country’s women take to the street.

    • EU-Canada trade deal signed, but our fates (and ISDS) not yet sealed

      On Sunday, the president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Council Donald Tusk, prime minister of Slovakia Robert Fico, and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau signed the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the EU and Canada. It followed more than a week of frenzied negotiations after Belgian regions refused to give permission to the central government of Belgium to proceed with the deal.

    • Don’t celebrate Justin Trudeau signing the Ceta deal with the EU – like TTIP, it is a ticking time bomb

      Don’t be fooled by the triumphant rhetoric emanating from Brussels today – the controversial EU-Canada trade deal known as CETA might have returned from the dead in time for Halloween, but it’s very much a zombie agreement. While CETA will now be approved by the European Council and head towards the Parliament, its future looks bleak.

      And it gets worse for Brussels. Because Belgium’s regional parliaments have, in the process of hobbling CETA, driven a stake into the heart of European trade policy. No wonder Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Munchau hailed the so-called ‘breakthrough’ as “a huge victory for Belgium’s Ceta opponents”.

      CETA (the Comprehensive Economic & Trade Agreement) is the sister deal of the better known TTIP trade deal between the US and EU. Just like its sibling, it is essentially not about reducing tariffs, but deregulation, liberalisation, and the handing of further powers over law-making to big business. Despite some fancy footwork by the EU to reform the hated “corporate court” system, which gives foreign investors their own special legal process to sue governments, that system is very much still in place in CETA.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Podesta paid $7,000 a month by top donor

      Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, last year signed a $7,000-a-month contract with the foundation of a major Clinton donor who made a fortune selling a type of mortgage that some critics say contributed to the housing collapse, hacked emails show.

      In February of last year, as Podesta was working to lay the groundwork for Clinton’s soon-to-launch campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, he signed the contract with the Sandler Foundation, which was started by Herb Sandler and his late wife Marion Sandler.

    • Trump Supporter Voted Twice in Iowa Because “Polls Are Rigged”

      Donald Trump has been warning supporters left and right about the potential devastating consequences of voter fraud. But the first arrest for voter fraud in this election season is actually a staunch Trump supporter. Terri Rote, 55, was arrested on first-degree l misconduct charges after she cast two ballots in the election. She was released on a $5,000 bond.

      So why did Rote, a registered Republican, decide to cast two ballots? She was apparently afraid that her first ballot would be counted as a vote for Hillary Clinton. “I wasn’t planning on doing it twice, it was spur of the moment,” Rote told Iowa Public Radio. “The polls are rigged.”

    • Donald Trump rolls out endorsements from people he pays

      At a campaign event in Miami on Tuesday that was more in keeping with the norms of politics in North Korea, Donald Trump brought reporters to one of his golf courses and invited 10 of his employees on stage to praise him.

      [...]

      Siegel also boasted about helping to secure Florida for George W. Bush in 2000, by pressing thousands of employees to vote for the Republican candidate. In an interview with the same publication, the developer explained that he gave employees not-so-subtle hints about what he wanted them to do by putting negative articles about Al Gore in envelopes along with their paychecks.

      As The Atlantic explained in 2012, after Siegel’s anti-Obama memo was leaked to Gawker, employers cannot explicitly pay workers to vote a certain way, but, in most states, they are permitted to make their preferences known before election day.

      Unlike Florida, California does have a law stating that “no employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.”

    • Five takeaways from the latest WikiLeaks releases

      Government ethics watchdogs have long warned that the Clintons’ nonprofit would present serious conflict-of-interest concerns should the former secretary of State obtain the oval office.

      Republicans — led by Donald Trump — have accused the Clintons of using the foundation to peddle influence and line their own pockets.

      The details in Band’s memo gave new ammunition to critics who have pressed for the foundation to be shuttered.

      In it, Band describes how Bill Clinton’s personal wealth skyrocketed with the help of the same consultants raising money for the foundation, and the same donors who poured millions into the charity.

      “I think it’s going to be a continuing problem unless they close the thing down after she’s elected,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon.

      Those calls were echoed by the press.

      “Let me go to bottom line: There is no way under any circumstance the Clinton Foundation should be operating if she becomes president,” Chuck Todd, moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” told WGN Radio in Chicago on Thursday. “I just don’t see how they can keep that going.”

    • Leaked Email Reveals Google Chairman Wanted To Be Clinton Campaign’s ‘Head Outside Advisor’

      WikiLeaks has continued to reveal Schmidt’s cozy relationship with the Clinton campaign.

    • WikiLeaks: Podesta Continued Ties to Russian Firm After He Said He Divested

      More hacked emails released Sunday by WikiLeaks appear to show Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s apparent continued connection to Joule Unlimited Technologies, despite his claims that he divested from the Kremlin-financed energy company, The Daily Caller reported.

      Podesta has said he transferred his 75,000 shares from Joule to a holding company named Leonidio Holdings. But included in the released emails is information that Podesta received a K1 income tax form indicating that he was a partner sharing income with Leonidio Holdings, while another form was made out to Podesta’s daughter Megan Rouse, who is a financial planner.

      A June 5, 2015 email from Rouse to John, Mae and Gabe Podesta shows the extent to which other family members were involved: “Mae and Gabe, Please see attached K1 for Leonidio. You can use this to complete your 2014 tax return. We will each report 1/3 share of what’s on the form. Mom and Pa, Please see attached K1 showing the distribution to Leonidio.”

    • Tax form Indicates Podesta Put Kremlin-Tainted Shares In Daughter’s Company

      Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta received a K1 income tax form indicating that he was a partner sharing income with Leonidio Holdings, according to emails released Sunday by WikiLeaks. Another form was made out to Podesta’s daughter, Megan Rouse, his partner in Leonidio Holdings.

      Podesta has always maintained that he transferred his 75,000 shares from Joule Unlimited Technologies, a Kremlin-financed energy company, to an “anonymous” holding company named Leonidio Holdings. Not only does Leonidio share an address with Podesta’s daughter, Rouse, but they share a tax return.

      The other beneficiaries are all in the family too.

    • Obama told us he’s honorable — but he’s just another liar

      Now we know Obama was lying. His own aides said so, in e-mails uncovered by WikiLeaks and made public this week.

    • WikiLeaks: Trump Rally Agitator and Clinton Campaign Manager Are ‘Close’

      Robert Creamer, the operative behind sending provocateurs to Donald Trump rallies, was close to Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, according to new emails released by WikiLeaks.

      Creamer, who allegedly spearheaded the dirty tricks for the Democrats, wasn’t just consulting for the Democratic National Committee, according to videos made by Project Veritas. He was sending people to provoke Trump at events.

    • Fmr U.S. Atty: Comey’s Hand Forced by FBI ‘Seething’ Anger at Botched Hillary Email Investigation

      In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, the former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Joseph DiGenova gave a stark assessment of what led to FBI Director James Comey’s recent decision to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, after an investigation into Anthony Weiner’s sexting scandal led to the discovery of thousands of emails on the computer of Weiner’s estranged wife, top Hillary Clinton aide, Huma Abedin.

    • Boring or Annoying Things We Have to Know

      I have always glazed over at any mention of Hillary Clinton’s emails. The USA is not my country, and it seemed like a rather boring argument about classifications and document security. I also had a natural resistance to anything that appeared to promote the interests of Donald Trump. I now realise that is how a complicit media was deliberately presenting it, and my lack of interest was the desired effect. They are still presenting the issues in a manner which I hope I will be able to prove to you is entirely tendentious. So this weekend I request you to grit your teeth, set aside your disinterest and read through this article. Please.

      Those Hillary server emails are largely a separate thing to those which WikiLeaks has been releasing. What the WikiLeaks release of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary campaign chair Podesta emails has proved beyond any reasonable doubt, is the extent of Hillary’s corruption. Both in terms of the fixing of the primary election against Bernie Sanders by the people who were supposed to be organising it, and the vast sums of money the Clinton family were receiving personally through Clinton Foundation and consultancy activity linked to State Department access, decisions and activity.

      Before Clinton handed over her private email server to the FBI investigation into her handling of classified material, she scrubbed over 30,000 emails and had drives physically treated to ensure permanent destruction. It is obviously very likely that many of those emails referred to the kind of nefarious activity we are now seeing from the DNC and Podesta leaks.

      It is also of course a fact that those 30,000 emails all had recipients, as well as Hillary as a sender. We can be sure that a major effort will have been undertaken to make sure recipients deleted them too. But from time to time some are sure to turn up. That is what has just happened and prompted yesterday’s announcement of a renewed investigation. In the course of an unrelated investigation into alleged paedophile grooming, the FBI has come across some of Hillary’s deleted emails on the device of a close political aide.

    • The Podesta Emails Revelations: A Collection

      —In an email containing information from intelligence sources, Clinton detailed a strategy for defeating the Islamic State and noted Qatar and Saudi Arabia are funding ISIS operations. (Dan Wright, Shadowproof)

      —Hillary Clinton’s letter to mega-donor Haim Saban against the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel was leaked to press to attract pro-Israel donors. (Rania Khalek, Electronic Intifada)

      —During one of her paid speeches for Goldman Sachs, Clinton admitted a no fly zone in Syria would mean the United States and NATO would “kill a lot of Syrians.” (Zaid Jilani, The Intercept)

      —Representatives of Qatar wanted to meet for “five minutes” with Bill Clinton to present a $1 million check to him for his birthday (New York Times)

    • Sometimes You Need to Dig a Little to Unearth the Point of an NYT Story

      As it turns out, most other news outlets did not share the Times‘ sense of newsworthiness.

    • ‘Will Every Eligible Voter Be Able to Cast a Ballot?’

      It’s hard to pick the most ominous or disturbing thing Donald Trump has said, but his call for supporters to “go and watch” polling places in “certain areas” because “you know what I’m talking about” is up there. But Trump’s claim that the election is rigged—unless he wins, in which case it isn’t—didn’t spring full-blown from his head. Republicans have claimed voter fraud benefiting their opponents for a long time. And for a long time, corporate media have set those claims alongside concerns about voter suppression, of African-Americans and immigrants in particular, as though they were equally grounded, or just analogous partisan gripes.

    • FBI discovered Clinton-related emails weeks ago

      The FBI stumbled upon a trove of emails from one of Hillary Clinton’s top aides weeks ago, law enforcement officials told CNN Sunday.
      But FBI Director James Comey didn’t disclose the discovery until Friday, raising questions about why the information was kept under wraps and then released only days before the election.
      Meanwhile, the Justice Department has obtained a warrant that will allow it to begin searching the computer that is believed to contain thousands of newly found emails of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, two law enforcement sources confirmed to CNN.

      The timeline behind the discovery of the emails came into greater clarity Sunday.
      Investigators took possession of multiple computers related to the inquiry of Anthony Weiner in early October, U.S. law enforcement officials said. Weiner is Abedin’s estranged husband and is being probed about alleged sexting with a purportedly underage girl.

    • Clinton emails: FBI chief may have broken law, says top Democrat

      The Democratic leader in the US Senate says the head of the FBI may have broken the law by revealing the bureau was investigating emails possibly linked to Hillary Clinton.

      Harry Reid accused FBI director James Comey of violating an act which bars officials from influencing an election.

      News of the FBI inquiry comes less than two weeks before the US election.

      The bureau has meanwhile obtained a warrant to search a cache of emails belonging to a top Clinton aide.

      Emails from Huma Abedin are believed to have been found on the laptop of her estranged husband, former congressman Anthony Weiner.

    • The FBI is sitting on ‘explosive’ information regarding Donald Trump and Russia, top Democrat asserts

      A top Democrat in Washington says the FBI has shone a spotlight on a new trove of emails potentially associated with Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while sitting on “explosive information” allegedly tying Donald Trump to the Russian government.

      Senator Harry Reid, the Democrat leader of the US Senate, accused the FBI of double standards in a letter sent late on Sunday to James Comey, the agency’s director, who jolted the presidential race on Friday by revealing the existence of a new cache of emails.

    • Facebook wants to be your guide on Election Day

      Now that the presidential debates are over, Facebook wants to help you prepare for the last political battleground: the voting booth.

      The social-media company unveiled a feature this week designed to help users create a voting plan, showing not just presidential candidates but also information on statewide elections. Should you want to dive down to the local level, you can give Facebook your address and the company will tell you what’s on the ballot in your neck of the woods.

    • Google’s Schmidt drew up draft plan for Clinton in 2014

      Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, submitted a detailed draft to a key Clinton aide on 15 April 2014, outlining his ideas for a possible run for the presidency and stressing that “key is the development of a single record for a voter that aggregates all that is known about them”.

      Though Schmidt did not mention it, this kind of information is the lifeblood of Google’s business.

      The ideas, in an email released by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, were sent to Cheryl Mills, former deputy White House counsel to Bill Clinton. Mills forwarded it to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, campaign manager Robby Mook and Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager David Plouffe.

    • Schmidt sought top outside post in Clinton campaign

      Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, expressed a desire more than two years ago to be the “head outside adviser” to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, according to an email released by WikiLeaks.

      The email, dating back to 2014, was part of a bigger trove released by the whistle-blower website, all of which were from the Gmail account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

      There have been unproven claims by the Democratic Party that the leaked material has been provided by Russian sources.

      In the email, sent to campaign manager Robby Mook, Podesta wrote that he had met Schmidt on 2 April 2014 and that he (Schmidt) was “ready to fund, advise recruit talent, etc”.

      Podesta apparently expected Schmidt to be a pushy sort, as he wrote, “He (Schmidt) was more deferential on structure than I expected. Wasn’t pushing to run through one of his existing firms. Clearly wants to be head outside advisor, but didn’t seem like he wanted to push others out. Clearly wants to get going.

      “He’s still in DC tomorrow and would like to meet with you if you are in DC in the afternoon. I think it’s worth doing. You around? If you are, and want to meet with him, maybe the four of us can get on the phone in the am.”

      Mook was in Australia at the time, but wrote back to Podesta that he would “to do a call w him before I get back or meet with him after the 23rd”.

    • Democrats should ask Clinton to step aside

      Has America become so numb by the decades of lies and cynicism oozing from Clinton Inc. that it could elect Hillary Clinton as president, even after Friday’s FBI announcement that it had reopened an investigation of her emails while secretary of state?

      We’ll find out soon enough.

      It’s obvious the American political system is breaking down. It’s been crumbling for some time now, and the establishment elite know it and they’re properly frightened. Donald Trump, the vulgarian at their gates, is a symptom, not a cause. Hillary Clinton and husband Bill are both cause and effect.

      FBI director James Comey’s announcement about the renewed Clinton email investigation is the bombshell in the presidential campaign. That he announced this so close to Election Day should tell every thinking person that what the FBI is looking at is extremely serious.

      This can’t be about pervert Anthony Weiner and his reported desire for a teenage girl. But it can be about the laptop of Weiner’s wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin, and emails between her and Hillary. It comes after the FBI investigation in which Comey concluded Clinton had lied and been “reckless” with national secrets, but said he could not recommend prosecution.

    • Clinton Foundation: Only 10% and 6% towards charity grants in 2013-14

      The Clinton Foundation spent less than 6 percent of its budget on charitable grants in 2014 and less than 10% the year prior, according to documents the organization filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

    • U.S. Officials Doubt Donald Trump Has Direct Link to Russia

      For much of the summer, the F.B.I. pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign. Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.

      Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.

      Hillary Clinton’s supporters, angry over what they regard as a lack of scrutiny of Mr. Trump by law enforcement officials, pushed for these investigations. In recent days they have also demanded that James B. Comey, the director of the F.B.I., discuss them publicly, as he did last week when he announced that a new batch of emails possibly connected to Mrs. Clinton had been discovered.

    • Don’t settle for the lesser of two evils in this election. Vote for the Green party

      Donald Trump’s self-inflicted wounds and propensity for public meltdowns had pushed the public-opinion needle toward Hillary Clinton, according to recent polls. That may have changed a little in the aftermath of the FBI’s renewing of its email probe last week. But even so, the fears of many voters that a Donald Trump presidency might become a reality have abated.

      Those fears are not unfounded. Trump’s failings as a candidate and a person are manifest, and he would be in a position to wreak considerable havoc if elected. That’s especially true at the agency level, with the judiciary and in other arenas where the president can wield executive power. The wildcard aspect of his personality poses risks that can’t be predicted, nor can anyone know the degree to which congress would be inclined to obstruct or approve his most damaging initiatives.

      What has been lost in the salacious and obsessive media coverage of the Republican nominee’s outrageous behavior, bigoted remarks and appeal to the worst instincts of the electorate, however, is a critical examination of what a Clinton administration will mean for the nation. The FBI probe, information on tangled interests within the Clinton Foundation, evidence of influence peddling and Wikileaks revelations detailing manipulation of media and the democratic process, signal a plutocratic style of governance that is all too familiar and increasingly dominant at the federal level.

      The content of what has been revealed in these leaks, as well as her lengthy track record in government and policy statements as a candidate yield an inescapable conclusion: Hillary Clinton represents the entrenched interests of the status quo. Her election will expand the excesses of global interventionism and corporate welfare that have characterized US policies for several decades – at tremendous, almost incalculable cost both domestically and internationally.

    • Jill Stein’s AMA (Ask Me Anything) On Reddit: All You Need To Know About The Green Party Candidate’s Q & A Session

      “We could for example cancel the obsolete F-35 fighter jet program, create a Wall Street transaction tax (where a 0.2% tax would produce over $350 billion per year), or canceling the planned trillion dollar investment in a new generation of nuclear weapons. Unlike weapons programs and tax cuts for the super rich, investing in higher education and freeing millions of Americans from debt will have tremendous benefits for the real economy.”

    • WIKILEAKS: Here’s How The Clinton’s Free Private Jet Scam Works

      Ira Magaziner, the CEO of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, asked former President Bill Clinton to thank Morocco’s King Mohammed VI for “offering his plane to the conference in Ethiopia.”

      “CHAI would like to request that President Clinton call Sheik Mohammed to thank him for offering his plane to the conference in Ethiopia,” Magaziner gushed in a November 22, 2011 email released by WikiLeaks.

      Clinton frequently has expected free, luxurious private jet travel during his post-presidential life. Clinton, his wife and daughter have artfully secured free air travel and luxurious accommodations since they left the White House. It’s an effective way to accept gifts of great value without declaring them for the Clinton Foundation.

    • Clinton Foundation memo reveals Bill and Hillary as partners in crime

      Last week, WikiLeaks dropped a 2011 memo by top Bill Clinton aide Doug Band that lays bare Team Clinton’s sordid financial dealings when Hillary Clinton was secretary of State.

      Band describes how the Clinton Foundation served as a conduit for what he called “Bill Clinton Inc.” — the former president’s for-profit arm. Other documents show State Department involvement.

      The result is an unsavory mix of charity work, profiteering, and pay-to-play politics that potentially reaches the highest levels of US foreign policy and screams for IRS and Department of Justice reviews.

      At center is Band and his consulting firm Teneo. Band served as gatekeeper to all things Bill Clinton. Those wanting a former president as golf partner ponied up. Requests for Foundation dough followed. Next came Clinton Inc. — the steady stream of speeches, books, and honorary titles that enriched Bill Clinton. Teneo managed it all.

      Huge corporations and others seeking Clinton’s orbit lined up. Teneo’s clients included major U.S. corporations Coca-Cola and Dow Chemical, which donated huge sums.

      Foreign firms like UBS donated and greased Clinton Inc.

      For-profit Laureate International Universities went further, buying Clinton “advice” and rights to his prestige for $3.5 million annually. In all, Band states Teneo’s management yielded the former president $50 million — including a $2 million upfront slice of Band’s firm — with another $66 million queued. Band also facilitated political activity including securing campaign donors and managing Clinton’s political schedule.

    • The Clinton Foundation: Hopelessly Corrupt Or Just A Lousy Charity?

      Public Corruption: As the unseemly ties between the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s State Department become more glaring and disturbing, the rhetoric from the Democratic side is getting more desperate. Now Clinton hatchet man James Carville says critics of the foundation are going to hell.

    • Poll: Comey’s bombshell changes few votes

      The race for the White House is tight, but it has not been radically changed by the FBI director’s bombshell announcement last week.

      Hillary Clinton has a slim three-point lead over Donald Trump one week before Election Day, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll conducted entirely after FBI Director James Comey announced the discovery of new emails that might pertain to the former secretary of state’s private server.

      Clinton leads Trump 46 percent to 43 percent in a two-way race, and 42 percent to 39 percent in a four-way race, with Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson at 7 percent and the Green Party’s Jill Stein at 5 percent.

      The poll was conducted using an online panel of 1,772 likely voters on Saturday and Sunday, beginning one day after Comey’s announcement. The poll carries a margin or error of 2 percentage points.

    • National poll: Trump now leads Clinton by 1 point

      Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has overtaken Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for the first time since May in a national tracking poll.

      Trump has a 1-point lead over the former secretary of State, 46 to 45 percent, in the ABC News/Washington Post poll released Tuesday morning.

    • Trump Leads Clinton by 1 Point in New Poll as Enthusiasm Declines

      While vote preferences have held essentially steady, she’s now a slim point behind Donald Trump — a first since May — in the latest ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates.

      Forty-six percent of likely voters support Trump in the latest results, with 45 percent for Clinton. Taking it to the decimal for illustrative purposes, a mere .7 of a percentage point divides them. Third-party candidate Gary Johnson has 3 percent, a new low; Jill Stein, 2 percent.

    • Report & Wikileaks Reveal How Facebook, Clinton Loyalists Control Your Newsfeed

      Censorship by Facebook has become a thorn in the side of nearly anyone with an opinion differing from the narrative touted by the corporate press — for instance, sentiments not praising Hillary Clinton — and now, through both a new report from Reuters and emails published by Wikileaks, we have insight into why certain posts are targeted.

    • John Podesta’s Best Friend At The DOJ Will Be In Charge Of The DOJ’s Probe Into Huma Abedin Emails

      Now that the FBI has obtained the needed warrant to start poring over the 650,000 or so emails uncovered in Anthony Weiner’s notebook, among which thousands of emails sent from Huma Abedin using Hillary Clinton’s personal server, moments ago the US Justice Department announced it is also joining the probe, and as AP reported moments ago, vowed to dedicate all needed resources to quickly review the over half a million emails in the Clinton case.

    • ‘Google has power to control elections, can shift millions of votes to Clinton’ – Robert Epstein

      People trust the “unbiased” internet search giant Google so much it can actually influence up to 10 million undecided voters to choose Hillary Clinton for president, prominent US psychologist and author Robert Epstein told RT following years of research.

      Despite being a supporter of the Democratic presidential nominee, Dr. Epstein believes Google’s unchecked algorithm of placing one candidate over the other in search results constitutes a “threat to democracy.”

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Interrogated by Finnish police for alleged idendity crimes, fraud and attempts of fraud

      Putting the word out: I was interrogated by the Finnish police today for
      multiple alleged counts (15+) of identity crimes, fraud and attempts of
      fraud. The invitation letter to be interrogated was sent out on
      2016-10-21 and received by me on 2016-10-25. Today is 2016-10-31.

      The police suspects me because of an “IP-address assigned to my name”,
      which I can’t confirm or deny to have a relation to me. As a suspect, I
      was not told what this aclaimed IP-address was on a specific date to my
      knowledge. It is only speculation if these allegations wrongly against
      me have something to do with my relation with the Tor community or
      activism about digital rights online.

      Pending ongoing investigation, I am not allowed by law to share more
      specific details about to the investigation. I’d be glad to reveal more
      details about the case once the investigation is over and share/hear how
      I became a suspect, once I know about it. (Note that my story is at
      least slightly opinionated.)

      I had a witness with me and I feel like my rights were being violated
      during the interrogation. The officer (not to be named publicly in
      respect for privacy) didn’t want to allow me to write down their badge
      number by taking the badge away from me while trying to write down the
      numbers. The officer looked slightly anxious.

    • Google Glass can teach you Morse code in four hours without trying

      If all that is meaningless to you, don’t worry. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found a way for humans to learn Morse code in four hours just by playing games.

      The subjects were given Google Glass headsets (ask your parents) and continued to play games while vibrations near the ear slowly embedded subconscious Morsey goodness into their brains, reported Phys.org.

    • South African Spy Company Used by Gadaffi Touts its NSA-Like Capabilities

      The South African company best known for selling Muammar Gaddafi’s regime spy equipment used to monitor millions of Libyans’ international phone calls is now claiming it can intercept communications on a scale that rivals a government spy agency, according to a company brochure obtained by The Intercept.

      In a 2016 pamphlet produced by VASTech SA Pty Ltd., the company outlines its current capabilities for governments, militaries, and law enforcement agencies around the world, claiming it can conduct “passive detection” of communications transmitted from satellites, fix-and-mobile phones, and fiber optic cable.

      The company is offering multiple tools to vacuum up communications from around the globe undetected, or what the company calls “communication intelligence extraction solutions” — a capability not unlike the U.S. National Security Agency’s PRISM program.

    • Who are the Shadow Brokers?
    • New Leak Leads To Another NSA Spying Scandal
    • Hackers say they’re revealing more from trove of NSA data
    • NSA-Hacking ‘Shadow Brokers’ Reveal Spy-Penetrated Networks
    • Shadow Brokers leak second batch of data allegedly from NSA-linked ‘Equation Group’ hacking unit
    • Shadow Brokers releases list of servers hacked by the NSA
    • Shadow Brokers post list of compromised IP addresses
    • New leak may show if you were hacked by the NSA
    • Hacking group says list features servers infiltrated by National Security Agency
    • The Shadow Brokers dump more intel from the NSA’s elite Equation Group
    • Shadow Brokers leak list of supposed NSA controlled computers in China, Russia
    • Shadow Brokers claim to leak NSA cyberespionage targets
    • ‘Shadow Brokers’ dumps list of NSA-hacked attack servers
    • Shadow Brokers Tell U.S. to Pay to Get Files Back
    • Second Shadow Brokers dump released
    • Shadow Brokers Give NSA Halloween Surprise With Leak Of Hacked Servers
    • Hackers expose apparent NSA cyber espionage operations
    • NSA has been hacking Sonatrach from 2010 to 2002
    • Shadow Brokers leak systems hacked by NSA – mostly mail and uni servers in India, China
    • New leak reveals over 100 web addresses compromised by the NSA
    • Shadowbrokers’ NSA dirty tricks spill points to compromised servers in China and Russia
    • Shadow Brokers leaks list of NSA targets and compromised servers
    • NSA Hackers The Shadow Brokers Dump More Files
    • Hacker group releases list of NSA-compromised servers
    • Past behaviour did not stop leaker from accessing sensitive NSA Data

      The US National Security Agency’s (NSA) latest alleged leaker apparently raised no red flags despite a history of abnormal behaviour. The New York Times reported on 29 October that Harold T. Martin III, who is accused of stealing 50 terabytes of data from the NSA, apparently dealt with divorces, unpaid taxes, legal charges and drinking problems and was still allowed access to top secret information.

      In a detention hearing on 28 October, Judge Richard D. Bennett noted that Martin had a history of drinking problems. In 2006, he faced a drunk driving charge. Martin is known to have been called up for unpaid taxes in 2000, which he did not pay off for over a decade. Martin’s other run ins with the law include a computer harassment charge and an incident where he pretended to be a police officer during a traffic dispute.

      Martin’s house would eventually be raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in August 2016. He was arrested when investigators found thousands of pages of classified material on several storage devices, apparently taken from a variety of jobs he held as an NSA contractor, most recently for Booz Allen. It is not clear whether Martin was merely hoarding this information, or intended to leak it. His lawyers have stated that “there is no evidence that he intended to betray his country”.

    • Rights Groups, Activists Ask President To Respond To Unanswered Encryption Petition

      A bunch of organizations concerned with privacy, free press, and human rights are gently reminding the outgoing president that he still hasn’t fully responded to a We the People petition about encryption.

    • Montreal police monitored iPhone of La Presse journalist Patrick Lagacé

      Montreal police strongly defended a highly controversial decision to spy on a La Presse columnist by tracking his cellphone calls and texts and monitoring his whereabouts as part of a necessary internal police investigation — while the journalist involved called what they did “indefensible.”

      “Lives were not at stake, this was not a question of national security,” La Presse columnist Patrick Lagacé said in an interview Monday. “The leaks made them look bad, that’s why they decided to go after me in the way they did.”

      Opposition politicians are also condemning Montreal police for spying on Lagacé, though Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre stood by police chief Philippe Pichet on Monday, noting that a mayor should not intervene in police operations, but did say he was troubled by the news.

      For several months this year, police were monitoring Lagacé’s iPhone to determine the identity of his sources, La Presse reported. This was confirmed to Lagacé last Thursday by Montreal police.

      At least 24 surveillance warrants were granted by courts in 2016, at the request of the Montreal police department’s special investigations section, which probes crime within the police force. The warrants allowed police to track the telephone numbers of incoming and outgoing calls on Lagacé’s phone, and to monitor the phone’s location, although Pichet denied at a hastily convened press conference Monday that the GPS on his phone was monitored.

      Lagacé said he is sure many judges around the world have been asked by police departments to grant similar warrants, but refused because it was too “vulgar” to spy on a reporter. “It was incredibly aggressive,” he said, questioning the judgment of the judge involved.

    • Lords examines Investigatory Powers Bill

      The Investigatory Powers Bill will have its third reading, a final chance to tidy up the bill and make changes, in the House of Lords on Monday 31 October.

    • Belgian Court Fines Microsoft For Failing To Comply With Its Impossible Order

      The court, failing to understand anything but its power to order people around, demanded Skype turn over communications. Skype turned over the only thing it could actually obtain, explaining that its architecture didn’t support the interception of calls. No dice. That only made the court angry.

      The court was no more happy to have pointed out to it that Microsoft didn’t actually fall under its jurisdiction. It maintains no data centers in Belgium, nor does it have anyone employed there. Microsoft suggested the court work with governments of countries where it actually maintains a presence and utilize their mutual assistance treaties.

    • Brandi Collins on Black Lives Surveillance

      Corporate journalists rely on the First Amendment, but it’s increasingly unclear if the First Amendment can rely on them. The relative lack of interest in the impact of spying on activists—a practice with a long and disturbing history given new power by technology—is the latest example.

    • As Expected, FCC Passes Modest Privacy Rules For Broadband Providers, ISPs Act Like World Has Ended

      Over the past week, we’ve been talking a lot about the need for more transparency and user control for privacy on the internet, so it’s only fitting that the FCC has officially adopted its new privacy rules for ISPs that will require broadband providers to be much more explicit concerning what information it collects and shares with others, and provide (mostly) clear “opt-in” requirements on some of that data collection. This isn’t a surprise. It was pretty clear that the FCC was going to approve these rules that it announced earlier this year. And, of course, the big broadband providers threw a giant hissy fit over these rules that just ask them to be more transparent and give users at least a little bit of control over what data is collected.

      Comcast has caused these proposals “irrational” and various think tankers paid for by the broadband providers tried to tell the world that poor people benefit from a lack of privacy. And magically new studies came out claiming that broadband providers are cuddly and lovable, rather than snarfing up everyone’s data.

      And, of course, the various broadband providers want to blame Google for the rules, because everyone wants to blame Google for everything. The issue here is that the broadband access providers have these rules, while online service providers, like Google and Facebook do not. There are, of course, a few responses to this. The first, is that the FCC doesn’t have authority over those sites, like it does have over the access providers under the Telecom Act. The second is that users are much more locked in to their broadband access provider, and there is much less competition. Switching is much more difficult. The third argument is, basically, that Google and Facebook don’t have nearly the same history as the broadband access providers of really nasty privacy violations. Hell, just as these new rules were coming, Verizon was being fined for stealth zombie cookies. Finally, the simple fact is that broadband access providers have the power to spy on a lot more internet activity than Google or Facebook. Yes, those other services are in more and more places, but it’s not difficult to block them. With your ISP everything goes through their pipes, and unless you carefully encrypt your traffic via a VPN, they get to see everything.

    • Why do we still accept that governments collect and snoop on our data?

      In recent weeks, the Hollywood film about Edward Snowden and the movement to pardon the NSA whistleblower have renewed worldwide attention on the scope and substance of government surveillance programs. In the United States, however, the debate has often been a narrow one, focused on the rights of Americans under domestic law but mostly blind to the privacy rights of millions of others affected by this surveillance.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • At DAPL, Confiscating Cameras as Evidence of Journalism

      While elite media wait for the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline to go away so they can return to presenting their own chin-stroking as what it means to take climate change seriously, independent media continue to fill the void with actual coverage.

      One place you can go to find reporting is The Intercept (10/25/16), where journalist Jihan Hafiz filed a video report from North Dakota, where the Standing Rock Sioux and their allies continue their stand against the sacred site–trampling, water supply–threatening project.

    • ‘Dumbfounded’: Documentarian facing 45 years for filming pipeline protest

      Schlosberg was arrested in Walhalla, North Dakota, on October 11 for filming activist Michael Foster — a member of the group known as Climate Direct Action — as he shut off a valve of a Canadian tar sands pipeline. In solidarity with protesters opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, activists shut down similar valves in Washington, Montana, and Minnesota on the same day.

      However, authorities in North Dakota have charged the filmmaker with two Class A felonies and one Class C felony, including conspiracy to theft of property, conspiracy to theft of services, and conspiracy to tampering with or damaging a public service.

    • Descendants of Jewish refugees seek German citizenship after Brexit vote

      Descendants of the tens of thousands of German Jews who fled the Nazis and found refuge in Britain are making use of their legal right to become German citizens following the Brexit vote.

      German authorities have reported a twentyfold increase in the number of restored citizenship applications – a right reserved for anybody who was persecuted on political, racial or religious grounds during the Nazi dictatorship, as well as their descendants.

    • Inside Nigeria’s Baby Factories

      Baby factories in Nigeria are pumping out babies for sale on the illegal adoption market. Swedish journalist Therese Cristiansson infiltrated these baby-trafficking networks with a hidden camera.

    • Nigeria lost $9bn to Boko Haram attacks – Presidential panel

      The Presidential Committee on North-East Initiative has revealed that the nation lost about $9bn to the violent activities of the Boko Haram insurgents in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states.

      According to the committee, a strategic framework would soon be set up by President Muhammadu Buhari in line with his determination to rebuild the North-East.

      The Vice-Chairman of the PCNI, Alhaji Tijani Tumsah, said this on Thursday in Abuja, while briefing newsmen on the outcome of its inaugural meeting.

      According to him, the focus of the meeting was to discuss the mandate given to the PCNI to fashion out a way that would be most direct, in terms of the delivery of that mandate, analyse the enormity of the task and fulfil the presidential mandate to give succour to the people of the North-East.

      Tumsah said, “We are not investigating anybody; there are people who are investigating such diversions. I’m glad you mentioned the Senate, the House of Representatives, police and the EFCC. Our mandate, going forward, is to provide a strategic framework for the implementation of all interventions going into the North-East in terms of humanitarian works, resettlement and eventual rebuilding of the North-East.

    • Iran: Writer Jailed For Writing Unpublished Story

      On Monday, Iranian intelligence authorities broke the apartment door of writer and human rights activist Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, raided her apartment and took her by force to serve a 6 year prison sentence for writing a story on stoning women in Islam, that was never published.

      Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee 35 years old, is the wife of political prisoner Arash Sadeghi, 36 who is now serving a 19 year prison sentence in Iranian prisons. The family has suffered much mistreatment since the 2009 disputed presidential election in Iran and have been in and out of prison. They have also lost their mother who had a stroke the minute the authorities raided their home in 2009.

    • Iran: Writer facing imminent imprisonment for story about stoning

      Iranian authorities must immediately repeal the conviction and sentence of Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, a writer and human rights activist who is due to begin serving six years in prison on charges including “insulting Islamic sanctities” through the writing of an unpublished story about the horrific practice of stoning, Amnesty International said today.

      “The charges against Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee are ludicrous. She is facing years behind bars simply for writing a story, and one which was not even published – she is effectively being punished for using her imagination,” said Philip Luther, Research and Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

    • Woman recalls moment she was strip-searched by police aged 12

      A woman has described being strip-searched by police when she was 12 years old.

      Georgia Wood, now 20, said the officers were “horrible and demeaning” and the incident had “really affected” her life, leaving her lacking confidence and suffering panic attacks.

      Ms Wood was taken into police custody in south Wales eight years ago with her mother, who was suspected of possessing drugs.

      No illegal substances were found on Ms Wood or her mother, Karen Archer, who wasn’t charged with an offence.

      According to figures acquired by the BBC from 13 police forces in England and Wales, more than 5,000 children aged 17 and under were strip-searched between 2013 and 2015.

    • Saudi Arabia is preparing to behead and crucify a 21-year-old activist

      A young Saudi Arabian Shi’a activist, who was sentenced to death last year, has lost his final appeal for justice and is due to be executed by beheading, followed by the mounting of his headless body onto a crucifix for public viewing.

      Human rights groups and Saudi critics are appalled by both the nature of the execution and the flimsy case against Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, though neither of these factors are unusual in today’s Saudi Arabia.

    • Muslim women complain about Sharia inquiries

      More than 100 Muslim women have complained about their treatment under two government probes into Sharia law.

      The inquiries – one ordered by Theresa May when she was home secretary, and another by the home affairs select committee – are ongoing.

      But some women have signed an open letter and said the aim is to ban Sharia councils, not reform them.

      The Muslim Women’s Network UK said the inquiries risk treating women like “political footballs”.

      The councils are tribunals often used to settle disputes within the Muslim community.

      The first evidence session on Sharia councils is due to be held by the home affairs committee on Tuesday.

    • Sharia Courts interfered to protect domestic abusers, MPs told

      Leading figures from the UK’s Sharia councils will give evidence in parliament tomorrow, in the wake of accusations that a leading Sharia court has been protecting domestic abusers from criminal proceedings.

      The Home Affairs Select Committee has published written evidence submitted to it that is heavily critical of the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (Mat) in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, in advance of its session on Tuesday. The Mat states on its website that it urges the Crown Prosecution Service to “reconsider” criminal charges brought against Muslim men accused of domestic violence.

      The Southall Black Sisters, a group that helps vulnerable women, have told the committee that the strategy of asking the CPS to “reconsider” cases is an “attempt to sabotage criminal proceedings”.

    • UK.gov’s pricey Five Year Plan to see off cyber thugs still in place

      UK Chancellor Philip Hammond is due to reaffirm a pledge to spend £1.9bn up until the end of 2020 to bolster the UK’s cyber security strategy in a speech early this afternoon.

      The updated strategy – which doesn’t include any new spending pledges1 – is expected to include an increase in focus on investment in automated defences to combat malware and spam emails, establish a fund earmarked to recruit 50 specialists to work on cybercrime at the National Crime Agency, the creation of a Cyber Security Research Institute and an “innovation fund” for cyber security startups. All this investment is needed because of increased threats from nation state attackers, terrorists and organised crime gangs, the Chancellor is expected to say.

    • Legislators Demand Answers From DOJ On Expanded Hacking Powers It’s Seeking

      There’s only a couple of months left until the DOJ’s proposed Rule 41 changes become law. All Congress has to do is nothing. This is a level of effort Congress is mostly amenable to. If this becomes law, worldwide deployments of malware/spyware during investigations will be unable to be challenged in court. In addition, the DOJ wants to be part of the cyberwar. It’s seeking permission to remotely access zombie computers/devices used in cyberattacks to “clean” them.

    • There’s no way your Facebook “check-in” is confusing North Dakota cops

      On Monday, supporters of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline began a viral campaign enticing people to “check in” to the reservation on Facebook as a way to “overwhelm and confuse” local law enforcement.

      However, there is no evidence that this tactic is effective, particularly as the Morton County Sheriff’s Department expressly said on its own Facebook page that it “is not and does not follow Facebook check-ins for the protest camp or any location. This claim/rumor is absolutely false.”

      In recent months, activists have been protesting at the site on the border of North and South Dakota in an attempt to halt a planned oil pipeline that many believe would damage the local water supply and desecrate tribal lands.

      This Facebook plea is similar to calls in 2009, during the controversial presidential election in Iran, where supporters of the Green Movement urged people to change their Twitter location to Tehran. Similarly, there was no indication that this action mitigated local Iranian authorities’ ability to arrest protesters.

    • Turkey detains 13 journalists after mass firings of public servants

      Turkey has detained 13 journalists in an ongoing wave of government crackdowns following a coup attempt in July.
      Early Monday morning, Turkish police detained Murat Sabuncu, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Cumhuriyet, along with a dozen other reporters in a raid, according to official news agency Anadolu.

    • Branding Moderates as ‘Anti-Muslim’

      As if facing down violent Islamist fanatics isn’t enough, Muslim reformers now have to dodge attacks from the American left. Consider the Southern Poverty Law Center’s decision last week to brand two such reformers, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Britain’s Maajid Nawaz, as “anti-Muslim extremists.”

    • Indonesian woman becomes latest person to be caned ‘for standing near boyfriend’

      A 20-year-old woman in Indonesia has been publicly caned for standing too close to her boyfriend, becoming the 14th person to be flogged this month in the same province.

      The unnamed woman was accused of breaking Islamic Sharia law, which strictly forbids unmarried couples to become intimate, and was flogged in front of a crowd in Banda Aceh province.

      She was escorted onto a stage outside a mosque wearing a headdress and was lashed with a cane.

      Incidents of the punishment have reportedly increased recently in Indonesia.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • AT&T’s Already Making Things Up To Get Its Massive New Merger Approved

      Over the years, we’ve noted how AT&T has a nasty habit of lying to sell the public, press and regulators on the company’s neverending attempts to grow larger. Whether it’s promising broadband expansions that never arrive, or using astroturf to try and argue anti-consumer mergers are good for toddlers, AT&T’s lobbyists, lawyers, and policy tendrils work tirelessly to argue that up is down, black is white, and any skepticism of its claims are unfounded hysteria. As we saw with the blocked T-Mobile merger, this sort of behavior doesn’t work quite as well as it used to.

      Enter AT&T’s latest $85 billion planned acquisition of Time Warner. Consumer advocates worry AT&T could use its size and leverage to make content more expensive, while the usage caps and zero rating give AT&T’s own upcoming streaming video service an unfair market advantage. Wall Street hasn’t exactly been bullish on the idea either, noting how AT&T’s $69 billion acquisition of DirecTV, followed by its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner is not only a giant risk on the eve of the cord cutting revolution, but it saddles AT&T with an absolute mountain of debt that will potentially damage the company’s credit rating.

    • Most of Canada’s Biggest Telecoms Want to End Net Neutrality

      On Monday, Canada’s federal telecommunications regulator debates the principle of net neutrality—the idea that every online service should be equally accessible in terms of connection speed and data costs.

      It’s fitting that this hearing takes place on Halloween, because the idea that one of Canada’s telecoms could favour a certain music streaming service, for example, over another—by making Spotify free to use, while Apple Music eats away at your data plan, for example—is pretty spooky.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Sega/Steam Took Down A Bunch Of Legitimate Steam Workshop Mods Over Copyright Concerns

        We’ve talked often about how common it is for legitimate customers to get caught up in attempts to thwart piracy and copyright infringement. From DRM keeping legit purchasers from using what they paid for to Fair Use uses of content getting taken down by automatic systems on sites like YouTube, it’s worth noting whenever this happens. After all, there is an expression in the legal system that goes something like: I’d rather set 100 guilty people free than imprison a single innocent. The stakes when it comes to copyright aren’t as high as jail time, typically, but it’s interesting how little this mantra penetrates with those who would enforce copyright via carpet-bomb rather than a scalpel.

        Take the recent incident with Sega’s Steam Workshop mod-space, for instance, where dozens and dozens of mods within the platform suddenly disappeared.

      • My Talk At Wikimedia: Copyright Impacts Everything

        Last week, I mentioned that I was giving a talk at the Wikimedia Foundation about copyright. It was a fun time, and the video from the talk is now online. Unfortunately, the audio and the video are… not entirely great. I’d complain about the terrible microphone, but that sounds like a certain presidential candidate. The video is okay, but the colors are off, so my presentation looks a little weird. Either way, you should still be able to get the basics. There’s an introduction from Jan Gerlach at the Wikimedia Foundation, talking about all the important policy work they do, then my talk that runs about half an hour, followed by a Q&A with the audience that runs another half hour or so. It was a fun time, with a really great group of folks, and the conversation continued on after the official session ended for quite a while.

      • Supreme Court Asks White House To Weigh In On Dancing Baby Fair Use Case

        The copyright case involving Stephanie Lenz and her dancing baby is one that may finally be nearing a conclusion after many, many years — but it’s not over yet. As you may recall, Lenz posted a very brief clip of her then toddler, dancing along to a few seconds of a barely audible Prince song. This was almost a decade ago.

      • Copyright and cheerleaders at the Supreme Court

        Star Athletica v Varsity Brands involves copyright protection for cheerleader uniforms. The question asked is: What is the appropriate test to determine when a feature of a useful article is protectable under Section 101 of the Copyright Act?

        “It is important because the court may well strike out on a new course or at least throw its determinative hat in the ring on how to approach useful articles more generally,” says Robert Brauneis of The George Washington University Law School, who will be presenting the session.

      • Copyright on a Useful Item

        Today the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the pending copyright case of Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands. Although not a patent case, the issue involves the boundary line (if any) between patent and copyright and the “useful article” exception. Question Presented: What is the appropriate test to determine when a feature of a useful article is protectable under section 101 of the Copyright Act. The statutory test under Section 101 states that “the design of a useful article . . . shall be considered a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work only if, and only to the extent that, such design incorporates pictorial, graphic, or sculptural features that can be identified separately from, and are capable of existing independently of, the utilitarian aspects of the article.”

      • Power Struggle In Russia As Internet Pirates Vie For Upper Hand

        The Russian intellectual property industry is on the verge of a new scandal. Following the recent arrest of Sergey Fedotov, head of the Russian Authors’ Society (RAS), Russia’s leading public association for the protection of intellectual property rights, on the charge of multi-million ruble thefts, the Russian police has announced the initiation of criminal proceedings against Maxim Ryabyko, head of the Russian Association for the Protection of Copyright on the Internet (RAPCI).

      • 86-Year Old Grandma Accused of Pirating a Zombie Game

        Since it’s become mandatory for ISPs to forward piracy notifications in Canada, hundreds of thousands of people have received letters over alleged copyright infringements. One of these accused pirates is an elderly woman, who’s threatened with $5,000 in potential damages for downloading a zombie game she’s never heard of.

      • ‘Shocked’ grandmother on hook for illegal mutant game download

        Post-nuclear war, mutant-killing video games are not Christine McMillan’s thing.

        But the 86-year-old from Ontario has been warned she could have to pay up to $5,000 for illegally downloading a game she’d never heard of.

        She is one of likely tens of thousands of Canadians who have received notices to pay up, whether they are guilty or not.

        “I found it quite shocking … I’m 86 years old, no one has access to my computer but me, why would I download a war game?” McMillan told Go Public.

        In May, she received two emails forwarded by her internet provider.

        They were from a private company called Canadian Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement (CANIPRE) claiming she had illegally downloaded Metro 2033, a first-person shooter game where nuclear war survivors have to kill mutants.​

      • Canada Copyright Troll Threatens Octogenarian Over Download Of A Zombie War Game

        Copyright trolling is somehow still a thing and it never seems to fail to provide ridiculous examples of miscarriages of justice. It has been long pointed out how rife with inaccuracy the process of threatening individuals with lawsuits and fines based on infringement as evidenced only by IP address is. Even courts have time and time again pointed out that an IP address is not sufficient to identify a person responsible for a given action. Yet the trolls still send out their threat letters, because bullying in this manner generally works.

        The latest example of this kind of trolling misfire comes from Canada, where 86-year-old Christine McMillan received a threat letter from CANIPRE over an alleged infringing download of Metro 2033, a game in which the player slaughters zombies in a post-nuclear world.

      • Pirate Party Books Election Victory in Iceland

        The Pirate Party in Iceland booked an important victory in the local parliamentary election today, scoring 14.5% of the total vote. While lower than most polls predicted, it marks the first time that a Pirate Party, anywhere in the world, has a serious shot at taking part in a government coalition.

      • Iceland’s Pirate Party Gains Ground in Election

        After near-constant exposure to the nausea-inducing dumpster fire that is the 2016 U.S. presidential race, it might be hard to grok that a movement of anti-establishment internet pirates has become one of the leading political parties of a small island nation.

        And yet that’s what’s happening in right now in Iceland, where the hacktivist-inspired Pirate Party achieved significant victories in the country’s parliamentary elections yesterday. Yesterday they won 14.5 percent of the popular vote, putting them in third place behind the center-right Independence Party and the Left-Green Movement, who won 29 percent and 15.9 percent of the vote respectively. (Earlier results showed them beating the Left-Green Movement for second place, but that changed as more votes were counted.)

        It wasn’t enough to seize majority control of the country as some polls for the extremely tight race were suggesting, but it was enough to win them 10 seats in the 63-seat parliament, up from the mere three they held after the 2013 elections. The formerly leading center-right Progressive Party, meanwhile, saw its seats drop by over half from 19 to eight, its dominance soundly trounced by the Pirates and the country’s smaller left-leaning parties: Left-Green, Bright Future, and Social Democrats. In the wake of the news, Icelandic prime minister and progressive Party member Sigurður Ingi Jóhannsson resigned Sunday.

      • EU Advocate General Declares That Hotels Don’t Need To Pay Copyright License To Have In-Room Television

        We’ve seen all manner of silly claims by copyright licensing groups as to what requires what kind of license in every kind of circumstance. These licensing groups have gone after children’s charities. A UK collection society had the strategy of calling up local businesses and demanding payments should they hear music playing in the background. The Author’s Guild once claimed that reading a book out loud constituted the need for a separate license, while ASCAP asserted with a straight face that the ring of a mobile phone was a public performance. This panoply of idiocy might be funny, except for the very real harm done through this kind of harassment.

        Even the good stories in this vein weigh heavily in that they are necessary at all. For instance, the advocate general for the EU’s Court of Justice recently wrote an opinion advising that hotels didn’t need a copyright license just to have televisions within guest rooms. It’s a good ruling, but conjures the frustrating question as to why it was needed in the first place. The answer, of course, is because a collection group was attempting to collect from hotels for just that reason.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/11/01/debian-drops-powerpc/feed/ 0 Links 16/10/2016: Linux 4.9 RC1, Wine 1.9.21 http://techrights.org/2016/10/16/linux-4-9-rc1/ http://techrights.org/2016/10/16/linux-4-9-rc1/#comments Sun, 16 Oct 2016 16:54:55 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=96125

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • NFV trends and open source SDN work with OpenDaylight

    Open source continues to gain momentum and is said to remain central to ongoing development and deployment of NFV and SDN for telecommunication operators

    The open source community remains active in bolstering support for the telecommunication market’s move towards network virtualization platforms using software-defined networking and network functions virtualization.

    In the past month alone, new platform iterations from the Open Platform for NFV project with its Colorado release; fellow Linux Foundation organization OpenDaylight with its Boron SDN platform; and the Open Networking Laboratory’s Open Network Operating System Project with its SDN-focused Hummingbird platform.

  • Google releases Open Source Report Card — does the company deserve an A+?

    The future of computing is open source. While there is still room for closed source software, more and more companies are going the open route. Major players such as Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook are all contributing to the open source community. Google in particular is a huge proponent of open source. Heck, two of the company’s operating systems — Chrome OS and Android — are Linux distributions.

    Today, the search giant announces the ‘Open Source Report Card’. This is essentially a report that explains the details of its open source projects. Google is undoubtedly a major open source contributor, but the question is, what grade should the company get?

    “Today we’re sharing our first Open Source Report Card, highlighting our most popular projects, sharing a few statistics and detailing some of the projects we’ve released in 2016. We’ve open sourced over 20 million lines of code to date and you can find a listing of some of our best known project releases on our website”, says Josh Simmons, Open Source Programs Office.

  • My FOSS Journey and Why I am applying for a Toptal Scholarship

    When I graduated from my high school in India, our class had an almost 50-50 ratio of boys-to-girls. My graduating class in one of India’s premier engineering institutions had less than 10%. It was even more interesting to see that there were more than 20% girls enrolled in Bachelors in Design (which offered courses like Product Design, Human Computer Interaction and User Experience Research) while there were none in Mechanical Engineering since the last three graduating classes. Was it that Design was considered a relatively non-technical course ? While I have never been openly discouraged from pursuing a career in technology – a predominantly male-populated field – there has always been an unconscious bias even from within my family. When I wanted to apply for a degree course in Mechanical Engineering, I was asked to take some more time to think about my future – was gently nudged towards more female-friendly engineering fields like Computer Science which wouldn’t involve as much strenuous physical effort. Was it even sublte experiences like this which had contributed towards the gender gap ? This feeling of being an ‘outsider’ in a predominantly male field never left till I started contributing to Open Source.

    I first learnt about Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) via Outreachy, a program designed to increase participation of minorities in FOSS. I liked the fact that the program had no knowledge prerequisites so that anyone interested in contributing to FOSS could be a part of it.

  • Hello fans and followers of open source voting in San Francisco!

    The Open Source Initiative works with a variety of organizations to promote the adoption of open source software throughout government. San Francisco Elections Commissioner Chris Jerdonek provides the OSI with a breakdown of the latest happening with San Francisco’s efforts to develop and certify the country’s first open source voting system!

  • Events

    • Announcing Google Code-in 2016 and Google Summer of Code 2017

      One of the goals of the Open Source Programs Office is to encourage more people to contribute to open source software. One way we achieve that goal is through our student programs, Google Summer of Code (for university students) and Google Code-in (for pre-university students).

      Over 15,000 students from more than 100 countries have worked with 23,000 mentors and contributed to 560+ open source projects, so we’re excited to announce the next round of these programs.

  • Databases

    • MySQL 8.0: The end of MyISAM

      This blog discusses the gradual end of MyISAM in MySQL.

      The story that started 20 years ago is coming to its end. I’m talking about the old MyISAM storage engine that was the only storage provided by MySQL in 1995, and was available in MySQL for 20+ years. Actually, part of my job as a MySQL consultant for 10+ years was to discover MyISAM tables and advise customers how to convert those to InnoDB.

    • Devs Await Open Source Word After Commercial RethinkDB Effort Fails

      With the company behind the RethinkDB project having failed and its engineering team scooped up by Stripe, Big Data developers are awaiting further word on plans to continue it as fully open source.

      Although failing to achieve commercial success, the RethinkDB database was lauded by many developers for its different approach and solid technology on developer-oriented social sites such as Hacker News and Reddit.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • First LibreOffice 5.3 BugHunting Session

      LibreOffice is approaching the 5.3 release season with the first bug hunting session, on Friday, October 21, 2016. Tests will be performed on the Alpha version of LibreOffice 5.3, which will be available on the pre-releases server (http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/pre-releases/) a few days before the event. Builds will be available for Linux (DEB and RPM), MacOS and Windows, and will run in parallel with the actual installation.

  • CMS

    • When it Comes to Open CMS Solutions, Take a Test Drive First

      Datamation is out with an extensive evaluation of which open source content management systems (CMS) really stand out, which is a topic near and dear to us here at OStatic. Our site runs on Drupal, which powers many sites around the web, but there are key differences between CMS offerings, and if you’re looking for the right solution, we have some good resources for you.

      The Datamation story provides a nice overview of the open CMS space, but here are some of out favorite ways to go about evaluating which is the right CMS for you.

      Marking a true renaissance for tools that can help anyone run a top-notch website or manage content in the cloud, open source content management systems (CMS) have come of age. You’re probably familiar with some of the big names in this arena, including Drupal (which Ostatic is based on) and Joomla. As we noted in this post, selecting a CMS to build around can be a complicated process, since the publishing tools provided are hardly the only issue.

  • Microsoft and Openwashing

  • Public Services/Government

    • The White House open sources President Obama’s Facebook Messenger bot

      The White House today shared open source code for President Obama’s Facebook Messenger bot to help other governments build their own bots.

      The White House says it’s sharing the code “with the hope that other governments and developers can build similar services — and foster similar connections with their citizens — with significantly less upfront investment,” according to a post published today by chief digital officer for the White House Jason Goldman.

      In August, the White House launched a Facebook Messenger bot to receive messages from American citizens. The messages are read alongside letters and other communique sent to the president.

      The open source Drupal module for the president’s bot is available to download on Github.

      “While Drupal may not be the platform others would immediately consider for building a bot, this new White House module will allow non-developers to create bot interactions (with customized language and workflows), and empower other governments and agencies who already use Drupal to power their digital experiences,” Goldman said on the White House website today.

    • Obama’s Facebook Messenger Bot Is Now “Open Source” And Available On GitHub
    • Why the White House is open-sourcing its chatbot code
    • White House open-sources chatbot
    • White House encourages local governments to embrace chatbots
    • Governments favor open source, Google releases 3 new projects, and more news: Russia and the Netherlands propose moves to open source

      For years now, governments throughout Europe have been enthusiastically adopting open source software. Their main reasons for doing so have been to lower costs and to be able to modify the software to suit their needs. Governments in Russia and the Netherlands are following that trend, but for divergent reasons.

      The Russian Duma announced earlier this month that it’s drafting a law to give preference to open source over proprietary software. Specifically, “the law will require local agencies to give preference to open source software and justify any purchases of proprietary software.” In an interview with Bloomberg News, Duma official Andrey Chernogorov cites security as a major driver behind this shift. Much of the government’s IT infrastructure is based on proprietary, foreign-made platforms, and Chernogorov said that the Russian government is “seeking to close this loophole for state purchases, as it causes security risks.”

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Access/Content

      • Senate supports open-source initiatives

        The ASWSU Senate passed a resolution to support the Office of the Provost’s open education initiatives at its meeting on Wednesday. The resolution supports the use of the OpenStax program to provide textbooks created with open-source material.

        This does not force professors to use a book that does not perfectly line up with their curriculum because they can freely edit and update the source material, said Sen. Matthew Morrow, author of the resolution.

        Researchers and professors collaborate to create open-source textbooks for students at other universities to use. Morrow said they are targeting UCORE courses because open-source textbooks are currently less suitable for upper-level classes.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

  • Programming/Development

    • TFW an obituary you wrote five years ago goes viral

      This is not a new phenomenon. Social media snap-posts have killed off celebrities hundreds of times before their actual deaths (to the point where some have required websites to constantly fact-check their mortality). Facebook is full of years-late “RIP” posts. The Internet may never forget, but the humans who use it have become increasingly absent-minded.

      It wasn’t even just my story that went viral—a similar Guardian story also resurfaced, probably because of the same “memories” feature on Facebook or some other social media feature that dredges up old content. Still, there was something personally unsettling about having words I had written in tribute of “dmr”—a man whom I credited personally for making my early exposure to computing and its potential possible—suddenly resurface five years later.

      The first few times I spotted Twitter acting up, I thanked people for resurfacing the story after so much time. But reading the post again—partially to make sure I hadn’t somehow written another tribute subconsciously from my perch at my dad’s bedside—was affecting in ways I didn’t expect. Maybe I got emotional because I was in a hospital room with my father, who was recovering from an other-than-routine knee replacement surgery, and I had spent the day before sitting in a surgical waiting room.

    • Tracing HTTP request latency in Go with OpenTracing
    • How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016
    • Why should students learn to write code?

      There are lots of efforts underway to get students (young and old) to learn to write code. There are far-reaching efforts, like the Hour of Code, and plenty of smaller, more focused projects, such as the Design and Technology Academy (part of Northeast ISD here in San Antonio, Texas). These are excellent programs that enrich the education of many students.

Leftovers

  • Smartphones are “contaminating” family life, study suggests

    Parents, which do you respond to first – your ring tone or your toddler’s crying?

    Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets can be distracting from child-rearing, upending family routines and fueling stress in the home, a small, new study finds.

    Incoming communication from work, friends and the world at large is “contaminating” family mealtime, bedtime and playtime, said study lead author Dr. Jenny Radesky. She’s an assistant professor of developmental behavioral pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical School.

    Her comments stem from her team’s study involving interviews with 35 parents and caregivers of young children in the Boston area.

  • Science

    • FCC CIO encourages creative problem solving in IT through compassionate leadership

      When speaking with Dr. David Bray, senior executive and CIO of the U.S. Federal Communication Commission, he is always quick to assign all the credit for achievements within his organization to his team of interdisciplinary change agents – from a successful move to the cloud, to saving millions on a legacy technology upgrade.

      Bray is firm in his belief that if digital C-Suite leaders aren’t first and foremost inspiring people to be creative problem solvers, their organizations simply won’t be able to move with the speed or the resiliency necessary to survive in the fast-paced digital world. Further, he says that leading a team of diverse change agents who are intrinsically motivated takes a unique approach. We touched base with Bray to learn more.

    • Opinion: Stop Submitting Papers

      PIXABAY, STARTUPSTOCKPHOTOSI woke up to three requests for review, and two papers to handle as a subject editor. It is unusual, but it happens. I declined to do all the reviews. This is not sustainable.

      Over the last six months, I kept informal track of the reviews I received, both as an author and as a subject editor. In the overwhelming majority of papers, about half of the “major” points were actually not major, but things that improve the paper because the reviewers see it from a different perspective.

      This is burdening the peer review process for very little return (because these comments, important as they may be, do not make the paper more correct or more robust).

      Here is what we should do: stop submitting papers to journals.

      Wait, what? No, I mean it. We should write our draft, go over it with our coauthors, and then put it on a preprint server. And wait. Some reasonable amount of time. A year, maybe. After a year, when we had the opportunity to share this paper with colleagues, then we can submit it.

    • Winner of the Norwegian Digitalisation Prize 2016, Deichmanske Public Library in Oslo

      A movie that shows that putting the user at the hub and thinking untraditionally makes exctiting things happen.

    • Status digitalisation in the Norwegian Public Sector
    • Digitalisation for Renewing, Simplifying and Improving the Norwegian Public Sector

  • Hardware

    • AMD x86 Zen Architecture Will Implement Game Changing Encryption Features Such as SME, SEV and HW Based SHA – Not Present In SkyLake or KabyLake

      Today I will be talking about a very disruptive feature that will be present in AMD’s upcoming compute architecture. Disruptive is probably the most misused word in the history of technology and I do not use it casually. While the readers of this site consist primarily of technology enthusiasts, for whom this news may not mean much. From a company like AMD’s standpoint, a vast majority of revenue will come from the Enterprise segment. For Enterprise users, data security is a very important consideration and on that front AMD Zen will be introducing some very significant advanced encryption features, such as SME and SEV. These features are not present in any competing Intel architecture.

  • Security

    • Friday’s security advisories
    • Metasploit eyeing Linux and usability improvements; iOS support uncertain

      Engineers at Rapid7, which owns the popular Metasploit penetration testing tool, are preparing a variety of enhancements for the ramp-up to version 5.0 in 2017.

      Metasploit evolved in 2003, Rapid7 acquired it from the original developers in 2009, and fourth-generation software debuted in 2011. Metasploit Pro is currently in version 4.2 and costs several thousand dollars for a license; Metasploit Framework currently in version 4.12.33 is open source, officials explained.

    • Self-Checkout Skimmers Go Bluetooth

      This blog has featured several stories about payment card skimming devices designed to be placed over top of credit card terminals in self-checkout lanes at grocery stores and other retailers. Many readers have asked for more details about the electronics that power these so-called “overlay” skimmers. Here’s a look at one overlay skimmer equipped with Bluetooth technology that allows thieves to snarf swiped card data and PINs wirelessly using nothing more than a mobile phone.

      The rather crude video below shows a Bluetooth enabled overlay skimmer crafted to be slipped directly over top of Ingenico iSC250 credit card terminals. These Ingenico terminals are widely used at countless U.S. based merchants; earlier this year I wrote about Ingenico overlay skimmers being found in self-checkout lanes at some WalMart locations.

    • 10-year-old OpenSSH vulnerability caught up in IoT DDoS attacks [iophk: "not an actual ssh problem despite the parrots"]

      THE THREAT WRANGLERS AT Akamai have come up with something new for us to worry about, except that it isn’t so much new as a decade old.

      An OpenSSH vulnerability is being used to fuel distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on the bloody Internet of Things (IoT).

      DDoS attacks are a constant pain, but attacks on the IoT are relatively new. A combination of the two would be a problem, unless you are the kind of company that makes its business discovering this kind of thing.

      “Researchers at Akamai have been monitoring the growth of attacks leveraging IoT devices,” said Eric Kobrin, director of adversarial resilience at Akamai, in a blog post about the SSHowDowN Proxy.

    • a single byte write opened a root execution exploit

      As one of the maintainers of the c-ares project I’m receiving mails for suspected security problems in c-ares and this was such a one. In this case, the email with said subject came from an individual who had reported a ChromeOS exploit to Google.

      It turned out that this particular c-ares flaw was one important step in a sequence of necessary procedures that when followed could let the user execute code on ChromeOS from JavaScript – as the root user. I suspect that is pretty much the worst possible exploit of ChromeOS that can be done. I presume the reporter will get a fair amount of bug bounty reward for this.

    • Parrot Security 3.2 “CyberSloop” Ethical Hacking OS Is Out with Linux Kernel 4.7

      Today, October 15, 2016, the ParrotSec team unleashed the second point release to the Debian-based Parrot Security 3.x GNU/Linux distribution designed for ethical hackers and security researchers.

    • Parrot Security 3.2 “CyberSloop” Ethical Hacking OS With Linux Kernel 4.7 Released
    • Alpine edge has switched to libressl

      We decided to replace openssl with libressl because we believe it is a better library. While OpenSSL is trying to fix the broken code, libressl has simply removed it.

    • German nuclear plant infected with computer viruses, operator says

      A nuclear power plant in Germany has been found to be infected with computer viruses, but they appear not to have posed a threat to the facility’s operations because it is isolated from the internet, the station’s operator said on Monday.

      The Gundremmingen plant, located about 120 km northwest of Munich, is run by the German utility RWE.

      The viruses, which include “W32.Ramnit” and “Conficker”, were discovered at Gundremmingen’s B unit in a computer system retrofitted in 2008 with data visualisation software associated with equipment for moving nuclear fuel rods, RWE said.

    • The Slashdot Interview With Security Expert Mikko Hypponen: ‘Backupception’

      Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer at security firm F-Secure, has answered a range of your questions. Read on to find his insight on the kind of security awareness training we need, whether anti-virus products are relevant anymore, and whether we have already lost the battle to bad guys. Bonus: his take on whether or not you should take backups of your data.

    • SourceClear Brings Secure Continuous Delivery to the Developer Workflow [Ed: I don’t trust them; they’re Microsoft connected with a negative track record]
    • Serious security: Three changes that could turn the tide on hackers

      The state of tech security is currently so dire that it feels like anything you have ever stored on a computer, or a company or government has ever stored about you, has already been hacked into by somebody.

    • Crypto needs more transparency, researchers warn

      Researchers with at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (INRIA) and the University of Pennsylvania have called for security standards-setters to publish the seeds for the prime numbers on which their standards rely.

      The boffins also demonstrated again that 1,024-bit primes can no longer be considered secure, by publishing an attack using “special number field sieve” (SNFS) mathematics to show that an attacker could create a prime that looks secure, but isn’t.

      Since the research is bound to get conspiracists over-excited, it’s worth noting: their paper doesn’t claim that any of the cryptographic primes it mentions have been back-doored, only that they can no longer be considered secure.

      “There are opaque, standardised 1024-bit and 2048-bit primes in wide use today that cannot be properly verified”, the paper states.

      Joshua Fried and Nadia Heninger (University of Pennsylvania) worked with Pierrick Gaudry and Emmanuel Thomé (INRIA at the University of Lorraine on the paper, here.

      They call for 2,048-bit keys to be based on “standardised primes” using published seeds, because too many crypto schemes don’t provide any way to verify that the seeds aren’t somehow back-doored.

    • Is Let’s Encrypt the Largest Certificate Authority on the Web?

      By the time you read this, Let’s Encrypt will have issued its 12 millionth certificate, of which 6 million are active and unexpired. With these milestones, Let’s Encrypt now appears to us to be the the Internet’s largest certificate authority—but a recent analysis by W3Techs said we were only the third largest. So in this post we investigate: how big is Let’s Encrypt, really?

  • Defence/Aggression

    • U.S. Enters Yemen War Directly for the First Time With Attack on Houthis

      When the Houthis fired on the U.S.S. Mason earlier this week, sailors were able to deploy countermeasures and the ship was not damaged.

      The Department of Defense issued a statement describing the U.S. attack as a series of “limited self-defense strikes,” but promised to “respond to any further threat” to U.S. ships “as appropriate.”

      “The intent of our strikes were to deter future attacks and to reduce the risk to U.S. and other vessels,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz said Thursday. “We are prepared to respond if necessary to any future missile launches.”

      The U.S. Navy tweeted a video of the destroyer U.S.S. Nitze launching cruise missiles, captioning it with the hashtag “#Yemen” — commonly used by activists to draw attention to the humanitarian catastrophe.

    • Biden vows US will retaliate against Russia for hacks

      Vice President Biden is vowing the U.S. will retaliate against Russia for its alleged hacking of American political groups.

      “We’re sending a message,” Biden said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” that will air Sunday.

      Biden did not detail the type of response the U.S. is preparing but said Russian President Vladimir Putin will “know it” when it happens.

      “It will be at the time of our choosing,” he added. “And under the circumstances that have the greatest impact.”

      The vice president is the highest-ranking member of the Obama administration who has pledged a response to Russia for its alleged hacking.

      His comments come a week after the administration took the unprecedented step of publicly blaming Moscow for hacking the computer systems of political organizations with the goal of influencing the outcome of the November elections.

      The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the hacks of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and campaign officials were authorized by senior Kremlin officials.

    • The Left’s Fatal Dismissal of Islamic Imperialism

      There is a general dearth of leftist discourse critical of Islamism in the English speaking West. In fact, the dominant leftist discourse in that regard is characterized by a mixture of portraying Islam as the ultimate victim and Islamism as a force of resistance to, or at least an excusable reaction to, Western policies. Meanwhile, millions of people throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) continue to struggle against the rising wave of Islamism on a daily basis in the absence of acknowledgement or support from the Western left.

      For the colonized peoples of the MENA region such as Amazighs, Assyro-Chaldeans, Copts, Nubis, Kurds, and Yezidis, Islamic imperialism is the most serious threat to their very existence. One would hope that the situation of these peoples would form the foundational parameters of the international left’s outlook on the MENA region. However, it is far more often the right in the West that takes issue with the genocidal campaigns waged against these peoples.

    • Hiding US Role in Yemen Slaughter So Bombing Can Be Sold as ‘Self-Defense’

      To hear US corporate media tell it, the US was dragged into a brand new war on Wednesday.

      US destroyers in the Gulf of Aden launched airstrikes against Houthi rebels, a Shia insurgent group currently withstanding a massive bombing campaign from a Saudi-led coalition in a year-and-half conflict between largely Shia rebels and the Saudi-backed Sunni government in Yemen. The Pentagon insisted that cruise missiles had been fired onto the USS Mason on Sunday and Wednesday from Houthi-controlled territory, and called the airstrikes a “limited self-defense” response.

      Needless to say, US media followed the Pentagon’s lead. The fact that the United States has been literally fueling Saudi warplanes for 18 months while selling weapons and providing intelligence support to the Gulf monarchy—acts which even the US State Department believes could expose the US to war crimes prosecution—was either downplayed or ignored. Nor did media recall the US’s long history of drone warfare in Yemen, where the military and CIA have been carrying out long-range assassinations since 2002, killing more than 500 people, including at least 65 civilians.

      [...]

      Why are American ships in those waters? Why are Tomahawk missiles “flying”? The conflict is never explained; it’s only brought up so that Maddow can warn that the GOP nominee could make things worse. Of course, it isn’t Trump who backed the Saudis in an air campaign that’s left thousands dead, but Obama—and it’s Hillary Clinton who as secretary of State enthusiastically pushed to sell warplanes to Riyadh (The Intercept, 2/22/16). But such facts would messy up the election-season narrative.

      Maddow, like the other reports, used the loaded modifier “Iran-backed” to describe the Houthis (even though experts and Pentagon officials think Iran’s support is overblown). This is a stark asymmetry, considering that none of the reports referred to the Yemeni government as “US-backed” or “Saudi-backed.” She also said that the Navy blamed the attacks on the Houthis, when the Pentagon only claims the missiles came from rebel territory, and could very well be from other allied groups (New York Times, 10/13/16).

      Not only is the US’s backing of Saudi Arabia omitted from all these reports, the word “Saudi” isn’t uttered in any of them. The viewer is given the impression that the war, aside from Iranian meddling, is an entirely internal affair—when it actually involves over 15 different countries, mostly Sunni monarchies propping up the Yemeni government—and that the rebels just randomly decided to pick a fight with the largest military in the history of the world.

      The Houthis, for their part, vehemently deny having carried out the attack on the Mason, and there is no publicly available evidence it was them or allied forces. It should be noted, however, that Houthi forces took credit for sinking a United Arab Emirates supply ship two weeks earlier.

      As is often the case with war, the issue of “first blood”—or who started the fighting—gets muddied. Governments naturally want global audiences and their own citizens to view their actions as defensive—a necessary response to aggression, not aggression itself. US corporate media are aiding this official spin in their reporting on the US bombing of Yemen.

    • Regime Change In The Philippines

      When will the neoconservative chant begin: “Duterte must go”? Or will the CIA assassinate him?

      President Rodrigo Duterte has indicated that he intends a more independent foreign policy. He has announced upcoming visits to China and Russia, and his foreign minister has declared that it is time for the Philippines to end its subservience to Washington. In this sense, regime change has already occurred.

      Duterte has suspended military maneuvers with the US. His defense minister said that the Philippines can get along without US military aid and prefers cooperation over conflict with China.

    • I Support a No-Fly Zone in Syria – A Real One that Applies to NATO Too

      When the neo-cons in the UK parliament and the serial warmonger Hillary Clinton call for a “no-fly zone” they actually mean the opposite. They mean that NATO should be given untrammelled access to the airspace to carry out mass bombings – but that nobody else should.

      We saw it in Libya. The argument goes like this. NATO aircraft need to enforce the no-fly zone. To do this in safety, they need to attack and destroy any ground to air weapons capabilities on the ground. That does not just include surface to air missiles, both carriage mounted and hand held, but anything that can be pointed upwards and fired. They need to take out by more bombing any stores that may house such weapons. They need to take out any radar installations, including civilian ones, that may pinpoint NATO aircraft. They need to destroy any runways and hangars, including civilian ones. They need to destroy by bombing all military command and control centres, including those in built up areas. They need to destroy the infrastructure on which air defence relies, including electricity generation and water supply, including civilian assets.

      I am not exaggerating. That really is the doctrine of NATO for enforcing a “no fly zone”, as previously witnessed in Iraq and Libya. It really was NATO aircraft which did to the beautiful Mediterranean town of Sirte the destruction which you see in that picture – in order to enforce a no-fly zone. Enforcement of the no-fly zone was the only authorisation NATO had for the massive bombing campaign on Libya which enabled regime change, which enabled rival jihadist militias to take over the country. They showed their gratitude by murdering the US Ambassador. The failure of central government led to Libya becoming the operating site from which a number now in the hundreds of thousands of boat refugees have crossed to Europe.

    • How Much Will Brexit Add to the Cost of Trident and Hinkley Point?

      The spectacular and continuing fall in the value of the pound will add over £50 billion to the cost of Trident. Yes, bits of steel are being welded together in the UK, but the steel is imported and so is the missile technology.

      Similarly, Hinkley Point will be in trouble. The Chinese and French are to build it against guarantees of income from future energy prices fixed at double the cost of current wholesale electricity. But the hard currency value of that income has now been slashed. I do not know the precise details of the contracts, but the French and Chinese not being stupid, my guess is that their income from it is set in a proper stable currency not in sterling. Which means that electricity prices to the British consumer will have to not just double as planned, but go up 50% again, to cover the diminished value of sterling.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Pamela Anderson reveals fears for Wikileaks’ Julian Assange on Embassy visit

      Pamela Anderson has revealed her fears over Julian Assange’s health after visiting him at the Ecuadorian Embassy.

      The former Playboy model said the WikiLeaks founder was doing “really well” but expressed concern for him and his family.

      The Australian has been living in the embassy for over four years and has been granted political asylum by Ecuador.

      He is due to be questioned over a sex allegation in Sweden – which he denies. Mr Assange believes that if he goes to Sweden he will be extradited to the United States for questioning over the activities of WikiLeaks.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • As She Campaigns With Al Gore, New Emails Show Hillary Told Environmentalists to ‘Get a Life’

      Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s relationship with the environmental movement has never exactly been the epitome of cordiality. At a campaign event in March, she blew up at a Greenpeace activist who asked her about her relationship with fossil fuel companies. Annoyed at the young woman’s question, she angrily pointed her finger at her and said she was “sick!” of the Bernie Sanders campaign lying about her. Now, thanks to WikiLeaks, we have proof that Clinton outright mocked green activists in her speeches to trade unions.

    • Greenland Is Very Mad About the Toxic Waste the US Left Buried Under Its Ice

      Greenland isn’t happy about being treated as a dumping ground for abandoned US military bases established at the height of the Cold War—and in a newspaper editorial, it’s calling on Denmark to deal with the mess left behind by the Americans, since the Danish long ago took responsibility for them. This editorial notes that, after decades, Greenland is “losing its patience.”

      One of the abandoned bases, called Camp Century, is full of nasty chemicals and some radioactive material, as Motherboard previously reported.

      At Camp Century, which was built in 1959, soldiers called “Iceworms” practiced deployment of missiles against Russia and literally lived inside the ice. When the US decommissioned the base in the 1960s, the military left basically everything behind, thinking that its waste would stay locked up in the Greenland ice sheet forever.

      Well, climate change has made that unlikely. Melting ice threatens to expose all kinds of toxic debris in decades to come, and Greenland wants it cleaned up, now.

    • Climate change: ‘Monumental’ deal to cut HFCs, fastest growing greenhouse gases

      More than 150 countries have reached a deal described as “monumental” to phase out gases that are making global warming worse.

      Hydroflurocarbons (HFCs) are widely used in fridges, air conditioning and aerosol sprays.

      Delegates meeting in Rwanda accepted a complex amendment to the Montreal Protocol that will see richer countries cut back their HFC use from 2019.

      But some critics say the compromise may have less impact than expected.

    • Nations, Fighting Powerful Refrigerant That Warms Planet, Reach Landmark Deal

      Negotiators from more than 170 countries on Saturday reached a legally binding accord to counter climate change by cutting the worldwide use of a powerful planet-warming chemical used in air-conditioners and refrigerators.

      The talks in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, did not draw the same spotlight as the climate change accord forged in Paris last year. But the outcome could have an equal or even greater impact on efforts to slow the heating of the planet.

      President Obama called the deal “an ambitious and far-reaching solution to this looming crisis.”

    • Bernie Sanders Just Asked President Obama to Halt the Dakota Access Pipeline

      The Dakota Access pipeline currently hangs in a state of uncertainty. On October 9, a federal appeals court dismissed the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s request for a permanent injunction to stop to the project. Meanwhile, Obama administration officials continue to stall; one day after the court ruling, the departments of Justice, Interior, and the Army issued a joint statement refusing to authorize construction along part of the proposed route.

      And while a federal review of the permitting process began this week, a handful of Senate Democrats, led by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, have now penned a powerful letter to President Barack Obama, calling on him to suspend all construction permits for the project and to order a full environmental impact statement. Check it out below.

    • NOAA Collects Aerial Imagery in Aftermath of Hurricane Matthew

      From October 7-10, 2016, the National Geodetic Survey collected damage assessment imagery for more than 1,200 square miles in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew. The aerial imagery was collected in specific areas identified by FEMA and the National Weather Service.

    • ‘All the Warning Signs Are There, Loud and Clear’ – CounterSpin interview with Dahr Jamail on climate disruption

      New research on attitudes to climate change suggests that people believe they are entitled to their own facts on the matter, even as scientific evidence points one way, only one way, and every day more urgently. Corporate media bear some responsibility: years of matching every piece of evidence with some statement of doubt or denial, years of placing scientific consensus alongside politicians’ folkloric ideas as though they merited the same sort of attention.

  • Finance

    • The Tax Code for the Ultra-Rich vs. the One for Everyone Else

      The revelation of details from Donald Trump’s 1995 state tax returns created exactly the political firestorm that it merited. Before they came to light, the Republican presidential candidate’s flimsy excuses for not releasing his returns produced two lines of speculation: Either he wasn’t as rich as he claimed, or he wasn’t paying any taxes. Trump’s colossal $916 million loss in 1995 partially confirmed both theories, with opponents portraying him as a bumbling businessman who exploits tax loopholes to shift his losses onto ordinary taxpayers.

      When it comes to tax policy, however, Trump’s tax returns are a distraction that crowds out more important issues. In The New York Times, the columnist James Stewart outlined how to prevent Trump’s particular form of tax avoidance: Shorten the period in which losses can be used to offset income, limit the deduction for depreciation, and so on. These are perfectly good solutions—to a minor issue. The poster child for the problems of the tax code isn’t Donald Trump; it’s Warren Buffett.

    • Why For-Profit Education Fails

      Earlier this year, LeapFrog Enterprises, the educational-entertainment business, sold itself for $1 a share. The deal came several months after LeapFrog received a warning from the New York Stock Exchange that it would be delisted if the value of its stock did not improve, a disappointing end to the public life of a company that had the best-performing IPO of 2002.

      LeapFrog was one of the very last remaining of the dozens of investments made by Michael Milken through his ambitiously named Knowledge Universe. Founded in 1996 by Milken and his brother, Lowell, with the software giant Oracle’s CEO, Larry Ellison, as a silent partner, Knowledge Universe aspired to transform education. Its founders intended it to become, in Milken’s phrase, “the pre-eminent for-profit education and training company,” serving the world’s needs “from cradle to grave.”

    • The battle of Hastings: What’s behind the Netflix CEO’s fight to charterize public schools?

      Silicon Valley electrical engineer Brett Bymaster was optimistic when Rocketship Education, a non-profit charter school chain, began building its flagship Mateo Sheedy elementary school next to his San Jose home in 2007. He and his family lived in a lower-income community, so he figured the new approach could help local kids. “I didn’t know anything about charter schools, so I thought it was a good thing,” he said.

      But the more he learned about Rocketship and charter schools, which receive government funding but operate independently of local school boards, the more concerned he became. He was struck by the school’s cramped quarters: over 600 students on a one-acre campus, compared to the 9.2 acres per 450 students recommended for elementary schools by the California Department of Education. All those students meant big classes; last year Mateo Sheedy had one teacher for every 34 students, more than the maximum allowed for traditional elementary schools under state law.

      The teacher deficit seemed to be compensated for with screen time: Thanks to its so-called “blended learning” approach, Rocketship kindergarteners were spending 80 to 90 minutes a day in front of computers in a school learning lab, nearly the daily maximum screen time recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. And when the kids weren’t in front of computers, they seemed to be getting disciplined throughout their extra-long school days. Bymaster says he’d constantly see teachers yelling at students. “It’s a military-style environment,” noted Bymaster, who spearheaded a 2013 lawsuit that caused Rocketship to scrap one of its planned San Jose schools. “It’s really a kill-and-drill kind of school.”

    • On TTIP, CETA, free trade and a free and open Internet

      I’m a free marketeer. I believe that free trade would be hugely beneficial for all.

      I also believe in a free and open Internet. Especially as it provides a level playing field on which entrepreneurs from all over the world can join a global market, 24/7.

      And I’m not at all happy with politicians and bureaucrats trying to force me to choose between the two.

      The CETA (EU-Canada) and TTIP (EU-US) trade agreements are problematic. CETA will undermine Europeans right to data protection and privacy online. The same goes for TTIP, which also might contain intellectual property regulations undermining the principle that Internet service providers are not responsible for what their customers are up to in their cables (the mere conduit principle). That would have huge implications, leading to a strictly controlled Internet where everything you are up to must be approved in advance. When it comes to TTIP, we still have no comprehensive information about what is going to be included or not when it comes to IP – as negotiations are carried out behind closed doors.

      Also, the ISDS mechanism in these trade agreements will make a much needed and long overdue copyright reform impossible.

    • CETA puts the protection of our privacy and personal data at risk

      We are constantly sharing parts of our lives on the internet. We feel free to do this because we believe that we can still preserve some privacy and remain in control of what we share. Governments have a moral and legal duty to protect our privacy, prevent abuses and preserve a climate of trust. This is done through laws. Nowadays, our online privacy and the protection of our personal information are threatened in “creative” ways. One of these ways can be found in the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union. Unlike traditional “trade agreements”, CETA goes far beyond trade, touching upon privacy and data protection, as well as other fundamental rights.

      Fifteen years ago, the European Union formally recognised that Canada offered EU citizens an adequate level of protection of their privacy and personal information, and this permitted EU data to be exported to Canada without additional restrictions. However, the European Court of Justice (CJEU) has recently clarified in the Schrems case that this means that non-EU countries must provide not just “adequate” but essentially equivalent protection as the EU does.

    • Boris Johnson’s ‘secret’ case against Brexit

      Boris Johnson thought Britain should stay in the European Union to avoid worsening “geostrategic anxiety” and a potential break-up of the United Kingdom, according to a “secret,” unpublished newspaper column by the foreign secretary.

      Johnson, the former mayor of London, was the figurehead for the Leave campaign in the run-up to the June 23 Brexit vote, but had flirted with supporting the other side earlier in the year.

    • Aide Planted Anti-Bank Comments in One Paid Clinton Speech to Throw Reporters Off the Scent

      A top aide calculatingly inserted a passage critical of the financial industry into one of Hillary Clinton’s many highly-paid speeches to big banks, “precisely for the purpose of having something we could show people if ever asked what she was saying behind closed doors for two years to all those fat cats,” he wrote in an email posted by Wikileaks.

      In late November 2015, campaign speechwriter Dan Schwerin wrote an email to other top aides floating the idea of leaking that passage, which had come in a speech Clinton gave to Deutsche Bank in October 2014 in return for $260,000.

      “I wrote her a long riff about economic fairness and how the financial industry has lost its way,” for that purpose, Schwerin wrote. “Perhaps at some point there will be value in sharing this with a reporter and getting a story written. Upside would be that when people say she’s too close to Wall Street and has taken too much money from bankers, we can point to evidence that she wasn’t afraid to speak truth to power.”

      Another email, from among the thousands posted by Wikileaks over the past week from Hillary Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account, shows how panicked members of the Clinton campaign intervened at the last minute to cancel a paid Bill Clinton speech to Morgan Stanley because it was timed too close to the launch of her campaign — against the initial wishes of the candidate herself.

      In the passage that Schwerin wanted to leak from Clinton’s speech to Deutsche Bank, she quoted Chicago Mercantile Exchange president Terry Duffy warning that “some Wall Streeters can too easily slip into regarding their work as a kind of moneymaking game divorced from the concerns of Main Street.”

      In his email to his fellow aides, however, Schwerin recognized that the press response might not be entirely in the campaign’s favor. “Downside would be that we could then be pushed to release transcripts from all her paid speeches, which would be less helpful (although probably not disastrous). In the end, I’m not sure this is worth doing, but wanted to flag it so you know it’s out there.”

    • As the Spirit of Enoch Powell Presides Over England, Scotland Must Leave the Union Now

      I am genuinely stunned that, following the competitive racism-fest that was the Tory Party conference, the Tories have gone up in the opinion polls.

      I quite admit my judgement was completely wrong. I was feeling happily that the Tories had finally overreached themselves, and the implications of employers drawing up lists of foreign employees, or primary schools writing to parents demanding birth certificates, would be met with popular revulsion from the inherently decent British people.

      Well, I was wrong. Racism pays, at least in England. After their Conference the Tories are up to 43%. The Tories and UKIP combined are up to 54%. I am afraid it is intellectually dishonest to avoid the grim truth. At present, you cannot be too racist for popular English taste. The underlying theme of the Labour Party conference was Blairite calls for Labour to join in the mood of xenophobia. Of the existence of that mood there can now be no doubt.

    • I am Warming to Nicola

      The BBC spin on Nicola Sturgeon’s speech was that actually it was a move further back from Indyref2. It can be interpreted that way. In effect she was saying that leaving the EU is perhaps not a “material change” triggering Indyref2, only hard Brexit would be a “material change”. On this reading, as given by Brian Taylor of the BBC, the publishing of a draft Indyref bill is simply a sop to placate the SNP troops in the hall.

      But I am satisfied that Nicola has in fact deliberately set conditions for Scotland to remain in the Union which she knows Theresa May will under no circumstances meet. Barring continued full access for Scotland to the single market, which simply cannot happen if England leaves it, then she insists that not only must the powers held by Brussels come to Scotland (eg fisheries) but that Scotland must control its own immigration policy and run its own foreign relations.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Leaked Podesta emails address Obama polling in 2008, executive privilege

      Emails leaked from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s private email account Friday by WikiLeaks addressed using executive privilege to keep the emails between Hillary Clinton and President Obama from being released, a 2008 survey testing reaction to then-Sen. Obama’s Muslim father and use of cocaine, and a suggestion from former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholme on how to take Clinton out of the “bubble.”

    • Roaming Charges: a Wikileak is a Terrible Thing to Waste

      + I’ve spent the week greedily consuming the treats offered up by Wikileaks’s excavation of John Podesta’s inbox. Each day presents juicy new revelations of the venality of the Clinton campaign. In total, the Podesta files provide the most intimate and unadulterated look at how politics really works in late-capitalist America since the release of the Nixon tapes.

      + There’s a big difference, though. With Nixon, the stakes seemed greater, the banter more Machiavellian, the plots and counter-plots darker and more cynical.

      + The Podesta email tranches show the inner mechanics of a much more mundane, petty and banal political machine. Instead of shaping a campaign around an ideological movement, the Clinton operation resembles the packaging of a political mutual fund, a balanced, low-risk portfolio of financial interests, captive NGOs and dependent demographic sectors.

      + The red meat in the emails can be found in the disclosures of the internal rivalries, self-aggrandizement and sycophancy of hired guns and consultants, especially as they gravitate toward Podesta, whose chilly presence looms behind the scenes like the ghost of Thomas Cromwell.

    • Latest Wikileaks Releases Boost Case for DNC Class Action Lawsuit

      Shortly after the Democratic Primaries, attorneys Jared Beck and Elizabeth Beck, Harvard and Yale Law School graduates, filed a class action lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee and disgraced former DNC chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, for the millions of Bernie Sanders supporters they allegedly suppressed and silenced. The latest Wikileaks releases of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s emails has revealed further evidence that the scales were heavily tipped in favor of Hillary Clinton by both the DNC and the mainstream media.

      “The latest documents provided by Wikileaks confirm and add considerable detail to what prior leaks have disclosed: that the DNC was actively working to undermine Bernie Sanders’ campaign while colluding with the Hillary Clinton campaign behind the scenes,” Jared Beck told the Observer. “This is further evidence in support of our lawsuit, which seeks to hold the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schultz accountable under the law for their failure to ensure a fair and neutral presidential nominating process.”

      The latest leaks include evidence current DNC interim chair Donna Brazile forwarded the Clinton campaign information about the Sanders campaign while she served as DNC vice chair and was obligated to remain neutral per the DNC Charter. Brazile also tipped off the Clinton campaign to a planned question on the death penalty the day before a Democratic town hall on CNN. “As soon as the nomination is wrapped up, I will be your biggest surrogate,” Brazile wrote to Podesta in a January 2016 email.

    • From liberal beacon to a prop for Trump: what has happened to WikiLeaks?

      How did WikiLeaks go from darling of the liberal left and scourge of American imperialism to apparent tool of Donald Trump’s divisive, incendiary presidential campaign?

      Thursday brought another WikiLeaks dump of nearly 2,000 emails hacked from the Hillary Clinton campaign, allegedly by Russians. As usual, they were inside-the-beltway gossip rather than game-changing: the campaign tried to push back the Illinois primary, believing it would make life harder for moderate Republicans.

      That has not stopped Trump trying to make hay from the leaked emails and deflect attention from allegations of sexual harassment against him. “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks,” he tweeted on Wednesday. “So dishonest! Rigged system!”

    • Want to Know Julian Assange’s Endgame? He Told You a Decade Ago

      Amid a seemingly incessant deluge of leaks and hacks, Washington, DC staffers have learned to imagine how even the most benign email would look a week later on the homepage of a secret-spilling outfit like WikiLeaks or DCLeaks. In many cases, they’ve stopped emailing altogether, deleted accounts, and reconsidered dumbphones. Julian Assange—or at least, a ten-years-younger and more innocent Assange—would say he’s already won.

      After another week of Clinton-related emails roiling this election, the political world has been left to scrub their inboxes, watch their private correspondences be picked over in public, and psychoanalyze WikiLeaks’ inscrutable founder. Once they’re done sterilizing their online lives, they might want to turn to an essay Assange wrote ten years ago, laying out the endgame of his leaking strategy long before he became one of the most controversial figures on the Internet.

    • WikiLeaks Sources Face Serious Charges Following CIA, FBI, DHS Hacks

      Two North Carolina men were arrested in September for their alleged roles in a hacking group responsible for breaching the email accounts of CIA Director John Brennan, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper — and providing the contents to WikiLeaks.

    • David Crosby: America is no longer a democracy

      At three o’clock in the morning on the day we talk, David Crosby woke from a sound sleep and wrote a song. He’ll be the first one to tell you that wasn’t the case years ago when he was touring huge venues with Crosby, Stills and Nash and CSNY in between bouts of his public struggles with drugs, alcohol and prison (he was jailed for five months in 1986 for on weapons and drugs charges).

      But with Lighthouse, a new album due this month, Crosby continues the hot streak he started in 2014 with Croz, his first solo album in 20 years. As a founding member of the Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash – and one of the finest voices of his generation – Crosby could well be sitting on his laurels. But the stunning material on Lighthouse, which is focused squarely on his vocals and guitar, suggest he is more creatively engaged than he has been since his much younger days.

    • Warnings of conspiracy stoke anger among Trump faithful

      In an arena normally reserved for ice hockey, the Donald Trump crowd was on edge.

      Some wore shirts with slogans like “[Expletive] Your Feelings” or, in reference to the female Democratic nominee, “Trump that Bitch.” Others had buckets of popcorn, ready for the show. When the media entourage entered, thousands erupted in boos.

      Anger and hostility were the most overwhelming sentiments at a Trump rally in Cincinnati last week, a deep sense of frustration, an us-versus-them mentality, and a belief that they are part of an unstoppable and underestimated movement. Unlike many in the country, however, these hard-core Trump followers do not believe the real estate mogul’s misfortunes are of his own making.

    • Transcripts of Clinton’s Wall Street talks released in new Wikileaks dump

      U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s full remarks to several Wall Street audiences appeared to become public on Saturday when the controversial transparency group Wikileaks dumped its latest batch of hacked emails.

      The documents showed comments by Clinton during question-and-answer sessions with Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and Tim O’Neill, the bank’s head of investment management, at three separate events in 2013 in Arizona, New York and South Carolina.

      Some excerpts of Clinton’s speeches had already been released. For more than a week, Wikileaks has published in stages what it says are hacked emails from the account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.

      Clinton’s campaign has declined to verify the emails. Goldman Sachs did not immediately provide any comment on Saturday.

    • Donald Trump’s Son & Campaign Manager Both Tweet Obviously Fake Story

      It’s no secret that there’s been a huge number of totally fake news websites popping up in the past few years. Apparently, it’s a fun and profitable venture. While some of the fake news sites come up with generic names, like National Report, Hot Global, The Valley Report and Associated Media Coverage, some of the most successful fake news sites just make use of the big well-known broadcaster websites… and just get a .co domain: using nbc.com.co or abcnews.com.co. Some of the hoax stories are really well done — and, yes, even we’ve been fooled, though in our defense, the fake story we fell for… was so believable it became true just months later. But, of course, we’re just a bunch of random bloggers, not a Presidential campaign.

      The Trump campaign, on the other hand, should know better. Amusingly, of course, this week we’ve talked about the Trump campaign’s willingness to fall for hoaxes, but they seemed to take it up a notch this week. I first noticed it when I saw Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway tweet an obviously fake story, claiming that an anti-Trump protestor was really paid by the Clinton campaign.

    • How One Young Black Man Supporting Trump Massively Skews The LA Times Presidential Poll

      Let’s jump right into this, because this post is going to be a bit on the wonky side. It’s presidential silly season, as we have said before, and this iteration of it is particularly bad, like a dumpster fire that suddenly has a thousand gallons of gasoline dropped onto it from a crop-duster flown by a blind zombie. Which, of course, makes it quite fascinating to watch for those of us with an independent persuasion. Chiefly interesting for myself is watching how the polls shift and change with each landmark on this sad, sad journey. It makes poll aggregating groups, such as the excellent Project FiveThirtyEight, quite useful in getting a ten-thousand foot view as to how the public is reacting to the news of the day.

      But sites like that obviously rely on individual polls in order to generate their aggregate outlooks, which makes understanding, at least at a high level, just how these political polls get their results interesting as well. And, if you watch these things like I do, you have probably been curious about one particular poll, the U.S.C. Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Daybreak poll, commonly shortened to the USC/LAT poll, which has consistently put out results on the Presidential race that differ significantly from other major polls. That difference has generally amounted to wider support for Donald Trump in the race, with specific differences in support for Trump among certain demographics. To the credit of those that run the poll, they have been exceptionally transparent about how they generate their numbers, which led the New York Times to dig in and try to figure out the reason for the skewed results. It seems an answer was found and it’s gloriously absurd.

    • Speaker Paul Ryan Tries to Change the Topic

      One day after Donald Trump spoke to a crowd of 20,000 in Cincinnati, Speaker Paul Ryan spoke to a group of about 100 undergraduates, 50 reporters and a phalanx of cameras on the “Failures of Liberal Progressivism” in a heavily controlled and scripted event in Madison on Friday.

      The students were members of the College Republicans of UW-Madison, a student group led by Gov. Scott Walker’s son Alex Walker.

      Acknowledging that the election has taken “a dark turn,” Ryan quickly pivoted to his hallmark message of fiscal austerity and his Better.GOP site, a website and policy plan first unveiled in June.

      [...]

      The invitation-only speaking engagement and managed “Q&A” at the Madison Masonic Center Foundation followed a tumultuous week for Ryan which began last Friday with the release of an Access Hollywood audio tape in which Trump brags about his ability to grope women. When you’re a star, “they let you do anything,” said Trump.

      The following day, Ryan rescinded Trump’s invitation to his annual “Fall Fest” in his congressional district. But Ryan was booed and heckled by some of Trump’s grassroots supporters and even called a “traitor,” according to news accounts. On Monday, Ryan said in a conference call with House Republicans that he will no longer defend Trump, nor campaign for him, over the objections of some.

    • Trump, Victim Shaming, Coincidences and Some Questions About the New York Times

      Did none of the many, many Republican primary candidates do any opposition research about Trump during the months and months of the primary season? Given the apparent accessibility of Trump sexual assault material, how was none of this found by Trump’s earlier opponents, who were certainly digging for dirt? A Ted Cruz or a Marco Rubio could have knocked Trump out of the race in April with half this information.

      Similar question; did no media investigate Trump’s background during his 18 months of candidacy?

      Coincidences happen, just not as often as we’d like to believe. Was any of the timing of any of this indeed coincidental, given much of this information was never reported for decades but is now front paged a few weeks before the election? I am well-aware of the reasons a woman might choose not to report an attack for many years. I am sometimes a bit more skeptical when after 30 years, during which Trump was in the media spotlight, and then another 18 months of Trump as a leading candidate, the accusations emerge only weeks before the election, timed nearly to the day with bookended presidential debates.

      And the big one.

      What process did the New York Times pursue before it decided to print the stories of the two initial Trump accusers? How did the Times vett their stories? If I were to walk into the Times’ newsroom today and report that either Trump or Hillary had inappropriately touched me in 1979, what process would unfold at the Times before my statement was published?

      I’m not being a smartass. I am not “victim shaming.” I do not believe asking these questions, especially the procedural questions about how the Times conducted its journalism, amounts to victim shaming. This is politics. No one is saying they are suing Trump, or engaged in a criminal case against him. It is at this point pure politics.

    • Russia, Terror and Taxes Dominate Debates; Climate, Poverty, Abortion Barely Mentioned

      A review of topics mentioned and questions asked in the first three presidential/vice-presidential debates shows a significant emphasis on Russia, terrorism and taxes—pushing aside most other issues, including climate change, abortion, education, campaign finance and LGBTQ rights.

      The total mentions of Russia and Putin—the number of times the words were said by either candidates or moderators—was 137. For ISIS and “terrorism” combined, it was 101. “Taxes” were mentioned 171 times—94 times in the context of tax policy, 77 times in regard to Donald Trump’s unwillingness to release his tax returns.

      In contrast, “climate change” (or “global warming”)—widely recognized as the biggest existential threat facing humanity—has only been mentioned three times. All three mentions were by Hillary Clinton, made in passing.

      “Poverty” (and “the poor”), “drugs,” “abortion” (with “right to choose” and “pro-life”) and “environment” have each been mentioned less than 10 times. LGBTQ issues (“LGBT,” “gay,” “trans,” “marriage equality”) were brought up in passing three times—once for the sole purpose of criticizing Russia. “Campaign finance” and/or Citizens United was brought up once by Clinton.

      The NSA (along with “privacy” and “surveillance”) and Native Americans have not been mentioned onstage once.

      In the first three debates, Russia and Putin have been mentioned more than the TPP, trade, race, guns, Social Security, the Supreme Court, education, student debt, poverty, drugs, abortion, climate change, LGBTQ issues and the environment combined, with 137 vs. 132 mentions.

    • Engage In Sex, Not War

      During the sexual scandals of Bill Clinton—the “bimbo eruptions” as Hillary called them—the Democrats and progressive opinion ruled out a person’s sex life as a political factor. Now suddenly nothing more than juvenile locker room banter without the actual sex has become the determinant of political unfitness.

      Where did the 11-year old recording of locker room talk between Donald Trump and Billy Bush come from? Who recorded it and kept it for 11 years for what purpose? Why was it released the day prior to the second debate between Trump and Hillary? Was the recording an illegal violation of privacy? What became of the woman who recorded Monica Lewinsky’s confession to her of sex with Bill Clinton? Wasn’t she prosecuted for wiretaping or some such offense? Why was Billy Bush, the relative of two US presidents, suspended from his TV show because of a private conversation with Trump?

    • The Donald Lives!

      The press had to cover it. Then the women marched into the auditorium at Washington University to watch Hillary Clinton defend her behavior toward them after their encounters with Bill.

      As the moderators and Hillary Clinton scrambled to refocus on Trump’s comments of a decade ago, Trump brought it back to Bill’s criminal misconduct against women, his lying about it, and Hillary’s aiding and abetting of the First Predator.

    • After the Republic

      Electing either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump cannot change that trajectory.

      [...]

      Because it is difficult to imagine a Trump presidency even thinking about something so monumental as replacing an entire ruling elite, much less leading his constituency to accomplishing it, electing Trump is unlikely to result in a forceful turn away from the country’s current direction. Continuing pretty much on the current trajectory under the same class will further fuel revolutionary sentiments in the land all by itself. Inevitable disappointment with Trump is sure to add to them.

    • Blaming Millennials for Their Elders’ Trump Attraction

      Mahken, Stern and Boot all argue that declining civic education standards—a popular target of neoliberal criticism—gave rise to the ignorant population that bred Trump. There’s one basic problem with this premise: It doesn’t make any sense.

      If Trump’s support were tethered to declining education standards, the younger someone is (e.g. the more recently they were educated), the more likely they would be to vote Trump. But Trump’s voters trend overwhelmingly older: He’s most popular with voters 65 and over, least popular with those under 30

      The two most recent examples of this argument, by Stern and Boot, are textbook think piece sophistry: They begin with a superficially appealing premise designed to flatter the reader (people are dumber, therefore Trump; but not you, you’re smart) and throw out some data points, pivot to a conclusion that doesn’t follow and hope no one notices. While Boot doesn’t use the word Millennial, it’s the logical implication of what’s he’s advancing. (His examples supporting his claim that people are getting more stupid are all relatively recent.)

    • Dear Clinton Team: We Noticed You Might Need Some Email Security Tips

      There is probably no one more acutely aware of the importance of good cybersecurity right now than Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, whose emails have been laid bare by WikiLeaks, are being mined for news by journalists (including at The Intercept), and are available for anyone with internet access to read.

      So as a public service to Podesta and everyone else on Clinton’s staff, here are some email security tips that could have saved you from getting hacked, and might help you in the future.

    • White House Brief: Things to Know about Jill Stein

      This isn’t Stein’s first foray into presidential politics. She ran on the Green Party line in 2012, failing to crack 500,000 votes or generate any significant spotlight. She thinks this time could be different, thanks to Sanders. Stein wasted no time swooping in on his political revolution, campaigning in Philadelphia during the Democratic National Convention and rallying throngs of angry Sanders’ supporters outside of the convention hall when the Vermont senator conceded the nod to Hillary Clinton.

      Stein’s running on a platform of erasing all existing student debt, mobilizing what she calls a wartime effort to switch the United States to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030 and disengaging from foreign wars that she says the United States has no business being in. She’s offering a dark view of the future, saying both Republicans and Democrats are leading the country into imminent disaster.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • CPJ calls on Thailand to not censor news during royal transition

      The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Thailand’s military government to lift a blanket censorship order on television news broadcasters imposed in the wake of King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s death yesterday.

      According to local news reports, all television news channels including foreign broadcasters were blocked and replaced with Royal Household Bureau footage eulogizing the Thai king. Local media were also barred from using Facebook live indefinitely, according to reports. Bhumibol, the world’s longest-serving monarch at the time of his death, reigned for 70 consecutive years.

    • Thai TV flicks back to colour, subdued, after king’s death

      Thai television flicked back to colour today – but with orders to keep it subdued – as the government lifted a black-and-white rule imposed out of respect for the country’s late king.

      All channels, including international satellite networks, have been replaced with prepared state media programmes praising revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s death, who died Thursday after a 70-year reign.

    • 12 unspoken censorship rules for Bollywood, if it still wants to make movies

      The following are the unspoken censorship rules that Bollywood must follow if it still wants to make movies.

      1. Even if the Government of India issues visas to Pakistan talent you will not make films with them. You must understand that the government of India is not bothered about how our jawans are dying in the border fire but you, as a proud Indian, should be.

      2. Even if the Central Board of Film Certification clears your film, it can still be censored by political parties. The CBFC does not have people of any merit. They can only determine the length of the kiss in a film. It is our political parties who really know how to protect the value, culture and integrity of India.

    • Kashmir, Dylan, censorship hog limelight

      Sleepy Kasauli town reverberated with the sights and sounds of authors, intellectuals and actors as the three-day Khushwant Singh Literature Festival-2016 got underway on Friday.

      Apart from a number of panel discussions, the day also saw Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh declaring the Khushwant Singh trail open.

      One of the highlights of the day was the panel consisting of former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah, author and journalist Rahul Pandita and author and historian Dilip Simeon talking about the crisis in Kashmir with the topic being “Kashmir: Cry the Beloved Country.”

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Police Around the Country Regularly Abuse Law Enforcement Databases

      For more than a year, EFF has been investigating how police in California misuse the state’s law enforcement database with little oversight from officials. An investigation published by the Associated Press today shows that abuse of law enforcement systems is a nationwide problem.

      The AP’s investigation analyzed records from all 50 states and three dozen of the country’s largest cities. The reporters found that officers have routinely used law enforcement and driver databases to stalk ex-partners, dig up dirt on their neighbors, and even spy on celebrities and journalists.

    • [Old] Why the Warrant to Hack in the Playpen Case Was an Unconstitutional General Warrant

      Warrants are often considered the basic building block of the Fourth Amendment. Whenever the government seeks to engage in a search or seizure, it must first get a warrant, unless a narrow exception applies. In a previous post, we explained the significance of the Fourth Amendment “events”—several searches and seizures—that occurred each time the government employed its malware against visitors to Playpen.

      But simply calling something a warrant doesn’t make it a constitutionally valid warrant. In fact, the “immediate evils” that motivated the drafters of the Bill of Rights were “general warrants,” also known as “writs of assistance,” which gave British officials broad discretion to search nearly everyone and everything for evidence of customs violations. In the words of colonial lawyer James Otis, general warrants “annihilate” the “freedom of one’s house” and place “the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.”

    • What Yahoo’s NSA Surveillance Means for Email Privacy

      This is a terrible precedent and ushers in a new era of global mass surveillance. It means that US tech companies that serve billions of users around the world can now be forced to act as extensions of the US surveillance apparatus. The problem extends well beyond Yahoo. As was reported earlier, Yahoo did not fight the secret directive because Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and the Yahoo legal team did not believe that they could successfully resist the directive.

      We believe that Yahoo’s assessment is correct. If it was possible to fight the directive, Yahoo certainly would have done so since they previously fought against secret FISA court orders in 2008. It does not make sense that US surveillance agencies would serve Yahoo Mail with such an order but ignore Gmail, the world’s largest email provider, or Outlook. There is no doubt that the secret surveillance software is also present in Gmail and Outlook, or at least there is nothing preventing Gmail and Outlook from being forced to comply with a similar directive in the future. From a legal perspective, there is nothing that makes Yahoo particularly vulnerable, or Google particularly invulnerable.

    • CIA threatens cyber attacks against Russia

      The CIA was recently reported to have issued the threat of cyber attacks against the Russian leadership, in retaliation for alleged and unsubstantiated claims that Russia is trying to influence the American elections.

    • Five EFF Tools to Help You Protect Yourself Online

      Do you get creeped out when an ad eerily related to your recent Internet activity seems to follow you around the web? Do you ever wonder why you sometimes see a green lock with “https” in your address bar, and other times just plain “http”? EFF’s team of technologists and computer scientists can help. We engineer solutions to these problems of sneaky tracking, inconsistent encryption, and more. Our projects are released under free and open source licenses like the GNU General Public License or Creative Commons licenses, and we make them freely available to as many users as possible. Where users face threats to their free expression, privacy, and security online, EFF’s technology projects are there to defend them.

    • How a Facial Recognition Mismatch Can Ruin Your Life

      It was just after sundown when a man knocked on Steve Talley’s door in south Denver. The man claimed to have hit Talley’s silver Jeep Cherokee and asked him to assess the damage. So Talley, wearing boxers and a tank top, went outside to take a look.

      Seconds later, he was knocked to the pavement outside his house. Flash bang grenades detonated, temporarily blinding and deafening him. Three men dressed in black jackets, goggles, and helmets repeatedly hit him with batons and the butts of their guns. He remembers one of the men telling him, “So you like to fuck with my brothers in blue!” while another stood on his face and cracked two of his teeth. “You’ve got the wrong guy,” he remembers shouting. “You guys are crazy.”

    • Hillary Clinton’s Encryption Proposal Was “Impossible,” Said Top Adviser

      Hillary Clinton’s advisers recognized that her policy position on encryption was problematic, with one writing that it was tantamount to insisting that there was “‘some way’ to do the impossible.”

      Instead, according to campaign emails released by Wikileaks, they suggested that the campaign signal its willingness to use “malware” or “super code breaking by the NSA” to get around encryption.

      In the wake of the Paris attacks in November, Clinton called for “Silicon Valley not to view government as its adversary,” and called for “our best minds in the private sector to work with our best minds in the public sector to develop solutions that will both keep us safe and protect our privacy.”

      When asked during a debate in December whether she would legally compel companies to build a backdoor into their products to give law enforcement access to unencrypted communications, Clinton responded “I would not want to go to that point.”

      But she then called for a “Manhattan-like project” to develop secure communication while allowing the government to read messages.

      Cryptography experts overwhelmingly agree that backdoors inevitably undermine the security of strong encryption, making the two essentially incompatible.

    • Researchers Ask Court To Unseal Documents Related To Technical Assistance Requests And Electronic Surveillance Warrants

      This has the makings of a movement along the lines of the highly-unofficial “Magistrates Revolt.” More efforts are being made more frequently to push federal courts out of their default secrecy mode. The government prefers to do a lot of its work under the cover of judicial darkness, asking for dockets and documents to be sealed in a large percentage of its criminal cases.

      Just in the last month, we’ve seen the ACLU petition the court to unseal dockets related to the FBI’s takedown of Freedom Hosting using a Tor exploit and Judge Beryl Howell grant FOIA enthusiast Jason Leopold’s request to have a large number of 2012 pen register cases unsealed.

      Now, we have researchers Jennifer Granick and Riana Pfefferkorn petitioning [PDF] the Northern District of California court to unseal documents related to “technical assistance” cases — like the one involving the DOJ’s attempted use of an All Writs Order to force Apple to crack open a phone for it.

    • ‘NITE Team 4′ Announced, Seeks Crowd Funding – Screens & Trailer

      You play as a new recruit in the covert hacking cell, Network Intelligence & Technical Evaluation (NITE) Team 4. Engaged in cyberwarfare with black hat groups and hostile states, you will be in a struggle to penetrate highly secure targets. Your job is to use the STINGER hacking system to infiltrate hardened computer networks and coordinate strike teams on the ground to carry out missions that feature real espionage tradecraft terminology taken straight from leaked NSA documents.

    • New Story-Driven, TSW Inspired Sim Game Announced

      Alice & Smith have announced a new story-driven military hacking simulation game based on The Secret World. Called NITE Team 4, the game is based on both strategy and RPG elements with an emphasis and base on NSA top secret documents in the real world. A Kickstarter project has started and is already fully funded.

    • Military hacking RPG NITE Team 4 blends real NSA documents with gamified espionage

      In a world where hacking groups are a powerful tool in clandestine political warfare, we sure don’t exploit that rich fictional seam much in games. NITE Team 4, a currently funded Kickstarter title, looks to breach into that world and create an RPG out of what lies within.

    • Appeal Court Revives Lawyer’s Lawsuit Against The NSA’s Email Dragnet

      Another lawsuit against the NSA has been revived. Previously dismissed by a district court for lack of standing, attorney Elliott Schuchardt’s suit against the NSA for its domestic surveillance has been remanded back to the court that tossed it.

      Like several other surveillance lawsuits, Schuchardt’s springs from the Snowden leaks. Unlike some of the others, it doesn’t focus on the NSA’s phone metadata collection — the subject of the first Snowden leak. Instead, his challenges the constitutionality of the NSA’s Section 702 collection. With this program, the NSA apparently collects not just metadata on electronic communications, but also the content.

    • Even NSA BFF Verizon Thinks Warrantless Location Data Collection May Have Gone Too Far

      You’d be hard pressed to find companies more bone-grafted to the nation’s intelligence gathering apparatus than AT&T and Verizon. So much so that it’s often difficult to determine where the government ends, and where the telecom duopoly begins. From Mark Klein highlighting how AT&T was giving the NSA live access to every shred of data that touched the AT&T network, to Snowden’s revelation of Verizon’s handover of customer metadata, these are companies that were not only eager to tap dance around privacy and surveillance law, but actively mocked companies that actually stood up for consumer privacy.

      That’s why it’s notable to see one of Verizon’s top lawyers, Craig Silliman, penning an op-ed over at Bloomberg implying that location data hoovering has jumped the shark. Silliman details the problems arising in the age of location data collection, and specifically how four recent district courts have ruled that law enforcement can get location data without a warrant. These rulings relied on the “third-party doctrine,” or the argument that consumers lose privacy protections to this information if they’re willing to share it with a third party — aka Verizon.

    • Top German court rejects lawmakers’ request for NSA targets [Ed: same as below]
    • Top German court rejects lawmakers’ request for NSA targets

      Germany’s top court has rejected German lawmakers’ demands for access to a secret list of U.S. eavesdropping targets.

      Parliament’s intelligence oversight panel, known as the G 10 committee, had asked the Constitutional Court to force the German government to hand over the list. It contains “selectors” — such as phone numbers and email addresses — that the U.S. National Security Agency wants allies to monitor.

      Following ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks in 2013, German media reported that the targets included officials and companies in Germany and other European countries.

    • Salesforce CEO has “walked away” from deal with beleaguered Twitter

      In the wake of Salesforce’s CEO publicly saying Friday that his company would not buy Twitter, the popular social network’s stock price has dropped more than six percent as of this writing.

      “In this case we’ve walked away. It wasn’t the right fit for us,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told the Financial Times.

      For months, rumors have swirled that numerous tech giants, ranging from Apple to Google, would snap up the San Francisco startup, which has lost nearly $2 billion from 2011 through 2015.

      Twitter has had a hard time attracting new users, which, in turn, has resulted in flat or slow growth.

    • After being outed for massive hack and installing an NSA “rootkit,” Yahoo cancels earnings call

      What do you do if your ailing internet giant has been outed for losing, and then keeping silent about, 500 million user accounts, then letting American spy agencies install a rootkit on its mail service, possibly scuttling its impending, hail-mary acquisition by a risk-averse, old economy phone company? Just cancel your investor call and with it, any chance of awkward, on-the-record questions.

    • DOJ: Microsoft Email Ruling Leaves Evidence Out of Authorities’ Hands

      In July, a court ruled that Microsoft did not have to provide the Department of Justice with the emails of a criminal suspect stored in Ireland. The case reportedly revolves around Gary Davis, who is charged with being a staff member of the dark web marketplace Silk Road.

      That ruling was seen as a victory for privacy and civil liberties campaigners. But the DOJ is not giving up. On Thursday, government attorneys filed a petition asking for the case to be reheard.

      The July ruling, “is significantly limiting an essential investigative tool used thousands of times a year, harming important criminal investigations around the country, and causing confusion and chaos among providers as they struggle to determine how to comply,” the DOJ writes in its petition, filed in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and sent to Motherboard by DOJ spokesperson Peter Carr.

    • Verizon reportedly wants $1 billion discount on Yahoo

      Verizon may not have bailed out of its deal to purchase Yahoo for $4.8 billion, but amid a growing case of bad news at the search engine company, the telecommunications giant is reportedly pushing to reduce the acquisition price by $1 billion.

      According to the New York Post, AOL chief Tim Armstrong, who runs the Verizon subsidiary that would be the umbrella company for Yahoo, is “getting cold feet.” Sources tell the publication that he’s “pretty upset about the lack of disclosure and he’s saying can we get out of this or can we reduce the price?”

      Yahoo is currently embroiled in two scandals, one of which involves hackers illegally accessing 500 million account. Members of the U.S. Congress have called upon the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate Yahoo’s disclosures in light of the hacking. The other issue involves Yahoo’s apparent compliance with U.S. intelligence agencies in secretly scanning customer emails, especially years after the Snowden revelations.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Amy Goodman Is Facing Prison for Reporting on the Dakota Access Pipeline. That Should Scare Us All.

      This Monday afternoon, as the sun hits its peak over Mandan, North Dakota, the award-winning journalist, and host of Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman will walk into the Morton County–Mandan Combined Law Enforcement and Corrections Center and turn herself in to the local authorities. Her crime: good, unflinching journalism.

    • Why Is North Dakota Arresting Journalists For Doing Journalism?

      Two years ago, we wrote about the ridiculousness of police arresting reporters for reporting in Ferguson, Missouri, even though courts had told police to knock it off. Even more ridiculous is that those reporters were eventually charged, leading to a ridiculous settlement earlier this year.

      And yet… arresting journalists for doing journalism continues to be a thing. As you probably know, there have been a bunch of protests in North Dakota lately concerning the Dakota Access Pipeline. Back in September, after covering the protests and having some of her videos of an attack on the protestors go viral, famed Democracy Now reporter Amy Goodman found out an arrest warrant had been issued for her. It’s pretty clear that this arrest warrant was solely because of the coverage reflecting poorly on officials.

      On Thursday, Goodman said that she’ll surrender to authorities next week. As Democracy Now points out, the criminal complaint against her is so transparently unconstitutional and so transparently about intimidating reporters, that it actually notes that “Amy Goodman can be seen on the video identifying herself and interviewing protesters about their involvement in the protest.” Right. That’s called journalism. Goodman was basically arrested for doing journalism that the powers-that-be dislike.

    • Outrageous! Felony Charges Given to Journalist Filming Anti-Pipeline Protest

      Many of you may have read my post on EcoWatch this morning, and already know that Deia Schlosberg, the producer of my new climate change documentary, How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change, was arrested Tuesday in Walhalla, North Dakota, for filming a protest against a pipeline bringing Canadian tar sands oil into the U.S.

    • The New Federal Safety Guidelines For Self-Driving Cars Are Too Vague… And States Are Already Making Them Mandatory

      The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration earned plaudits from across the tech sphere for its recently released safety guidelines for self-driving cars.

      With the NHTSA looking to offer guidance to this emerging industry, the agency issued a set of rules that largely just asks manufacturers to report on how they were following the guidelines. The 15-point checklist is vague in quite a few details, but that isn’t necessarily a tremendous problem so long as the standards remain voluntary, which they purport to be. To many, this approach struck a good overall balance between oversight and flexibility.

      Regulatory ambiguity can, however, turn out to be a real nightmare with standards that are mandatory. Vague rules can leave even the best-intentioned firms at a loss as to how to proceed. Given how much of a premium consumer confidence will be in a market as revolutionary and potentially transformative as autonomous vehicles, it’s crucial that manufacturers comply with whatever standards the federal government promulgates.

    • My Secret Evidence to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee

      I have been considering my appearance before the Committee.

      As you will know, there has been very substantial doubt in the human rights community about the good faith of your committee’s inquiry. I have been prepared to give the benefit of the doubt and offer to cooperate.

      However if the committee really are genuine, they should wish me to be able to prepare and give the best evidence that I am able to do. There is no doubt that something went very wrong in terms of the UK government’s collusion with overseas torture programmes. The Feinstein report made plain that the CIA was very wrong in what it did, and your committee know very well that the CIA was sharing with SIS the intelligence obtained by torture. The British government has settled with large payments cases where the British government was involved more actively.

    • Structural Racism and Human-Rights

      In the first half-hour, author and professor Carol Anderson rejoins the Project Censored Show to discuss structural racism in the US, especially in the context of the presidential campaign. In the second half of the program, human-rights activists Hector Aristizabal and Isabel Garcia speak about conditions on the US-Mexico border, and how multiple US administrations have enforced border policies that bring death to many immigrants. They also discuss the Border Convergence taking place October 7 – 10.

    • A Missed Chance to Put Discriminatory Policing on Campaign Agenda

      But only a few—like Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post (10/7/16), Steven Holmes at CNN (10/7/16)—reminded us of Trump’s full-page screed in the New York Times, calling uncryptically for the young men to be executed and demanding an end to “our continuous pandering to the criminal population.” Trump’s CNN statement indicates that he would still support executing people whom the courts have found innocent. But no one withdrew their support or demanded an apology, and the comments were pushed off the page just hours later by the unearthing of tape of Trump joking about sexual assault.

      Those abhorrent remarks deserve the attention; but as The Intercept‘s Liliana Segura (10/11/16) noted, Trump’s comments on the Central Park Five also have wider repercussion. The ugly truth, she writes, is that his attitude is all too common in district attorneys’ offices. Prosecutors routinely defend the convictions of innocent people even after exoneration, and often block efforts to test for such evidence as DNA in the first place. When convictions are overturned, DAs often refuse to drop charges, dragging out the legal fight and forcing people found innocent to live under constant threat of re-imprisonment.

      Governors play a role—like Mike Pence, who recently refused to grant pardon to a man in Indiana, exonerated with DNA evidence after 10 years in prison. (Pence’s office said he refused to consider granting a pardon “out of respect for the judicial process.”)

      Hillary Clinton has shown more concern about wrongful convictions, but, Segura notes, she still supports the death penalty. And while in theory one might support executions while opposing killing innocent people, reality—preeminently, the exoneration of more than 150 death row prisoners to date — shows these positions are irreconcilable.

    • UK Torture Secrets Will Remain Secret

      The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has agreed that I shall be able to review Top Secret and other classified documents which contain the evidence of UK complicity in torture and my attempts to stop it, before giving evidence to the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament. But under conditions which make plain the determination that the dirtiest of secrets will remain firmly shut away. Given that parliament actually defers to the FCO over what can and cannot be done, the entire pointlessness of the Intelligence and Security Committee Inquiry is starkly revealed.

      Gareth Peirce as my counsel is not to be allowed in to any of my evidence where anything secret is being discussed – which is 100% of it. I think that really says everything about the “Inquiry” that you need to know.

    • For Black Men, Running Is a Reasonable Reaction to Police Harassment and Racial Profiling, Concludes Massachusetts’ Supreme Court

      The justices found that it’s reasonable for Black men to run from police because of the indignity of stop and frisk.

      In 2004, University of Virginia football player Marquis Weeks returned a kickoff 100 yards for a touchdown. After the game he described how he did it: “That was just instinct,” Weeks said with a laugh. “Kind of like running from the cops, I guess you could say.”

      It’s funny until it isn’t. The “instinct” exists for a reason. Black and brown people have been running from people with badges for generations, going all the way back to the days of the slave catchers, who were predecessors of modern-day police.

      Despite his obvious speed, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court caught up with Mr. Weeks this month. The court found that the facts of the case, including that the young Black male suspect tried to avoid the police, did not justify a stop and search of the young man.

    • Report: Every 25 Seconds, Cops Arrest Someone for Drug Possession

      The war on drugs may have failed, but it certainly hasn’t ended: Every 25 seconds in the U.S., someone is arrested for drug possession.

      Arrests for the possession and personal use of drugs are boosting the ranks of the incarcerated at astonishing rates — with 137,000 people behind bars for drugs on any given day, and 1.25 million every year. Possession of even tiny quantities of illicit drugs is criminalized in every state, a felony in most, and the No. 1 cause of all arrests nationwide. And while marijuana is now legal in a handful of states and decriminalized in others, in 2015 police nationwide made over 547,000 arrests for simple marijuana possession — more than for all categories of violent crime combined. These arrests are feeding people into a criminal justice system that’s rife with inefficiencies, abuse, and racism, and compounding drug users’ substance abuse with the lifelong impact of a criminal record.

      The staggering numbers, detailed in a report released today by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, shed new light on the colossal impact of the criminalization of drug use, as well as on the discriminatory impact of its enforcement. These laws have done nothing to stem the public health problem of drug addiction and in the process have destroyed countless lives and cost incalculable amounts of public resources in arrests, prosecution, and incarceration, the report charges.

      Nearly half a century after it was first launched by President Nixon, the war on drugs has been widely recognized to have been a failure, yet little of substance has been done to reverse its course and the catastrophic damage it continues to inflict. In fact, while piecemeal approaches to fixing some of its symptoms — like sentencing reform, marijuana reclassification, and some discussion of police abuse — have by now been embraced within mainstream politics, the drug war’s founding policy, the criminalization of the personal use and possession of drugs, has rarely been questioned.

    • Drawing Representative Districts

      FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY, “one person, one vote” has been essential to American representative democracy. Key to preserving equal representation is redistricting, occurring most broadly every 10 years. The decennial census records population changes, which states must reflect in legislative districts to make the democratic process fair.

      But in many states this is a highly partisan process that is not always fair or in voters’ interests, says Laughlin McDonald, ACLU special counsel, who has fought voter suppression for decades. “Somewhere down the line they may consider the interest of the voters, but that’s not really what drives the process,” he says.

      Without Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, states are now free, without federal oversight, to make election-related changes that could adversely affect racial and language minorities.

    • It Is Time to Get Real About School Policinga

      Interactions between young people and police don’t occur just on the streets of America — they’re happening in our nation’s K-12 schools, too. Increasingly police have become “embedded” in schools, in many cases working there full-time. Many are considered school staff and have daily authority over students, even in situations that have traditionally been seen as everyday disciplinary matters.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • The World Trade Organization Sets its Eyes on the Internet

      This week, EFF has been at the World Trade Organization (WTO)’s annual Public Forum. Best known to the general public as the locus of anti-globalization protests at its 1999 Ministerial Conference, it’s ironic that the WTO is today the most open and transparent of trade negotiation bodies—an honor it holds mainly because of how closed and opaque the trade negotiations conducted outside the WTO are, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), or on its margins, the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA).

      This year’s Public Forum, although notionally focusing on inclusive trade, has featured unprecedented interest in digital trade, with dozens of sessions dealing with this topic. Just a few of them, including the workshop “Boundaries and Best Practices for Inclusive Digital Trade” organized by EFF, have been summarized by the Geneva Internet Platform (you can also read slides from some of our workshop’s presentations below).

  • DRM

    • Amazon launches new ‘Music Unlimited’ service, starting at $4/month for use on just one Echo [Ed: DRM. Avoid.]

      Would you pay a few extra bucks a month to turn your smart home speaker into an intelligent, unlimited jukebox? Amazon is betting people will.

      The company on Wednesday is launching a new subscription music service, Amazon Music Unlimited, that starts at $3.99 a month for a library of tens of millions of songs. That’s less than half the cost of Apple Music, Spotify Premium and other competing music services.

    • Studio Ghibli’s first TV series getting English dub courtesy of Amazon

      Famed animation studio Studio Ghibli launched its first TV series, Ronja the Robber’s Daughter, in 2014, and fans’ wait for an official Western version is now coming to an end, thanks to Amazon.

      After the series’ 26-episode run wrapped, the studio began shopping an English-language version to various international channels and distributors. That shopping apparently concluded this week, as Amazon confirmed via a Friday press release that Ronja’s dub will debut exclusively on Amazon Video in the US, UK, Germany, Austria, and Japan. The news didn’t include a release date, but it did confirm one familiar voice joining the Ronja cast: Gillian Anderson, whose voice previously appeared in famed Ghibli film Princess Mononoke.

    • …And Here Come The Device-Restricted Music Subscriptions

      And so we enter a world with yet another means of fragmenting digital music services and making them way, way less appealing. At least they were decent enough to drop the price — but now that the floodgates are open, it’s entirely possible such heavily limited subscriptions will eventually become the new baseline, and truly open subscriptions that can be played anywhere (one of the biggest advantages of digital music) will morph into an expensive luxury. The key difference between this and our speculation about Apple limited output devices is that the restriction happens further upstream, with the subscription only being piped to one specific device — and if that device is an Echo Dot, there’s even still an analog jack so it can be plugged into just about anything else. But the next step — a subscription on a general purpose device like a phone with music that is artificially limited to only be output through certain devices, thanks to the DRM capabilities of digital-only connectors — feels slightly and worryingly closer to reality. And what will this accomplish? Nothing more than ensuring legal digital music continues to suck in unnecessary ways.

      The grand, omnipresent and incorrect assumption about music piracy is that it’s primarily motivated by price, and the desire to get content without paying. It’s not and it never has been: it’s motivated by restrictions, and the desire to easily access a wide variety of content how, when and where you choose. It’s about music being free, but not free as in beer.

      And so, naturally, the legacy music industry has sought out almost every opportunity to add restrictions and limitations to their digital offerings. Disruptive innovators like Spotify and Pandora fight an ongoing uphill battle to secure the necessary rights to offer something more open and appealing, and the massive digital retailers — Apple, Google and Amazon — drift around in between: aware and capable of the type of technological innovation necessary to make digital music services appealing, and armed with the money and clout to secure better licensing deals from rightsholders, but also prone (to varying degrees) to following in those rightsholders’ restrictive footsteps in order to fulfill their own dreams of total control and a captive audience. Amazon isn’t banking on people who are out searching for a digital music service deciding to go with the absurdly limited $4 option — it’s targeting existing Echo customers who might see it as a cheap add-on for some extra music around the house. It wants to upgrade those Echo users into Prime subscribers if they aren’t already (for even more music, since the services are weirdly fragmented from each other), and eventually turn new Echo-only music subscribers into fully dedicated Amazon Music customers. Instead of making it really, really easy to sign up for a music subscription that gives you everything you want on every device you own, it’s ensuring there are plenty of different ways for people to pay up for a tiny slice of that experience.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Lawmakers Warned That 10 Year Sentences Could Apply to File-Sharers

        The UK is currently forming new legislation that will harmonize sentences for offline and online piracy. While the theoretical 10-year maximum sentence is supposed to target only large-scale pirates, this week MPs were warned that wording in the Digital Economy Bill is not tight enough to exclude file-sharers.

      • Company Offers “Fraudulent” and Deceptive Copyright Registrations

        A ring of misleading websites is charging people to pay for copyright registrations in the UK, Australia and elsewhere, even though it’s a free and automatic right. In India, where there’s also an official registration office, the authorities are taking legal action to stop the “fraudulent” operation.

        [...]

        Interestingly the Indian Copyright Office has now become the center of a rights dispute itself. As it turns out, the website copyright.in is offering ‘unofficial’ copyright registrations to Indians as well.

        The website in question offer users “anteriority proof for their copyrights” in 164 countries, charging roughly $10 for a copyright registration.

      • AllMyVideos.net to Shut Down, No Longer Profitable

        Video-hosting service AllMyVideos.net has announced that it will shut down its website next weekend. The operator says that it’s no longer profitable to host videos due to a lack of revenue and encourages users to back up their files before it’s too late.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/10/16/linux-4-9-rc1/feed/ 0 Links 7/10/2016: Linux Kernel 4.8.1, Wine Staging 1.9.20 http://techrights.org/2016/10/07/linux-kernel-4-8-1/ http://techrights.org/2016/10/07/linux-kernel-4-8-1/#comments Sat, 08 Oct 2016 03:06:54 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=95919

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Tesla vehicles to get a much-needed updated browser with new Linux OS in December, says Musk

    There are plenty of useful and well-thought-out features on Tesla’s 17-in touchscreen, but the internet browser is not one of them. For years now, we have been used to high-speed internet browsing on our laptops, desktop and now even or phones, but Tesla’s browser is so slow that it feels like it’s from another era.

    Model S and X owners have been asking for an update to the browser for a long time and unfortunately, it didn’t come with the recent 8.0 update, but Tesla CEO Elon Musk said yesterday that it will with an upcoming update, which will likely be in December.

    Tesla’s operating system is built on a modified version of Linux Ubuntu. Musk says that Tesla aims to upgrade the Linux OS to 4.4 in Tesla vehicles in December. That’s when he expects they will be able to update the browser.

  • Desktop/Microsoft

    • Detested snooping patch KB 2952664 reappears

      Perhaps the world has gone truly mad. Or maybe Microsoft’s trying to pull the wool over our eyes prior to its major shift in patching strategy — the patchocalypse — widely anticipated this month. It’s even possible Microsoft wants to bring back the “Get Windows 10″ campaign, to drive Windows’ reputation even deeper into the dirt.

      A Microsoft spokesman says it isn’t bringing back the “Get Windows 10″ campaign, but our old nemesis KB 2952664 reappeared suddenly yesterday afternoon, and Windows users are livid — and scared.

    • Microsoft’s Skype locks out iTWire editor-in-chief

      Login issues at Skype have bitten iTWire, with editor-in-chief Stan Beer being told his account has been suspended. After 16 hours of waiting, he is still unable to log in, and Microsoft now says it has lost his account and all its data.

      A furious Beer would not rule out legal action. “This is unacceptable. I have been using my account practically every day for the past 10 years. It is vital to the operation of my company. If I do not have it reinstated immediately I will have no alternative but to consider my options and take legal action,” he said.

      An email just received from Microsoft’s support team said: “We have checked our records and your account does not exist in the Microsoft system. Please check the spelling of your account. If you are sure this is the correct Microsoft account, it is also possible that it has expired due to inactivity.

      “Your account will expire if you do not sign in regularly or within the first 10 days after registration. When the account is deleted, all messages, folders, and contacts are deleted as well. Incoming messages will be sent back to the sender as undeliverable, but the user name is immediately available for registration.”

      After suffering repeated issues with Windows over many years, Beer thought he had escaped the clutches of Microsoft when he switched to OS X.

      But last evening he was given a sharp reminder that the Typhoid Mary of the Internet has a long reach and can still foul up one’s day.

    • Data loss services: Microsoft leads all the way

      When you have data you want to get rid of forever, whom are you going to call? There’s one sure place to go: Redmond. You are assured of losing your data when you hand it to Microsoft.

      The company is not in the habit of keeping backups. That’s so yesterday.

      No, Microsoft is out there in front of them all, modern-looking chief executive Satya Nadella in the lead, preaching the gospel of getting rid of the old and welcoming in the new.

      The bitter truth must now be acknowledged: veteran tech journo Bob Cringely said it first and I have repeated it for some time, but never seen it up so close. Microsoft is a marketing company, not a technology company.

    • BIOS Problems and Solutions

      When Lenovo released the Yoga 900-13ISK2 it became apparent that Linux and BSD users could not rely on closed source BIOSes. Of course while it is rather naive to think that a Microsoft Signature Edition PC would be Linux friendly, one could hope that at least it would not be Linux or BSD hostile. On further analysis one can see that this is not the case, and any would-be Linux user is in for a very difficult time trying to load any operating system other than Windows 10.

      The exact reasons for this problem boil down to the inability of the BIOS to set Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) mode for the SSD. Now I knew long ago that closed source BIOSes could become a problem back in the mid-1990s. I’ve spent considerable time researching the ways one can obtain a computer with FOSS firmware.

      Before I go into the specifics of which computers actually have a BIOS with freely available source code allow me to recap some computer history. When we look at the original IBM PC BIOS we can see that it’s been well analyzed and that no other operating systems have been locked out. In addition to this there was no way to alter the BIOS save for swapping out the BIOS chip and putting in a different one. So for several years people didn’t give much thought to the BIOS, as long as their computer booted they could load whatever operating system they wanted, be it Unix, Minix, MS-DOS, CP/M, etc.

  • Server

    • OCI Announces New Tools Projects and 1.0 Release Candidates

      With ContainerCon Europe currently underway in Berlin, we want to share some of the great progress the Open Container Initiative (OCI) has made.

      The OCI was launched with the express purpose of developing standards for the container format and runtime that will give everyone the ability to fully commit to container technologies today without worrying that their current choice of infrastructure, cloud provider or tooling will lock them in.

    • Never explain, never apologize: Microsoft silent on Outlook.com email server grief

      A tweak to Microsoft’s Outlook.com cloud service has blocked a good number of people from accessing their messages.

      Specifically, the baffling and unannounced change affects Outlook.com users with connected accounts: these are email accounts hosted on third-party servers (such as a company’s private server or an ISP’s mail server) that are accessed via the Outlook.com cloud. People with this setup are no longer able to send or receive mail through Redmond’s webmail service.

      Reg reader David Barrett, who runs an internet-facing server for his friends and a UK health charity, said the issue has left those users who run Outlook.com with outside mail systems unable to get their email for days now.

      “It happened around the end of last week/over the weekend and seems to have been a gradual rollout,” he told us.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • New “Qt Lite” adds 2D renderer, targets 16MB RAM Linux systems

        Qt 5.8 will include IoT-oriented “Qt Lite” technology that enables fine-grained configuration and supports small-footprint IoT gizmos without OpenGL.

        The Qt Company announced a Qt Lite project that aims to extend the Qt development framework to smaller footprint Internet of Things devices with as little as 16MB RAM and flash. The Qt Lite technology will initially appear in Qt 5.8, including a more flexible configuration system for the cross-platform development framework, as well as a new 2D renderer for devices that can’t run OpenGL. Qt Lite also provides a more accessible, lightweight set of development tools.

      • Plasma 5.8 LTS now available in KDE Neon

        KDE Neon, the newly popular distribution produced by KDE and Kubuntu developer Jonathan Riddell and based on Ubuntu is now available in version 5.8. The best part of this latest release? It includes the latest long term stable release of Plasma 5.8. You can get additional details about this release from Jonathan Riddell’s blog.

      • KDE neon 5.8 Linux Distribution Arrives With Plasma 5.8 LTS Desktop

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Wrapping up Outreachy

        Now that my time as an intern is over, I want to take a moment to thank Outreachy for giving me the opportunity to be a part of this amazing experience. Also a big thank you to my mentor Jim Hall and the GNOME design team (Allan and Jakub) for the guidance and encouragements they provided throughout these months. And finally, a thank you to GNOME community for being awesome ^_^

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Linux Lite 3.2 Beta Released With Lite Desktop Widget

        The Linux Lite 3.2 Beta release has arrived for developer testing and to give an idea about the recent changes made to the Linux Lite distro. It now features a new Lite Desktop widget. The GRUB bootloader has been set to its default configuration which enables multibooting other operating systems alongside Linux Lite.

    • Arch Family

      • The Arch Terminal Desktop

        This linux desktop is an homage to one of our favorite distributions, Arch Linux-and reader KudalGadgil shared it with us in our desktop show and tell pool. Here’s how you can get a similar look.

    • Slackware Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • #RedhatDID: Retrospective and a look ahead to future events

        The day several Redhat trainers and industry folks met to talk about best practices and give feedback on the vision and mission ( and speed of progression) of Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and upstream / downstream projects and products. Among one of the most popular Sessions was the one by Robin Price and Martin Priesler on OpenSCAP which was a standing room only session with nearly 1/3 of attendants in attendance for this talk / session. Rita Carroll and others setup a interest list for those that would like to attend another OpenSCAP Workshop (mainly centered on a hands-on event but other venues seemed open for debate). If you’d be interested regardless of whether you like me were in attendance please email Rita @ rita@redhat.com with a simple subject line referencing OpenSCAP Workshop (Tysons Area).

      • Installing the Red Hat Container Development Kit 2.2 Release

        When an application developer or architect tasked with exploring the possibilities that containerized applications offer, nothing is easier than the Red Hat Container Development Kit (CDK).

        The Red Hat CDK has all the Cloud tooling you need for your local OSX, Linux or Windows environment and it has a few containers pre-configured for you to explore.

      • RHEL containers on non-RHEL hosts

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Libre Application Summit 2016

          I had a great time at the Libre Application Summit in sunny, hipster moustachioed Portland – many thanks to Sri for inviting me. Sorry this blog post is a bit late, but things have been really busy with the Fedora 25 Beta release (which we signed off on today).

          For a first year conference without a crazy marketing budget or anything, attendance was great – it was a good size for the venue, the number of sessions, and the social events, things felt busy and there was a lot of people-getting-to-know-each-other going on. Sri, Adelia and friends did a great job of finding a good venue and getting a solid wifi network, providing food and coffee, and setting up some fun social events.

        • Design – Steps into tickets – the Track ticket.

          The first step in this is to make sure that the subject completely design team fedora. A second step is to check the validity according to legal terms.

          In this category are the rules established by the international community and the teams fedora.

        • Flatpak 0.6.12 Linux Application Sandboxing Makes Kernel Keyring Non-Containable

          Alex Larsson from the Flatpak project, an open source initiative sponsored by Red Hat in an attempt to make cross-platform app deployment easier, announced on October 6, 2016, the release of Flatpak 0.6.12.

        • Fedora 25 Is Still On Track To Use Wayland By Default

          Back in August Fedora 25 switched to using Wayland by default in time for the project’s alpha release. With next week’s beta release, Fedora 25 is still using Wayland by default and it looks like it will remain that way unless any showstoppers appear.

          Initially it wasn’t clear if Fedora 25 would continue using Wayland by default as it neared the final release, but so far so good. Adam Williamson of Fedora QA confirmed in the forums, “Wayland is the default for Fedora Workstation in F25 Beta, and barring any crazy showstoppers we didn’t know about showing up between now and Final, is likely to be the default for Final too.”

        • Fedora 25 Beta Will Be Released Next Week

          The beta of Fedora 25 will be released on-time next week.

          It’s a bit rare in the Fedora space, but all relevant parties have signed off on the Fedora 25 Beta for it to ship on-time, 11 October. Often Fedora releases are challenged by delays due to blocker bugs, including earlier with Fedora 25 Alpha, but all appears to be in shape for shipping the beta next week.

        • Outreachy with Fedora, Fall 2016

          GNOME Outreachy is a global program that offers historically underrepresented people of gender and race stipends to write code for several participating FOSS projects . Inspired by Google Summer Of Code, Outreachy offers participants hands-on internships for contributing to open source projects.

          In 2016, the Outreachy internship dates are from December 6, 2016 to March 6, 2017. Participants work remotely from home while getting guidance from an assigned mentor and collaborating within their project’s community.

    • Debian Family

      • Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier

        To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier, please join us on our IRC channel #debian-lego and join the Debian LEGO team in the Alioth project we created yesterday. A mailing list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)

      • About Pacemaker HA stack in Debian Jessie

        People keep ignoring the status of the Pacemaker HA stack in Debian Jessie. Most people think that they should stick to Debian Wheezy.

        Why does this happen? Perhaps little or none publicity of the situation.

        Since some time now, Debian contains a Pacemaker stack which is ready to use in both Debian Jessie and in Debian Stretch.

      • Reproducible Builds: week 75 in Stretch cycle

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Canonical Announces Snapcraft 2.19 Snap Creator Tool for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

            Canonical’s Sergio Schvezov announced recently the release and immediate availability of the Snapcraft 2.19 tool for creating Snap universal packages, in the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.10 repos.

          • Dell Launches Its New Ubuntu-Powered XPS 13 Developer Edition Laptop in US & EU

            Dell just launched its new XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop in the US and European markets, and, as usual, they’re partnering with Canonical to deliver you the best Ubuntu Desktop experience as possible.

            For those of you that aren’t aware yet, the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop was made possible as a part of a project called Sputnik, which attempted to identify the needs of developer when running an open source operating system like Ubuntu, which is currently one of the most popular GNU/Linux distributions in the world. Therefore, Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop now ships with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus).

          • Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) Final Freeze Now in Effect, It Launches on October 13

            A few hours ago, October 6, 2016, Canonical’s Adam Conrad announced that the upcoming Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) operating system has entered the Final Freeze development stage.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Tiny i.MX6 COMs gain enhanced CAN and wireless, eMMC option

      SolidRun has updated its tiny, Linux-ready i.MX6 based MicroSoM modules with optional eMMC and NOR flash, improved FlexCAN, and TI WiLink8 wireless.

      SolidRun has refurbished its NXP i.MX6-based MicroSoM computer-on-modules with new rev 1.5 versions featuring optional eMMC and/or NOR flash, among other additions. Despite some minor mechanical redesigns, the modules have the same 47 x 30mm dimensions, and are backward compatible. They can be plugged into existing MicroSoM companion products such as SolidRun’s sandwich-style, open-spec HummingBoard SBCs and CuBox-i mini-PCs. All the modules continue to run Linux or Android.

    • Desert Rotor’s Next Generation Drone Controller to Use Logic Supply’s ML100 NUC

      Logic Supply informs Softpedia about a recent case study they’re doing featuring drone control specialists Desert Rotor, a drone controller company that uses their ML100 industrial PC for its next-gen UAV control system.

      First, we’d like to inform the reader that Logic Supply is the leading industrial and embedded computer hardware manufacturer. The company is being known for creating some of the most powerful industrial products, from mini and rugged panel PCs and thin client computers to dust-resistant, fanless, and ventless units that can be used in virtualization and IoT (Internet of Things) markets, or other applications.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Samsung might soon be announcing a partnership with Mediatek

          It is no secret that Samsung uses Spreadtrum’s SOCs for most of its budget and mid range smartphones. Spreadtrum’s current best chip happens to be the SC9860- a 16nm process based 2GHz octacore 64 bit Cortex A53 SOC; these are chipset specifications from the yester-year and the technology is now moving into more powerful heterogeneous architectures involving ARM’s Cortex A73, A72 and A57 standards(and the low powered A53 cores for better battery efficiency). Now, this might not make any sense to a normal user. But over at Samsung, Spreadtrum’s slow development pace for its chips seems to be holding the Korean smartphone giant down from offering better (or more) midrange products.

      • Android

        • BMW Connected service adds Alexa and, finally, Android

          The smart car market hasn’t exactly settled along the usual Google vs Apple camps and some do take both sides, if not their own. When BMW launched its BMW Connected service early this year, it seemed to have actually put up a stake on Apple’s iOS side of the fence. Apparently, it was only bidding its time. In its new update, the service finally gets its first Android app. But that’s not the only thing that’s new, as BMW Connected is also gaining support for the Apple Watch 2 and Amazon’s Alexa.

        • Nexus 9 LTE Android 7.0 Nougat Update Officially Rolls Out
        • Upcoming HTC Bolt Smartphone To Run Android 7.0 Nougat
        • Google Pixel phone’s best feature won’t be coming to other Android phones, company suggests

          Google got us all hot and bothered with the launch of a new pair of smartphones earlier this week, but you can be forgiven for missing a major announcement regarding Android.

          The details of the latest version of the operating system, 7.1 Nougat, have been revealed, and it’s missing some of the key features Google waxed lyrical about on Tuesday.

          The biggest news is that Google Assistant, which is sort of like a souped-up version of Siri for Android, will remain exclusive to the Pixel and Pixel XL, in the near future at least. The virtual helper played a central role in Google’s event, with the company taking time to demonstrate how it supports two-way conversation and learns from you as you spend more time using it.

        • Android 7.1 Nougat won’t bring Assistant to everyone

          If, after seeing all the software goodies on Google’s new Pixel phones, you hoped that some of those cool features will trickle down to other Android phones capable of running Android 7.1 Nougat, you’ll be disappointed.

          Google’s smart personal assistant Assistant (Google did not do us a favor when naming this one), as well as unlimited, free backup for full-resolution photos and videos will remain Pixel-only for the time being. Somewhat less surprisingly, non-stop customer support service won’t be included, either.

        • Pixel won’t share Google Assistant with other Android phones
        • When is Android 7.1 Nougat coming to my phone?
        • Giphy Cam finally arrives on Android
        • Android and iPhone fail: Our lust has petered out
        • Verizon will control Android updates for Google Pixel phones it sells
        • Chatting with Google’s Hiroshi Lockheimer about Pixel, Android OEMs, and more

          There were big changes announced at Google this week as the company’s “Google Hardware” team came out of hiding and announced a slew of products. The star of the show was definitely the Google Pixel, Google’s new pair of smartphones that the company is saying it designed while using HTC as a manufacturer. The advent of Pixel phones means Google is an Android OEM again, harkening back to the days when it owned Motorola. This time, though, the company is serious about hardware and software integration.

          Android, however, is the world’s most popular operating system because of OEM partners like Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, and LG. And if Google wants Android to continue to deliver Google services to billions of people, it will still need all those partners. Google once again has a delicate balancing act to pull off. The company must do its best to deliver a Google-y Android phone while not stealing the thunder from other OEMs or putting them at a serious competitive disadvantage.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Netizen Report: Open Source Developers Endure Long Prison Sentences, And Worse

    It has been one year since Syrian-Palestinian open technology leader Bassel Khartabil disappeared from his prison cell in Syria.

    Bassel served as the public affiliate for Creative Commons Syria and contributed to Mozilla Firefox, Wikipedia, and other open communities online. He also was the CTO of Al-Aous, a publishing and research institution dedicated to archaeological sciences and arts in Syria. In November 2012, Foreign Policy named Bassel one of the world’s 100 top global thinkers.

  • Open source IT pros are in high-demand in Europe

    Open source employees in Europe have it good, especially when we compare that market to the rest of the world. This is according to a new report by Dice and The Linux Foundation. The report says that out of 1,000 European respondents 60 percent believe it would be fairly easy to find a new job this year. Globally, the figure stands at about 50 percent.

    “Demand for open source talent is growing and companies struggle to find experienced professionals to fill open roles”, says Bob Melk, president of Dice. “Rising salaries for open source professionals indicate companies recognize the need to attract, recruit and retain qualified open source professionals on a global scale. Regardless of where they reside around the world, these professionals are motivated by the opportunity to work on interesting projects”.

    Most sought after skills are application development, the report says, adding that European businesses are doing more than their counterparts in other parts of the world in order to keep hold of the staff. Four out of ten professionals in Europe say the best part about their jobs is that they get to work on interesting projects, as well as the fact that they get to use “cutting-edge technology”.

  • Google’s open source Noto: Free font covers 800 languages, including dead ones

    Google has released a new open-source font called Noto, which supports 800 languages and covers 110 writing systems.

    Short for ‘No more Tofu’, the name of the new typeface is a nod to what people call the default white boxes that appear when a computer doesn’t understand a character on a website.

    “One of the goals of the project was to support every language and every character, so one of the things we wanted to do was make sure there’s no tofu for all our users,” said Bob Jung, an director of internationalization at Google.

  • Google Releases Indoor Mapping Tool to Open-Source Community

    Cartographer, which Google initially used internally only, enables real-time mapping inside buildings, the company says.
    Like it often does, Google has released into the open-source community an indoor mapping tool called Cartographer that it has used internally.

    Cartographer is designed to enable what is known as real-time simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)—or the ability to build a 2D or 3D map while at the same time keeping track of an individual or robotic agent’s location within that map.

    The algorithms used in SLAM combine data from various sensors such as Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) systems and cameras to determine the position of an object within an environment and to map that environment.

  • Open Source Explained in Less Than Three Minutes

    Free Code Camp is an organization that teaches people to code. As part of this free training, student coders produce free code needed by nonprofit organizations. Free Code Camp doesn’t accept donations, but you can support them by buying t-shirts, hoodies and audiobooks through their store.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Promoting Cybersecurity Awareness

        We are happy to support National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM), a global effort between government and industry to ensure everyone has the resources they need to be safer, more secure and better able to protect their personal information online.

        We’ve talked about how cybersecurity is a shared responsibility, and that is the theme for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month – the Internet is a shared resource and securing it is our shared responsibility. This means technology companies, governments, and even users have to work together to protect and improve the security of the Internet. We all have to do our part to make the Internet safer and more secure for everyone. This is a time for all Internet users to Stop. Think. Connect. This month, and all year long, we want to help you be more “CyberAware.”

  • CMS

    • Why I hate (all) software

      This article will be about OTRS, a ticket system we’re using at the FSFE for handling things like swag orders, internship applications and so on. But it could actually be about any software. OTRS just happened to be in the line of fire this time.

      This will be an example in how to (not) manage user expectations. You may know the principle of least astonishment, and this will be a typical example of where it fails. The problem is in how a program communicates (or fails to communicate) to the user what it will do based on some input.

      The design principle of least astonishment simply means you should aim for designing your software in a way that what the user expects should happen when performing a certain operation, should also happen. If something else happens, that’s bad design.

  • Education

    • Why public libraries need to support open source

      People turn to public libraries for answers, and a lot of times libraries are superb at providing them. But when it comes to providing answers about open source, libraries have an uneven track record.

      What can we do to make this better so that more people can turn to their public library to learn about open source software, hardware, and principles?

      Right now, if you walked into my public library and pelted me with questions about open source—like, “What is it?” “How does it work?” “How can I use open source?”—I’d rattle off answers so fast you’d be walking out with a new tool or technology under your belt. Open source is a big world, so of course there are some things I don’t know, but guess what? We have the Internet and books right at our finger tips. Saying that you don’t know the answer is fine, and patrons will respect you for it. The key is helping them find the answer.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • An even more distributed ActivityPub

      So ActivityPub is nearing Candidate Recommendation status. If you want to hear a lot more about that whole process of getting there, and my recent trip to TPAC, and more, I wrote a post on the MediaGoblin blog about it.

      Last night my brother Stephen came over and he was talking about how he wished ActivityPub was more of a “transactional” system. I’ve been thinking about this myself. ActivityPub as it is designed is made for the social network of 2014 more or less: trying to reproduce what the silos do, which is mutate a big database for specific objects, but reproduce that in a distributed way. Well, mutating distributed systems is a bit risky. Can we do better, without throwing out the majority of the system? I think it’s possible, with a couple of tweaks.

    • Register now for LibrePlanet 2017: “The Roots of Freedom” March 25-26, 2017 in Boston, MA
    • FSFE Newsletter – October 2016

      We’re still not over how cool it was to see so many from our community join the FSFE Summit in September. It was a good experience and we’re keen to repeat it. One of the highlights was the ending keynote where Julia Reda called out proprietary software as a threat to democracy. Be sure to view the keynote and some of the other talks from the Summit, either on our YouTube channel, or from our download server where you can get the available videos in webm format.

      We also celebrated the FSFE’s 15th birthday in C-Base with a ceremony where we honored many of our local heroes from around Europe. C-Base has kindly provided a recording of the ceremony if you’re interested in hearing the story of some of our heroes, all of whom you can find working in one of the FSFE’s teams today.

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Tips for building your own maker workspace

        I firmly believe that in the absence of any intentional organizational strategy a person’s workspace becomes a reflection of their mind. Like bits of knowledge stored in the brain, tools and assets instinctively find themselves organized in a way that feels right to the individual.

        If this holds true, it stands to reason that, more often than not, our workspaces are always naturally trending away from being tidy and highly-functional. At this point, the odds are good that I’m just trying to rationalize why my office is an unmitigated disaster most of the time, but since you’ve made it this far, let’s make one more assumption: No two people are exactly alike, therefore no two workspaces are exactly alike.

        With this assertion firmly in place, I’d like to share a few things I’ve implemented for creating my workspace that have worked well for my brain. Your workspace will look different, but the practices I chose to follow here can be used for anyone looking to match their setup to their brain.

  • Programming/Development

    • PHPUnit 5.6

      RPM of PHPUnit version 5.6 are available in remi repository for Fedorra ≥ 22 and for Enterprise Linux (CentOS, RHEL…).

Leftovers

  • Is Apple’s software getting worse or what?

    For over a year, Apple’s software has been the subject of more derision than might be expected for a company of its size.

    Developer Marco Arment took Apple to task early last year, arguing that OS X (recently rebranded macOS) is full of embarrassing bugs and that the company is trying to do too much on unrealistic deadlines.

    Arment subsequently disavowed his post because of the widespread media attention it received. But there was blood in the water and the feeding frenzy has continued at Apple’s expense, at least in part because controversy, manufactured or not, drives online traffic.

  • Science

    • The really secret lives of bees: Ingenious experiment shows they learn like we do, from each other

      The bumblebee brain is puny, at least compared with the massive and fatty organ locked in your skull. At about 0.0002 percent the volume of yours, bee brains are close in size to the seeds stuck on a hamburger bun. Thinking about insect brains in terms of size alone, however, is a trap. The intelligence of sesame-brained bugs should not be underestimated.

      A study reported in the journal PLOS Biology on Tuesday, for instance, takes bee smarts in a surprising direction: Scientists from the Queen Mary University of London suggest that the “insects possess the essential cognitive elements for cultural transmission,” as they wrote in their new paper. It is possible to teach a single bee a new trick, in other words, and a different bee can learn that behavior from her peer.

    • Younger adults prefer to get their news in text, not video, according to new data from Pew Research

      Digital publishers may be pouring time and energy into cranking up their video operations, but for a lot of their potential viewers, text is still the way to go.

      New data from Pew Research finds that, when it comes to the news, younger adults still prefer words over moving images. While 46 percent of Americans overall say they prefer to watch the news over reading it, that number is far lower for Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 — only 38 percent of that group named video as their preferred news consumption format. In contrast, 42 percent said that they actually prefer text (which they prefer to read online, of course). Just 19 percent of young adults named listening as their preference. (“Smelling the news” was not an option.)

  • Hardware

    • Lenovo in talks to buy Fujitsu’s loss-making PC business

      In the early 2000s, Fujitsu was one of the top 5 PC makers globally. Today, it’s a loss-making enterprise that’s seen its market eroded by smartphones and tablets. The margins have squeezed, and IT conglomerate Fujitsu has been working to offload its non-core businesses and improve profitability. The company spun off its PC division as a separate business in February, a move that’s typically a precursor to a sale or other major restructuring option.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Floridians Are Shrugging Off A Hurricane and Zika. But It’s Just the Beginning.

      Hurricane Matthew is whipping away at Florida’s shores this week—threatening lives and homes and parties.

      If you know any Floridians, you know that no one is really freaking out yet. We are masters of disaster in the worst kind of way, having endured hurricanes, tornados, weird crimes, Rick Scott, and a growing Zika virus problem in the past year alone. That’s why business owners in Miami this week were prepping for Hurricane Matthew with a kind of calm, cooperative indifference.

    • Four more states likely to legalize pot

      Voters in four states appear likely to approve ballot measures that would legalize marijuana for recreational purposes, according to recent surveys, while voters are split on the question in a fifth state.

      The polls, taken over the last few weeks, demonstrate a seismic shift in the politics of pot. Even a decade ago, voters rewarded politicians who promised to redouble the war on drugs. After November’s elections, nearly a quarter of Americans could live in states where marijuana consumption is legal.

      But proponents and opponents alike say that polls taken before Election Day often overstate support for legal marijuana measures.

      “If the pro-legalization side is not at 55 percent at this point, it will likely lose,” said Sean Noble, an Arizona-based Republican strategist working against that state’s legalization measure, Proposition 205. “We know that polling on legalization generally overperforms actual results.”

    • Over 140,000 women demonstrate against total ban on abortion

      Plans to impose a total ban on abortion have sparked a massive uncontrolled explosion of anger in Poland. On Monday 3 October a strike of Polish women was called, inspired by the example of Icelandic women, who held a nationwide strike in 1975. In Warsaw, over 50,000 demonstrated in the pouring rain, in Wroclaw 30,000 and Krakow 25,000. Tens of thousands more demonstrated all across the country. In Poznan, there were clashes with the police, while in Kielce demonstrators demolished a controversial homphobic exhibition. Even the police’s conservative estimates talk about 98,000 people demonstrating in over 143 separate protests across the country. Meanwhile, the left party Razem estimated that over 140,000 people had protested on the streets throughout the country. These are easily the biggest ever protests in defence of abortion rights in Poland, far exceeding the protests in 1993, when the current ban on abortion was introduced.

      The first wave of the movement started in spring with the anouncement that a right-wing pressure group had collected over 100,000 signatures (finally they collected 400,000) required to submit a draft law to the Polish parliament which would impose a total ban on abortion and punish women with up to three years in prison. The barbarity of the proposals is illustrated by the fact that all miscarriages would be treated as suspected abortions and would be subject to criminal investigation.

      However, already Poland has one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in Europe, allowing abortion only in the case of rape, a threat to the health or life of the woman, or deformation of the foetus. In practice, even when these conditions are fulfilled abortion is often prevented by doctors who exploit the so-called “conscience clause” and impose their own religious beliefs on patients by refusing vital treatment.

  • Security

    • Thursday’s security advisories
    • Fact Or Fiction? Sysadmin Claims This 48 Character String Will Crash Most Linux Distros
    • Crippling bug in Linux crashes system with a single tweet
    • keysafe with local shares

      If your gpg key is too valuable for you to feel comfortable with backing it up to the cloud using keysafe, here’s an alternative that might appeal more.

      Keysafe can now back up some shares of the key to local media, and other shares to the cloud. You can arrange things so that the key can’t be restored without access to some of the local media and some of the cloud servers, as well as your password.

      For example, I have 3 USB sticks, and there are 3 keysafe servers. So let’s make 6 shares total of my gpg secret key and require any 4 of them to restore it.

    • ‘Security fatigue’ is the worst thing to happen to people since insecurity

      CHANGING PASSWORDS is just too much for some people, according to research, and causes them to do stupid things.

      This is called ‘security fatigue’, apparently, and comes straight from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and a collection of clipboards and pens.

      “After updating your password for the umpteenth time, have you resorted to using one you know you’ll remember because you’ve used it before? Have you ever given up on an online purchase because you just didn’t feel like creating a new account?” asked NIST.

      “If you have done any of those things, it might be the result of ‘security fatigue’. It exposes online users to risk and costs businesses money in lost customers.”

    • The new BYOD backlash hides an ulterior motive

      Recent research from IDC shows a clear picture: IT organizations are increasingly unhappy about BYOD and now want to curtail or end the practice.

      Their stated concern: The costs are too high and the savings too low. But those concerns are misguided and likely masking a secret agenda to regain control over mobile devices, not to save money. Face it: BYOD was never popular with IT.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Here’s how the U.S. is dealing with Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte’s blitz of rants, insults and ultimatums

      Like those from a battering ram, the hits just keep coming from the recently elected president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte.

      Saying this week that President Obama could “go to hell,” Duterte has threatened to jettison decades of close security cooperation with the United States, suggesting Manila would turn to China or Russia for support.

      The latest anti-U.S. vitriol came as U.S. Marines and sailors practiced amphibious landings and other exercises with Philippine troops at coastal sites close to the strategic shipping lanes and disputed islands in the South China Sea, a regional hot spot.

      The joint exercises began Tuesday and are scheduled to run until Oct. 12. Last week, Duterte said this would be the final round of joint exercises with the U.S. military.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Top Climate Scientist: Tax Fossil Fuels to Save Younger Generations’ Future

      The report warns that future generations may be forced to use “negative emissions” measures to forcibly extract CO2 from the atmosphere as temperatures keep rising. (Photo: Joe Brusky/flickr/cc)

      Fossil fuels must be taxed out of existence to ensure that future generations are not saddled with a world of rising seas and extreme weather—and all the costs that come with them—according to a new research paper by renowned climate scientist and Columbia University professor James Hansen.

    • [Older] How to Talk About the Paris Climate Agreement at the Bar

      On October 5, the United Nations proudly announced that enough countries had agreed to the Paris Agreement for it to go into effect, 30 days from now. That’s great. But if you are a bit confused about what exactly this news means, fear not. I’m here to break it all down.

    • ‘Megadrought’ Risk In American Southwest Soars As Global Temperatures Rise

      Vast swathes of Southwestern United States — a region already grappling with parched conditions — may now have to brace for another threat — decadeslong “megadroughts.”

      According to a new study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, there is roughly a 70 to 90 percent chance that the Southwest would experience a megadrought — an extreme dry spell lasting 35 years or more — before the end of the century. And, if precipitation is below normal, it’s 99 percent certain that such an event will occur.

      “Megadroughts are rare events, occurring only once or twice each millennium. In earlier work, we showed that climate change boosts the chances of a megadrought, but in this paper we investigated how cutting fossil fuel emissions reduces this risk,” lead author Toby Ault, a professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell University, said in a statement. “The increase in risk is not due to any particular change in the dynamic circulation of the atmosphere. It’s because the projected increase in atmospheric demand for moisture from the land surface will shift the soil moisture balance.”

      The present-day Earth is 1 degree Celsius hotter than it was 150 years ago. The Paris climate agreement, which is to come into force next month, aims to restrict this rise to below 2 degrees Celsius — a target that many experts now believe is almost certain to be breached.

    • Hurricanes will worsen as planet warms and sea levels rise, scientists warn

      Hurricane Matthew is already feared to have caused seven deaths after it hit Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Tuesday, bringing 145mph winds, pounding rain and storm surges to coastal communities.

      The category 4 storm, the strongest hurricane to hit Haiti in 50 years, is expected to surge northwards towards Florida’s east coast and up the south-eastern US coast by the weekend. It follows September’s Hurricane Hermine, which was the first hurricane to hit Florida in nearly 11 years.

    • Amid Media Blackout over Climate Change Links to Hurricane Matthew, Top Scientist Speaks Out

      States of emergency have been declared in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas as Hurricane Matthew barrels toward the Southeast coastline. More than 2 million people have been urged to evacuate their homes. The record-breaking storm has already killed at least 26 people in Haiti and four in the Dominican Republic. The storm is soon expected to hit the Bahamas and then strengthen as it moves toward Florida. Meteorologists are predicting Matthew could be the strongest hurricane to hit the United States since Wilma in 2005. Many scientists are saying climate change has intensified Hurricane Matthew because warmer ocean waters help create stronger hurricanes. Matthew is already the longest-lived Category 4 or 5 hurricane in the Eastern Caribbean on record. To talk more about Hurricane Matthew and climate change, we speak to Guardian journalist Oliver Milman and Michael Mann, a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University. His latest book, co-authored with political cartoonist Tom Toles, is titled “The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy.” Mann is also author of “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines.”

    • Hurricane Matthew Drives Storm Surge Into Northeast Florida; Coastal Flood Damage Already in South Carolina; Dangerous Flood Threat in Carolinas, Georgia

      Hurricane Matthew’s eyewall continues to brush parts of Florida’s northeast coast with high winds and storm surge flooding, and will spread those impacts, in addition to potentially serious rainfall flooding into Georgia, South Carolina, and southern North Carolina through at least Saturday night.

  • Finance

    • Early indications show UK favouring ‘hard Brexit’, says expert

      The UK will trigger Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon, triggering the formal two-year Brexit negotiation process, by the end of March 2017, the prime minister has announced.

      The government also intends to publish a ‘Great Repeal Bill’ which, once given effect, will remove the 1972 European Communities Act from the UK statute book and enshrine any EU laws in effect on the date of the UK’s exit from the EU into UK law, Theresa May told the Conservative Party annual conference.

      May said that the process would give UK businesses and workers “maximum certainty as we leave” the EU, while retaining the government’s right to “amend, repeal and improve any law it chooses” at a later date. EU law expert Guy Lougher of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that the comments provided “a helpful indication of the government’s intentions and priorities”.

      “Although the prime minister has indicated her opposition to the shorthand labels of ‘soft Brexit’ and ‘hard Brexit’, it appears that the government’s negotiation intentions and the likely outcome are closer to the latter than the former,” he said.

    • A ‘Genius’ Like Trump

      Trump’s business “genius” relies on stiffing creditors and contractors, laying off workers and driving the equity of investors down while he just walks away.

    • Privatizing the public sector is actually costing taxpayers money

      Privatization is bad news for federal, state and local government workers, and the communities where they live. That’s according to a new report released Wednesday by In the Public Interest, a research group focused on the effects of privatization.

      The study, “How Privatization Increases Inequality,” explores the role privatization plays in the American economy—compiling data on the estimated $1.5 trillion of state and local contracts doled out each year.

      “A lot of decisions are small,” says Donald Cohen, executive director of In the Public Interest, but “if you add all that up, it’s very significant.”

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Can Facebook influence an election result?

      But Facebook’s most powerful political tool may be one that’s hiding in plain sight. Consider the “I Voted” button.

      The button, dubbed by Facebook a “voter megaphone”, allows users to report whether they have voted and shows which of their friends have also voted.

    • Mike Pence is gaslighting America

      Video of Mike Pence denying Trump said any of the horrible, racist, stupid, uninformed and generally embarrassing things he spouts all day long, matched with Trump saying the stuff.

    • Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein discusses her campaign

      She’s a dark horse in the presidential race, but green party nominee, Dr. Jill Stein could have a big impact on the outcome.

      Stein is campaigning in L.A. for a few days – trying to convince voters that she is the better choice. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein will make a campaign stop Thursday at Cal State Northridge.

      Stein is polling around the 2% mark in most of the national polls, but that is enough to sway the election to the winner.

    • CNN Censors Third Party Supporters as ‘Undecided’ in Focus Group

      After the first presidential debate on September 26, CNN hosted a focus group at the University of Richmond. According to Justin Smith, one of the 28 people included in the panels, CNN censored those who said they would be voting for a third party, declaring them “undecided.”.

      “Out of 28 panel members, five said they were decided on Clinton, two said they were decided on Trump, and 12 said they were going to vote 3rd party. But once they saw the response, they reshot the segment and replaced ‘3rd party’ with ‘still undecided.’ You’ll noticed on the live feed, I refused to raise my hand,” wrote Smith in a Facebook post. Smith is supporting Evan McMullin, former CIA operations officer and former chief policy director for the House Republican Conference in the U.S. House of Representatives, for president. “They then said they were going to reshoot it, except this time they changed ‘3rd party’ to ‘undecided.’ Some of us asked about the third party option, and they ignored us. They then said they were going to shoot it again, and still asked for ‘undecided’ voters and left out ‘3rd party.’ A lot of the members voted ‘undecided’ because it was the only option other than Trump or Clinton.” Smith posted the CNN video of the focus group and wrote that in the video he refused to raise his hand and vote “undecided” as a protest.

    • The Podesta Emails

      WikiLeaks series on deals involving Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. Mr Podesta is a long-term associate of the Clintons and was President Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff from 1998 until 2001. Mr Podesta also owns the Podesta Group with his brother Tony, a major lobbying firm and is the Chair of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington DC-based think tank.

    • Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005

      Donald Trump bragged in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women during a 2005 conversation caught on a hot microphone, saying that “when you’re a star, they let you do it,” according to a video obtained by The Washington Post.

      The video captures Trump talking with Billy Bush, then of “Access Hollywood,” on a bus with the show’s name written across the side. They were arriving on the set of “Days of Our Lives” to tape a segment about Trump’s cameo on the soap opera.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • YouTube Takes Down European Parliament Video On Stopping Torture For ‘Violating Community Guidelines’

      Back in 2008, then Senator Joe Lieberman went on a ridiculous pro-censorship campaign, demanding that YouTube take down any “terrorist” videos. For reasons I still don’t understand, YouTube complied. As a result, watchdogs documenting Syrian atrocities had them censored from YouTube, because YouTube determined them to be in “violation” of its guidelines in publishing “shocking and offensive videos.”

      That was a few years ago, and it seems like the problem has only gotten worse — as have the ridiculous calls for YouTube and other platforms to be the giant censor in the digital sky. The latest victim? Would you believe it’s the European Parliament itself? Marietje Schaake, a really wonderful Member of the European Parliament (and a Techdirt reader), tweeted that the video she had posted of a European Parliament debate on “anti-torture” was taken down for “violating community guidelines.” Really.

    • Trump’s many, many threats to sue the press since launching his campaign

      Donald Trump’s outright contempt for journalists and press freedom is well known—but in the past month he has outdone himself.

      In the span of a long weekend in mid-September, Trump threatened to sue The New York Times, his staff had a Vice reporter arrested outside a campaign event, and he blamed the New York terrorist bombings on “freedom of the press.”

      This weekend, Trump struck again. After the Times’ huge scoop detailing how he took an almost billion-dollar loss on his 1995 taxes, Trump’s lawyer threatened “prompt initiation of appropriate legal action” against the Times once more. By my count, it is at least the 11th time Trump has threatened to sue a news organization or journalist during his campaign for president.

      I had intended to quantify how many journalists or news commentators Trump has threatened to sue over his lifetime, but that quickly turned into a fool’s errand. A simple Google search of “Trump threatens to sue” will return an overwhelming number of stories. In the past decade alone, he’s sued a former Times journalist who wrote a book about him that he later admitted he didn’t even read; he’s threatened to sue former View host Rosie O’Donnell for allegations that have been shown over and over again during this campaign to be correct; he’s sued HBO’s Bill Maher over a joke bet that involved proving he was not, in fact, born an orangutan.

    • Trump Adds To His Anti-First Amendment Legacy In Threatening To Sue Clinton For Campaign Ads

      Donald Trump keeps insisting that he’s a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights, but he appears to have skipped right past the 1st Amendment. We’ve discussed his stated plans to “open up” libel laws and his regular threats to sue newspapers for reporting on him in ways he dislikes. Trevor Timm, of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, recently tried to count how many times Trump had threatened to sue the media since his campaign began (ignoring all the threats from before the campaign).

    • Chrome and Firefox are blocking The Pirate Bay as a deceptive site, again

      THE PIRATE BAY is not a place you want to go, at least not according to the Chrome and Firefox browsers which have taken to warning people that the pages are perhaps poisoned and definitely deceptive.

      A post on TorrentFreak said that users are batting their heads against a blocking wall when they try to access magnets and that kind of stuff.

      We took to the water today in search of The Pirate Bay on Firefox. Virgin Media has put a cage around the site, but you can still get to it. Once there we were able to get to the main page, but no further.

      A search, with a capital R for research, took us to a page of links that took us to another page, but not one that we expect The Pirate Bay user base will enjoy.

    • Chrome and Firefox Brand The Pirate Bay As a “Phishing” Site…..Again

      Chrome and Firefox are again blocking direct access to The Pirate Bay’s download pages. According to Google’s safe browsing program, ThePirateBay.org is a “deceptive site” that may steal user information. The TPB crew has been alerted to the issue and hope it will be resolved soon.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Yahoo helps the government read your emails. Just following orders, they say.

      Not long after Edward Snowden’s revelations of massive government surveillance of the American public, Yahoo was one of the eight tech giants that called for strong reforms that would protect their customers.

      And back in 2007, Yahoo went to court to challenge a government surveillance program in order to protect its users’ privacy.

      Well, that was then.

      Now, in a move that has outraged privacy advocates, Yahoo reportedly has helped take government intrusion to a new level. Without apparent protest, according to news reports, it built a mechanism that allowed the National Security Agency and the FBI to scan all of its users’ incoming emails for specific characters or words.

    • Verizon wants $1B discount on Yahoo deal after reports of hacking, spying

      Verizon is pushing for a $1 billion discount off its pending $4.8 billion agreement to buy Yahoo, several sources told The Post exclusively.

      The request comes on the heels of the web giant getting bludgeoned by bad news in the past few days.

      Yahoo revealed two weeks ago that it had been hacked in 2014 and that usernames and passwords for 500 million accounts were swiped.

      Then, earlier this week, it was learned that Yahoo had been ordered by a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to scan emails for terrorist signatures.

      “In the last day we’ve heard that [AOL boss] Tim [Armstong] is getting cold feet. He’s pretty upset about the lack of disclosure and he’s saying, ‘Can we get out of this or can we reduce the price?’” said a source familiar with Verizon’s thinking.

      That might just be tough talk to get Yahoo to roll back the price. Verizon had been planning to couple Yahoo with its AOL unit to give it enough scale to be a third force to compete with Google and Facebook for digital ad dollars.

      The discount is being pushed because it feels Yahoo’s value has been diminished, sources said.

    • FBI Looking Into ‘Legal and Technical Options’ for Entering Another Terrorist’s iPhone

      A new case might lead the FBI and Apple into another fight over security and privacy on smartphones, following a confirmation yesterday by FBI special agent Rich Thorton that the FBI has the iPhone of Dahir Adan in its possession (via Wired).

      Adan was the culprit behind the stabbing of 10 people in a Minnesota mall in mid-September, and was eventually shot and killed by police. After the event, terrorist organization ISIS claimed credit for the attack on social media, but “no evidence has emerged to suggest ISIS had a hand in planning or executing the attack.”

      During a press conference in St. Cloud, Minnesota yesterday, Thorton confirmed that the FBI has Adan’s iPhone and that it is locked with a passcode. According to the special agent, the organization is “still trying to figure out how to gain access to the phone’s contents.” The issue currently is that the model and version of iOS running on the iPhone is known only to the FBI. Following the launch of iOS 8 in 2014, any iOS device running the software is encrypted to an extent that no malicious outsider — or even Apple itself — can get into the iPhone or iPad.

    • Ex-Yahoo Employee: Government Spy Program Could Have Given a Hacker Access to All Email

      Contrary to a denial by Yahoo and a report by the New York Times, the company’s scanning program, revealed earlier this week by Reuters, provided the government with a custom-built back door into the company’s mail service — and it was so sloppily installed that it posed a privacy hazard for hundreds of millions of users, according to a former Yahoo employee with knowledge of the company’s security practices.

      Despite this week’s differing media accounts, this much isn’t disputed: In 2015, Yahoo provided the U.S. government with the means to scan every single email that landed in every single Yahoo Mail inbox. The scanning was kept an absolute secret — and as this ex-Yahoo source describes, that meant keeping it a secret from security personnel who came to believe it endangered Yahoo’s hundreds of millions of unwitting customers.

      The employee, who worked at Yahoo before, during, and after the installation of the email-scanning program, requested anonymity because of a nondisclosure agreement formed when the individual quit several months after the program was discovered internally last summer. The source declined to share certain specific names for fear of violating that same NDA or the NDA of others, but The Intercept has confirmed details of the source’s employment at Yahoo, which would have put the then-employee in a position to know this information.

    • Police documents reveal how law enforcement keep Stingray use secret

      Police records obtained by the Daily Dot reveal in unprecedented detail how the Obama administration enables law enforcement to suppress information about controversial phone-surveillance technology used by police throughout the United States.

      The documents, which link the purchase of so-called Stingray devices to various North Carolina state and local police agencies, include a fill-in-the-blank warrant drafted by the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) and intended for use by state and local police that extends the veil of secrecy over law enforcement’s Stingray use.

      The records, originally acquired by Working Narratives under North Carolina public records law and shared with Daily Dot reporters, also offer new specifics about the capabilities of Stingrays bought by police in North Carolina from Harris Corporation, a leading U.S. manufacturer of cell-site simulators, and the company behind the original “StingRay” procured by the Pentagon and various intelligence agencies more than two decades ago. The North Carolina agencies referenced by the documents include the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office; the Wilmington Police Department; and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, an agency that reports directly to Gov. Patrick L McCrory (R).

    • At Booz Allen, a Vast U.S. Spy Operation, Run for Private Profit

      In the six weeks since federal agents raided a suburban Maryland home and arrested Harold T. Martin III on suspicion of stealing classified information from the National Security Agency, another organization has quietly prepared to face the fallout: Booz Allen Hamilton, Mr. Martin’s employer.

      Booz Allen, a consulting firm that earns billions of dollars by working for American intelligence agencies, has been called the world’s most profitable spy organization. News this week of Mr. Martin’s arrest in August could renew scrutiny of the firm’s operations and, more broadly, the lucrative contracting business that American intelligence now relies on to run its vast, global surveillance operations.

      Mr. Martin’s arrest is the second time in three years that a Booz Allen contractor has been accused of stealing potentially damaging material from the N.S.A. The company also employed Edward J. Snowden, who spirited out a cache of documents that, in 2013, exposed the extent of American surveillance programs in the United States and around the world.

      Booz Allen is one of a handful of defense and intelligence contractors that blur the line between the government’s intelligence work and private enterprise.

    • BT Yahoo! customers: Why! can’t! we! grrr! delete! our! webmail! accounts!?

      BT customers are unable to delete BT Yahoo email services – despite an exodus of users seeking to leave the security-challenged webmail biz.

      Since allegations arose that Yahoo built an app to enable it to scan all of its users’ emails at the request of US intelligence, many users have sought to delete their email accounts.

      That was in addition to Yahoo!’s confession last month that hackers had stolen the credentials for at least 500 million of its customer email accounts.

    • Imagining a Cashless World [Ed: Lack of anonymity in purchasing/payments now “driven in part by an epidemic of armed robberies in smaller shops,” says iophk]

      A fantastic heist (we like our crimes as smart and magical as dreams) took place some years back, when a stolen helicopter landed on the roof of a cash depot in Stockholm and three masked men smashed a skylight to climb inside. It was September 23, 2009. The depot was freshly stocked in expectation of a coming Swedish payday. Armed with a Kalashnikov, the invaders held employees at bay while their accomplices outside positioned road spikes to keep cop cars from swarming the building. Fake bombs had been set among the police helicopters to delay an aerial chase. The thieves loaded bag after bag of bills into their aircraft, then departed. Seven men were later caught and sentenced, but nearly all of the stolen cash—reportedly some $6.5 million—still has not been found.

      The robbery is known as the Västberga heist, and, like many capers, it became a source of public fascination. (It is the subject of Evan Ratliff’s e-book “Lifted.”) But it also earned astringent notice from some economic theorists, who saw in it a parable about the risks of paper money. Cash is the squirmy ferret of societal wealth—tricky to secure physically and, once liberated in the wild, almost impossible to get back—and money, as technology, has changed a lot in half a century. A day’s errands once called for bulging pockets. Now it’s possible to shop for groceries, pay rent, buy lunch, summon a taxi, and repay your sister for a movie without handling a checkbook, let alone fumbling with bills and coins. Most people think of card and electronic payments as conveniences, stand-ins for exchanging cold, hard cash. Yet a growing group of theorists, led in the United States by Kenneth S. Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, are embracing the idea that physical currency should be the exception rather than the rule.

    • Twitter tanks 20.1% as would-be suitors drop out

      Twitter shares plunged 20.1% Thursday after published reports said would-be suitors including Google would not bid for the struggling social media company.

      Technology news outlet Recode said Google and Disney would not pursue Twitter and Apple was unlikely to buy it either, deflating the stock that had soared on takeover speculation.

      Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, considered one of the more likely suitors for Twitter, also seemed to downplay his interest during an analyst meeting at his company’s annual Dreamforce event in San Francisco.

      “We look at everything and we don’t buy most things, and we haven’t agreed to buy that company,” he said Wednesday, emphasizing that Salesforce.com has a “disciplined M&A process.”

    • Yahoo email scan fell under foreign spy law -sources

      A Yahoo operation in 2015 to scan the incoming email of its customers for specific information identified by the U.S. government was authorized under a foreign intelligence law, U.S. government officials familiar with the matter said.

      Reuters on Tuesday reported that the Yahoo program was in response to a classified U.S. government request to scan emails belonging to hundreds of millions of Yahoo users.

      The revelation rekindled a long-running debate in the United States over the proper balance between digital privacy and national security.

      The Department of Justice obtained the order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, said the sources, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • The FBI Treated Clinton With Kid Gloves

      Tim Kaine repeatedly defended Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate. “The FBI did an investigation,” he said at one point, “and they concluded that there was no reasonable prosecutor who would take it further.” But such a statement is credible only if it follows a real criminal investigation—that is, the sort of investigation that the FBI and the Justice Department conduct when they actually care about a case and want convictions.

    • Google ‘screwed over’ its non-millennials – now they can all fight back

      Google has been hit with a class-action lawsuit accusing the ad giant of discriminating against older employees.

      The Northern California District Court has certified [PDF] the case brought against the Chocolate Factory, allowing aggrieved applicants aged 40 and older to join together in filing a single suit.

      By certifying the case, the court allows the plaintiffs to take on Google’s legal might as a combined force, rather than individually. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of a favorable settlement from Cali-based Google.

      The complaint, originally filed in April of 2015, claims that Google discriminates against job candidates over the age of 40 when screening them. The suit accuses Google of violating the US Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

    • Report: DEA Blowing Money On Liars, Thieves, And Amtrak Employees

      If the Drug War is US law enforcement’s wildly-swinging fist, the DEA is its middle finger. Once the pointless brutality stops, the finger is extended to everyone — especially taxpayers.

      Even the agency’s name inadvertently belies its twisted motivations: “Drug Enforcement Agency.” Without further information, the name, on its own, seems to suggest a shoring up of the drug trade, rather than an adversarial force.

      The DEA has a lot of skin in the drug game. Without the steady flow of drugs, it ceases to exist. It operates with a great deal of autonomy and is often excused its worst excesses because most people agree (without much thought) that drugs are bad.

      The DEA controls a vast network of confidential informants. Actually, to state it more accurately, the DEA oversees… Never mind. The DEA pays a great deal of money to confidential informants. Beyond handing out cash, the DEA apparently does little else to keep its informants in line.

      A just-released Inspector General’s report [PDF] on the DEA’s use of confidential informants finds the agency has no problem paying out vast sums of money to lying informants and that it maintains a small army of otherwise-employed citizens who moonlight as cash/drug-sniffing humans for the nation’s top drug warriors.

      This year’s report builds on the lowlights of last year’s examination of the DEA’s informant program, in which the OIG basically stated the entire program runs without sufficient oversight. Nothing has changed in the interim. This report includes even more details of excess, abuse, and stupidity.

    • Cops arrest hundreds of people allegedly involved in IRS phone scam

      Hundreds of people in Mumbai, India have been detained in relation to a massive telephone scam where fake callers “from the IRS” targeted Americans. In said calls, scammers tried to convince recipients that they were from the IRS in order to con victims into forking over thousands of dollars payable via prepaid credit cards.

      According to The Guardian, 200 Indian police officers raided nine locations across one of India’s largest cities.

    • Indonesian arrested for streaming porn on billboard

      Indonesian police have arrested a man accused of hacking into a public billboard in Jakarta and streaming a pornographic film.

      The 24-year-old IT analyst has admitted the crime, said police, for which he could face up to six years in jail.

      Motorists were left in shock last week when footage from a Japanese porn film was displayed on an electronic screen in south Jakarta.

      The video ran for five minutes on Friday before power was eventually cut.

      However the clip had already been captured on many mobile phones and soon spread across social media.

      The man, who was arrested in his office, allegedly carried out the prank after seeing login details displayed on the billboard.

    • [Older] Valley Fair mall guard pulled gun on shopper for hitting traffic cone, lawsuit alleges

      A shopper at Westfield Valley Fair mall claims in a civil lawsuit that a security guard pulled a gun on him after he hit a traffic cone while trying to leave the mall in December.

      In the Santa Clara County Superior Court filing submitted last week, San Jose resident Nicholas Buchanan, an Apple engineer, is seeking unspecified damages against the mall, a security contractor, and two security guards for a Dec. 5, 2015 encounter. The lawsuit also takes issue with how the guard who drew a pistol on Buchanan was not licensed to carry a firearm at the time.

    • Malaysia: Islamic dept launches app allowing public to report Syariah offences

      RELIGIOUS authorities in the Malaysian state of Selangor has launched a mobile application that allows members of the public to report Syariah-related crimes, adding to concerns of growing Islamic fundamentalism in the Muslim-majority country.

      Selangor’s Islamic Religious Department (Jais) director Haris Kasim told The Star that the app allows the public to become the eyes and ears of enforcers, making it easier for them to report offences that breach the Syariah code, such as pre-marital or extramarital sex, or alcohol consumption, which are forbidden to Muslims.

      “The application, which was launched Tuesday, is simple and easy to use. Once installed on a smartphone, people can send over information and make reports to Jais very easily,” he was quoted as saying.

    • Chess star to boycott World Chess Championship in Iran over hijab

      A top chess player is boycotting the World Chess Championship in Iran because women will be legally required to wear the hijab while competing.

      Nazi Paikidze-Barnes, a Geogian-American chess player, is petitioning the World Chess Federation (FIDE) in a bid to change the host country of the women’s world championship competition from Iran.

      “I think it’s unacceptable to host a women’s World Championship in a place where women do not have basic fundamental rights and are treated as second-class citizens,” the 22-year-old told the BBC.

    • Muslim killer stabbed his care worker wife EIGHT TIMES because she looked after men

      After being arrested, Khan told a police officer: “Never get an arranged marriage bro.”

      The butcher was handed a life sentence after pleading guilty to murdering Nasreen.

      Manchester Crown Court heard Khan told his wife “it’s not halal for you to work with men”.

    • 16-year-old boy killed by LAPD called 911 before the shooting and left a ‘farewell note,’ police say

      A 16-year-old fatally shot by a Los Angeles police officer in South Los Angeles called 911 himself before the shooting and left his family a “farewell note,” leading investigators to believe he had a “desire to end his own life,” LAPD chief Charlie Beck said Thursday.

      Coroner’s officials identified the boy Thursday as Daniel Enrique Perez, who police say was shot after pointing a realistic-looking replica gun at officers.

      Beck said detectives identified Perez through a cellphone he was carrying, which was used to call 911 about 20 minutes before the deadly encounter. The caller reported a man with a gun matching Perez’s description, Beck said.

    • Norway sets out plans for banning burqa in schools and universities

      The burqa veil is to be banned in schools and universities across Norway following similar measures in other European countries, according to the Norwegian education minister.

      The country’s right-wing government confirmed it was considering “national regulations prohibiting the full-face veil in schools and universities”, a move supported by the opposition Labour Party.

      Education minister Torbjorn Roe Isaksen confirmed the ban would only apply to the full-face veil and not to other Islamic headscarves including the hijab, chador and niqab.

    • Top CIA officers to face questions about brutal interrogations in civil suit

      Two former high-ranking CIA officials will be compelled to answer questions under oath about the agency’s brutal interrogations of terrorism suspects, a federal judge ruled Tuesday as part of a lawsuit brought against former CIA contractors by the American Civil Liberties Union.

      The ruling would require Jose Rodriguez, who was the head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, and John Rizzo, the agency’s former acting general counsel, to submit to depositions about a program that used methods widely condemned as torture.

      “This ruling is a critical step towards accountability, and it charts a way forward for torture victims to get their day in court,” ACLU attorney Dror Ladin said in a statement released by the organization after the ruling in federal court in Spokane, Wash.

    • How the Heated, Divisive Election of 1800 Was the First Real Test of American Democracy

      On a windy afternoon in February 1959, 14-year-old Craig Wade scooped up what seemed to be a crumpled rag that was blowing, tumbleweed style, across a railroad track in his hometown, Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He later told a local newspaper that he simply “likes to save things.”

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Facebook wants to bring its free internet service to the US [iophk: "zero-rating, so as to decide what people do and don’t have access to"]

      Facebook is in talks with the government and wireless carriers to bring its “Free Basics” internet service to the U.S., reports The Washington Post.

      If the plan works, Facebook “would target low-income and rural Americans who cannot afford reliable, high-speed Internet at home or on smartphones,” the report notes.

      Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

      Free Basics isn’t a full-fledged internet provider, but rather an agreement with carriers that lets people use Facebook and other sites without it counting towards their data plan.

      Facebook has run into trouble with Free Basics abroad. The program, which currently operates in 49 countries, was shut down earlier this year in India due to net neutrality concerns.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • EU Copyright Reform: Outside the Safe Harbours, Intermediary Liability Capsizes into Incoherence

        As has by now been extensively reported, on 14th September the European Commission released its new copyright reform package. Prominent within this is its proposal for a new Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.

        The proposal contains an array of controversial offerings, but from the perspective of this intermediary liability blogger, the most interesting provision is the proposed Article 13 on ‘Certain uses of protected content by online services’. This is highly problematic in a number of different ways.

      • BitTorrent Fires CEOs, Closes Los Angeles Studio, Shutters BitTorrent Now (EXCLUSIVE)

        BitTorrent has fired its two co-CEOs Robert Delamar and Jeremy Johnson and laid of an unknown number of staffers, Variety has learned from multiple sources. BitTorrent CFO Dipak Joshi has stepped in as interim CEO.

        The company is also closing its Los Angeles-based production studio and shuttering its BitTorrent Now video streaming efforts. This comes just months after BitTorrent announced a renewed focus on media under the leadership of Delamar and Johnson.

        BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen laid out the changes in an email to staff earlier this week, according to a source, but layoffs apparently began as early as two weeks ago. In addition to being ousted as CEOs, Delamar and Johnson were also removed from the company’s board of directors.

        The company had officially announced the appointment of Delamar and Johnson as new co-CEOs in April. At the time, the duo laid out a renewed focus on media production and distribution, which involved the opening of a new Los Angeles-based production studio.

        These efforts culminated in BitTorrent Now, an ad-supported music and video streaming platform that launched in June. BitTorrent Now built on the company’s efforts to strike media distribution deals with independent artists, but didn’t actually use BitTorrent’s P2P technology for streaming.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/10/07/linux-kernel-4-8-1/feed/ 0 Links 2/9/2016: Docker Fork Questions, Baidu’s Free Software http://techrights.org/2016/09/02/docker-fork-questions/ http://techrights.org/2016/09/02/docker-fork-questions/#comments Fri, 02 Sep 2016 11:40:12 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=95187

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux Journal September 2016
  • September 2016 Video Preview

  • Desktop

  • Server

    • A Docker Fork: Talk of a Split Is Now on the Table

      Discussions about a split from Docker are now underway among several Docker ecosystem vendors and end users. Expressing frustration of Docker’s management of Docker Engine, the technologists with the companies are exploring ways to address various issues around supporting enterprise Docker deployments.

    • Forking Docker will lead to more fragmentation

      If you have been keeping up with Docker lately, you may have come across my blog post about the sad state of Docker. In this post, I go over how the 1.12 release appeared interesting from all the marketing announcements and the constant copying and pasting of the same Docker content into blogs over the world. However, many others and I expressed our opinions on Hacker News on how Docker failed to deliver a quality product and how they failed to create a quality release. The New Stack then summarized all of the weekend discussions going on in a new blog post and discussed that a fork of Docker may arise. Is a fork really the best answer? Let’s take a look.

      The nice thing about open source software is that anyone can take the software and modify it as needed or even create their own version of the software for redistribution. Software repositories like GitHub make it really easy for developers to fork a project and begin making their own changes and improvements. A recent example was the fork of OwnCloud into NextCloud. My problem with forking is that it leads to fragmentation. I personally like one or two ways of doing something well versus many different ways to partially achieve the same goal.

    • Why the container community is wrong to whine about Docker

      The Docker inmates want to run the asylum, as Red Hat’s Daniel Riek makes clear. So much so, in fact, that there are rumblings of a Docker fork. Companies like Red Hat see their future in containers and worry about being forced into second-class citizenship, while operations vendors like VMware worry about the entire fabric of their virtualization businesses being ripped to shreds.

    • Memory Issues with Linux Control Groups Might Affect Containerized Applications

      The paper authors suggest several workarounds for these problems, including pre-touching the memory, which involves ensuring that the memory is allocated when the process starts, rather than on demand. The exact methods of doing this vary across platforms. Another option is to better assess the memory footprint of an application so that allocation can be done more accurately. The page cache usage is not easy to estimate, but the anonymous memory can be estimated easily. The anonymous memory can be estimated from system metrics like the Resident Set Size (RSS).

    • Docker usage rises, but high portability pointless for most

      The adoption of Docker — and containers in general — within AWS environments continues to rapidly increase. However, reports show that abandonment rates align with adoption rates, which is interesting for those looking at Docker’s potential.

      Docker usage has quintupled in a single year — following the patter of most-hyped technologies, according to a recent study by Datadog, a monitoring and analytics platform. But this raises some questions: Can this growth be sustained? And, if so, what will be the likely patterns of adoption?

    • IBM links Blockchain with AI in new Industry Platforms business unit

      IBM has underscored how seriously its taking Blockchain technology with the creation of a new business unit centered around it. The new business, called Industry Platforms, will be led by Global Business Services chief, Bridget van Kralingen.

      IBM’s entire blockchain leadership team will transition to the new business, which was first announced last year.

      As well as working on Blockchain technology, the Industry Platforms business will also work to promote its Watson artificial intelligence platform in the financial services sector.

      “The Industry Platforms business will bring clients radically optimized processes and marketplaces that leverage Watson, IBM Cloud, IBM Systems, blockchain, deep domain expertise and ecosystems of partners and developers,” said IBM CEO Ginni Rometty.

    • Habitat: Automating Applications, Minus Platform and Infrastructure Hassles

      Remember the days when technology platforms sat in silos and our fierce allegiance to them did too? “We’re a Mac shop,” admins would announce. “We’re all in on Windows,” another might say.

      Those days are quickly fading, along with the barriers that used to separate platform and infrastructure technologies. Instead, we are moving toward a world of containers, multiple instances of virtual machines, and multiple operating systems working in tandem. This is especially true in data centers, and open source tools are helping to drive the trend.

      There is a pronounced need for ways to run applications on multiple types of infrastructure, ranging from bare metal to virtual machines to containers to the cloud. That’s where Habitat comes in. It’s an open source project focused on “automation that travels with the application.” It has pedigree, too. Habitat comes from the makers of the venerable configuration management and automation platform Chef, which, like Puppet, has helped to optimize many heterogeneous technology environments.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • 8 Best and Most Popular Linux Desktop Environments of All Time

      In this article, we shall list and walk through some of the best desktop environments for Linux, including a few of their illustrious features and components. However, we should note that this list is not organized in any particular order.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Connect links your Android phone with your Linux desktop

        Despite the name, KDE Connect isn’t just for KDE Plasma desktop users. You can install KDE Connect on any Linux desktop environment. After that, you’ll just need to install the KDE Connect app for Android from the Google Play Store.

        With KDE Connect on your Linux PC and Android phone, you’ll be able to link them together. Notifications you receive on your Android phone will appear on your Linux PC. If you receive an SMS message on your phone, you’ll see it on your Linux PC and you can respond to it from Linux. KDE Connect also offers other useful features, like the ability to trigger custom commands and use your phone as a media controller remote. The connection is made without any servers—your phone and PC connect directly to each other using TLS encryption over the local network.

        Read more

      • KDE Arrives in Berlin, Elects Thomas Pfeiffer to the e.V. Board

        Today KDE has been arriving in Berlin for Akademy, our annual meeting, which is year is part of the larger QtCon conference. This year we are teaming up with KDAB to gather together with the wider community of Qt developers for the first time, which is a major opportunity to share experiences between the open source and the commercial worlds. Also at the gathering are the VLC developers. VLC is one of the most successful open source projects successfully reaching out to users on all platforms and is a project we have long cooperated with. And the Free Software Foundation Europe will be brining the important political edge to our talks.

      • Kubuntu-16.04 and updates

        I installed kubuntu-16.04 in April. Although I don’t use it much, I occasionally boot into it to check a few things. Whenever I booted into Kubuntu, I looked to see if the update applet was notifying me of updates. I left the system running for an hour or more, to give it plenty of time to find out.s

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Distributions

    • Finding Five Good Linux Distributions Isn’t That Easy

      This is a good alternative list of distribution suggestions. Android is an interesting shout but having tried it myself I think something needs to happen with regards to navigation to make it worthwhile.

      Xubuntu is always a worthy suggestion and it makes a good base for creating the distribution you really want.

      I tried Netrunner out recently. Whilst it is a reasonable distribution I am not personally a fan of the KDE desktop. Netrunner does come with a good set of applications pre-installed.

    • I Asked “What Are The Best Linux Distributions For The Average Person”, You Answered

      August was a light month for me blogging wise because I was in Florida for 2 weeks and unable to post anything.

      In September I will be ramping things back up and writing more reviews and more tutorials.

      What this process has shown me is that I have a lot of good readers and I thank everyone who submitted a list and everyone who reads the blog.

      I also have a very diverse reader base with people coming from all over the world to submit their lists.

      From a technical point of view there were 42 different distribution suggestions and this is maybe why it is hard to suggest a top 5.

      However if I sort the data based on the number of suggestions per distribution the top 5 are as follows:

      Linux Mint
      Ubuntu
      Manjaro
      Linux Lite
      Ubuntu MATE / ZorinOS

      My original list included three of those distributions and the two that didn’t make the list above are Peppermint OS and PCLinuxOS.

      I can’t argue with Linux Lite and it is definitely up for a new review in September and Ubuntu MATE should probably have made the list of PCLinuxOS. As mentioned earlier I have concerns over Zorin and I will state my case in a new article next week.

      I stick with my suggestion of Peppermint however because it has been around a long time and it provides a good blend between being lightweight yet productive. I also personally still think PCLinuxOS is a good choice although often overlooked.

    • New Releases

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • Throw a Beta Pizza Party
      • openSUSE 42.2 Pushed Back as Beta is Released
      • openSUSE Releases Leap Beta, Modifies Road Map

        Software testers and Linux enthusiasts can now get the Beta release of openSUSE Leap 42.2, which was released today.

        “Leap is for pragmatic and conservative technology adopters,” said Ludwig Nussel, the release manager for openSUSE Leap. “Testing the beta helps make Leap even more mature, so we encourage as many people as possible to test it.”

        openSUSE Leap focuses on well-established packages, like systemd 228 and Qt 5.6. The release day for the official version is scheduled for Nov. 16, which is one week after SUSECon.

      • Tumbleweed Enhances Encryption, has Massive Updates

        openSUSE users are at no loss for getting new software as this week the rolling distribution Tumbleweed had several snapshot releases and there was a beta release for openSUSE Leap 42.2.

        openSUSE’s rolling distribution Tumbleweed, which was originally created by Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman, had six snapshots two weeks ago and four last week. This week we will look at another six snapshots.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat’s Latest OpenStack Platform Boasts New Management Features

        Red Hat is known to some people as the only U.S.-based public company that is exclusively focused on open source, and known to many for its Linux-focused strategy complemented by rock solid support. But as I’ve noted before, the cloud beckons in a big way for Red Hat. The company has recently extended a broad partnership with Microsoft focused on Linux and cloud agreements.

        And now, Red Hat has announced the availability of Red Hat OpenStack Platform 9, its latest open Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform designed to deploy, scale and manage private cloud, public cloud, and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) environments. It’s based on the OpenStack community “Mitaka” release, and Red Hat says it offers customers a more secure, production-ready automated cloud platform integrated with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2, Red Hat Ceph Storage 2, and Red Hat CloudForms for hybrid cloud management and monitoring.

      • Red Hat Inc. ranks 25th as most innovative company under the Forbes list of ‘World’s Most Innovative Companies’ list
      • Red Hat still plans on being The OpenStack company

        Other companies — Canonical, SUSE, and Mirantis — all plan on being OpenStack powers, but Red Hat shows it’s determined to be number one with its latest OpenStack cloud release.

      • Red Hat Takes Aim at VMware With RHV

        Although VMware and Red Hat might have seemed to be best buddies at last week’s LinuxCon, this week it’s become obvious that Red Hat is locked and loaded and has VMware in its sites. During a week when the suits at the virtualization company would doubtlessly like attention focused on Las Vegas and its VMWorld 2016 users’ conference, Red Hat has been stealing the headlines on just about every major tech site with news of its own virtualization products.

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • SUSE Contributions, Fedora & Korora 24 Reviews, Security Distros
        • Fedora 25 Alpha Released with Wayland Default
        • Korora 24

          The Korora distribution is based on Fedora and provides users with several desktop editions. Each edition of Korora ships with multimedia support and with several third-party repositories enabled. This gives Korora access to a wider range of software with its default configuration.

          The latest release of Korora, version 24, is based on Fedora 24 and includes the same changes and technology as its parent. The Korora release is available in four flavours (Cinnamon, GNOME, MATE and Xfce). A fifth edition featuring KDE’s Plasma desktop is planned, but was not available when I began this review. The new release media is available for the 64-bit x86 architecture exclusively, however existing Korora 23 users who run 32-bit systems can perform live upgrades to Korora 24. The Pharlap driver manager has been removed from this release.

        • The next version of Fedora picks up Rust

          You know a language has arrived when its toolchain ships as a standard component with operating systems.

          Rust, Mozilla’s language for safe and speedy systems level programming, has landed a prime-time slot in the next edition of Fedora Linux, according to the change set for the first public alpha for Fedora 25.

        • Crash test dummy? Love the excitement of breaking an OS? Fedora 25 Alpha has landed

          If you’re a chronic complainer and nit-picker with a spare machine and a willingness to suffer multiple crashes, weird screen artefacts and possible data loss: Fedora 25′s alpha has landed ahead of its anticipated November 2016 release.

          If you want to help the developers by breaking stuff, don’t risk dual-boot on OS X if you’ve got live data, because this known bug is a treat:

          “The installer appears to support volume shrink for OS X volumes (Apple Core Storage) by offering a Shrink button and sizing slider in Automatic partitioning; and likewise allow numeric resizing in Manual partitioning. However, setting the installer to resize these volumes and proceeding with installation will result in complete data loss of the volume. Resize the volume in OS X’s Disk Utility to create free space before proceeding with the installation of Fedora.”

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Touch OTA-13 to Be Released on September 14, Add Numerous Improvements

            We’ve been asked by many of our readers what’s going on with the development of the next major OTA software update for Canonical’s Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system for Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu Tablet devices, the OTA-13.

          • Should You Upgrade To Ubuntu 16.04 From Ubuntu 14.04

            Ubuntu 16.04 has been out for about 4 months now and it is the latest long term support release which gurarantees support for 5 more years.

            Do you need to upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04 right now or should you wait a while? In this guide I am going to list reasons for and against upgrading to Ubuntu 16.04 and help you to decide when it is right for you.

          • Ubuntu Working On Improved Low Graphics Mode For Unity 7

            While Ubuntu developers continue work on preparing the Unity 8 desktop for rolling out across all form-factors, Unity 7 is still seeing some new improvements as their interim desktop solution.

          • 5 Things We Secretly Miss About Ubuntu

            Sure, it’s super stable, far more compatible, and less buggy than it was a few years back. The polish and professionalism mirrors Canonical’s own transition from scrappy startup to server-ruling stalwart.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • ReSpeaker Is an Upcoming Open Source, Modular Voice Interface to Hack Things

      Softpedia was informed by SeeedStudio about an upcoming device that was fully funded in twelve hours on Kickstart, while still having 20 days to go on its crowdfunding campaign.

    • Linaro Announces First Development Board Compliant with 96Boards TV Platform Specification

      Linaro Ltd, the collaborative engineering organization developing open source software for the ARM® architecture, today announced support for the HiSilicon ‘Poplar’ board – the first development board compliant with the 96Boards Enterprise Edition TV Platform specification. The board is the latest addition to the 96Boards family, the open specification defining a platform for the delivery of low-cost 32-bit and 64-bit ARM ecosystem developer boards. It is available to purchase for under $100 from Tocoding Technologies.

    • HiSilicon’s Poplar Is The First Linaro 96Boards EE TV Platform

      Linaro has announced the first development board that supports their 96Boards’ Enterprise Edition TV Platform specification.

      The HiSilicon Poplar development board is their first TV Platform compliant product and targets set-top box developers and hobbyists. The Poplar dev board is powered by a Hi3798C V200 SoC that packs in a quad-core 64-bit Cortex-A53 processor and Mali T720 for graphics. The Poplar board costs $79 USD or closer to $100 when factoring in shipping.

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

  • Have a strum on Lightning Uke, the first open-source 3D printed electric ukulele
  • 3D printed ukulele comes with open source software

    A team of designers from Taiwan recently have created an open-source 3D printed electronic ukelele. This could very well to be the first open-source one in the world. With a full-size fretboard, regular strings and tuners, and a custom-made amplifier, pick-up, and speaker, the exotically shaped ukelele was named Lightening Uke and was particularly designed for consumer 3D printers.

    No matter for masters or green-hands, an ukulele would always be a good choice to play because of its portability and user-friendliness. However, few of these players would claim to be able to play “Over the Rainbow” with a 3D printed instrument. Surely we have already seen several 3D printed instruments online, (like the 3D printed violin) but these Taiwanese designers noticed that there weren’t any open-source ukuleles and that’s why they decided to bring this unique instrument to all makers.

  • Why News Corp loves open source

    The struggles of publishing giant News Corp and its media brethren are no secret, but from an IT perspective scurrying to cut costs amidst falling revenues may have inadvertently put the business on the path to innovation.

    Speaking at the Future IT Infrastructure forum in Melbourne this week, News Corp’s top infrastructure architect Nicholas Tan urged his peers to join the publisher in embracing the open source community.

    Open source is not “hobby software” anymore, Tan said.

    “It’s definitely the real deal and it is powering a lot of the tech we consume today even if we don’t realise it.”

    News Corp has been gradually deploying open source technologies at strategic points in its stack – “where our major business value is, where we need to be highly differentiated – that is where our developer talent will go”, Tan said.

  • How small enterprises can leverage open-source to build for the enterprise

    Open-Source software allows small businesses to leverage millions of dollars worth of software to build customized solutions which are usually well supported by a global community of users. Many of Canada’s closest allies have already made huge strides to adopt it for their biggest and most challenging IT projects.

  • Survey: Infographic Shows Open Source Increasingly Embraced by Developers

    Open source platforms are no longer just for a small group of hardcore coders. A recent study by Black Duck and North Bridge of developers and security professionals shows that 65 percent of respondents have embraced open source as a critical element of their development strategy.

    Emerging technologies such as containers are also on the rise; 59 percent of respondents already utilize containers in a variety of deployments to speed up their go-to-market strategies, from development and testing to internal and external production environment.

  • Culture and lack of skills holding back Australia’s open source adoption: Coles

    When it comes to the adoption of open source technologies in Australia, Niall Keating, head of Big Data at supermarket giant Coles, has said that it is both the culture and talent shortage that is holding the country back.

    Having worked in the Hadoop space for the past four years, Keating said he has seen a shift in attitude towards open source, watching businesses deploy such technology in earnest to solve real business problems.

  • Web4Africa has launched a data mirror project to localise popular open-source content in Nigeria

    Pan-African web hosting company, Web4Africa, has launched the first West African mirror project aimed at providing a local mirror of popular open-source projects in Nigeria.

    The Nigerian Mirror Project, which is physically hosted in Nigeria, will reduce the high cost of bandwidth by bringing free and open-source content closer to end-users in Nigeria through data mirroring. Access to bandwidth in Nigeria is expensive compared to most parts of the world, and this is mostly due to the fact that most of the content consumed by Nigerian Internet users is generated outside the country. With this Mirror Project, free and open-source software will become more available, and user experience will be made better with faster downloads.

  • The Intersection of Alchemy and Open Source

    As open source continues to take over over the software development landscape, so too are the metaphors for how its success today has multiple historical precedents. For science-fiction author and activitist Cory Doctorow, open source is an idea that helped to raise humanity out of the dark ages.

    In a keynote at the LinuxCon North America conference in Toronto last week, Doctorow compared the age of open source to the enlightenment.

  • Baidu open sources its deep learning platform PaddlePaddle

    Taking a cue from some of its U.S. peers like Google, Chinese Internet search giant Baidu has decided to open source its deep learning platform.

    The company claims that the platform, code-named PaddlePaddle after PArallel Distributed Deep LEarning, will let developers focus on the high-level structure of their models without having to worry about the low-level details. A machine translation program written with PaddlePaddle, for example, requires significantly less code than on other popular deep learning platforms, said Baidu spokeswoman Calisa Cole.

  • Baidu open-sources Python-driven machine learning framework
  • Baidu Open Sources its Deep Learning AI Platform
  • Chinese Search Company Wants to Revolutionize Deep Learning
  • Baidu open sources its machine learning software
  • China’s homegrown AI sector takes off
  • Baidu Open-Sources PaddlePaddle Deep Learning Platform
  • Baidu peddles PaddlesPaddles, floats open source AI tech
  • China’s Baidu to open-source its deep learning AI platform
  • Baidu follows US tech giants and open sources its deep learning tools
  • Baidu Signs Partnership Deal With HARMAN; To Open Source Software Platform
  • Baidu to Open Source New Platform for Deep Learning Community
  • Baidu Delivers a Hardened Open Source Deep Learning Tool

    A few weeks ago, in an article for TechCrunch, Spark Capital’s John Melas-Kyriazi weighed in on how startups can leverage artificial intelligence and deep learning tools to advance their businesses or even give birth to brand new ones. In a subsequent post, I noted that quite a few of them have been tested and hardened at Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other companies, and some of them may represent business opportunities.Since then, there has been more action on the open source AI and deep learning front.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Back End

    • Build vs. buy equation changes, as open source big data tools surge

      Build vs. buy is a decision that has long been intrinsic to the mission of the IT leader. In the age of big data and open source software tooling, the familiar dilemma has taken a different tone, according to reporters speaking in the latest edition of the Talking Data podcast.

      Important elements in making build vs. buy decisions are the total cost of ownership of software over time, the competitive benefit to be gained by adding new features quickly and the skill sets available within the organization for any given new technology initiative.

    • On complexity in big data

      What’s the scale we’re using here? What makes big data and NoSQL more complex than cloud or mobile?

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Contemplating the retirement of Apache OpenOffice

      Outgoing Apache OpenOffice project management committee (PMC) chair Dennis Hamilton has begun the discussion of a possible (note possible at this point) shutdown of the project. “In the case of Apache OpenOffice, needing to disclose security vulnerabilities for which there is no mitigation in an update has become a serious issue. In responses to concerns raised in June, the PMC is currently tasked by the ASF Board to account for this inability and to provide a remedy. An indicator of the seriousness of the Board’s concern is the PMC been requested to report to the Board every month, starting in August, rather than quarterly, the normal case. One option for remedy that must be considered is retirement of the project. The request is for the PMC’s consideration among other possible options.” (Thanks to James Hogarth.)

  • CMS

    • Drupal 8.2, now with more outside-in

      Over the weekend, Drupal 8.2 beta was released. One of the reasons why I’m so excited about this release is that it ships with “more outside-in”. In an “outside-in experience”, you can click anything on the page, edit its configuration in place without having to navigate to the administration back end, and watch it take effect immediately. This kind of on-the-fly editorial experience could be a game changer for Drupal’s usability.

      When I last discussed turning Drupal outside-in, we were still in the conceptual stages, with mockups illustrating the concepts. Since then, those designs have gone through multiple rounds of feedback from Drupal’s usability team and a round of user testing led by Cheppers. This study identified some issues and provided some insights which were incorporated into subsequent designs.

      Two policy changes we introduced in Drupal 8 — semantic versioning and experimental modules — have fundamentally changed Drupal’s innovation model starting with Drupal 8. I should write a longer blog post about this, but the net result of those two changes is ongoing improvements with an easy upgrade path. In this case, it enabled us to add outside-in experiences to Drupal 8.2 instead of having to wait for Drupal 9. The authoring experience improvements we made in Drupal 8 are well-received, but that doesn’t mean we are done. It’s exciting that we can move much faster on making Drupal easier to use.

  • Education

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

  • Public Services/Government

    • Which countries have open-source laws on the books?

      As the institutional use of open-source software continues to expand like an octopus, the public sector remains a key target market.

      Government users like Linux and other open-source software for several reasons, but the most important ones are probably that total cost of ownership is often lower than it is for proprietary products and that open-source projects don’t vanish if the company providing them goes under.

    • German free software proponents approach lawmakers

      German members of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) are once again contacting political candidates in next month’s state elections. The major, traditional parties fear the unknown, while left, green and pirate parties favour the use of such software in public administration.

      In the state of Berlin and the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern FSFE members are studying the party programmes. At the same time, the group is lobbying the candidates, advocating public administration’s use of free and open source software solutions.

    • Free Software in the Berlin election programs
    • Germany While Leading In Adoption Of FLOSS Still Has Luddites In High Places
    • Corbyn Promises Broadband For All And Open Source Government

      Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn vows to democratise the internet with funding, better public services, open source software and broadband access

      Jeremy Corbyn has pledged to deliver superfast broadband and mobile coverage to every home and business in the UK as part of a digital manifesto that also includes support for open source software.

      The Labour leader described a ‘universal service network’ that would provide the connectivity, alongside online resources for education, a digital bill of rights and a ‘digital passport’ that would be used as a secure online identity for public services.

      Public funding would be made available to make the cost of connecting citizens with services such as transport, accommodation, culture and catering and any Labour government would require all software and hardware paid for by public money to be made open source.

    • CNAS report recommends DOD ‘embrace open-source software’

      A new report from the Center for a New American Security is recommending the Pentagon take more aggressive steps to embrace open-source software.

    • Defense Department failing to capitalize on open-source benefits

      The Defense Department increasingly relies on software for everything from weapons systems to accounting, but it is failing to capitalize on the power of open-source software, according to a report from the Center for a New American Security.

    • Defense Department needs to embrace open source or military will lose tech superiority

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Data

      • Nice: NASA Opens Up Its Research Online For Free

        Every once in a while, we get some good news out of a government agency. Based on a 2013 directive from the White House, NASA had finally announced early this year that it would be following the NIH model and making its publicly funded research available for free online. With the only caveat being a restriction on research that relates to national security, NASA has made good on plans to publish the rest of this research on Pubspace, its new publicly-facing portal for sharing this research.

  • Programming/Development

    • Converseen 0.9.5 porting to Qt5 is available for Linux

      During the last weeks I worked on the Qt5 porting of my open source project Converseen, a cross-platform batch conversion and image processor tool, thanks to the help of rezso, an user from GitHub who sent me some patches with a lot of useful changes that enabled the project to be compiled with Qt5.

      In addition to this, I spent a couple of hours making the project compatible (and compilable) with Visual Studio 2015 in order to make it available for Windows platforms, too. In particular, the Windows version comes with ImageMagick 6.9.5 HDRI bundled in the same package.

    • Preliminary Qt 5.8 Alpha Packages Now Available

      The Qt Project is readying the Qt 5.8.0 Alpha toolkit release.

      Qt 5.8 is now under a feature freeze and working to get its release schedule back on track with hopes of releasing Qt 5.8 before Christmas.

    • GitHub Showcases Most Popular Open Source Developer Tools

      With open source having “won” in becoming “today’s preeminent architecture,” developers may want to check up on the most popular development tools used in community projects.

      One place to do that is GitHub, the go-to choice for developers worldwide to host their open source projects. Sure, the company has published the occasional report based on data mining its stores of projects, such as one recent study of the most popular programming languages, but there’s another resource that devs can consult at any time to check up on the hottest trends in open source development.

    • 5 great Java performance optimization tricks

      Optimizing your Java code requires an understanding of how the different elements in Java interact, and how it interacts with the operating system that is it running on. Use these five tips and resources to start learning how to analyze and optimize your code.

      Before we get to the good stuff, you might be concerned about licensing. Java is owned by Oracle, and is under Oracle’s BCL license which is not a free/open source license. Even so, Oracle Java is part of many open source projects. OpenJDK is the free software implementation of the Java platform, licensed under GPL v2. (See Free Java implementations on Wikipedia for more information.)

Leftovers

  • Genode OS 16.08 Released With seL4 Kernel Improvements

    Genode OS 16.08 allows running more software off the seL4 micro-kernel, adds support for virtual networking and Tor, support for VirtualBox on top of the Muen separation kernel, support for VirtualBox 5 on their NOVA kernel, virtual AHCI controller support, statistical profiling support, and more.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • WHO Debates Expansion Of Role In Virus-Sharing

      The global treatment of influenza is under reconsideration at the World Health Organization this week, as a review group of a WHO influenza pandemic framework looks at issues such as its relationship with an international treaty protecting countries’ ownership biological resources.

    • WHO Flu Pandemic Framework Working, Group Says; Some Concerned

      A World Health Organization framework to respond to influenza pandemics is working successfully, the confidential draft report of a review team has found. But some areas, such as virus genetic information, still need more work. Stakeholders, meanwhile, are challenging some findings and a concern was raised that lawyers may be influencing the science behind decisions on this issue.

  • Security

    • Linux Foundation Restructuring CII Security Effort for Scale

      Since creating the Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) in 2014 in response to the Heartbleed vulnerability in the OpenSSL cryptographic library, the Linux Foundation has raised $5.8 million in funding to support the effort. It easily could raise much more, given its popularity.

      Nicko van Someren, CTO of the Linux Foundation, is leading an effort to restructure the governance model for the CII, to help accelerate security for the internet. In a video interview, he details his suggested changes, which are being reviewed by the CII’s existing membership.

    • BlackArch Linux Ethical Hacking OS Is Now Powered by Kernel 4.7.2, New ISOs Out

      On August 30, 2016, the development team behind the BlackArch Linux penetration testing distribution based on Arch Linux announced the release of new Live ISO images with updated components and various improvements.

    • Kali Linux 2016.2 Released as the Most Advanced Penetration Testing Distribution

      The Kali Linux (successor to BackTrack) developers are back from the DEF CON Vegas and Black Hat conferences for security professionals and ethical hackers, and as they promised earlier this year, they’re now announcing the availability of Kali Linux 2016.2.

    • Fairware ransomware for Linux Web servers
    • The Newcomer FairWare Ransomware Hits Linux Running Servers (Maybe)
    • New and Mysterious FairWare Ransomware Targets Linux Servers
    • FairWare Ransomware Strikes Linux Systems, Deletes Files, Demands Bitcoin Payment
    • New FairWare ransomware targets Linux web servers, holds web folder hostage
    • Fantom and FairWare ransomware discovered
    • FairWare ransomware infects servers through exposed Redis instances [Ed: Rerunning a story from last month to make Linux sounds scary, due to a Redis misconfiguration]
    • Insecure Redis Instances at Core of Attacks Against Linux Servers
    • Blackhat wannabes proffer probably bogus Linux scamsomware

      A new purported ransomware variant is hitting Linux servers, deleting files and demanding payment for the return of lost data.

      The scam is possibly a bluff, since it does not follow the regular format of encrypting files and leaving ransom notes for slick and automated payment.

      Information on the attacks is scarce. Bleeping Computer researcher Lawrence Abrams suspects it is likely a copy of the deleted files with the web folder uploaded to an attacker’s server, rather than complex encryption being applied.

    • School Creates Own Security Hole; Tries To Have Concerned Parent Arrested For Hacking

      We’ve seen it so often over the years, it’s probably now time to accept the fact that this will never change: when entities are presented evidence of security holes and breaches, far too often the initial reaction is to shoot the messenger.

      A school whose online student portal exposed a lot of sensitive data decided the best way to handle a concerned parent’s repeated questions about how it was handling the problem was to file a criminal complaint against the parent. (via the Office of Inadequate Security)

      The details of the breach (since closed) were reported by independent journalist Sherrie Peif.

    • [Tor] A New Bridge Authority

      After ten years of volunteer maintenance of Tonga, Tor’s bridge Authority—a piece of critical infrastructure within the Tor network—our colleague and friend, Lucky Green, a long time cypherpunk, and free speech and privacy advocate, has decided to step down from this role. Tonga’s cryptographic keys will be destroyed this week. We are incredibly thankful to Lucky for all his support and selfless labour in maintaining a key component of our censorship circumvention efforts, grateful for the years we have spent working with him, and very sorry to see him go.

    • More Than 40% Of Attacks Abuse SSL Encryption

      There’s an important caveat about encrypted traffic from new research released this week: Encryption works so well that hackers are using it as cover.

      A new study from A10 and the Ponemon Institute found that 80% of respondents say their organizations have been the victim of a cyberattack or malicious insiders in the past year — and 41% of the attacks have used encryption to evade detection. In addition, 75% say malware hidden within encrypted traffic is a risk to their organizations.

      At issue: The report found that SSL encryption not only hides data from would-be hackers but also from common security tools.

      “Hackers are using SSL encryption to slide by standard perimeter defenses,” says Chase Cunningham, director of cyber operations at A10 Networks.

    • The Cloud Security Alliance publishes its best practices for Big Data security

      Big Data is a boon for businesses worldwide, but the benefits come at a cost. The more data companies store, the more vulnerable they are to potential security breaches. And data breaches can be enormously expensive when they occur. IBM’s 2016 Cost of Data Breach report found that the average consolidated total cost of a data breach grew from $3.8 million to $4 million in the last year, which makes securing their data an important goal for any company that’s invested in it.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Clinton: Treat cyberattacks ‘like any other attack’

      Hillary Clinton on Wednesday called for the U.S. to begin treating cyberattacks like any other assault on the country.

      “As president, I will make it clear that the United States will treat cyberattacks just like any other attack,” the Democratic presidential nominee said. “We will be ready with serious political, economic and military responses.”

      Clinton called for the U.S. to “lead the world in setting the rules in cyberspace.”

      “If America doesn’t, others will,” she said.

      The remarks, given during a foreign policy speech at the American Legion Convention in Cincinnati, address one the central challenges the Obama administration has faced in responding to cyberattacks.

    • How Clinton And US Government Benefit When New York Times Attacks WikiLeaks

      Without any evidence whatsoever, the New York Times published a “special report” tying the operations of WikiLeaks to Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Times reporters strongly suggested, “whether by conviction, convenience, or coincidence,” WikiLeaks’ document releases, along with statements by its editor-in-chief Julian Assange, have “often benefited Russia at the expense of the West.”

      This kind of journalism has historically been labeled yellow journalism. It is a crude exaggeration and distorting of reality aimed at sensationalism. Times reporters fuel a manufactured idea that somehow WikiLeaks is a Russian pawn of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the country’s new Cold War against the United States.

      In fact, decades ago, the CIA spread anti-communist propaganda and disinformation, which had a way of making it into American newspapers. Perhaps, during that era this type of story would have been planted by the CIA in the Times, however, nowadays the CIA does not need to plant news stories. Journalists willingly adopt their agenda and ideology and publish stories like this one, which have the same effect.

  • Finance

    • French minister calls for halt to TTIP talks

      There is ‘no more political support’ in France for EU-US trade pact, foreign trade secretary says.

      By Joshua Posaner for Politico Pro

      France wants to stop negotiations on a transatlantic trade pact between the EU and U.S., the country’s secretary of state for foreign trade said Tuesday.

      Matthias Fekl said “there is no more political support in France for these negotiations,” adding that “France calls for an end to these negotiations,” according to AFP.

    • The Secret Threat That Makes Corporations More Powerful Than Countries

      International corporations that want to intimidate countries have access to a private legal system designed just for them. And to unlock its power, sometimes all it takes is a threat. Part two of a BuzzFeed News investigation

    • Apple to shareholders: order to pay back $14.5bn in taxes ‘will be overturned’

      Tech giant Apple told shareholders it did not consider the European commission’s decision to collect $14.5bn in back taxes final on Tuesday and was “confident that it will be overturned”, but analysts warned the picture was more complex.

      In a note posted to the company’s investor relations page, the company said it did “not expect any near-term impact on our financial results” and that it was prepared to pursue the matter in court for years to come. “While we desire a resolution as soon as possible, the process is likely to take several years,” the company said.

      Peter Kenny, senior market strategist at Global Markets Advisory Group, said that it wasn’t clear which side would prevail, ultimately. “There’s no telling whether the verdict will stand on appeal, but we know that the landscape is changing for US corporations in the EU,” he told the Guardian.

    • Apple ordered to pay €13bn after EU rules Ireland broke state aid laws

      Apple has warned that future investment by multinationals in Europe could be hit after it was ordered to pay a record-breaking €13bn (£11bn) in back taxes to Ireland.

      The world’s largest company was presented with the huge bill after the European commission ruled that a sweetheart tax deal between Apple and the Irish tax authorities amounted to illegal state aid.

      The commission said the deal allowed Apple to pay a maximum tax rate of just 1%. In 2014, the tech firm paid tax at just 0.005%. The usual rate of corporation tax in Ireland is 12.5%.

      “Member states cannot give tax benefits to selected companies – this is illegal under EU state aid rules,” said the European competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, whose investigation of Apple’s complex tax dealings has taken three years.

    • Apple Inc. Could Lose $19 Billion In Ireland On Tax Probe

      Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) was offered some reprieve on a European tax investigation in recent days after Margrethe Vestager, the Danish Commission in charge of the inquiry, decided to slow down its progress toward making conclusions. Despite that, Apple could still be very much in trouble in Europe, and a new report outlines some of the dangers that Tim Cook and his team may be facing.

    • European Commission Rules Apple Received Illegal State Aid From Ireland, Owes Billions in Back Taxes

      The European Commission on Tuesday will rule that Apple received illegal state aid from Ireland, according to a 130-page judgment known by Financial Times.

    • Apple’s Tax Game Is Hurting Economic Growth

      It’s a big number, though not nearly the tax bill Apple would owe the U.S. if it pulled the $92 billion in profits it is currently storing in Irish and other overseas accounts back to its home country.

      CEO Tim Cook says 40 percent of that would go in taxes to the U.S. and state governments, an amount he recently told the Washington Post Apple would not be willing to pay. “It’s not a matter of being patriotic or not patriotic,” Cook said. “It doesn’t go that the more you pay, the more patriotic you are.”

    • Industry’s Proposed Changes To Draft TPP Were Not Protected Under National Security Exemption, US Judge Says

      Changes to the draft text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) suggested during negotiation of the treaty are not protected under the national security clause of the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a judge ruled yesterday in a rare rejection. But he also defended USTR’s protection of information on the basis that other countries in TPP might accuse the US of “steamrolling” them if US textual proposals from the negotiations were revealed.

    • Theresa May will lead us into a bleak future – outside the single market

      In a famous eulogy published following his death in 1881, the Times wrote of the 19th-century Tory prime minister Benjamin Disraeli that he “discerned the Conservative working man in the inarticulate mass of the English populace, as the sculptor perceives the angel imprisoned in a block of marble”.

      Can Disraeli’s admirer Theresa May already discern the shape of her Brexit deal imprisoned in the block of marble too? This week’s cabinet meeting at Chequers gave us some clues about the Britain the prime minister sees in her mind’s eye. A briefing stressed that curbing migration is a red line, and that Britain is not interested in an off-the-shelf deal with Europe but a bespoke one. Nevertheless it is still far from clear, perhaps even to May herself, what will emerge once she has finished with her hammer and chisel.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • New DNC Chair Donna Brazile Calls WikiLeaks’ Assange A ‘Criminal’ Over DNC Leak

      In an interview on Sunday, the interim chair of the Democratic National Committee criticized Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who she called a “criminal,” and the media for what she perceived to be positive treatment of the government transparency website’s work.

      Donna Brazile took over as interim DNC chair in July after Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned in the wake of WikiLeaks’ “DNC Leak,” an archive of almost 20,000 emails and over 8,000 files that also forced out other key party leaders.

      Appearing on ABC News’ “This Week”, Brazile praised Americans for supporting the victims of the Louisiana flood then criticized Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for his failure to distance himself from the racist statements and attitudes of some of his supporters, including the so-called “alt-right” movement.

    • Bernie Sanders is a no-show for Tim Canova

      Bernie Sanders, the politician who elevated first-time candidate Tim Canova to national attention and a rich campaign warchest, doesn’t appear to be coming to South Florida to help out his protégé in his battle against U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

      At a press conference Wednesday — less than a week before the Aug. 30 primary — at his Hollywood campaign office, Canova pushed back against reporters’ questions about why Sanders hasn’t appeared in the Broward/Miami-Dade district.

      “You tell me why he isn’t coming,” said Canova. “I don’t have an answer to that. I am very proud to have his support. Quite frankly we don’t need him here to win this election. Our field operation is growing by the day. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the one who needs to run out and get folks to come in from out of town to help protect her — to shield her from the voters. I am out there talking to voters every day.”

    • The Green Party’s Jill Stein Wants a Green New Deal

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • EU: Europe needs to invest $800bn in digital infrastructure to catch up with US

      Europe needs to invest close to $800bn in its digital infrastructure to catch up with the United States and China, the European Union commissioner responsible for the issue said on Thursday.

      Commissioner Guenther Oettinger also urged fellow Austrians to reject populist views that could deter technology experts from migrating to Europe to help drive development.

      If Europe can’t develop fibre-optic networks and next-generation high-speed 5G wireless applications and networks fast enough “we will lose, because important technological applications will not be possible any longer in our industry”, Oettinger said.

    • ESPN Can’t Get Out of NFL Player’s Privacy Lawsuit Over Reporter’s Tweet

      ESPN is no Gawker, but the sports giant is now facing the prospect of a trial in Florida that has shades of the litigation brought by Hulk Hogan over an invasion of privacy.

    • Court: Okay For Trial To Move Forward Against ESPN For Tweeting JPP’s Medical Chart

      ESPN’s lawyers also pointed out that Pierre-Paul is not suggesting that Schefter was prohibited from reporting on the exact details within the chart, which was the actual harming information if any harm actually was done, but that tweeting out the medical chart image itself suddenly was actionable. Why Pierre-Paul chose this attack on ESPN and a journalist rather than whatever source shared the chart with Schefter in the first place is largely left unaddressed, although the depth of the parties’ respective pockets likely has something to do with it.

      Regardless, this is a disappointing ruling on many levels. Those seeking medical attention certainly do have an expectation of privacy from those providing the healthcare work and one would think HIPAA violations may be in play here as well, but Pierre-Paul has no such expectation of privacy from a journalist covering him. The proper defendant in this case is obviously whomever provided the chart to Schefter and likely over HIPAA violations. Whatever the implications upon privacy at issue here, it seems quite clear that chilling the reporting of journalists who receive information from sources is not hte proper vector for addressing those issues. Between this and the Gawker case, along with the public comments by one well-known would-be politician, we seem to entering a different era in terms of how the press is viewed and treated in America.

    • FBI’s stingray quickly found suspect after local cops’ device couldn’t

      According to new government affidavits filed earlier this week, the Oakland Police Department (OPD) used its stingray without a warrant in 2013 for several hours overnight as a way to locate a man accused of being involved in shooting a local police officer. The OPD called in the FBI when that effort was unsuccessful. The FBI was somehow able to locate the suspect in under an hour, and he surrendered to OPD officers.

      That suspect, Purvis Ellis, is the lead defendant in the case of United States v. Ellis et al. The case involves four men who are charged with the January 21, 2013 attempted murder of local police officer Eric Karsseboom in the parking area in front of a Seminary Avenue apartment complex in East Oakland. The men are also charged with running an alleged local gang, centered around Seminary Avenue (known as “SemCity”).

    • Court Documents Show FBI Had To Bail Out Oakland Police With Its Bigger, Better Stingray

      The only reason these affidavits even exist is because the judge presiding over the prosecution of Purvis Ellis ordered the government to submit declarations detailing how the devices were used to locate him. Two declarations — one from the FBI [PDF] and one from the Oakland PD [PDF] — shed some additional light on the now-ubiquitous cell phone-tracking technology.

      Neither law enforcement agency sought a warrant for their Stingray deployments. Both declarations claim none was needed because of “exigent circumstances.” Given that this occurred before the DOJ instituted a warrant requirement for the FBI’s Stingray use, it’s unlikely any evidence is in danger of being tossed.

      The Oakland PD’s declaration states the same thing: no warrant was sought because of “exigent circumstances.” Similarly, there appears to have been no warrant requirement in place for the Oakland Police Department at that time. That doesn’t mean the court won’t find that the use of a Stingray device (or, in this case, two of them) requires the use of a warrant, but even if it does, the good faith exception is likely to apply — especially in the FBI’s case, as its warrant requirement was still thee years away. In both deployments, pen register orders were used to obtain subscriber info. Because exigent circumstances dictated the requests, no judicial approval of the orders was needed.

      Ellis’ lawyers are hoping the judge will find the circumstances surrounding the Stingray deployments to be not nearly as “exigent” as the government claims.

    • Lawsuit: Warriors App Secretly Allowed For Creepy, NSA-Style Tracking Of Users

      The Golden State Warriors are the team of the megalomaniacs and bloodsuckers of Silicon Valley, and they are run by a trophy-fucker who thinks he invented smallball. From their continued obfuscation of their own ridiculous luck with a teleological argument about how their success was predetermined by their organizational character to their second-best player humping the “Actually, Failure Is Good” line, they embody the worst tendencies of their region. I would have thought that secret data mining was beyond the capabilities of a basketball team, but according to a class-action lawsuit, the Warriors official team app may have violated users’ privacy. The lawsuit alleges that the team’s official smartphone app has recorded private conversations and other audio from users’ phones without their knowledge or permission, and without giving them the ability to opt out.

    • Flagrant foul? Mobile app user accuses NBA’s Warriors of spying on conversations
    • Lawsuit claims Warriors app used to secretly listen in on fans
    • Golden State Warriors Android app constantly listens to nearby audio, fan says
    • Lawsuit alleges that Warriors’ app illegally listens in on users
    • Lawsuit calls foul on Golden State Warriors’ app
    • Warriors’ app secretly records users’ conversations, according to lawsuit
    • Lawsuit filed against Warriors’ app for violating consumers’ privacy
    • Lawsuit claims popular Warriors app accesses phone’s microphone to eavesdrop on you
    • Class action lawsuit claims Warriors’ official app covertly listened to users
    • Golden State Warriors, Signal360 And App Developer Sued Over ‘Eavesdropping’ Allegations
    • Warriors Wrap Up: Warriors Face Lawsuit Regarding App
    • Lawsuit Claims Warriors App Monitors User Conversations
    • Lawsuit accuses Golden State Warriors of spying on fans through team app
    • Golden State Warriors’ app at the center of a lawsuit
    • Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Golden State Warriors to Notch Another NBA Championship?
    • Lawsuit Claims Warriors Team App Secretly Recorded Users’ Conversations
    • Warriors general manager says team will take time to evolve during new season
    • Golden State Warriors app alleged to record users’ conversations without consent
    • Lawsuit Claims Warriors Mobile App Eavesdrops On Fans Even When Not In Use
    • NBA Team Smartphone App Secretly Records Private Phone Conversations, Claims Lawsuit
    • Lawsuit claims Warriors app secretly records users’ conversations
    • NBA’s ‘Golden State Warriors’ app allegedly listens in on users’ conversations constantly
    • DOD data center closures could affect DC area
    • Inspector General Finds NYPD’s Surveillance Of Muslims Routinely Violated Consent Decree Guidelines

      Following two lawsuits against the NYPD for its pervasive, rights-violating surveillance of the city’s Muslims, the department’s Inspector General took a look at a sampling of cases from 2010-2015 to see if the Handschu Agreement — crafted in 1985 and heavily modified in 2002 — was being followed. The short answer is “No.” So is the long answer [PDF].

      The guideline was part of a consent decree created in response to pervasive NYPD surveillance of activities protected by the First Amendment, even when no unlawful activity was suspected. The guideline worked for awhile, but the 9/11 attacks changed that. The NYPD brought in two former CIA employees who decided to turn a domestic law enforcement agency into Langley on the Hudson. Former CIA officer David Cohen used terrorism fears to compel a judge to significantly modify the Handschu Agreement.

      >From that point on, the NYPD steadily abused the revamped agreement. Its “Demographics Unit” designated entire mosques as terrorist entities, placed the city’s Muslims under surveillance, and — best of all — generated zero leads.

      The Inspector General’s report points out that the NYPD couldn’t even comply with the relaxed, post-9/11 Handschu Agreement. Instead, the Demographics Unit copy-pasted justifications for pervasive surveillance and passed them up the ladder to the rubber stamps handling the approval process.

    • U.K. and Double Game of Terrorist Ratlines and GCHQ Spying: Control of Smartphones

      Edward Snowden warns about the role of big government in the United Kingdom (UK) and how the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) can literally control smartphones at the drop of a hat. Of course, this isn’t a shock to anyone because the British government is obsessed with monitoring various different social media networks and all forms of telecommunications. However, despite this, it is still alarming to know that GCHQ can even spy on individuals when smartphones are turned off and take images.

      Before focusing on the advice of Snowden and looking into GCHQ in relation to smartphones, it is important to mention the terrorist intrigues of the British government. After all, various governments in the UK, irrespective if the Conservative Party or Labour Party, have supported various terrorist groups since the late 1970s onward in relation to Sunni Takfiri Islamist groups. Indeed, if you go further back into history then obviously several British governments also helped America in various areas in relation to supporting right-wing authoritarian regimes throughout South America.

    • EU General Data Protection Regulation

      The GDPR seeks to afford technologically neutral protection, by addressing legal aspects of the processing and free movement of personal data in light of the technological developments of the past 20 years. The review of the personal data protection system that led to the GDPR derived from the central role that the Internet plays in personal and business life and the concerns of individuals about unlawful intrusions by both companies and public authorities into their personal data (e.g., see the CJEU’s judgement in case C-362/14, Maximillian Schrems v Data Protection Commissioner, invalidating of the EU-US Safe Harbor).

    • Leaked Catalogue Reveals a Vast Array of Military Spy Gear Offered to U.S. Police

      A confidential, 120-page catalogue of spy equipment, originating from British defense firm Cobham and circulated to U.S. law enforcement, touts gear that can intercept wireless calls and text messages, locate people via their mobile phones, and jam cellular communications in a particular area.

      The catalogue was obtained by The Intercept as part of a large trove of documents originating within the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, where spokesperson Molly Best confirmed Cobham wares have been purchased but did not provide further information. The document provides a rare look at the wide range of electronic surveillance tactics used by police and militaries in the U.S. and abroad, offering equipment ranging from black boxes that can monitor an entire town’s cellular signals to microphones hidden in lighters and cameras hidden in trashcans. Markings date it to 2014.

      Cobham, recently cited among several major British firms exporting surveillance technology to oppressive regimes, has counted police in the United States among its clients, Cobham spokesperson Greg Caires confirmed. The company spun off its “Tactical Communications and Surveillance” business into “Domo Tactical Communications” earlier this year, presumably shifting many of those clients to the new subsidiary. Caires declined to comment further on the catalogue obtained by The Intercept or confirm its authenticity, but said it “looked authentic” to him.

    • Privacy Groups File FTC Complaint Over Whatsapp Facebook Privacy ‘Bait And Switch’
    • Meet USBee, the malware that uses USB drives to covertly jump airgaps
    • USBee, the new malware that covertly jumps airgaps using USB drives
    • How to Leak Data From Air-Gapped Computers With a USB Device
    • Creating a buzz: USBee software causes air-gapped computers to leak data via USB connections
    • USBee stings air-gapped PCs: Wirelessly leak secrets with a file write
    • Researchers have replicated one of the NSA’s scariest hacking tools

      Called USBee, and developed by security researchers at the Ben-Gurion University’s Cyber Security Center, the technology lets attackers move data from a protected computer over the air. Certain conditions have to be met. First, an insider must infect the computer with the malware. Then, any USB stick must be plugged into that computer. Finally, the attacker needs to be near the compromised device.Called USBee, and developed by security researchers at the Ben-Gurion University’s Cyber Security Center, the technology lets attackers move data from a protected computer over the air. Certain conditions have to be met. First, an insider must infect the computer with the malware. Then, any USB stick must be plugged into that computer. Finally, the attacker needs to be near the compromised device.

    • FBI director: ‘There is no such thing as absolute privacy in America’

      Welcome back, hope you had a great summer, let’s get right back to our regularly scheduled cyber programming: A global war over encryption.

      FBI Director James Comey, who has spent the last six months itching to get back into a public debate over the spread of encryption and mandated special backdoor government access to data, took to a spotlighted stage on Tuesday to pointedly criticize tech companies who offer default strong encryption on devices, saying he was preparing for the argument to extend into 2017 and beyond.

    • The NSA Research Director Wants Hackers to Know Who She Is [Ed: Another NSA puff piece comes out now…]
    • Mysterious Group Hacks The NSA

      The latest hack revealed over the weekend has nothing to do with the Democratic Party or George Soros, and instead a mysterious hacker group by the name “The Shadow Brokers” claims to have hacked the Equation Group – a government cyberattack hacking group associated with the NSA, and released a bunch of the organization’s hacking tools. The hackers are also asking for 1 million bitcoin (around $568 million) in an auction to release more files.

      “Attention government sponsors of cyber warfare and those who profit from it!!!!” the hackers wrote in a manifesto posted on Pastebin, on GitHub, and on a dedicated Tumblr.

    • Cisco, Huawei and Juniper play down NSA attack reports

      Cisco, Huawei and Juniper have played down reports that the US National Security Agency (NSA) has developed tools to spy on traffic running through their equipment.

      Juniper and Cisco admitted that there were vulnerabilities, that have now been addressed. Huawei did not go so far, but said the company was making “significant investments” in security.

      The reports emerged after a group called Shadow Brokers released files that seemed to show the NSA was targeting not only US companies such as Cisco and Juniper but also Chinese vendor Huawei.

    • CIA director misled FBI about how agency spied on Pentagon Papers leaker

      CIA Director Richard Helms misled the FBI in June 1972 to cover up his agency’s role in helping to smear the reputation of Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked a secret history of the Vietnam War to the press, a newly released CIA document shows.

      In a June 28, 1972, memo to his deputy, Vernon Walters, Helms wrote that he asked the FBI to “desist from expanding this investigation into other areas which may well, eventually, run afoul of our operations.” Those details are included in the 155-page CIA inspector general’s report that was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative legal watchdog Judicial Watch and released Tuesday. Other elements of the document were first reported Tuesday by Fox News.

      Helms’ misdirection enabled the CIA’s role in the Pentagon Papers case to go undiscovered for 11 months amid a growing political scandal that would eventually force President Richard Nixon from office and lead to an extensive investigation into abuses by the CIA and other parts of the U.S. Intelligence community.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Strong evidence suggests a Peruvian police ‘death squad’ set up and killed criminal suspects

      Nine members of Peru’s national police are being investigated on suspicion of participating in a “death squad” responsible for as many as 27 killings carried out to secure promotions and impress superiors, government officials said.

      One police general, a commander and seven officers are suspected of having organized at least six bogus police operations from 2011 to 2015 that resulted in the deaths. While most of the victims had criminal pasts, at least 11 people killed during the operations had no police records, investigators say.

      A source within a special investigative committee formed by recently inaugurated President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski told the Los Angeles Times late Tuesday that investigators believe corrupt police using intermediaries persuaded delinquents to carry out robberies and then killed them during the heists to gain performance points.

    • EFF, ACLU Asks Ninth Circuit Court To Rehear Two Recent CFAA Cases

      The EFF and ACLU are pushing the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to hold full en banc rehearings (with all 11 judges, rather than just three) of two recent CFAA-related cases. The first case, US v. Nosal, is the more (in)famous of the two. In this decision, the court read the language of the CFAA broadly enough to criminalize a mostly-harmless everyday activity participated in by thousands of Americans: password sharing.

      The court tried to couple this with some “authorization” wording to make it appear as though the court wouldn’t entertain frivolous prosecutions using interpretation of the CFAA, but that gives the court (and the DOJ) far more credit than they have earned.

      The other case — Facebook v. Power Ventures — is dangerous in its own way, even if it involves two private companies, rather than the US government’s prosecutorial arm. The same appeals court didn’t go quite as far as it did in the Nosal decision in terms of criminalizing password sharing, but instead made the district’s stance even more confusing by arriving at a seemingly-contradictory conclusion.

    • ACLU Challenges Gag Orders Issued To Tech Companies By The DOJ

      The ACLU is hoping to intervene in Microsoft’s legal battle against the government, challenging gag orders attached to warrants and subpoenas issued under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). Microsoft sued the DOJ back in April, arguing for the right to notify customers that their communications and data have been handed over to the government.

      Microsoft didn’t have a problem with the government’s gag orders in every case. It’s just that the demand for secrecy accompanied more than half of the ~300 orders per month Microsoft receives. And nearly 70% of those gag orders arrived with no fixed end date.

      The ACLU petitioned the court to intervene in the case on its own behalf, citing its position as a Microsoft customer. The DOJ filed a motion to dismiss Microsoft’s lawsuit, hoping the court will find Microsoft has no standing to challenge gag orders on its customers’ behalf. The ACLU is trying to prevent this from happening until the DOJ addresses the issues raised by the ACLU’s (attempted) intervention. In its opposition [PDF] to the DOJ’s motion, the ACLU points out that the government’s “no standing” argument pretty much nullifies any sort of due process for Microsoft customers (including the ACLU) who’ve been targeted by the DOJ’s super-secret warrants, relegating them to a Kafka-esque legal purgatory.

    • Australian Government Using Data Retention Law To Seek Out Journalists’ Sources, Hunt Down Whistleblowers

      If there ever were decent protections for whistleblowers in Australia, they’re gone now. Australia’s Attorney General was pushing for harsher whistleblower punishments two years ago, while simultaneously claiming data retention laws — and expanded permissions for intelligence agencies to pore through retained data — were simply the way governments were doing business these days.

      And what a business it is. The Australian government wants to punish whistleblowers but finds they’re often difficult to track down. It’s just so much easier to find those they leak documents to, like journalists, and work towards getting them to divulge their sources. The “best” part about the new data retention laws is that those seeking whistleblowers to punish won’t have to confront journalists directly. In fact, they may never need to speak to them at all.

    • Turkey removes more than 10,000 security personnel, academics in purge

      Turkish authorities have suspended about 8,000 security personnel and more than 2,000 academics, adding to a purge of people suspected of having links to perpetrators of a failed coup, the Official Gazette said on Friday.

      Since the coup attempt in mid-July, in which rogue soldiers tried to topple President Tayyip Erdogan’s government, Turkey has removed 80,000 people from public duty and arrested many of them, accusing them of sympathising with the plotters.

      Of the security personnel removed in the latest purge, 323 were members of the gendarmerie and the rest police, according to the Official Gazette, in which the government publishes new laws and orders.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • FCC Gives Up On Municipal Broadband Fight

      Easier said than done. Telecom incumbents, like so many large players, have an absolute chokehold over state legislatures. So much so that ISPs like AT&T continue to have success passing new laws of this type despite growing, significant bipartisan public opposition to them. For years ISPs quickly passed these laws by framing this as a partisan issue of government “competing with the free market.” But as Comcast and AT&T consumers get an ongoing master class in how broken and not free the telecom market is, members of both parties have grown increasingly hostile toward protectionism of this type.

    • AT&T, Poster Child For Government Favoritism, Mocks Google Fiber For Government Favoritism

      First, let’s just get out of the way that the idea of AT&T, now bone-grafted to our intelligence agencies’ domestic surveillance efforts, giving anybody a lecture on government favoritism deserves a major hypocrisy award.

      What’s AT&T actually upset about? Google Fiber has been pushing to reform utility pole attachment rules, one of several layers of regional bureaucracy telecom monopolies used to slow broadband competitors from coming to market. Google Fiber’s been pushing cities like Louisville and Nashville for “one touch make ready” laws that let a single, insured contractor move any ISPs’ hardware — often reducing installation from half a year to just a month. AT&T’s response? To sue cities like Louisville for overstepping their authority. Such decisions, AT&T argues, should be left up to the state regulatory bodies that AT&T all but owns.

      AT&T’s taking the opportunity to kick Google Fiber while it’s down, the company plagued by recent rumors that it’s pausing a handful of unannounced cities to consider supplementing fiber service with wireless broadband. Sources with knowledge of Google Fiber’s plan tell me many of the reports about Google Fiber hitting deployment “snags” have been either overstated or in error, but the fact that Google Fiber hasn’t publicly clarified its dedication to expansion suggests there likely is some possible restructuring going on as the company takes stock of its recent Webpass acquisition and eyes wireless as a way to supplement fiber.

    • AT&T Dodges FTC Throttling Lawsuit Using Title II Classification It Vehemently Opposed

      Back in 2011, AT&T stopped selling unlimited wireless data plans, and began heavily pushing more expensive capped and metered plans. Existing unlimited users at the time were grandfathered, but the company engaged in all manner of sneaky behavior to try and make life as unpleasant as possible for these users, ranging from blocking them from using Facetime unless they migrated to metered plans, to heavily throttling these “unlimited” users after only consuming a few gigabytes of data. Ultimately AT&T faced a $100 million fine by the FCC (currently being contested by AT&T), and a 2014 lawsuit by the FTC for misleading consumers and dramatically changing the terms of service while users were under contract.

    • T-Mobile Declares It’s On ‘The Right Side Of History’ As It Laughs At Net Neutrality

      While T-Mobile has certainly done some good things for the wireless industry, the company’s ongoing tone deafness on net neutrality isn’t doing the carrier any favors. T-Mobile fought against real net neutrality rules, then, once passed anyway, got right to work trying to find creative ways around the rules using zero rating (exempting only some content from usage caps). When net neutrality advocates and scholars repeatedly pointed out T-Mobile was violating net neutrality and being a bit hypocritical (“we’re edgy and love consumers but not real net neutrality!”), the company dug a deeper hole by attacking groups like the EFF.

      Last week T-Mobile upped the ante with new plans that promise “unlimited” data, but are not only more expensive, they throttle tethering, throttle overall consumption at 26 GB, and throttle all video to 1.5 Mbps or 480p. Users who want HD video to actually work correctly can apparently pony up $25 more per month. Emboldended by T-Mobile and a (so far) apathetic FCC, Sprint revealed similar “unlimited” data plans of its own, which throttle all video, games and music to 1.5 Mbps, 2 Mbps, and 500 kbps respectively, unless you pony up another $25 per month.

      Groups like the EFF were quick to point out that installing ISPs as middlemen who get to determine how well your services work based on how much you pay in a marginally-competitive broadband market sets a horrible precedent. If regulators allow T-Mobile to charge more money for HD video to work, what stops Comcast from charging you more if you want 4K Netflix streams to work? Or AT&T deciding it can charge you more if you want your Steam games to download at full bitrate? This is a door that, once opened, won’t be easily closed. And once this practice is a standard, it will be abused.

  • DRM

    • DRM: Still Hurting Paying Customers The Most

      So, we have two issues, neither of them useful to end users. On Adobe’s end, we have a protection scheme that requires an internet connection. That’s classic DRM — phone home, get permission… all well and good (NOT REALLY) until someone needs access to documents but can’t because they’re not connected to the internet.

      Then we have an update that breaks the connection Adobe’s DRM relies on, forcing the same problem on users who do have internet access. The problem with DRM schemes like these is that they rely on a bunch of parts that aren’t interconnected (Adobe, Windows) but both have to be working properly to get the job done… rather than just, say, open Adobe Reader and be done with it. Subtract an internet connection and Adobe’s documents are useless, even to authorized users. Throw a suprisingly volatile Windows update into the mix and end users doing everything right are still screwed. Combine the two and sensitive documents are suddenly so “protected” that a majority of users can’t even view them. And, remember, this is a “privilege” corporate customers pay for.

      DRM: still mostly useless and still mainly a pain in the ass for paying customers.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • A triple dose of defeat – three antibiotic patents of Cubist revoked in one trial

      This case concerns three patents owned by the defendant Cubist Pharmaceuticals LLC relating to the antibiotic daptomycin, originally discovered by Eli Lilly in the 1980s. Patent EP1115417 (“the 417 patent”) claims a range of doses of the drug to be administered once a day. The other two patents, EP1252179 and EP2264047 (“the 179 patent” and “the 047 patent” respectively), claim different methods of purifying daptomycin. The claimant, Hospira UK Limited, sought the revocation of all three patents, which were all considered in a single trial. Mr Justice Carr found all three patents to be invalid.

    • Trademarks

      • Louis Vuitton’s Inability To Take A Joke Opens Up A Chance To Fix Our Broken Trademark Laws

        As you may recall, earlier this year we wrote about a good ruling in a ridiculous lawsuit by the notoriously overaggressive trademark enforcers at luxury goods giant Louis Vuitton. You can look back at some of their earlier lawsuits, but the one we wrote about this year was particularly ridiculous. It sued a small bag maker called “My Other Bag” who made a simple tote bag that played on the famous joke bumper sticker “My Other Car is A….” with some sort of luxury car brand listed as the final point. People would put those on not-nearly-as-nice cars. In fact, when I was a kid, my dad had a Ford Pinto (yes, the exploding kind) and it had “My Other Car is a Porsche” as a bumper sticker. It’s not a very funny joke (and I totally didn’t get it as a kid), but it’s a joke.

      • Moosehead Lager Makers At It Again: Suing Moose Whiz Root Beer For Trademark Infringement

        Earlier this year, Moosehead Brewery made the wonderful decision to get into a trademark dispute with the makers of a different beer, called Müs Knuckle, I imagine because trademark lawyers now know both that I’m paying attention to these cases and that I have the sense of humor of a high school sophomore. Moosehead essentially asserted that it owned the trademark rights to anything remotely close to “moose”, including made up words that are homonyms but which have delightfully vulgar connotations. Other than the issue of the word “moose”, none of the trade dress in question had anything remotely to do with one another.

        Which is slightly different in another trademark suit that Moosehead Brewery has initiated. In the case of Moosehead Brewery v. Moose Wizz Root Beer, the labels are somewhat similar in color and logo, though there is certainly differentiation within them as well. The real issue here, instead, is that one of these is an alcoholic drink while the other is just a soda.

    • Copyrights

      • SUPER KAT-EXCLUSIVE: Here’s draft Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market
      • Our ‘Copying Is Not Theft’ T-Shirt Seems To REALLY Upset Some People

        That doesn’t necessarily mean that copying is always legal or morally correct. But it pretty clearly is not theft.

        The shirt is selling fine (get yours soon, because it’s only available for a few more days!), but what’s been surprising is how much it has resulted in pure rage from some people who seem really, really pissed off that we’d dare suggest the simple fact that copying is not theft.

        Earlier this week, we wrote about the head of the Global Anti-Counterfeiting Group promising to make counterfeit copies of our t-shirt (which seems a bit… odd, no?), but today I wanted to highlight some of the other responses we’ve received. The fact is, many people do understand the message and seem to appreciate it, but I’m somewhat surprised at those who disagree with it who feel the need to not just disagree, but to act as if merely stating a four word factual sentence is somehow offensive. It started in our comments where someone insisted that saying copying is not theft wasn’t just wrong, but was “ignorant and irresponsible.” Huh.

      • Announcing The Techdirt Greenhouse Salon: The Battle For Copyright Reform

        Several years ago, we hosted a series of really fun events called the Techdirt Greenhouse, which involved getting a lot of smart people together and actively brainstorming on a variety of topics. We’ve been wanting to bring back the Greenhouse events for a while now, and we’re finally going to do so with a new series of evening “Greenhouse Salons” hosted by our Copia Institute. Today we’re announcing the very first of these new Greenhouse Salons, The Battle For Copyright Reform. As you know, there are ongoing efforts to reform copyright around the globe, with a proposal leaked for the EU and one expected shortly in the US.

      • PETA Has Lost Its Monkey’s ‘Next Friend’ In Its Crazy Copyright Case

        The ongoing saga that is the monkey selfie lawsuit has continued to move forward, with the lawyers for photographer David Slater filing their brief in response to PETA’s. As you probably recall, PETA had teamed up with a primatologist named Antje Engelhardt claiming to be “next friends” for the Indonesian macaque monkey named Naruto, who is alleged to have taken the following selfie with David Slater’s camera.

      • 3 copyright tips for students and educators

        Copyright is a really complicated topic, and when it comes to online use of creative works, accidentally crossing the line between fair use and a copyright violation is easy. How do you know what is copyrighted? Recently Frederico Morando (Creative Commons, Italy) and I presented a training session on understanding copyright policies at Wikimania 2016, which was originally proposed by Wikipedian User:Jim Carter. We covered topics such as fundamentals of copyright, exclusive rights, Berne convention, copyleft, Creative Commons licenses, Public Domain, fair use, and copyfraud.

      • The last thing the API economy needs is copyright friction

        The Oracle versus Google verdict set a positive precedent for the future of the API economy, but will it last? What is at stake if the decision is reversed?

        While on the surface Oracle versus Google might seem like a battle for profit between two tech giants, the implications are much more significant. This is a battle for interoperability and the merit-based making of entire markets.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/09/02/docker-fork-questions/feed/ 0 Links 26/8/2016: Maru OS Resurfaces, Android More Reliable Than ‘i’ Things, PC-BSD Becomes TrueOS http://techrights.org/2016/08/26/pc-bsd-becomes-trueos/ http://techrights.org/2016/08/26/pc-bsd-becomes-trueos/#comments Sat, 27 Aug 2016 00:36:20 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=95118

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Windows, Mac or Linux… Which operating system best suits your business?

      Linux is a free alternative. Apart from the zero-cost factor, it’s still less prone to viruses than Windows. Most Linux machines start out as Windows computers that are reformatted. Linux is also adaptable — Linux is an OS kernel, not a full system, but is the heart of software distributions such as Ubuntu or Fedora.

      As for cons, Linux is more complex to learn and use. There are also far fewer programs written for Linux systems. Of course, someone with an advanced online computer science master’s degree will help you make the most of a Linux system by supplying the skills needed to innovate and implement custom solutions for your business environment.

    • Eight free open source alternatives to Windows 10: Chrome, Ubuntu, Solus and more Linux-based alternatives – what’s the best alternative to Windows OS?

      Initially released in 2004, Ubuntu is Debian-based and part of the open source Linux family. Ubuntu uses Unity as its default user interface and can be run on smartphones, tablets and PCs.

      Key features: Libre Office, Firefox, Thunderbird, built-in Ubuntu Software Center, F-spot, an image editor, an instant messaging client called Empathy, and Ubuntu Make (developer tools centre).

      Pros: Comes with popular open source software pre-installed, like Firefox and Libre Office.

      Cons: Unfamiliar interface, perhaps aimed at more technical audience.

    • Windows 10 computers crash when Amazon Kindles are plugged in

      Dozens of Microsoft Windows 10 users are reporting that their computers crash when plugging in Amazon Kindles.

      The issue appears to be caused by the recent Windows 10 Anniversary update. Users of Amazon’s Paperwhite and Voyage attempting to either transfer books or charge their devices via USB are seeing their various Windows 10 laptops and desktops locking up and requiring rebooting.

      Pooka, a user of troubleshooting forum Ten Forums said: “I’ve had a Kindle paperwhite for a few years no and never had an issue with connecting it via USB. However, after the recent Windows 10 updates, my computer BSOD’s [blue screen of death] and force restarts almost as soon as I plug my Kindle in.”

      On Microsoft’s forums, Rick Hale said: “On Tuesday, I upgraded to the Anniversary Edition of Windows 10. Last night, for the first time since the upgrade, I mounted my Kindle by plugging it into a USB 2 port. I immediately got the blue screen with the QR code. I rebooted and tried several different times, even using a different USB cable, but that made no difference.”

      Another forum user, Tuscat, who found the issue affected both an HP laptop and a Dell desktop said: “It’s pretty frustrating because I need to transfer some PDFs to the Kindle for my son’s school classes.”

      The issue appears to be affecting regular Windows 10 Anniversary update users and those on Microsoft’s Insider programme for pre-release software testing.

    • Linux survival guide: These 21 applications let you move easily between Linux and Windows

      If you need to navigate regularly between Linux and the Windows world, there are many applications that can make your job easier. We spotlight 21 quality applications that will pave the way.

    • City of Bern starts open desktop proof of concept

      The council of the Swiss capital of Bern wants to increase the city’s use of open source software solutions. Last week, the city approved a CHF 843,00 (about EUR 750,000) proof of concept study for a switch to open source desktop solutions. The proposal was supported by a clear majority in the council, with 49 votes in favour and 18 against.

  • Server

    • Open Source, Containers and the Cloud: News from ContainerCon and LinuxCon

      LinuxCon and ContainerCon, events focused on Linux, containers and open source software, wrapped up this week in Toronto. Here’s a round-up of the announcements and insights related to cloud computing that emerged from the meeting.

      LinuxCon and ContainerCon are co-located events. That made for an interesting combination this year because Linux is an established technology, which is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary. In contrast, containers remain a new and emerging enterprise technology. (Yes, containers themselves are much older, but it has only been in the past three years, with the launch of Docker, that containers are becoming a big deal commercially.)

      The two events thus paired discussion of a very entrenched platform, Linux, with one that is still very much in development. But open source, the coding and licensing model behind both Linux and container platforms like Docker, tied everything together.

    • Citrix Enables NetScaler for Containers and Micro-Services

      At the LinuxCon ContainerCon event here, a core topic of discussion is about how to enable enterprises to be able to embrace containers. Citrix has a few ideas on how to help and is announcing enhancements to its NetScaler networking gear to enable load balancing for containers and micro-services.

    • Want to Work for a Cloud Company? Here’s the Cream of the Crop

      What do Asana, Greenhouse Software, WalkMe, Chef Software, and Sprout Social have in common? They’ve been deemed the very best privately held “cloud” companies to work for, according to new rankings compiled by Glassdoor and venture capital firm Battery Ventures.

      For “The 50 Highest Rated Private Cloud Computing Companies,” Glassdoor and Battery worked with Mattermark to come up with a list of non-public companies that offer cloud-based services, and then culled them, making sure that each entry had at least 30 Glassdoor reviews, Neeraj Agrawal, Battery Ventures general partner told Fortune.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

    • ‘Show-and-Tell’ Cool Maker Projects on Hangouts

      Wow! This live Hangout show looks a lot like a DIY version of one of the morning shows on over-the-air TV — and if there’s any doubt that the maker movement thrives on open source, the first guest’s project is all about Python and Arduino. Be sure to check out the cool Star Trek combadge. Beam us up, Mr. Shapiro!

  • Kernel Space

    • 25 things to love about Linux

      Today marks 25 years of Linux, the most successful software ever.

      At LinuxCon this week, Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation spoke words of admiration, praise, and excitement from the keynote stage, saying “Linux at 25 is a big thing” and “You can better yourself while bettering others at the same time.”

      To celebrate, we asked our readers what they love about Linux and rounded up 25 of their responses. Dive into the Linux love!

    • The 25 biggest events in Linux’s 25-year history

      You can argue about Linux’s official birthday. Heck, even Linus Torvalds thinks there are four different dates in 1991 that might deserve the honor. Regardless, Linux is twenty-five years old this year. Here are some of its highlights and lowlights.

    • 25 Years of Linux: What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

      Happy Birthday Linux! You’re 25!

      When Linux was born on Aug. 25, 1991, it was little more than a hobby for then 21-year old Linus Torvald. Today the Linux community is estimated to be upwards of 86 million users strong. It has become the backbone of large enterprises, and it is installed in government systems and embedded in devices worldwide.

      The Linux operating system started out as an alternative to other platform architectures in use on mainframes and enterprise back-ends. It has grown into a major mainstream computing platform for small through large companies’ server operations, and has made inroads into consumer computing.

      Linux has been ported to more hardware platforms than any other operating system, thanks to the popularity of the Linux-based Android operating system, noted Meike Chabowski, documentation strategist at Suse.

      “Today, Linux has the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating systems worldwide. Linux is also the leading operating system on servers of any sort, and of 99.4 percent of the top 500 supercomputers,” he told LinuxInsider. “Also, you find embedded Linux in a huge quantity of devices and machines — built into cars, network routers, facility automation controls, entertainment equipment, and medical equipment such as X-rays.”

      Some people do not even know they are using it. Linux is everywhere, Chabowski said.

    • Google’s Continuing & Numerous Contributions To Open-Source

      Marc Merlin of Google presented at this week’s LinuxCon 2016 event in Toronto how the company has — and continues to — contribute to open-source software.

    • Why Linux is poised to lead the tech boom in Africa

      Certain emerging markets are advancing so quickly that they aren’t just speeding through the technology phases of developed countries. They’re skipping stages entirely — a phenomenon economists call “leapfrogging.”

      The most visible signs of leapfrogging are in consumer technologies, including the rapid adoption of the internet, mobile phones and social media. By 2020, Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to be the world’s second-largest mobile Internet market, surpassing Europe and ranking only behind Asia-Pacific, according to Frost & Sullivan.

      These advances in consumer technologies are creating a corresponding need for advances in IT infrastructure. This week to help meet that need, IBM announced a new LinuxONE Community Cloud for Africa. Developers will have access at no charge for 120 days utilizing the cloud to create and test their applications on IBM LinuxONE, the industry’s most powerful Linux system.

    • 25 Awesome (And Some Unexpected) Things Powered By Linux

      From your kitchen to the reaches of outer space, Linux is truly everywhere. Here are 25 different places where you can hear the beating of an open-source heart.

    • Special Anniversary Edition: This Week in Open Source News
    • Linux turns 25 years old! Happy birthday Linux!

      Valve aren’t the only ones celebrating a birthday this week (see here). Linux also just got a bit older and wiser. Linux is officially 25 years old today!

    • ​Linus on Linux’s 25th birthday

      It’s been twenty-five years since Linux began. Today, we’re living in a world where Microsoft has embraced Linux and everything — and I mean everything — depends on Linux. It didn’t start that way. It began as a small project without any great ambitions.

    • Open source software changing the connected world
    • Linux celebrates the first of its two 25th birthdays
    • Linux turns 25: Containers, cloud and IoT present new opportunities and challenges
    • Linux turns 25, kind of runs (part of) the world
    • 25 Years of Linux and the GPL, and How Android Benefits
    • Happy 25th birthday, Linux!
    • Twenty-five years of Linux overcoming hurdles and overshooting goals
    • Linux Took Over the Web. Now, It’s Taking Over the World
    • Twenty-five years of Linux: A quiet revolution
    • Linux turns 25 years young: an open, free and exciting future lies ahead
    • Linux celebrates its 25th birthday today! But can it survive another 25 years?
    • Happy Twenty-Fifth Birthday, Linux!
    • Linux: 25 years on and still going strong
    • Tech Quiz Of The Week: Linux At 25
    • 25 Years of Linux — so far

      On August 25, 1991, an obscure student in Finland named Linus Benedict Torvalds posted a message to the comp.os.minix Usenet newsgroup saying that he was working on a free operating system as a project to learn about the x86 architecture. He cannot possibly have known that he was launching a project that would change the computing industry in fundamental ways. Twenty-five years later, it is fair to say that none of us foresaw where Linux would go — a lesson that should be taken to heart when trying to imagine where it might go from here.

    • Happy 25th Birthday, Linux!
    • Happy Birthday, Linux
    • Slides for my LinuxCon talk on Mainline Explicit Fencing

      For those of you that are interested here are the slides of the my presentation at LinuxCon North America this week. The conference was great with very good talks and very interesting meetings on the hallway track.

    • Linux 4.8 May Fix An Issue Of Some Laptops Burning Through Power While Suspended

      It looks like some newer Intel laptops will be much happier when S3 suspended with the upcoming Linux 4.8 kernel.

      For at least some newer Intel laptops with distributions like Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Fedora was a case where suspending the system would still still be consuming much power: a hot laptop and losing around 12% of the battery life per hour while “suspended.”

    • Linux 4.8 Intel P-State vs. CPUFreq Scaling Driver/Governor Benchmarks

      Given the underlying work that’s been happening in the CPUFreq/scheduler area and the introduce of the new Schedutil CPUFreq governor, I decided to run some fresh performance benchmarks of P-State and CPUFreq with the different governor options when testing from a Linux 4.8 Git kernel atop the current Fedora 25 development packages and using a Core i5 Skylake processor.

    • Upcoming Linux Tests With A $300 Broadwell-EP Xeon CPU
    • Linus Torvalds says first Linux release wasn’t public

      Keeping up with tradition, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, and Dirk Hohndel, vice president and chief of open source at VMware, sat down to talk about Linux at LinuxCon NA. Here is an edited version of the conversation, in which they talked about the email Torvalds sent out 25 years ago to announce Linux.

    • LinuxCon: Tracing Linux’s Roots, Mapping Its Future

      On Aug. 25, 1991, a student at the University of Helsinki sent out a mailing announcing a new hobby operating system project. That student was Linus Torvalds, and his hobby operating system, now known as Linux, became the most widely used OS, powering stock exchanges, supercomputers, mobile phones and much more. From Aug. 22 to 25, the Linux community gathered at the annual LinuxCon North America event here to celebrate and discuss all things Linux. A highlight of the event was the appearance of Linus Torvalds, who reminisced about the past 25 years on what has gone wrong and what has gone right with Linux. A decade ago, LinuxCon was only about Linux, but this year, the event was co-located with ContainerCon, Xen Summit and Cloud Native Day. Linux in 2016 is about more than just an operating system. It is about a wider market of open-source technologies that Linux helps enable. (Highly telling is the fact that, starting next year, the conference will be renamed the Open Source Summit.) In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at highlights of this year’s LinuxCon event.

    • Happy birthday Linux: 25 years later, the ‘Year of Linux’ may finally be here

      25 years ago, one Linus Benedict Torvalds started working on a part-time project. This was not any project like travel, working time, hacking, learning music or anything typical. Instead, this part-time hobby project was to work on an ‘Operating System’. Yes, that’s right, an operating system.

      While mere mortals like us would waste our time gaming or sleeping, Linus Torvalds decided to build an OS. Well, technically not an entire operating system, but an OS Kernel. It’s the most crucial part of the operating system anyway.

    • Linux Celebrates Its 25th Birthday This Week
    • As Linux turns 25, its lies beyond desktops and mobile devices

      Today marks the 25th anniversary of the open-source operating system used to do everything from powering supercomputers to surfing the web: Linux.

      Linux began its journey 25 years ago, and now it’s a top product platform for apps for smartphones, Internet of Things devices, and computers—all of which primarily run on Linux.

      Jane Silber, CEO of Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu), said that the organization is continuing to “support Linux’s journey as the production platform for the enterprise and telecoms infrastructure we see today.” She added that while cloud technology runs almost entirely on Linux, Canonical still thinks the desktop is important to Linux’s growth. Ubuntu also started as a desktop OS, and it’s still used for both mobile and desktop programs, she said.

    • Linux turns 25, with corporate contributors now key to its future

      That developer was of course Linus Torvalds and his free operating system came to be known as Linux. It’s since more or less conquered the world, first becoming the de facto heir to proprietary Unix and latterly serving as the operating system for enormous numbers of devices large and small.

      El Reg runs on Linux and these even Microsoft is embracing the OS, offering it in its cloud, porting products to it and even putting Linux to work running is data centre switches.

    • 2016 LiFT Scholarship Winner Alexander Popov: Linux Kernel Contributor

      Since 2012, Alex has had 14 patches accepted into the mainline Linux kernel. With his employer, Positive Technologies, he has helped develop a bare metal hypervisor that they hope to open source soon. And this year he spoke at LinuxCon Japan about his work porting Kernel Address Sanitizer (KASan) to his company’s bare-metal hypervisor.

      He is using the free training and certification provided by the LiFT scholarship to take the Linux Kernel Internals and Development (LFD420) course from The Linux Foundation.

    • Graphics Stack

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KaOS Brings Serious Relevance Back to KDE

        If you’ve been looking for a distribution to sway you back to the KDE desktop, look no further than KaOS. It’s beautiful, runs with the snap of a much lighter desktop, and feels as reliable as any other option available for Linux. I haven’t been this impressed with KDE for a very, very long time. And, I am certain users would find themselves equally happy to return to a desktop that has long needed a champion like KaOS.

      • Qt 5 based Colorpick

        Colorpick is one of my little side-projects. It is a tool to select colors. It comes with a screen color picker and the ability to check two colors contrast well enough to be used as foreground and background colors of a text.

      • KDE Connect 1.0 is here!

        Today we are officially publishing the first stable release of KDE Connect. Hooray! This version is the most solid yet feature-packed version we ever released. It’s been in development for a year now and it took a lot of hard work, we hope you like it!

      • KDE Connect 1.0 Released For Device/Phone Communication

        KDE Connect is the interesting project for integrating notifications and more from your phone or other mobile device onto the KDE desktop.

      • Qt Creator 4.1 Adds New Themes, Experimental Nim Support

        The Qt Company announced the release today of Qt Creator 4.1 as the newest version of its popular, cross-platform IDE.

      • Qt Creator 4.1.0 released

        We are happy to announce the release of Qt Creator 4.1.0.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Fresh From the Oven: GNOME Pie 0.6.9 Released

        For a slice of something this weekend you might want to check out the latest update to GNOME Pie, the circular app launcher for Linux desktops.

      • GUADEC 2016 and the Butterfly Effect
      • GUADEC 2016 Notes

        I’m back from GUADEC and wanted to share a few thoughts on the conference itself and the post-conference hackfest days.

        All the talks including the opening and closing sessions and the GNOME Foundation AGM are available online. Big thanks goes to the organization team for making this possible.

  • Distributions

    • The Battle of The Budgie Desktops – Budgie-Remix vs SolusOS!

      Ladies and gentleman, it’s the moment you have all been waiting for… the main even of the evening! In this corner, wearing Budgie trunks, fighting out of Ireland, created by Ikey Doherty, the man behind Linux Mint Debian Edition — SolusOS! And in this corner, built on the defending champion, also wearing Budgie trunks, aiming to be the next flavor of Ubuntu, Budgie-Remix!

    • Reviews

      • An Everyday Linux User Review Of Antergos LinuxAn Everyday Linux User Review Of Antergos Linux

        So Antergos was recommended to me by a number of people and I have to say that the experience was decent.

        It isn’t difficult to install Antergos but if you have a slow internet connection then you have to be a bit patient.

        Most things worked ok and hardware support was fine across the board.

        The Steam thing I put down to something that the Steam developers need to resolve. Come up with a better installer.

        Would Antergos make my top five now that I have tried it? I would say no to that. It isn’t as good as Manjaro and that is the best distribution to pitch it against because they are both based on Arch. Manjaro has a more polished look and feel.

        Nevertheless Antergos is a good distribution and well worth a try.

    • New Releases

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Updates its Kernel-based Virtual Machine

        Red Hat updated its Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)-powered virtualization platform for both Linux- and Windows-based workloads.

      • Red Hat Virtualization 4 Takes on Proprietary Competition

        Red Hat continues to move well beyond its core enteprise Linux-based roots with a string of new releases. The company has announced the general availability of Red Hat Virtualization 4, the latest release of its Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) -powered virtualization platform. It fully supports OpenStack’s Neutron – the networking project leveraged in SDNs.

        The company emphasizes that Red Hat Virtualization 4 challenges the economics and complexities of proprietary virtualization solutions by providing a fully-open, high-performing, more secure, and centrally managed platform for both Linux- and Windows-based workloads. It combines an updated hypervisor, advanced system dashboard, and centralized networking for users’ evolving workloads.

      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 Beta Adds NVDIMM Support, Improves Security

        Today, August 25, 2016, Red Hat announced that version 7.3 of its powerful Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system is now in development, and a Beta build is available for download and testing.

        Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 Beta brings lots of improvements and innovations, support for new hardware devices, and improves the overall security of the Linux kernel-based operating system used by some of the biggest enterprises and organizations around the globe. Among some of the major new features implemented in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 release, we can mention important networking improvements, and support for Non-Volatile Dual In-line Memory Modules (NVDIMMs).

      • CentOS 6 Linux OS Receives Important Kernel Security Update from Red Hat

        CentOS developer and maintainer Johnny Hughes informed the community about the availability of an important Linux kernel update for the CentOS 6 Linux operating system.

        The new kernel update is here to patch various important security issues in the Linux 2.6.32 kernel packages used by CentOS 6, which is built on the freely distributed sources of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 operating system. This means that the new kernel has also been pushed upstream, in Red Hat’s repositories.

      • Release of Red Hat Virtualization 4 Offers New Functionality for Workloads

        Release of Red Hat Virtualization 4 Offers New Functionality for Workloads
        Red Hat has released Red Hat Virtualization 4 (formerly Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization), the latest release of its Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) virtualization platform that provides a centrally managed platform for Linux and Windows based workloads.

      • Red Hat CEO: Open-source innovation is always user-led

        According to Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, the prevailing narrative about the growth and spread of Linux is only half-true.

        The idea that a doughty community of coding geniuses, led by an irascible commissar in Linus Torvalds, quietly created a technological asset that eventually spread to the biggest users in the land is actually a little misleading, he told Network World at LinuxCon North America 2016 in Toronto.

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Julita Inca Chiroque: How Do You Fedora?

          In 2012 Julita traveled to the Czech Republic for a hackfest. She participated with the GNOME Documentation team. She became aware of the relationship between Red Hat, CentOS and Fedora because the event was held in the Red Hat building. Chiroque was inspired to organize Fedora events after meeting Jiří Eischmann. Julita said, “I knew Jiří Eischmann from Fedora Czech Republic and I saw his work as organizer and I wanted to do the same in Peru.” She began working with Fedora LATAM to organize events, with Luis Bazan as her Fedora LATAM Mentor. Chiroque’s current focus is on young students interested in open source and Fedora.

          Julita organized the Fedora 17 release party, a five hour event, as her first in Peru. Activities included installation of Fedora and configuration of applications. The event also included a discussion on how to contribute to Fedora.

        • F25 Wallpaper

          Here are my rough designs so far for the Fedora 25 release wallpaper! Design inspiration? Archimedes; mathematician and inventor of the Achimedean screw. Note: none of these are the final design; they are just to give a sneak peak at the progress begin made by myself and the rest of the Design Team on this project

        • Another Set of Updated Fedora 24 Linux Live ISO Images Are Now Ready to Download

          Fedora Unity Project leader and Fedora AmbassadorBen Williams proudly announce the release of yet another set of updated Live ISO images for the Fedora 24 Linux operating system.

        • Wayland by default in Fedora 25?

          I’ve noticed various reports that Fedora has decided to switch to Wayland by default in Fedora 25. It’s true that the alpha release will default to Wayland, but these reports have misunderstood an authorization from FESCo to proceed with the change as a final decision. This authorization corrects a bureaucratic mistake: FESCo previously authorized the change for Fedora 24, but the Workstation working group decided to defer the change to Fedora 25, then forgot to request authorization again for Fedora 25 as required. An objection was raised on the grounds that the proper change procedure was not followed, so to sidestep this objection we decided to request permission again from FESCo, which granted the request. Authorization to proceed with the change does not mean the decision to proceed has been made; the change could still be deferred, just as it was for Fedora 24.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • 4Duino combines Arduino, WiFi, and a 2.4-inch touchscreen

      4D Systems launched a $79 “4Duino-24” Arduino compatible board, with a 2.4-inch resistive touchscreen and an ESP8266 WiFi module.

      One reason you might choose a Linux SBC like a Raspberry Pi over an Arduino is that it’s easier to control an LCD display for simple IoT GUIs and other HMI applications. Now the 4Duino-24 board aims to smooth the path to Arduino-based IoT displays with an Arduino Leonardo clone board that not only adds an ESP8266 WiFi module, but also includes a 2.4-inch TFT LCD display with resistive touch.

    • Tegra TK1 COM Express module runs Ubuntu at 15W

      Connect Tech has launched an Ubuntu-driven COM Express Compact Type 6 module with an Nvidia Tegra K1 and optional extended temperature support.

      Nvidia’s Tegra SoCs have faded fast in the smartphone world, but appear to be doing just fine in embedded, especially in automotive. (Nvidia just announced a Tegra-like, ARM Cortex-A57 based Parker SoC for its Drive PX 2 autonomous car platform.) Now Connect Tech has added to the growing market for Linux-driven, Tegra K1-based computer-on-modules aimed at the general embedded market with its “COM Express TK1 CMG601” COM Express Compact Type 6 module.

    • Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Code Club teaches kids skills to compete in our digital world

      For some time, the UK’s technology sector has been concerned about finding the right skilled workers to fill jobs in the future. This predicted “digital skills gap” warns that unless we help people to become confident with technology now, we will be facing a huge shortage in skilled workers in the future.

      One way to overcome the digital skills gap is to invest in training and education for the next generation.

      Code Club is a network of free coding clubs for primary school students, and all of the projects we work on are open source. There are over 4,500 Code Clubs currently in the UK, reaching an estimated 75,000 children.

    • Rugged 3.5-inch SBC runs Linux or Android on i.MX6

      Logic Supply has introduced a “ICM-3011” 3.5-inch board with a dual-core i.MX6, wide-range power input, and extended temperature support.

      Like the recent Pico-ITX form factor ICM-2010 SBC that’s also available in an ICS-2010 mini-PC, the ICM-3011 was built by Taipei-based Embux, and is being distributed and supported by Logic Supply. Like the ICM-2010, the $253 ICM-3011 runs on the 1GHz, dual-core DualLite version of NXP’s Cortex-A9-based i.MX6 SoC. It similarly is supported by images for Android 5.0.2 “Lollipop,” Yocto “Daisy” Linux 1.6.2, or Ubuntu Linux 12.04.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Comparison of the Samsung Z1 vs Z2 vs Z3 Tizen smartphones

          Compare Samsung Z1, Z2, and Z3 Tizen Smartphones

          Lets do a quick history lesson: The first Tizen Smartphone was the Samsung Z1, then came the Z3, and yesterday was the turn of the 4G touting Z2 to take centre stage. On the whole the Z2 is very similar to the Z1 and can be thought of a Z1 2016 edition with the inclusion of 4G cellular connectivity and updated software with user requested features.

      • Android

        • iPhones are much more likely to ‘fail’ than Androids

          Apple’s once glittering reputation for quality took quite a few hits during the last few years, especially when it comes to iOS, the software that runs on iPhones. In some cases, recurrent software bugs have plagued users with issues such as the inability to use Wi-Fi, frequent crashes, and ridiculously short battery life. This week reports surfaced about a hardware flaw that makes some iPhone 6 screens inoperable. (Apple hasn’t confirmed any related problems.)

          It’s hard to tell how widespread some of these issues are, but a new report from a company that monitors smartphone quality suggests iPhones are far more likely to “fail” or suffer serious glitches than Android phones. The Blancco Technology Group says it collected performance data from millions of mobile phones during the second quarter of 2016, and it found that iPhones had an overall failure rate of 58 percent, compared to just 35 percent failure for Android devices. The term “failure” doesn’t necessarily mean that the phone has become a brick, according to Blancco. Instead, it means the device or software running on the device suffered some serious problem.

        • Maru OS is now open source (Turns Android phones into Linux desktops)

          Maru OS is a software project that lets you plug an Android phone into an external display to run desktop Linux software. First unveiled earlier this year, the software is very much a work-in-progress. Initially it only supported one phone: the Google Nexus 5.

          But things could get a lot more interesting soon, because the developer behind Maru OS has finished open sourcing the project and a group of developers are planning to start porting the software to run on additional devices.

        • Maru OS wants to turn your phone into a desktop with its latest open source build

          Not to be confused with Maru the adorable YouTube cat, Maru OS, the bite-sized Android add-on that turns your phone into a desktop, just went open source.

          Maru OS doesn’t change much about the way your phone operates on its own, but once you connect a desktop monitor via a slimport cable, Maru really comes to life. When connected to a display, Maru OS allows you to run a desktop Linux environment straight from your phone.

          Your phone is still a phone, it’ll take calls, send texts and do everything else it normally does, even while it’s connected to a desktop monitor running Linux on the side. It’s an interesting concept, but it’s still very much a work in progress. Today’s announcement could help move things along for Maru.

        • The long-awaited Maru OS source release

          Hey guys,

          I’m happy to announce that Maru has been fully open-sourced under The Maru OS Project!

          There are many reasons that led me to open-source Maru (https://blog.maruos.com/2016/02/11/maru-is-open-source/),
          but a particularly important one is expanding Maru’s device support with
          the help of the community.

          If you’d like to help out with a device port (even just offering to test a
          new build helps a lot), let the community know on the device port planning
          list (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/maru-os-dev/YufKu…)
          . We currently have a few Nexus, LG, and Motorola builds being planned. If
          you don’t see your device on there and would like to help with development
          or testing, please do chip in and we’ll get it added to the list.

        • Living with Android 7.0 Nougat: The most important changes

          Android 7.0 Nougat has finally reached Google’s Nexus devices after more than five months of developer preview testing. The final version is more stable and has a ton of new features. Most phones won’t get a Nougat update for a few months at least, and that’ll only happen if the carrier and OEM consider it a high priority. What can you expect when that glorious day finally arrives? I’ve been using Nougat on both a Nexus 6P and a Pixel C for the last few days. I won’t bother reciting all the features, which you can find a simple list of them on Google’s site. Let’s talk about what it’s actually like to use Android 7.0 Nougat as a daily driver.

        • Apple’s iOS ‘Failure Rate’ Is Higher Than Android’s For First Time

          Apple’s iOS devices like iPhones and iPads crashed twice as often in the second quarter compared to the previous one, new data shows.

          Fifty-eight percent of iOS-based devices suffered from “performance failures” like apps crashing or components shutting down during the second quarter, up from 25% in the first quarter, according to a study by mobile technology service provider Blancco Technology Group (BTG).

        • Is Android malware more popular than Google’s own app?
        • Android 7.0 Nougat Tip: Manage Battery Life
        • Android 7.0 Nougat has already been ported to a phone that doesn’t support it
        • Night Mode Enabler Brings Back Android Nougat’s Night Mode
        • Is your Android phone being controlled by a rogue Twitter account? Botnet is first to receive commands via tweets
        • Nougat’s Nav bar customizer still an option for Nexus 6P owners
        • Geekbench listing shows two Nokia-branded Android phones in the works
        • How to Use Multi-Window View in Android 7 Nougat
        • 1.5m US iPhone users are about to switch to Android

          If we take ComScore figures for January 2016 we see that around 198.5 million people in the US own smartphones. 52.8 percent of these use Android and 43.6 percent use iPhones, ComScore claims.

          If we use ComScore’s figures as base we can make some estimates based on Fluent’s research. Fluent believes 29 percent of all iPhone users will definitely buy a new phone this year, and while 87 percent of them will stick with Apple (21.8 million), 6 percent will switch to Android. This suggests that around 1.5 million US iPhone users will make this switch.

Free Software/Open Source

  • 5 Ways to Solve the Open Source Industry’s Biggest Problems

    Over the last decade, open source software and its audience of end users have greatly matured. Once only used by a small subset of tech-savvy early adopters, the convenience, effectiveness and cost savings of open source solutions are now driving enterprise IT to explore more ways to take advantage of the power of open source in their daily business operations.

    In today’s economy, enterprise IT has less to gain from developing and licensing software and more to gain from actively working with existing open source technology. However, the march toward open source still faces major obstacles before it becomes mainstream. In this slideshow, Travis Oliphant, CEO and founder of Continuum Analytics, outlines five challenges preventing enterprise IT from shifting to open source and tips for tackling them to keep the future of open source heading in the right direction. The road may be winding, but it will eventually lead companies to open source to help them innovate and as the way of the future.

  • Latest attacks on privacy…

    With the EU (in this case France and Germany) gearing up for another attack on privacy I’m quite happy and proud to have been part of the release of Nextcloud 10!

  • Events

    • Conferences and Kids

      I’ve taken my daughter, now 13, to FOSDEM in Brussels every year that I had slots there. She isn’t a geek, yet enjoys the crowds and the freebies. When I could, I also took my kids to other events, where I was speaking. In this post I’d like to capture my feelings about why children should be part of conferences, and what conferences can do to make this easier.

      First off, the “why?” Traditional conferences (in all domains, not just software) are boring, ritualized events where the participants compete to see who can send the most people to sleep at once. The real event starts later, over alcohol. It is a strictly adult affair, and what happens at the conf stays at the conf.

      Now our business is a little different. It is far more participative. Despite our history of finicky magic technologies that seem to attract mainly male brains, we strive for diversity, openness, broad tolerance. Most of what we learn and teach comes through informal channels. Finished is formal education, elitism, and formal credentials. We are smashing the barriers of distance, wealth, background, gender, and age.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • Rackspace to be Acquired for $4.3B

      Rackspace announced that it is being acquired in an all-cash deal valued at $4.3B. Pending regulatory anti-trust approval, the firm will be taken private by a group of investors led by Apollo Global Management in Q4 of 2016.

      This valuation equates to a price of $32/share. The 38% premium cited in the announcement is calculated against a base share price from August 3, as the news about the pending acquisition began increasing the company stock price as early as August 4.

      For historical context, this valuation falls considerably below the company’s peak market capitalization in January 2013 when Rackspace was worth $10.9B. This means that the company’s current valuation – including the premium – is less than 40% of what it was at its highest point.

    • More on Open Source Tools for Data Science

      Open source tools are having a transformative impact on the world of data science. In a recent guest post here on OStatic, Databricks’ Kavitha Mariappan (shown here), who is Vice President of Marketing, discussed some of the most powerful open source solutions for use in the data science arena. Databricks was founded by the creators of the popular open source Big Data processing engine Apache Spark, which is itself transforming data science.

      Here are some other open source tools in this arena to know about.

      As Mariappan wrote: “Apache Spark, a project of the Apache Software Foundation, is an open source platform for distributed in-memory data processing. Spark supports complete data science pipelines with libraries that run on the Spark engine, including Spark SQL, Spark Streaming, Spark MLlib and GraphX. Spark SQL supports operations with structured data, such as queries, filters, joins, and selects. In Spark 2.0, released in July 2016, Spark SQL comprehensively supports the SQL 2003 standard, so users with experience working with SQL on relational databases can learn how to work with Spark quickly.”

    • SDN, open source nexus to accelerate service creation

      What’s new in the SDN blog world? One expert says SDN advancements will be accelerated, thanks to SDN and open source convergence, while another points out the influence SDN has in the cloud industry.

    • Platform9 & ZeroStack Make OpenStack a Little More VMware-Friendly

      Platform9 and ZeroStack are adding VMware high availability to their prefab cloud offerings, part of the ongoing effort to make OpenStack better accepted by enterprises.

      OpenStack is a platform, an archipelago of open source projects that help you run a cloud. But some assembly is required. Both Platform9 and ZeroStack are operating on the theory that OpenStack will better succeed if it’s turned into more of a shrink-wrapped product.

    • Putting Ops Back in DevOps

      What Agile means to your typical operations staff member is, “More junk coming faster that I will get blamed for when it breaks.” There always is tension between development and operations when something goes south. Developers are sure the code worked on their machine; therefore, if it does not work in some other environment, operations must have changed something that made it break. Operations sees the same code perform differently on the same machine with the same config, which means if something broke, the most recent change must have caused it … i.e. the code did it. The finger-pointing squabbles are epic (no pun intended). So how do we get Ops folks interested in DevOps without promising them only a quantum order of magnitude more problems—and delivered faster?

    • Cloud chronicles

      How open-source software and cloud computing have set up the IT industry for a once-in-a-generation battle

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Oracle reveals Java Applet API deprecation plan

      Oracle has revealed its interim plan to help Java devs deal with browser-makers’ imminent banishment of plug-ins.

      Years of bugs in Java, Flash and other plugins have led browser-makers to give up on plugins. Apple recently decided that its Safari browser will just pretend Java, Flash and Silverlight aren’t installed. Google has announced it will soon just not run any Flash content in its Chrome browser.

      Oracle saw this movement coming and in January 2016 announced it would “deprecate the Java browser plugin in JDK 9”

  • Education

    • Marist College, Rockefeller Archive Center Partner on Open Source Digital Archival Tech

      Marist College and the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) in New York have partnered to develop and implement an open source digital records management system to support researchers, archival staff and the broader archival community.

      [...]

      At the same time, one of the goals of Marist College “is to offer open source technologies, such as Liferay and Blockchain, to like-minded organizations that create a lasting impact on our community,” said Bill Thirsk, vice president of information technology and CIO at the college, in a news release.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • More Details On PC-BSD’s Rebranding As TrueOS

      Most Phoronix readers know PC-BSD as the BSD operating system derived from FreeBSD that aims to be user-friendly on the desktop side and they’ve done a fairly good job at that over the years. However, the OS has been in the process of re-branding itself as TrueOS.

      PC-BSD has been offering “TrueOS Server” for a while now as their FreeBSD-based server offering. But around the upcoming FreeBSD 11.0 release they are looking to re-brand their primary desktop download too now as TrueOS.

    • PC-BSD > TrueOS, BSD’s Legacy, f25 Wayland Maybe

      A few days ago we reported that Wayland is set to be the default graphical server in upcoming Fedora 25 but today Michael Catanzaro said only if it’s ready. PC-BSD is renaming their desktop operating system to TrueOS and Christopher Tozzi looked at why BSD didn’t become the dominate Unix-clone. Elsewhere, Michael Mason examined Budgie Desktop distros and, of course, there’s more on Linux’ 25th.

    • FreeBSD 11.0-RC2 Arrives With Fixes

      The second release candidate to the upcoming FreeBSD 11 is now available for testing.

      FreeBSD 11.0-RC2 ships with various bug fixes, several networking related changes, Clang compiler fixes, and other updates.

      FreeBSD 11.0 is bringing updated KMS drivers, Linux binary compatibility layer improvements, UEFI improvements, Bhyve virtualization improvements, and a plethora of other work. Those not yet familiar with FreeBSD 11 can see the what’s new guide.

    • Open Source History: Why Didn’t BSD Beat Out GNU and Linux?

      If you use a free and open source operating system, it’s almost certainly based on the Linux kernel and GNU software. But these were not the first freely redistributable platforms, nor were they the most professional or widely commercialized. The Berkeley Software Distribution, or BSD, beat GNU/Linux on all of these counts. So why has BSD been consigned to the margins of the open source ecosystem, while GNU/Linux distributions rose to fantastic prominence? Read on for some historical perspective.

      Understanding BSD requires delving far back into the history of Unix, the operating system first released by AT&T Bell Labs in 1969. BSD began life as a variant of Unix that programmers at the University of California at Berkeley, initially led by Bill Joy, began developing in the late 1970s.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • Uganda to cut costs with open source software

      Some of the FOSS customizable applications on the market include Word Press, Mozilla Firefox, and open office among others. The applications can be used to create websites, marketing business ideas, and conduct online business. Most startups find it difficult to break through but creation of an online presence has made some business gain faster traction. James Saaka, the NITA-U executive director, said government struggles to pay licenses to use programmes from Microsoft, Oracle which is so expensive to maintain.

  • Licensing/Legal

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Leftovers

  • Science

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Is Big Pharma Out to Stop—Or Take Over—Marijuana Legalization?

      Geoffrey Guy stood out when he began attending conferences of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in Washington, DC, in the mid to late 1990s. The stout British gentleman, dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit, was hard to miss among the other attendees dressed in tie-dye shirts and psychedelic parkas, recalled Allen St. Pierre, then NORML’s deputy national director.

      But while he might not have fit in, Guy, a doctor in his early 40s who’d already made millions by founding a UK-based pharmaceutical company, was eager to learn all he could at the events about medical marijuana.

      “He was like a dry sponge who desperately wanted to be thrown in a bucket of water,” said St. Pierre, who recently resigned from his 11-year stint as NORML’s executive director to pursue private-sector opportunities.

    • NHS cuts ‘planned across England’

      Plans are being drawn up that could see cuts to NHS services across England.

      The BBC has seen draft sustainability and transformation plans (STPs) which propose ward closures, cuts in bed numbers and changes to A&E and GP care in 44 areas.

      There have been have been no consultations on the plans so far.

      NHS England, which needs to find £22bn in efficiency savings by 2020-21, said reorganising local services is essential to improve patient care.

      But the Nuffield Trust think tank said while STPs could lead to “fundamental changes”, many of the plans do not meet the financial targets set by the government and will face a “dauntingly large implementation task”.

      Laura Townshend, director of the campaign group 38 Degrees, said the plans had received very little public or political scrutiny.

      She told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme: “A key concern is why it hasn’t been this transparent up until now.

    • NHS plans closures and radical cuts to combat growing deficit in health budget

      NHS bosses throughout England are quietly drawing up plans for hospital closures, cutbacks and radical changes to the way healthcare is delivered in an attempt to meet spiralling demand and plug the hole in their finances, an investigation by the Guardian and campaign group 38 Degrees has revealed.

      Without the changes, the NHS at local level could be facing a financial shortfall of about £20bn by 2020-21 if no action is taken, the research suggests.

      The cost-cutting shakeup is being overseen by NHS England, but is already sparking a series of local political battles over the future of services, and exposes the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to fresh criticism after his controversial role in the junior doctors dispute.

      Last year’s Conservative manifesto pledged an extra £8bn a year for the NHS by the end of this parliament, as demanded by the NHS chief executive, Simon Stevens, in his 2014 “five-year forward view”. But Stevens made clear that was the minimum money needed, and radical reforms to the way healthcare is delivered would also be necessary to make the NHS hit its budgets.

    • Virus Sharing Key Against Next Flu Pandemic: Global Database Hosts Genetic Data Of Flu Viruses

      When a deadly influenza virus appears and threatens to become a pandemic, time is of the essence. The 1918 flu epidemic infected a large portion of the global population and killed millions of people. The next pandemic is inevitable, and surveillance of flu viruses is essential through the timely sharing of flu virus genetic data with the scientific and research communities. A collaborative database has become prominent in recent years.

    • The feminisation of males

      An increasing number of baby boys in the UK are being born with genital disorders. One in 350 male babies have a condition known as hypospadias. Instead of the opening of the penis being at the tip, it may be lower down the penis or even around the scrotum. In a few rare cases, there may not be an opening at all.

      Other disorders of the male reproductive system are also on the increase. Cryptorchidism is the most common genital malformation of all, when one of both testes fail to descend into the scrotum, affecting between two and four per cent of baby boys. Chordee – a downward curve of the penis, especially when erect – is usually, but not always, associated with
      hypospadias. Boys with chordee often have to sit down when they relieve themselves. In later life, the severe curvature from chordee can make intercourse impossible.

      Many experts believe that the defects seen in male babies are related to a broader problem- the feminisation of men. Male sperm counts have halved since 1941. Infertility and cancer of the testes are also on the rise. Testicular cancer is now the most common cancer of young men. Hypospadias is a congenital (present at birth) anomaly (abnormality), which means that the malformation occurs during foetal development. As the fetus develops, the urethra does not grow to its complete length. Also during fetal development, the foreskin does not develop completely, which typically leaves extra foreskin on the top side of the penis and no foreskin on the underside of the penis.

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • The Death Toll in Yemen Is So High the Red Cross Has Started Donating Morgues to Hospitals

      Almost a year and a half into Saudi Arabia’s U.S.-backed bombing campaign in Yemen, the humanitarian toll has become so extensive that the International Committee of the Red Cross has taken the unusual step of donating entire morgue units to Yemeni hospitals.

      “The hospitals were not able to cope,” said Rima Kamal, a Yemen-based spokesperson for the Red Cross. “You could have more than 20 dead people brought into one hospital on one single day. The morgue capacity at a regular hospital is not equipped to handle this influx of dead bodies.”

      “At times several dead bodies had to be stored on one shelf to avoid further decomposition,” Kamal continued. “The situation was not sustainable.”

      Saudi Arabia began bombing Yemen in March 2015, after Houthi rebels took control of the capital and forced Yemen’s Saudi-backed leader, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, into exile. The United Nations has since attributed the majority of the war’s 6,500 deaths to the Saudi coalition, which the U.S. and U.K. have resupplied with tens of billions of dollars of weapons.

    • Genocide in Plain Sight: Shooting Bushmen From Helicopters in Botswana

      In a healthy democracy, people are not shot at from helicopters for collecting food. They are certainly not then arrested, stripped bare and beaten while in custody without facing trial.

      Nor are people banned from their legitimate livelihoods, or persecuted on false pretenses.

      Sadly in Botswana, southern Africa’s much-vaunted ‘beacon of democracy’, all of this took place late last month in an incident which has been criminally under-reported. Nine Bushmen were later arrested and subsequently stripped naked and beaten while in custody.

      The Bushmen of the Kalahari have lived by hunting and gathering on the southern African plains for millennia. They are a peaceful people, who do almost no harm to their environment and have a deep respect for their lands and the game that lives on it. They hunt antelope with spears and bows, mostly gemsbok, which are endemic to the area.

      According to conservation expert Phil Marshall, there are no rhinos or elephants where the Bushmen live. Even if there were the Bushmen would have no reason to hunt them. They hunt various species of antelope, using the fat in their medicine and reserving a special place for the largest of them, the eland, in their mythology. None of these animals are endangered.

    • U.S. Military Now Says ISIS Leader Was Held in Notorious Abu Ghraib Prison

      In February 2004, U.S. troops brought a man named Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badry to Abu Ghraib in Iraq and assigned him serial number US9IZ-157911CI. The prison was about to become international news, but the prisoner would remain largely unknown for the next decade.

      At the time the man was brought in, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba was finalizing his report on allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib’s Hard Site — a prison building used to house detainees singled out for their alleged violence or their perceived intelligence value. Just weeks later, the first pictures of detainee abuse were published on CBS News and in the New Yorker.

      Today, detainee US9IZ-157911CI is better known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State. His presence at Abu Ghraib, a fact not previously made public, provides yet another possible key to the enigmatic leader’s biography and may shed new light on the role U.S. detention facilities played in the rise of the Islamic State.

      Experts have long known that Baghdadi spent time in U.S. custody during the occupation of Iraq. Previous reports suggested he was at Camp Bucca, a sprawling detention facility in southern Iraq. But the U.S. Army confirmed to The Intercept that Baghdadi spent most of his time in U.S. custody at the notorious Abu Ghraib.

    • Support for Saudi Arabia Gives U.S. Direct Role in Yemen Conflict

      It was a frenetic Monday afternoon at Abs Hospital in northern Yemen, with doctors and nurses busily shuttling among the patients and a maternity ward filled with 25 women expecting to give birth.

      The bomb from the Saudi jet dropped into the middle of the hospital compound, a facility run by Doctors Without Borders, landing between the emergency room and a triage area for new patients. Nineteen people were killed, dozens were injured, and a humanitarian group that for decades has braved war zones across the globe decided it had had enough.

      Doctors Without Borders announced in the days after the Aug. 15 strike that it was pulling out of six medical facilities in northern Yemen, the latest turn in a war that has further devastated one of the Arab world’s poorest countries and has bogged down a Saudi military ill-prepared for the conflict.

    • Dad accused of imprisoning his daughter in Saudi Arabia has ‘two weeks’ to allow her home

      A Saudi academic accused of imprisoning his 21-year-old daughter at his home in Jeddah has about two weeks to comply with a British judge’s order which says the woman must be allowed to return to the UK.

      Mr Justice Holman ordered Mohammed Al-Jeffery to return Amina Al-Jeffery to Britain on August 3 after analysing the case at a public hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London.

      The judge said Mr Al-Jeffery had to “permit and facilitate” Miss Al-Jeffery’s return to England or Wales by 4pm on September 11.

      Solicitor Anne-Marie Hutchinson, who represents Miss Al-Jeffery and is a partner at London law firm Dawson Cornwell, says her client has yet to return.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Indonesia fires: Environmentalists urge authorities to act

      Smoke is rising once again from the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, one year after haze from Indonesian land-clearing fires caused major health problems across South-East Asia.

      Environmentalists have urged Indonesian authorities to make good on their promises to get serious about the burning-off.

      So far, much of the haze seems to be coming from the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo.

    • Billionaire’s 28-Year-Old Son Picks Digital Music Empire Over Palm-Oil Riches

      Kuok Meng Ru didn’t spend much time with his billionaire father when he was growing up.

      As the third child of an agribusiness tycoon, he was sent off to a British boarding school at 10, graduating later from Cambridge University with a mathematics degree.

      His father Kuok Khoon Hong was busy building Wilmar International Ltd. into the world’s largest palm-oil business, starting from scratch in 1991. His mother constantly reminded him: “Much has been given, much will be expected.”

      Yet it was the father who introduced his son to Eric Clapton’s music. That led to an obsession with B.B. King and a love affair with the blues guitar.

      “I always felt like I had a personal relationship with him,” Kuok said of the late guitarist.

    • Smoke from Indonesian fires hits ‘unhealthy’ level in Singapore

      Air pollution in Singapore rose to the “unhealthy” level on Friday as acrid smoke drifted over the island from fires on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, the National Environment Agency (NEA) said.

      Every dry season, smoke from fires set to clear land for palm oil and pulp and paper plantations in Indonesia clouds the skies over much of the region, raising concern about public health and worrying tourist operators and airlines.

      The 24-hour Pollution Standards Index (PSI), which Singapore’s NEA uses as a benchmark, rose as high as 105 in the afternoon. A level above 100 is considered “unhealthy”.

      The NEA said it planned a “daily haze advisory” as “a burning smell and slight haze were experienced over many areas” in Singapore.

      Indonesia has been criticized by its northern neighbors and green groups for failing to end the annual fires, which were estimated to cost Southeast Asia’s largest economy $16 billion in 2015, and left more than half a million Indonesians suffering from respiratory ailments.

    • Smoke from Indonesian fires hits ‘unhealthy’ levels in Singapore as authorities push to hunt offenders

      Air pollution in Singapore has risen to the “unhealthy” level as acrid smoke drifted over the island from fires on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, the city-state’s National Environment Agency (NEA) said, in a repeat of an annual crisis.

      Every dry season, smoke from fires set to clear land for palm oil and pulp and paper plantations in Indonesia clouds the skies over much of the region, raising concern about public health and worrying tourist operators and airlines.

      The 24-hour Pollution Standards Index (PSI), which the NEA uses as a benchmark, rose as high as 105 in the afternoon — a level above 100 is considered “unhealthy”.

      The NEA said it planned a “daily haze advisory” as “a burning smell and slight haze were experienced over many areas” in Singapore.

    • Indonesia Steps up Fire Response as Haze Blankets Singapore

      Six Indonesian provinces have declared states of emergency as forest fires blanketed a swath of Southeast Asia in a smoky haze.

      Singapore’s air quality deteriorated to unhealthy levels on Friday as winds blew smoke from fires on Sumatra, where millions of people are already affected by haze, across the city-state and into southern Malaysia.

      The number of hotspots detected in Sumatra and Borneo by weather satellites has increased in the past month though they are below levels last year when massive fires in Indonesia caused a regional crisis.

      Singapore’s three-hour air pollution index was at 157 by late afternoon, after peaking at 215. Its environment agency doesn’t give a health warning with the limited duration index, but on a 24-hour basis it says levels above 100 are unhealthy and above 200 very unhealthy.

    • Singapore air quality worsens overnight as Indonesia fire arrests jump

      Southeast Asia is bracing itself for its annual, uncomfortable tryst with haze as raging fires at Indonesian plantations worsen pollution in the region.

      On Friday, Singapore woke up to a deterioration in air quality overnight, as a thin cloak of haze hung over the city-state. The country’s environment agency said that its 3-hour Pollution Standards Index hit the unhealthy level at 10am SIN.

      Neighboring Malaysia had already been feeling the effects of the drifting smog since mid-August, local media reported.

      The latest bout of pollution comes even as Indonesia steps up efforts against the ‘slash-and-burn’ technique of cutting down vegetation on a patch of land, then burning off the undergrowth to make space for new plantations.

      The country has arrested 454 individuals in connection with forest fires so far this year, more than double the 196 arrests made in 2015, Reuters reported, citing police data released on Thursday.

      The ‘slash-and-burn’ method is prevalent in Indonesia as it the easiest, fastest and most cost-effective way to clear land. According to the World Bank, about 35 percent of the Indonesian workforce is employed in agriculture, with palm oil and pulp-and-paper industries key contributors.

    • Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?

      Standing before several dozen students in a college classroom, Travis Rieder tries to convince them not to have children. Or at least not too many.

      He’s at James Madison University in southwest Virginia to talk about a “small-family ethic” — to question the assumptions of a society that sees having children as good, throws parties for expecting parents, and in which parents then pressure their kids to “give them grandchildren.”

      Why question such assumptions? The prospect of climate catastrophe.

      For years, people have lamented how bad things might get “for our grandchildren,” but Rieder tells the students that future isn’t so far off anymore.

      He asks how old they will be in 2036, and, if they are thinking of having kids, how old their kids will be.

  • Finance

    • Apple could be on the hook for $19 billion in taxes, and the Obama administration is livid

      The European Commission is expected to levy a judgment against Apple in the next few months that could total in the billions of euros.

      JPMorgan has estimated that Apple could be on the hook for as much as $19 billion — or about 17 billion euros — the Financial Times reports.

      The commission is accusing Apple of striking a sweetheart tax deal with Ireland, in which the iPhone maker would move its profits to wholly owned Irish subsidiaries to reduce its corporate taxes.

      Apple has one major defender in its corner, though: the US Treasury Department and, by extension, the Obama administration.

    • Uber & Lyft As An Extension Of… Or Replacement For… Public Transit
    • Bay Area transit system to subsidize Uber, Lyft rides

      In a first for California, a public transit agency next month plans to begin subsidizing fares of people who take private Uber and Lyft cars to local destinations rather than riding the bus.

    • Uber Loses at Least $1.2 Billion in First Half of 2016

      The ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies Inc. is not a public company, but every three months, dozens of shareholders get on a conference call to hear the latest details on its business performance from its head of finance, Gautam Gupta.

      On Friday, Gupta told investors that Uber’s losses mounted in the second quarter. Even in the U.S., where Uber had turned a profit during its first quarter, the company was once again losing money.

    • Uber Is Playing a $16 Billion Game of Chicken

      A Bloomberg report Thursday revealed that Uber continues to lose an astounding amount of money as it tries to figure out a business model that works internationally. Uber lost $1.27 billion globally in the first half of 2016, according to the report. But more concerning for domestic riders is the fact that, after a profitable quarter in the United States, Uber is now once again losing money in the US market as it tries to use the enormous amount of financing it’s raised ($16 billion) to destroy competitors such as Lyft.

      In its quest to corner the ridesharing market, that has meant steep price discounts and promotional fares for consumers that are subsidized by Uber’s investors. Uber lost $100 million domestically in the second quarter. Lyft isn’t faring any better—its goal is to lose less than $50 million per month, according to the Bloomberg report.

      “Uber has been engaged in a fierce price war with Lyft Inc. this year, and that has also contributed to the enormous losses,” Bloomberg reporter Eric Newcomer wrote. “Uber told investors on Friday’s call that it’s willing to spend to maintain its market share in the US. The company told investors that it believes Uber has between 84 percent and 87 percent of the market in the US, according to a person familiar with the matter. One investor said that he was expecting Uber to continue losing money in the US for the next quarter or two.”

    • Uber lost at least $1.27bn in first half of 2016 – report

      Ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies lost at least $1.27bn before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in the first six months of 2016, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

      The subsidies Uber grants its drivers was the main reason for the loss, finance head Gautam Gupta told investors in a quarterly conference call, Bloomberg said, citing sources.

      Uber, whose investors include Goldman Sachs Group and Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, could not immediately be reached for comment.

      The company lost about $520m in the first quarter of the year and another $750m in the second quarter, Bloomberg said.

    • Brexit pushes up price of bacon butty as China takes advantage of weak sterling to buy British pork

      The price of a bacon butty has dramatically increased after Brexit as China snaps up Britain’s pork supply and takes advantage of the UK’s weak sterling.

      Pork suppliers have revealed they had bumped up the price of a pack of British smoked bacon by as much as 38 per cent since the beginning of August, causing price increases for Britons of up to 19 per cent.

      The rise is attributed to higher demand from China who are desperately trying to import British pork to make up for their own domestic shortage after floods wiped out huge swathes of Chinese pigs.

    • Government brings forward measures to boost tourism after Brexit puts UK into bargain basement bin

      The Government is bringing forward a raft of measures to boost tourism, as a weak pound makes trips to Britain cheaper for foreigners.

      Brits’ summer holidays became more expensive across the board following the Brexit vote, as the pound fell from $1.49 on referendum day to lows of $1.28 in July and August.

      As a result the cost of a beer in New York City bar went from £3.98 to £4.65 overnight for British visitors – with similar rises for all other expenses like hotels, museums, and some flights.

    • Brexit shock fades as consumer confidence jumps at highest rate in three years

      UK consumer confidence rose the most in more than three years this month as the initial shock from the Brexit vote faded.

      An index of sentiment by YouGov and the Centre for Economics and Business Research jumped to 109.8 from 106.6 in July, which was a three-year low. The gauge is still below the level it was a year ago.

      While the Brexit vote initially knocked sentiment, it’s not yet clear how this might ripple into economic activity. The Bank of England took pre-emptive action in early August, cutting interest rates and restarting quantitative easing to counter any slowdown.

    • The top 10 reasons Brexit isn’t working, according to Brexiteers

      Over the next few years, it is likely that the economy will shrink, that the entire government will be consumed by trade negotiations at the expense of every other priority, and that EU leaders will use their considerable negotiation advantages to theatrically screw us. As this unpretty story unfolds, those who argued confidently for Brexit, in parliament and in the press, will feel compelled to maintain that they were right, and that if it hadn’t been for some other impossible-to-foresee factor everything would be going splendidly. What follows is an attempt to anticipate the most predictable post-rationalisations; I’m sure there will be more creative efforts.

    • Why the Norway model is a flawed blueprint for Brexit

      The Norway option contradicts most claims of “taking back control” made during the referendum campaign. This is because, in order to benefit from membership of the single market, Norway has to accept the free movement of persons, along with goods, services and capital. Free movement within the EEA is a package deal.

      Even if the UK was able to secure an agreement to join the EEA and introduce limits on free movement of persons (which seems unlikely), the Norway option would still betray the “control over our laws” promise, as the UK would, in practice, continue to be bound by a large proportion of EU law.

    • Brazil’s Congress — a den of corruption

      Brazil’s Senate is big on decorum, not even letting men in without a coat and tie. But when it comes to corruption allegations, the politicians judging suspended president Dilma Rousseff seem less worried.

      Analysis by corruption watchdog Transparencia Brasil reveals that 59 percent of the 81 Senate members who will vote on Rousseff’s impeachment have been convicted or been investigated for crimes at some point.

      It is the same proportion in the lower house, whose 513 deputies first ignited the impeachment process now in its final stage in the Senate.

      Rousseff is accused of illegally manipulating government accounts to mask the depth of the economic crisis. However, her alleged crime, which she argues is an accounting maneuver used by several previous governments, does not suggest personal corruption or common crime.

      The same cannot be said of many of those sitting in Congress in recent years with rap sheets ranging from embezzlement and vote buying to murder.

    • Finland plans to give out cash to create jobs

      The experiment aims to show if the measure can simplify the welfare benefits system and lower unemployment in the country.

      “The primary goal of the basic income experiment is related to promoting employment,” the ministry said.

      As part of the testing, which will begin next year, 2,000 randomly selected working-age recipients of unemployment benefit will receive a monthly tax free income of €560 instead of their current payment.

    • Finland gearing up to launch basic income experiment

      Finland is set to launch an experiment in which a group of randomly-selected recipients of unemployment benefits will receive a monthly basic income of 560 euros instead of their current benefits.

    • Finland tests giving every citizen a universal basic income

      Finland is pushing ahead with a plan to test the effects of paying a basic income as it seeks to protect state finances and move more people into the labour market.

      The Social Insurance Institution of Finland, known as Kela, will be responsible for carrying out the experiment that would start in 2017 and include 2,000 randomly selected welfare recipients, according to a statement released on Thursday.

      The level of basic income would be €560 euros per month (£480) tax free, and mandatory for those picked.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • “The Spoiler” Speaks

      Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on her campaign and building an alternative to the two corporate parties.

    • Did an ISIS Fighter Try to Sell Sex Slaves on Facebook?

      Well, maybe. It is amazing how these horrific stories about ISIS just happen to appear on global social media, and then are instantly picked up by the mainstream media as fact.

      Why, it is almost as if someone is creating them, and then calling the mass media’s attention to them on obscure sources, for anti-ISIS propaganda purposes. Hmm.

    • Clinton Wins in A Cakewalk? Don’t Bet the Ranch on It

      If you listen to the media and the pundits, most are predicting a surefire Clinton victory – if not a landslide. One of the reasons for this misplaced optimism is that they seem to believe Sanders’ revolutionaries are all prepared to join hands with the PACster politicians and DLC types dominating the Democratic Party and sing Kumbaya.

      [...]

      The 2014 mid-terms are a good guide in terms of what to expect. The President’s party usually loses in a mid-term, but the Democratic defeat in 2014 was off the charts. Republicans ended up with 247 House seats – their best showing since Hoover was President, and they took the Senate, ending up with 54 seats.

      Most of the pundits and even many of the Democrats themselves ascribed the 2014 shellacking to their favorite fantasy – that the majority of Americans are right-of-center and liberal issues like Obamacare sunk the Party. The fact is, the majority of Americans are left of center, and except for a brief blip in the 70’s and 80’s, they have been since World War II.

      In reality, “none of the above” won in 2014, and the Democrats lost because instead of running on progressive values they ran from them, and progressives – disgusted and with no one to vote for — stayed home in droves.

      As a result, 2014 ended up with the lowest voter turnout in over 70 years. If you were to ask what Democrats stood for in 2014, about the only conclusion you could come up with would be something like, “We’re not with the black guy, and well … er… um we really don’t like Obamacare much either …”

      Conservatives, in contrast, ran fanatically on their usual platform of jingoism, anti-government, free-marketeer nonsense, and while their base is much smaller, they got fired up and they showed up. Throw in the gerrymandered districts they got from strategically targeted down-ballot interventions in 2010, and the defeat was crippling.

    • Should Gary Johnson, Jill Stein be included in debates? Reader respond to our question: Letters

      Given the unpalatable candidates chosen by the two major parties for the upcoming presidential election, I feel it is essential that all credible third-party candidates be included in the debates, regardless whether they have polled at 15 percent or better.

      Should either the Democratic or the Republican candidate be elected president, I shudder at the tragic consequences that are sure to result. I certainly don’t plan on voting for the lesser of the two evils and hope that having third-party candidates in the debates may convince others to seriously consider voting for a third party.

    • From Dana Milbank, Trite Objections To Jill Stein

      One week after a CNN town hall event which created a momentary spike of interest in her presidential campaign, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. She hoped to convince reporters from establishment media outlets to give her campaign more coverage because voters are “hungry for more” information about her candidacy.

      Washington Post columnist and contrarian Dana Milbank was present. He published a piece on Stein based on what he heard (and decided not to hear) at the Press Club. This was not the kind of media coverage Stein wanted, but it is about what her campaign could expect from a seasoned Beltway hack, who thinks everything he does is hot fire.

      Columns from the Washington Post are syndicated widely. Just as the Washington Post introduced Americans to Jill Stein through an article that underhandedly suggested she was anti-vaccine, this column will make an impression on voters. That is why it deserves to be rebutted in its entirety.

      In the piece, Milbank attacks Stein for a tactical disagreement with left-wing scholar Noam Chomsky and does so with a joke because Milbank thinks he is hilarious. He once made a joke about what kind of a beer Hillary Clinton would be, “Mad Bitch Beer,” and had to apologize for it. (Yes, sometimes his edginess gets the best of him.)

    • If You’re Worried About Trump’s ‘Alt-Right’ Then Vote Jill Stein, Not Hillary Clinton

      Donald Trump has pandered to the extreme right this election, but Republicans have always engaged in this form of politics. My first Salon article (long before Joan Walsh lobbied the publication to stop publishing me) was in 2014, regarding Paul Ryan’s “tailspin of culture” comments. From Romney’s “47% Percent” remark to Reagan’s use of the “welfare queen” stereotype, Republicans have used race as a political weapon. Trump didn’t start the GOP’s use of racism to gain votes, but he’s been more vocal than previous Republican nominees. There’s a reason he won the Republican Primary and Tea Party politics has gained greater influence within the GOP.

      However, to assume that Hillary Clinton’s speech on Trump’s “alt-right” political alliance makes the case for voting Democrat ignores recent history. Clinton and Trump are two sides of the same coin, especially considering Trump donated $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation and is friends with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Voting for the lesser evil in 2016 (assuming you view Clinton to be less evil) only bolsters the ability of establishment Democrats to take money from prison lobbyists, without the condemnation of progressive media. Therefore, the only logical choice to truly undermine “alt-right” political ideology is voting for the Green Party’s Jill Stein. I explain in this YouTube segment why progressives shouldn’t worry about Trump and must vote Jill Stein to transform America’s lesser-evil political system.

    • Democratic Pundits Downplay Serious Ethical Issues Raised by the Clinton Foundation

      The Associated Press story this week revealing that as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton frequently met with donors to the Clinton Foundation, set off a firestorm in the media. Many Democrats and sympathetic pundits are criticizing the article — and have made the sweeping claim that, contrary to many deeply reported investigations, there is no evidence that well-heeled backers of the foundation received favorable treatment from the State Department.

      While there are some legitimate criticisms of the AP story — its focus, for instance, on a Nobel Peace Prize winner meeting with Clinton distracts from the thesis of the piece — it is nonetheless a substantive investigation based on calendars that the State Department has fought to withhold from the public. The AP took the agency to court to obtain a partial release of the meeting logs. Other commentators took issue with a tweet promoting the AP piece, which they said might confuse readers because the AP story reflected private sector meetings, not overall meetings.

      But in challenging the overall credibility of the AP story, Clinton surrogates and allies are going well beyond a reasoned critique in an effort to downplay the serious ethical issues raised by Clinton Foundation activities.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • China announces strict rules for P2P lenders, Yirendai’s stock price plummets

      After months of very high profile problems, China’s regulators have finally announced how they’re going to fix the online P2P lending industry. Among the new rules for P2P lenders:

      No accepting public deposits
      No pooling investor money to support the lender’s own projects
      No selling financial/wealth management products
      No issuing asset-backed securities
      All lenders must use third-party banks to watch over investors’ money

    • Lawyer Sues Basically All Mainstream Media For RICO Violations For How They Report On Donald Trump

      If you do a Google search on Roy Den Hollander, as I just did, you may discover that basically every result is a story about some absolutely ridiculous lawsuit he has filed. There was the time he sued a nightclub claiming that requiring him to buy a $350 bottle of vodka was a human rights violation. Or the time he sued a bunch of night clubs for violating the 14th Amendment by having “Ladies’ Nights.” Or the time he sued Columbia University for offering women’s studies courses. Or the time he wanted to file a lawsuit to force women to register for the draft. And these are all stories from just the first page of Google results (or following links from those stories). But, you get the idea.

      And now he’s back with a new lawsuit. He’s basically suing the entire mainstream media claiming that how they report on Donald Trump is a RICO violation. No, really.

    • Ai Weiwei Says He Was Removed from Inaugural Yinchuan Biennale for Political Reasons

      Ai Weiwei at his exhibition in 2015 at London’s Royal Academy of Art. Photo Alex B. Huckle/Getty Images. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei says that his work was removed from the inaugural Yinchuan Biennale for political reasons.

    • Dissident artist Ai Weiwei says work was pulled from Yinchuan Biennale due to ‘political sensitivity’

      Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei says his work has been pulled from the upcoming biennale in Yinchuan, China, due to his “political sensitivity.”

      Ai said on Instagram that he received a “vague” letter from Hsieh Suchen, art director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Yinchuan, China. The letter stated that his participation in the upcoming Yinchuan Biennale is now cancelled. The decision was made by higher officials due to his “political sensitivity,” Ai said.

      Scheduled to run from September 9 to December 18, the Yinchuan Biennale is the first biennale in the north west of China and the second in China. As the museum’s first Biennale, the exhibition represents Yinchuan’s entrance into the international art scene.

    • Groups charge censorship over relocation of paintings

      Anti-censorship groups recently appealed to the University of Wisconsin-Stout not to remove or relocate two 80-year-old paintings that depict First Nations people and French fur traders.

      UW-Stout Chancellor Bob Meyer said the paintings were being relocated for display under “controlled circumstances” because of student complaints.

      Meyer said Native American students feel the paintings symbolize a time when their land and possessions were taken from them, according to the AP. The school is moving the paintings because of their potential for harmful effect and because they could reinforce racial stereotypes.

    • Twitter, Google, Facebook “consciously failing” to police extremism, MPs claim

      Twitter, Facebook, and Google are “consciously failing” to tackle the promotion of terrorism and killings on their services in the UK, a cross-party panel of MPs has claimed.

      The home affairs committee released a report on radicalisation on Thursday morning, following a 12-month-long inquiry. And the conclusion is damning for popular online sites such as YouTube.

      “The use of the Internet to promote radicalisation and terrorism is one of the greatest threats that countries including the UK face,” it said, before adding: “Networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are the vehicle of choice in spreading propaganda and they have become the recruiting platforms for terrorism. They must accept that hundreds of millions in revenues generated from billions of people using their products needs to be accompanied by a greater sense of responsibility and ownership for the impact that extremist material on their sites is having.”

    • Newspaper Archive Disappears From Google, Because Company Wants To Cash In

      Another day, another case of copyright being used to lock up information, rather than make it more accessible. In this case, it’s the news archives of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, according to an interesting piece by Henry Grabar over at Slate. A decade or so ago, the newspaper partnered with Google to digitize all of its archives and make them publicly accessible.

    • After Outpouring Of Islamophobia, Oxford Dictionaries Suspends Most-Hated Word Survey

      Oxford Dictionaries suspended its #OneWordMap most-hated words project today. An update to the blog post describing the feature stated: “We regret to inform users that due to severe misuse we have had to remove this feature from our website.”

      It’s possible that the suspension stemmed from the apparent outpouring of anti-Islam sentiment in the submissions to the project. Some Twitter accounts posted screenshots purporting to show that Oxford Dictionaries had barred certain sensitive words, like “Islam,” from submission prior to the decision to take down the project.

      However, the nature of the misuse was not specified in the site’s statement, and as of this update, Oxford Dictionaries had not responded to a request for more details about why the program was halted.

    • UK lawmakers say Facebook, Google, and Twitter are ‘consciously failing’ to fight ISIS online

      A committee of UK lawmakers this week said that Facebook, Google, and Twitter are “consciously failing” to combat terrorist propaganda and recruitment on their platforms, escalating an ongoing debate over the role of social media companies in curtailing online extremism. In a wide-ranging report on radicalization published Thursday, the UK Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee said that social media platforms have become “the vehicle of choice in spreading propaganda and the recruiting platforms for terrorism.” The Wall Street Journal first reported on the committee’s findings on Wednesday.

      Lawmakers in the US and Europe have called on social media companies to crack down on propaganda spread by ISIS and other extremist groups, following a spate of recent attacks. The Obama administration has been working with tech companies to create counter-messaging campaigns, and some social networks have publicly touted an increase in suspended accounts linked to extremist groups. But some rights groups have said that the crackdown could curtail free speech, expressing concerns over governments delegating too much power to private tech firms.

    • Twitter developing keyword filtering tool to fight abuse, says report

      Twitter is reportedly working on a feature that will let users block certain keywords in order to fight abuse, reports Bloomberg. According to anonymous sources, Twitter has been discussing the tool internally for about a year, although it’s unclear when or if it might be put into place. Bloomberg compares the keyword filtering to a feature recently added by Instagram, which lets users block comments containing certain words from appearing on their posts. But where that would outright remove messages, this system sounds more like an expansion of Twitter’s existing “mute” feature, which simply lets people avoid seeing tweets from specific accounts.

      The report suggests that users could set these filters and avoid being shown tweets with racial or gendered slurs, or they could use it for inoffensive tweets about events or conversation topics they’re not interested in. That’s different from the filters Twitter has been suspected of using in the past, which would actively prevent people from tweeting specific keywords at another user. In fact, the description makes it sound a lot like the filtering systems that already exist in third-party clients like Tweetdeck or Tweetbot, although these aren’t mentioned.

    • Political Correctness: What Words Are Okay to Say?
    • Some Words One College Won’t Encourage
    • UWM ‘Just Words’ campaign sparks criticism of censorship
    • Korryn Gaines Shooting Prompts ‘Censorship’ Change

      A collective of activists sent an open letter to Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg asking him to implement an “anti-censorship policy” at the company for its dealings with law enforcement officials in the wake of the death of Korryn Gaines.

      Gaines, 23, died shortly after a standoff with Baltimore police. Her confrontation with police officers, which was streamed via the social media site’s Facebook Live feature, was turned off shortly after her death.

      Archived video footage from the stream was briefly unavailable as well. According to the letter, Facebook said the inconvenience was due to a “technical glitch.”

      But the consortium of activist groups say they don’t buy the “glitch” explanation.

    • Why Did Facebook Censor the Fatal Police Shooting of Korryn Gaines?
    • Black Lives Matter Demands Facebook Revive Account Of Woman Killed For SHOOTING AT COPS With Large Gun
    • Activists Request Anti-Censorship Policy from Facebook Following Death of Korryn Gaines
    • As Summer Ends, Tensions Remain High Between Black Community and Police
    • UPDATE: Amos Yee Pleads Guilty to Three Charges of ‘Wounding Religious Feelings’
    • Singaporean dissident blogger Amos Yee pleads guilty to three more charges
    • Amos Yee enters guilty plea on three more charges
    • Don’t censor terrorists’ names
    • Terrorists’ names, faces should be published

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • British Companies Are Selling Advanced Spy Tech to Authoritarian Regimes

      Since early 2015, over a dozen UK companies have been granted licenses to export powerful telecommunications interception technology to countries around the world, Motherboard has learned. Many of these exports include IMSI-catchers, devices which can monitor large numbers of mobile phones over broad areas.

      Some of the UK companies were given permission to export their products to authoritarian states such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Egypt; countries with poor human rights records that have been well-documented to abuse surveillance technology.

      “At a time when the use of these surveillance tools is still highly controversial in the UK, it is completely unacceptable that companies are allowed to export the same equipment to countries with atrocious human rights records or which lack rule of law altogether. There is absolutely a clear risk that these products can be used for repression and abuses,” Edin Omanovic, research officer at Privacy International, told Motherboard in an email.

    • BAE Systems Sells Internet Surveillance Gear to United Arab Emirates

      A Danish subsidiary of British defense contractor BAE Systems is selling an internet surveillance package to the government of the United Arab Emirates, a country known for spying on, imprisoning, and torturing dissidents and activists, according to documents obtained by Lasse Skou Andersen of the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information.

      The documents from the Danish Business Authority reveal an ongoing contract between the defense conglomerate, BAE Systems Applied Intelligence A/S, and the Middle Eastern oil federation dating back to at least December 2014.

      The contract describes an internet surveillance product capable of deep packet inspection — “IP monitoring and data analysis” for “serious crime” and “national security” investigations. That could include capabilities like mapping a target’s social networks and extracting personal information and communications from devices including voice recordings, video, messages, and attachments.

    • Why can’t Apple spend its way out of security vulnerabilities?

      On most days, it’s the largest company in the world by market cap, and a surprising amount of that money is already in the bank. At the close of Q1 this year, the company had $55 billion in easily accessible cash along with another $178 billion in long-term securities that could be cashed in if the need arose. With the core business already at its peak, there’s no obvious place to put that money, which is why it’s so easy for Tim Cook to pour cash into areas like health-tracking or Frank Ocean albums.

    • IPhone Users Urged to Update Software After Security Flaws Are Found

      One of the world’s most evasive digital arms dealers is believed to have been taking advantage of three security vulnerabilities in popular Apple products in its efforts to spy on dissidents and journalists.

      Investigators discovered that a company called the NSO Group, an Israeli outfit that sells software that invisibly tracks a target’s mobile phone, was responsible for the intrusions. The NSO Group’s software can read text messages and emails and track calls and contacts. It can even record sounds, collect passwords and trace the whereabouts of the phone user.

      In response, Apple on Thursday released a patched version of its mobile software, iOS 9.3.5. Users can get the patch through a normal software update.

    • WhatsApp privacy backlash: Facebook angers users by harvesting their data

      Stop us if you’ve heard this one: Facebook rolls out a new feature and/or acquires a new company, vowing to protect the privacy of its users’ personal information with its last dying breath. A year or two later, it backtracks and decides it wants spin your data into gold after all – and if users don’t like it, they can delete their accounts.

      And so it is with today’s news about WhatsApp, the messaging service acquired by the world’s most unavoidable social network in February 2014. In a blogpost, WhatsApp announced it would begin sharing names and phone numbers with its parent company, to allow its more than 1 billion users “to communicate with businesses that matter to you too” – like notifications from airlines, delivery services or your bank, for example.

      Facebook will also use that data to make friend suggestions and combine that data with the reams of information it has already collected so that it can tailor ads even more specifically to your interests.

      Facebook did not want to comment on the change.

      The reaction was nothing if not predictable. Tech news site Gizmodo sums up the feeling of many tech observers: “The sentiment that WhatsApp is an app that protects and cares for your privacy is no longer a reality. It was nice while it lasted.”

      Some used Reddit to voice their disappointment, like Redditor Rakajj: “WhatsApp just lost a user. Was just a matter of time once the FB acquisition went through. Guess it’s time to finally give Telegram a whirl.”

    • You can stop WhatsApp from sharing your phone number with Facebook

      Hyper-popular messaging app WhatsApp announced yesterday that it would start sharing some user data — including your phone number — with parent company Facebook. The two companies say the new policy will help you find friends and “improve your Facebook ads and products experiences,” but it will also give businesses a new avenue to reach potential customers, with WhatsApp describing situations where banks and airlines will use your phone number to get in touch about fraudulent payments or delayed flights.

      WhatsApp has promised that it won’t sell or share that number with advertisers, but if you still balk at the idea of putting your phone number where a legion of hungry brands could potentially see it, you’re in luck — you’ve still got a chance to stop WhatsApp from handing Facebook this new data if you act fast. There are two methods, as Motherboard notes, but the first has to be done before you accept the messaging app’s new terms of service. Rather than clicking “agree” blindly, press the smaller “read more” option below, and uncheck the box that reads “Share my WhatsApp account information with Facebook…”

    • Facebook Takes First Step Toward Making Money From WhatsApp Deal

      Facebook Inc. is laying the groundwork for its free messaging service WhatsApp to begin making money, easing its privacy rules so data can be used for Facebook advertising and allowing businesses to message its more than one billion users. It’s the first step toward monetizing the platform since the social network’s Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg paid $22 billion for the app in 2014.

      WhatsApp announced the change to its terms of service policy today. It allows businesses to communicate with users, including appointment reminders, delivery and shipping notifications and marketing pitches. In a corresponding blog post, WhatsApp said it will be testing the features over the coming months.

    • Here’s How to Prevent WhatsApp from Giving Facebook Your Phone Number

      A little more than two years ago, after Facebook bought his messaging startup for a cool $19 billion, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum stressed that “nothing would change” regarding his company’s well-regarded privacy policy and its handling of user data. “There would have been no partnership between our two companies if we had to compromise on the core principles that will always define our company, our vision and our product,” Koum said.

      Times change.

      WhatsApp said on Thursday morning that it will now share with Facebook the phone numbers of its users in an effort “to improve your Facebook ads and products experiences.” So far, this “improved experience” primarily appears to mean giving businesses the ability to contact you via WhatsApp: banks will be able to message you when they detect fraudulent activity on your account, and airlines will be able to alert you when your flight is delayed. WhatsApp noted that it expects to begin testing these features within the next few months.

    • Inside Facebook’s (Totally Insane, Unintentionally Gigantic, Hyperpartisan) Political-Media Machine

      Open your Facebook feed. What do you see? A photo of a close friend’s child. An automatically generated slide show commemorating six years of friendship between two acquaintances. An eerily on-target ad for something you’ve been meaning to buy. A funny video. A sad video. A recently live video. Lots of video; more video than you remember from before. A somewhat less-on-target ad. Someone you saw yesterday feeling blessed. Someone you haven’t seen in 10 years feeling worried.

    • NSA’s SNMP exploit cyberweapon affects all Cisco ASA software

      The danger of the NSA-linked EXTRABACON exploit grew after researchers found an easy way to modify the SNMP exploit to be effective against newer versions of Cisco’s ASA software.

      EXTRABACON, released earlier this month as part of the Shadow Brokers dump of NSA cyberweapons, was described by Cisco as an exploit targeting a buffer overflow vulnerability in the Simple Network Messaging Protocol (SNMP) code used in Cisco’s Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software.

      Cisco admitted the underlying vulnerability could be found in all supported versions of SNMP and therefore all Cisco ASA software releases were also affected. But, preliminary research indicated EXTRABACON was designed to be effective against Cisco ASA versions 8.4(4) and earlier.

      Silent Signal, a cybersecurity company based in Budapest, Hungary, proved the EXTRABACON code was modular and could easily be modified to make the SNMP exploit work on all Cisco ASA software.

    • The National Security Agency has no idea how a rogue hacking group leaked its exploits

      The US intelligence community is still attempting to figure out how a hacking group called the Shadow Brokers was able to obtain and leak a slew of NSA computer exploits used to circumvent security of routers and firewalls, top officials have admitted.

      “We are still sorting this out,” said James Clapper, director of national intelligence, at an event at the Nixon Presidential Library on 24 August. As reported by AP, he added: “It’s still under investigation. We don’t know exactly the full extent – or the understanding – of exactly what happened.”

      In what amounted to the first official comment on the hack, it’s clear the US government is still attempting to find out the true scope of the embarrassing blunder.

      The leaked toolkits, reportedly from 2013, contained NSA surveillance and infiltration exploits that relied upon previously unknown zero-day vulnerabilities.

    • Cisco starts patching firewall devices against NSA-linked exploit

      Cisco Systems has started releasing security patches for a critical flaw in Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) firewalls targeted by an exploit linked to the U.S. National Security Agency.

      The exploit, dubbed ExtraBacon, is one of the tools used by a group that the security industry calls the Equation, believed to be a cyberespionage team tied to the NSA.

      ExtraBacon was released earlier this month together with other exploits by one or more individuals who use the name Shadow Brokers. The files were provided as a sample of a larger Equation group toolset the Shadow Brokers outfit has put up for auction.

      ExtraBacon exploits a buffer overflow vulnerability in the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) implementation from Cisco’s ASA software. It allows attackers to remotely execute rogue code on the affected devices, as long as they can send traffic to their SNMP interface. This typically requires being on the same internal network as the targeted devices.

      Even though the ExtraBacon exploit was designed to work for versions 8.4(4) and earlier of the ASA software, other researchers demonstrated that it can be modified to also work on newer versions. Cisco confirmed in an advisory that all versions of SNMP in Cisco ASA software contain the flaw.

    • The Secret Behind the NSA Breach: Network Infrastructure Is the Next Target

      Advanced attackers are targeting organizations’ first line of defense–their firewalls—and turning them into a gateway into the network for mounting a data breach. On Aug. 13, the shady “ShadowBrokers” group published several firewall exploits as proof that they had a full trove of cyber weapons. Whether intended to drive up bids for their “Equation Group Cyber Weapons Auction” (since removed), or to threaten other nation-states, the recent disclosure raises the question: if organizations can’t trust their own firewalls, then what can they trust? Does the cache of cyber weapons exposed by ShadowBrokers signal a shift in attack methods and targets?

    • NSA Leaks are Scaring Big Tech. Heres Why

      After an unknown group came public with a cache of hacking tools from the National Security Agency earlier this week, some of the biggest tech companies in the world are in a hurry to fix their systems and software to protect themselves and customers from attacks.

      The leak came from an anonymous group and is calling itself The Shadow Brokers. While the group’s beginnings and reasons for the leak are unknown, cybersecurity experts and former agency employees have authenticated the NSA hacking tools.

      By exposing the custom-made malware online, the Shadow Brokers have made many of the systems American corporations rely on for security online more vulnerable to cyberattacks from criminals and spies.
      Many cybersecurity pros are asking why the NSA would stockpile so many of these kinds of security vulnerabilities without telling the affected companies such as networking giants Cisco and the digital security firm Fortinet.

    • Cisco Patches ASA Devices Against EXTRABACON

      Cisco has begun releasing software updates for its Adaptive Security Appliance devices to patch a zero-day flaw that was revealed via leaked Equation Group attack tools. Cisco ASA devices provide anti-virus, firewall, intrusion prevention and virtual private network capabilities (see Equation Group Hacking Tool Dump: 5 Lessons).

    • The Shadow Brokers Release More Potent Exploits To The Public

      The Shadow Brokers continue to make a name for themselves. Although their Bitcoin auction is not seeing much success, the group recently leaked some Cisco firewall exploits.

    • The NSA hacked equipment from Cisco, Huawei, and Juniper

      With sensitive NSA documents falling into the hands of hacking group Shadow Brokers, it was only a matter of time before the world gained some further insights on the security agency’s latest work.

    • Apple Updates iOS To Close Three Separate 0days That Were Being Exploited

      As you may have heard, if you have an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, even iPod Touch) you should be updating your devices, like a few hours ago. Seriously, if you haven’t done it yet, stop reading and go update. The story behind this update is quite incredible, and is detailed in a great article over at Motherboard by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai. Basically after someone (most likely a gov’t) targeted Ahmed Mansoor, a human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates with a slightly questionable text (urging him to click on a link to get info about prison torture), a team of folks from Citizen Lab (who have exposed lots of questionable malware) and Lookout (anti-malware company) got to work on the text and figured out what it did. And, basically the short version is that the single click exploits three separate 0days vulnerabilities to effectively take over your phone in secret. All of it. It secretly jailbreaks the phone without you knowing it and then accesses basically everything.

    • To The NSA, The Word ‘Security’ Is Synonymous With ‘Gaping, Unpatched Holes In US Developers’ Software’

      Suck it up, Cisco. That gaping hole uncovered by the Shadow Brokers was discovered at least three years ago by the NSA and if it chose not to tell you about it, it had its reasons. Namely: national security.

      The Obama administration made sympathetic noises in the wake of the Snowden leaks, suggesting the NSA err on the side of disclosure. It simultaneously gave the agency no reason to ever do that by appending “unless national security, etc.” to the statement.

      But part of the phrase “national security” is the word “security.” (And the other part — “national” — suggests this directive also covers protecting US companies from attacks, not just the more amorphous “American public.”) Allowing tech companies who provide network security software and hardware to other prime hacking targets to remain unaware of security holes doesn’t exactly serve the nation or its security. So, while Tanji may claim the NSA isn’t in the QA business, it sort of is. The thing is the NSA prefers to exploit QA issues, rather than give affected developers a chance to patch them.

    • Germany Interior Minister Pushing For Deployment Of Facial Recognition Software In Public Areas

      Facial recognition software is the wave of the future present. The FBI — acting without a required Privacy Impact Assessment — rolled out its system in 2014, finding that a 20% false hit rate was good enough for government (surveillance) work.

      Following in the footsteps of Facebook, governments slanting towards the authoritarian side (that’s you, Russia!) have deployed facial recognition software to help ensure its citizens are stripped of their anonymity.

      Other governments not so seemingly bent on obedience to the state have done the same. UK law enforcement has quietly built a huge facial recognition database and Brazil experimented with police equipment that would turn officers into Robocops — providing real-time facial recognition to cops via some sort of Google Glass-ish headgear. If what we know about facial recognition software’s accuracy rates holds true, the goggles will, indeed, do nothing.

      Germany has maintained an arm’s-length relationship with its troublesome past. The Stasi and Gestapo’s lingering specters still haunt current legislators, occasionally prompting them to curb domestic surveillance efforts. Concerns for the privacy of its citizens has also sometimes resulted in the government making angry noises at tech companies it feels are overstepping their boundaries.

    • EU backs Franco-German bid for access to encrypted messages

      France and Germany want to compel operators of mobile messaging services to provide access to encrypted content to terrorism investigations, after a series of deadly attacks in both countries.

      French intelligence services, on high alert since attackers killed hundreds of civilians in Paris in November and in Nice in July, are struggling to intercept messages from Islamist militants.

      Many of the groups now use encrypted messaging services rather than mainstream social media, with Islamic State a big user of such apps, investigators in several countries have said.

      French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the European Commission should draft a law obliging operators to cooperate in investigations of militants.

      “If such legislation was adopted, this would allow us to impose obligations at the European level on non-cooperative operators,” he told a joint conference with his German counterpart in Paris.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Why Obama Should Pardon Edward Snowden

      The power of independent journalism was demonstrated last week when the Justice Department announced the end of privately run prisons in the federal prison system. Seth Freed Wessler explains what it took to uncover dozens of questionable deaths in these corporate, for-profit facilities in his yearlong investigation for The Nation.

      [...]

      Plus: Amnesty for Edward Snowden. ACLU attorney Ben Wizner argues that President Obama should do the right thing in view of the NSA whistle-blower’s contributions to freedom and democracy.

    • Canadian Law Enforcement Want Government To Force People To Turn Over Their Passwords

      Mandating the divulging of passwords relies on some very dubious assumptions. One, it assumes that any information still unseen by prosecutors or investigators is of evidentiary value — hence the perceived need to force suspects to unlock devices. As was seen in the San Bernardino case, a lengthy court battle and a million-dollar payout to Israeli hackers recovered nothing of interest from the shooter’s iPhone.

      Second, it assumes law enforcement will use this power wisely and with restraint — something that has historically been a problem for it. When an agency uses repurposed military technology (Stingrays) to (almost) hunt down fast food thieves, it’s safe to assume forcing someone to expose their “whole personal life” by turning over a password is likely to result in the same sort of misuse… and abuse. It won’t be reserved for the “worst of the worst” criminal suspects and will likely be legislated into existence without enough statutory restrictions to prevent device seizures incident to even the most innocuous of arrests to be viewed as evidentiary fishing expeditions.

      The only standing between this law (if it becomes law) will be Canada’s judges. While some judges may be unwilling to expose a person’s entire life just because law enforcement swears it’s necessary, others will be more amenable. Bring on the forum shopping!

    • Jeff Wood’s Stay of Execution Casts More Doubt on the Texas Death Machine

      Terri Been was being interviewed by a reporter inside a Whataburger restaurant in East Texas on the afternoon of August 19 when the text came in: Her brother, Jeff Wood, on death row for his alleged involvement as an accomplice in the 1996 murder of his friend, and facing imminent execution, had been granted a stay. She read the text sent by Wood’s attorney twice before dialing him up. “Are you serious?” she asked.

      It had been a long and emotionally taxing day: Been and her husband, her parents, Wood’s daughter, and another friend had traveled to Huntsville, Texas, the location of the state’s execution chamber, for the first of several eight-hour visits with Wood in anticipation that he would be executed sometime after 6 p.m. on Wednesday, August 24. The news from the lawyer, Jared Tyler, was a serious relief. “I consider it a miracle,” she told The Intercept. “He’s stopped Texas from killing my brother.”

      That afternoon the state’s highest criminal court, the Court of Criminal Appeals, agreed with Tyler that a state district court should determine whether the punishment hearing portion of Wood’s 1998 trial was infected by junk science and misleading testimony offered by the notorious Dr. James Grigson. If the district court agrees that it was tainted, Wood could get a new hearing, and a chance to get off of death row.

      Grigson, who died in 2004, was known even among peers in the psychiatric community as “Dr. Death” for routinely offering scientifically unsupportable testimony that helped to send defendants to death row in a number of capital cases. He was expelled from the American Psychiatric Association and its Texas counterpart prior to testifying in Wood’s case, where he opined that unless sentenced to die Wood would continue to be violent, a determination he made without ever examining Wood.

    • When Boats Brought Hope to Gaza

      Israel continues to cut off the 1.8 million people of Gaza from receiving relief supplies from sea, an illegal blockade that will be challenged again this year by the Women’s Boat to Gaza, writes retired Col. Ann Wright.

    • What Israel’s Actions Have Wrought

      Israel’s repression of the Palestinians is often rationalized by the historical abuse of the Jews, but Israel’s misconduct is having the disturbing effect of stirring up new anti-Semitism, observes Lawrence Davidson.

    • Another Brick in the Wall: Children of the American Police State

      The nation’s young people have been given front-row seats for an unfolding police drama that is rated R for profanity, violence and adult content.

      In Arizona, a 7-year-old girl watched panic-stricken as a state trooper pointed his gun at her and her father during a traffic stop and reportedly threatened to shoot her father in the back (twice) based on the mistaken belief that they were driving a stolen rental car.

      In Oklahoma, a 5-year-old boy watched as a police officer used a high-powered rifle to shoot his dog Opie multiple times in his family’s backyard while other children were also present. The police officer was mistakenly attempting to deliver a warrant on a 10-year-old case for someone who hadn’t lived at that address in a decade.

      In Maryland, a 5-year-old boy was shot when police exchanged gunfire with the child’s mother—eventually killing her—over a dispute that began when Korryn Gaines refused to accept a traffic ticket for driving without a license plate on her car.

    • Baltimore Police Can’t Explain Why Their All-Seeing Spy Planes Were Kept Secret

      Police officials in Baltimore are trying to deflect controversy over an aerial mass-surveillance program exposed earlier this week, in which a private company quietly keeps watch over a 32-mile radius of the city by flying planes overhead for as many as 10 hours a day.

      The pilot program, which according to Bloomberg Businessweek has been run by the Ohio-based company Persistent Surveillance Systems since January, allows Baltimore police to do retroactive and real-time aerial tracking of people and vehicles using technology adapted from the Iraq war, which its creator describes as “Google Earth with TiVo capability.”

      During a press conference on Wednesday, Baltimore Police Department spokesperson TJ Smith attempted to dismiss privacy concerns about the BPD’s eye in the sky, going as far as refusing to call the program “secret.”

      “Secrecy is not the right word because it’s not a secret spy program … this is something that we’re looking into,” Smith said during the press conference, which was streamed on Periscope and Facebook Live.

    • ‘You are now in Canada’: Anger management ordered for Iranian-born man who attacked wife’s boss

      An Iran-born Edmonton man has been ordered to take anger management courses following a “nasty” attack on his wife’s boss stemming from a male co-worker saying hello to her in a mall.

      Aadel Moradi, 39, was given a suspended sentence and placed on probation for 18 months on Tuesday in provincial court after pleading guilty to assault charges over what was an apparent clash of cultures.

      “This was very nasty,” said Judge Kirk MacDonald, who described the Nov. 6, 2015, incident as a minor assault with “disturbing” undertones.

      “You are now in Canada. We do not place restrictions on the way that women live here, unlike in some other countries,” said MacDonald, adding it is “very sad” that Moradi doesn’t see it.

      The judge told Moradi — a Kurd who emigrated here from a city near Tehran about 15 years ago — that he had considered sending him to jail, but accepted the joint submission by Crown and defence.

      “Just because you think someone has displayed bad manners, getting into a fight is no remedy for that,” said MacDonald.

      Crown prosecutor Bethan Franklyn told court that Moradi and his wife had been at a city mall in late October 2015 when one of her co-workers came up to say hello.

    • Hindus flee Muslim extremists after Koran burned in Pakistan

      In the provincial town of Ghotki near Pakistan’s border with India, Ashok Kumar is packing his bags.

      He’s reached breaking point. Like many of his neighbours, and other Hindus in Sindh province, the small trader is fleeing to India.

      “I have four daughters and I fear that one day they will be kidnapped and will be converted to Islam forcibly and will be forced to marry Muslims,” he says.

    • Saudis and Extremism: ‘Both the Arsonists and the Firefighters’

      Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump do not agree on much, but Saudi Arabia may be an exception. She has deplored Saudi Arabia’s support for “radical schools and mosques around the world that have set too many young people on a path towards extremism.” He has called the Saudis “the world’s biggest funders of terrorism.”

      The first American diplomat to serve as envoy to Muslim communities around the world visited 80 countries and concluded that the Saudi influence was destroying tolerant Islamic traditions. “If the Saudis do not cease what they are doing,” the official, Farah Pandith, wrote last year, “there must be diplomatic, cultural and economic consequences.”

      And hardly a week passes without a television pundit or a newspaper columnist blaming Saudi Arabia for jihadist violence. On HBO, Bill Maher calls Saudi teachings “medieval,” adding an epithet. In The Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria writes that the Saudis have “created a monster in the world of Islam.”

      The idea has become a commonplace: that Saudi Arabia’s export of the rigid, bigoted, patriarchal, fundamentalist strain of Islam known as Wahhabism has fueled global extremism and contributed to terrorism. As the Islamic State projects its menacing calls for violence into the West, directing or inspiring terrorist attacks in country after country, an old debate over Saudi influence on Islam has taken on new relevance.

    • Literal Fashion Police Arrest Hundreds Of WhatsApp And Instagram Users In Iran

      I’ll admit I’ve had some fun in these pages with my friends over in the Iran over the years. In my defense, they have at times made the job quite easy for me, between trying to bolster their military reputation through video game footage, trying to suggest that the West carve out a non-free speech zone when it comes to criticizing Islam or members of its faith, and the country’s policy of futility in trying to block its citizens from using the wider internet. These are actions worth criticism and scorn.

      But things got a just a bit more dangerous for some in Iran this past week, as the country has announced it is cracking down on its citizens for actions against Islam and for infractions of fashion on display on several social media services. It seems some portion of the Revolutionary Guard has quite literally become the Fashion Police.

    • France’s Highest Court Suspends Burkini Ban In One Town, Other Challenges May Follow

      France’s highest administrative court, the Conseil d’État, reversed the burkini ban imposed in the town of Villeneuve-Loubet near Nice on Friday.

      At a hearing Thursday, the court heard a challenge — brought by the Human Rights League of France (LdH) — to the town’s decision to ban the full-body swimsuits with hoods that are popular with Muslim women. The attire has been at the center of a fierce religious and political debate in the country.

      The court invalidated the decree banning the burkinis for the city of Villeneuve-Loubet. In its ruling, also issued in English, the court said, “The mayor’s order had seriously infringed, in a manner that was clearly illegal, fundamental liberties such as the freedom to come and go, religious freedom and individual freedom.”

    • Lack of Accountability Has Made Baltimore an Overpoliced Panopticon
    • Private Prison Involved in Immigrant Detention Funds Donald Trump and His Super PAC

      Geo Group, the second largest private prison company in the U.S., and a major player in for-profit immigrant detention, filed a disclosure this month revealing that it provided $50,000 through its political action committee to Rebuilding America Now, the Super PAC backing the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

      While Trump has not used his campaign to purchase campaign advertisements, an unusual dynamic noted by many in the campaign press, Rebuilding America Now has become his de facto paid media voice, with $2 million in recent anti-Hillary Clinton ad buys.

      Trump has promised sweeping policies to detain and deport millions of undocumented immigrants, a policy platform that he routinely references at rallies across the country.

      “You’re going to have a deportation force, and you’re going to do it humanely,” Trump explained on MSNBC last year. He also called for tripling the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and ending birthright citizenship, a right enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

    • French muslim gang probed after British women GROPED and ASSAULTED on Spanish holiday

      One woman, a 19-year-old from Farnborough in Hampshire, suffered a broken nose after being punched in the face.

      A second woman, a 20-year-old from Essex, was taken to hospital semi-conscious with arm and head injuries.

      Witnesses claimed the men, French-born but of Arabic origin, began to attack the young women in the upmarket resort of Puerto Banus near Marbella after one tried to touch up the teenager who suffered the broken nose.

      One man was arrested for assault and three friends taken with him to a nearby police station so they could be identified as part of an ongoing investigation.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • WIPO External Offices In High Demand As 18 Countries Offer Hosting [Ed: So they want violations?]

      Hosting a regional or national office of the UN World Intellectual Property Organization seems to be a high prize for WIPO members, 18 of which have submitted hosting proposals to be considered at the WIPO Program and Budget Committee next week. Most of those 18 countries are developing nations and all sought to demonstrate their commitment to intellectual property rights and IPR protection, with some underlining the importance of considering level of development. According to regional press reports, Algeria and Nigeria have been selected by the African region to host the two African external offices.

    • Copyrights

      • Is hosting providers’ safe harbour the real problem of copyright owners? A new article [Ed: No, the problem is that we’re led to assume ISPs are in the business of copyright judgment and policing]

        In the context of its Digital Single Market Strategy [Katposts here] the EU Commission is currently engaged in a discussion of whether the liability principles and rules contained in that EU directive for the benefit of ISPs should be amended [the next EU copyright package is awaited for release in the second half of September - see here for a leaked version].

        With specific regard to copyright, one of the principal concerns relates to a particular type of ISP, ie hosting providers.

        Unlicensed hosting providers have been increasingly said to invoke the relevant safe harbour immunity in the EU Ecommerce Directive [Article 14] lacking the conditions for its application. This alleged abuse has led to a distortion of the online marketplace and the resulting ‘value gap’ indicated by some rightholders.

      • The FBI’s Megaupload Domains Are Now Hosting Porn Ads

        Well, we know the FBI is particularly adept at hosting porn on the internet. After all, just a few days ago it was revealed that in the short time it was running a child porn site as a honeypot, it actually made the site run much faster. But now Torrentfreak points us to the news that some other FBI sites are serving up porn as well, though mostly out of FBI incompetence, rather than competence. Apparently the domain the FBI was using for its nameservers for the domains it seized from Megaupload expired, and someone else snapped it up and redirected all the sites using those nameservers to advertisements basically for porn. So, the FBI is now essentially pointing people to porn via Megaupload.

      • Dotcom Wants Extradition Hearing Live-Streamed, U.S. Does Not

        Kim Dotcom is hoping to have his fight with the U.S. government pushed further into the public consciousness by having his extradition appeal streamed live on the Internet. U.S. authorities are already objecting to Dotcom’s application but they could be up against stiff opposition since New Zealand is proud of its courtroom transparency.

      • Team Prenda Done Fighting Judge Otis Wright

        Well, one of the big Prenda cases may finally be over. As you may recall, the first truly scathing legal ruling against Team Prenda came a little over three years ago when Judge Otis Wright basically lit Team Prenda on fire.

      • Comcast/NBC Tone Deafness, Not ‘Millennials’ To Blame For Olympics Ratings Drop

        Olympics watchers repeatedly begged Comcast for live opening ceremonies, more live events, less host prattle, and fewer ads ahead of the recent games in Rio. What did Comcast deliver instead? A smorgasbord of abysmal bloviation, tape delays, and so many advertisements that many people stopped watching in disgust. As a result, the Rio Olympics were the lowest rated Summer Olympics since 2000, with average viewership down 17% and an overall audience that was 25% smaller than 2012 in the 18-to-49 demo.

      • If You’re Angry About Twitter Banning Someone ‘Permanently’ For Sharing Olympics GIFs, Blame Copyright Law

        The story has gone pretty viral (on Twitter, naturally), with lots of people expressing anger at Twitter. It also appears that soon after the story started spreading, Twitter actually changed its mind and put back his account.

        Here’s the thing, though: if you want to get upset about this, don’t get upset at Twitter. Get furious at parts of the DMCA and how some courts have interpreted it lately (and the International Olympic Committee — it almost always deserves the anger that is pointed in its direction for its extreme protectionist/copyright policies). But remember, not too long ago, the ISP Cox lost big time in an important DMCA case, at the key issue that swayed the judge was the lack of a competent “repeat infringer policy.” And what was one of the key things in that case? The fact that Cox didn’t permanently ban people.

        So if you’re the legal team at Twitter, and you’re keeping up on the caselaw, you better believe that you’re going to make sure that you have a serious “repeat infringer policy” that kicks people off permanently for sharing a few pieces of copyright-covered material. Because even as basically everyone is saying “what? you shouldn’t lose your account permanently for sharing a few happy gifs from the Olympics,” in court it would be spun as “Twitter has a history of failing to reasonably implement a repeat infringer policy, as required by the DMCA in Section 512(i)(1)(A).” And if the Olympics or whoever gets a judge like the one in the Cox case, who doesn’t seem to care much about whether people use the internet or not, Twitter might just lose.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/08/26/pc-bsd-becomes-trueos/feed/ 0 Links 25/8/2016: Linux Turns 25, NetworkManager Turns 1.4 http://techrights.org/2016/08/25/networkmanager-turns-1-4/ http://techrights.org/2016/08/25/networkmanager-turns-1-4/#comments Thu, 25 Aug 2016 16:39:37 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=95060

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • The future is here

        Nautilus from master, updated everyday, parallel installable, in less than 3 minutes. I cannot believe this is possible. Note that due to be sandboxed with no permission handling there are things that are not working, like opening with an application.

        For someone not aware of the whole platform and the Linux desktop, it’s difficult to see how many implications this bring to us and the changes that will allow in the upcoming months. This truly changes the game for GNOME (and any other desktop) as a project and platform, including 3rd party developers and companies using Linux desktops or that want to support it.

      • GUADEC’16 report

        I got a chance to attend GUADEC’16 which happened in Karlsruhe, Germany from 11 – 17 August. I stayed for the whole duration including Workshop Day, core days and the later BOF days which were very learning. I’m grateful to my mentor David Woodhouse who guided me all the time. I thank GNOME community for giving me the chance to speak at intern lightning talk and i tried my best to present my project in front of those great people. I hope to get a chance someday again to speak up. We have finished our GSoC project so i am free now to wander around to find some more places and tasks in GNOME’s huge shelter. My experience of attending GUADEC was awesome, despite being a less speaker i was very comfortable to talk and interact to people in the community. I made some new friends in the community and i came to know a lot more about it. I loved attending social events after the long day of great and motivating talks. I am thankful to the GUADEC organizers, i didn’t feel any problem for a second staying 6,000 kms away from home.

      • GUADEC 2016

        I came back from Karlsruhe last week, where GUADEC 2016 took place.

        It was a wonderful event. Even though it was only my second GUADEC, I felt at home in this community, meeting with old and new friends.

      • Summer Talks, PurpleEgg

        The topics were different but related: The Flock talk talked about how to make things better for a developer using Fedora Workstation as their development workstation, while the GUADEC talk was about the work we are doing to move Fedora to a model where the OS is immutable and separate from applications. A shared idea of the two talks is that your workstation is not your development environment environment. Installing development tools, language runtimes, and header files as part of your base operating system implies that every project you are developing wants the same development environment, and that simply is not the case.

      • An awesome experience!

        GUADEC has been a week full of memorable moments. As my friend Rares mentioned in his post, our newcomers group was welcomed by friendly community members right as we arrived at the hotel. For someone who has never attended a similar event before, this really helped with getting into the conference atmosphere.

        In the first couple days of the conference, I found myself meeting a lot of people that I knew from IRC. It felt really nice to finally know the person behind the internet nick. I was especially excited about getting to meet my mentor, Carlos Soriano =). In between the presentations I also took the time to prepare my own lightning talk about compressed files in Nautilus. Speaking in front of the GNOME community for the first time was a unique experience.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • Slackware Family

      • NOAA Breaks Weather Apps, Slackware Updates, Valve @ 20

        The LinuxCon headlines continue to dominate but, more importantly, our desktop weather apps are broken thanks to NOAA decommissioning the site. Liam Dawe looked back at 20 years of Valve and Sebastian “sebas” Kügler introduced new KDE kscreen-doctor. Slackware rolled out some updates including a rare kernel upgrade and The VAR Guy wants to hear about your first time.

    • Red Hat Family

      • New CentOS Atomic Host Update Released with Linux Kernel 3.10, Docker 1.10.3-46

        CentOS Project’s Jason Brooks is back again with some awesome news for those interested in using the CentOS Atomic Host operating system designed for running Docker containers on top of the RHEL-based CentOS Linux 7 platform.

      • Red Hat’s gunning for VMware with virtualization platform update

        Open-source Linux vendor Red Hat Inc. has thrown in support for OpenStack Neutron and other new technologies with the latest release of its software virtualization package, in what looks like a bid to steal customers away from VMware Inc.’s more widely-used solution.

        Targeted at convergence, Red Hat Virtualization 4 is the first version of the platform that doesn’t include the word “enterprise,” in a move that suggests the company is hoping its virtualized stack will become the platform for convergence, rather than a server density product.

        OpenStack Neutron is the open-source networking project used by Software-Defined Networks (SDNs), which up until now has only been available as a preview. Many have criticized Neutron’s development for lagging behind the rest of OpenStack’s code base, and Red Hat was one of several vendors to concede that things could be sped up a bit. With the inclusion of the software in Red Hat Virtualization, the company says its Linux platform can be used to run both cloud-enabled and “traditional” workloads in concert.

      • Red Hat Virtualization 4 woos VMware faithful

        It’s easy for a virtual machine user to feel left out these days, what with containers dominating the discussion of how to run applications at scale. But take heart, VM fans: Red Hat hasn’t forgotten about you.

        RHV (Red Hat Virtualization) 4.0, released today, refreshes Red Hat’s open source virtualization platform with new technologies from the rest of Red Hat’s product line. It’s a twofold strategy to consolidate Red Hat’s virtualization efforts across its various products and to ramp up the company’s intention to woo VMware customers.

      • Commvault Announces Support of Red Hat Virtualization 4 with Commvault Software

      • Fedora

        • UDP Failures and RNGs
        • F24-20160823 updated Live isos

          New Kernel means new set of updated lives.

          I am happy to release the F24-20160823 updated lives isos.

        • Curse you, Jon Masters! Why do you always have to be right!

          Long story short, Fedora 24 came out and I’m given the taste of the same medicine: the video on the ASUS is completely busted. I was able to limp along for now by using the old kernel 4.4.6-301.fc23, but come on, this is clearly a massive regression. Think anyone is there to bisect and find the culprit? Of course not. I have to do it it myself.

          So, how did F24 ship? Well… I didn’t test beta versions, so I don’t have much ground to complain.

        • Communication Anti-Patterns
        • Autocloud: What’s new?

          Autocloud was released during the Fedora 23 cycle as a part of the Two Week Atomic Process.

          Previously, it used to listen to fedmsg for successful Koji builds. Whenever, there is a new message the AutocloudConsumer queues these message for processing. The Autocloud job service then listens to the queue, downloads the images and runs the tests using Tunir. A more detailed post about it’s release can be read here.

          During the Fedora 24 cycle things changed. There was a change on how the Fedora composes are built. Thanks to adamw for writing a detailed blogpost on what, why and how things changed.

        • Modularity Infrastructure Design

          The purpose of our Modularity initiative is to support the building, maintaining, and shipping of modular things. So, in order to ensure these three requirements are met, we need to design a framework for building and composing the distribution.

          In terms of the framework, in general, we are concerned about the possibility of creating an exponential number of component combinations with independent lifecycles. That is, when the number of component combinations becomes too large, we will not be able to manage them. So that we don’t accidentally make our lives worse, we must limit the number of supported modules with a policy and provide infrastructure automation to reduce the amount of manual work required.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Open source drone controller has an FPGA-enhanced brain

      Aerotenna has launched an open source, $499 “OcPoc” drone flight controller that runs Linux on an Altera Cyclone V ARM/FPGA SoC.

      Lawrence, Kansas based Aerotenna, which bills itself as “the leading provider of innovative microwave sensors and flight control systems,” describes OcPoC (Octagonal Pilot on Chip) as a ready-to-fly, open source flight control platform. The system integrates an IMU, barometer, GPS, and a CSI-camera interface.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 unveiled in China, priced at $135

          Xiaomi took the wraps off their latest smartphone offering, the Redmi Note 4, earlier today, and as is expected from the budget-friendly Redmi series, the device offers a premium look, specifications, and features, and more importantly, an ultra-affordable price tag.

          The Redmi Note 4 retains the premium full metal unibody construction that was introduced with its predecessor, but now comes with a brushed metal finish and chamfered edges that looks and feels even better. The design language is quite similar as well, with the Redmi Note 4 also coming with a fingerprint scanner on the back.

          Under the hood, the Redmi Note 4 comes with a 5.5-inch Full HD display that is covered with a 2.5D curved glass panel. The phone is powered by a MediaTek Helio X20 processor, that is backed by the Mali-T880MP4 GPU and 2 GB or 3 GB of RAM. 16 GB or 64 GB are the on-board storage options available, which also dictates how much RAM you get, and you also get expandable storage via microSD card to cover all your needs. Keeping everything running is a huge 4,100 mAh battery.

        • New study finds iPhones fail far more often than Android phones

          Apple customers are generally a shockingly loyal bunch. The company’s high repeat customer rate can be attributed to a combination of factors that concern iPhones themselves as well as Apple’s industry-leading customer service. Dealing with Apple’s customer care department has always been a pleasure compared to dealing with rival companies, and iPhones themselves have historically been very reliable, offering a consistently smooth user experience that people love.

        • Relax, Spire can now connect to Android phones

          Spire, the wearable that promises to help you with healthy breathing and mindfulness, was previously only available for iOS devices. But that should change with an update rolling out now.

        • Android 7.0 Nougat: Small changes that make a big difference in UX

          The seventh iteration of Android (Nougat) has finally been released by the mighty Google. If you happen to be the owner of a Nexus device, you might see this update very soon. Everyone else…you know the drill.

          So after an extended period of waiting for the update to trickle through your carrier and onto your device, what can you expect to happen to your Android device once its center has become a creamier shade of Nougat?

        • Two Nokia Android smartphones show up in benchmark

          Nokia is definitely coming out with a few Android smartphones later this year, but today’s Nokia has little in common with the company that ruled the mobile phone industry for years.

          For starters, the devices that will be released this year, or the next, will be made by a third-party company. Nokia won’t be manufacturing phones anymore and most likely it won’t manage the way they are sold through retailers and authorized resellers.

        • Proxima bae, Instagram scams, Android goes full crypto: ICYMI
        • PayPal adds proper Nexus Imprint fingerprint login support on Android
        • Google Duo has been downloaded 5 million times on Android since its release
        • Google’s New Android Brings a Much Needed Change

          Thanks in part to Samsung’s Galaxy Note lineup and Apple’s iPhone 6s Plus, large-screened phones are becoming more popular than ever. Time spent on these large phones, sometimes called “phablets,” grew by 334% year-over-year in 2015, according to data from Flurry Analytics.

          Still, few phone makers other than Samsung ssnlf have made good use of these larger devices. Google goog is hoping to change this with its newest version of Android. Called 7.0 Nougat, it notably features the ability to view apps in a split-screen mode. The software update, which Google began pushing out to certain Nexus devices this week, makes it possible for Android users to interact with more than one app simultaneously.

        • Google’s New Android Brings a Much Needed Change

          Real multitasking has finally come to stock Android — and it’s about time

          Thanks in part to Samsung’s Galaxy Note lineup and Apple’s iPhone 6s Plus, large-screened phones are becoming more popular than ever. Time spent on these large phones, sometimes called “phablets,” grew by 334% year-over-year in 2015, according to data from Flurry Analytics.

          Still, few phone makers other than Samsung have made good use of these larger devices. Google is hoping to change this with its newest version of Android. Called 7.0 Nougat, it notably features the ability to view apps in a split-screen mode. The software update, which Google began pushing out to certain Nexus devices this week, makes it possible for Android users to interact with more than one app simultaneously.

        • Android 7.0 has a hidden feature that could finally make it better than iOS

          Android and iOS have been in a user-interface war for years. Who is winning really depends on who you ask, but a secret feature buried in the code for Android 8.0 Nougat shows a feature that would give Android the upper hand.

          Android Police uncovered details and screenshots of a navigation bar customizer hidden in the code for Android Nougat. It’s not currently active, as it was pulled from the code base for being “not ready,” but a tipster managed to recreate the feature and provide screenshots.

        • 8 new things Android 7.0 can do that iOS can’t

          A new version of Android is here, and it looks to be a solid, if relatively low-key, upgrade. Whenever Android 7.0 (Nougat) gets to your device, you’ll probably be happy with it.

          It also means that it’s time, once again, to see how Android has separated itself from iOS. If you’ve been thinking of pledging allegiance to a new platform, then here are some new, Nougat-y features that you won’t find on any iPhone.

        • Android 7 boasts new encryption features as the Crypto War soldiers on

          Not too long ago, the idea of smartphone encryption set off a global debate.

          Now, with the release of Android 7.0, the rise of secure messaging apps, and a public awakening on cyberspying, encrypting your chats and data is easier than ever—encryption is a now marketable selling point for the world’s tech giants—even as the political controversy heats up once more.

          A year after the 2013 Edward Snowden intelligence leaks lit a political fire around spying and privacy, the American tech giants Apple and Google added full-disk encryption to iPhones and Android devices. Police, intelligence agencies, governments, criminals, hackers, and all sorts of prying eyes around the globe would be increasingly locked out of the ubiquitous device that knows so much about us all.

        • Google Drive for Android now creates file and folder shortcuts
        • Android Nougat offers more PC emojis, plus an avocado
        • There’s a hidden menu in Android that lets you unlock experimental features — here’s how to use it
        • Project Fi’s Wifi Assistant to serve all Nexus devices soon
        • How to use split-screen mode in Android Nougat
        • How to Block Annoying Spam Calls and Texts In Android Nougat
        • Google Photos, Android System Webview, and HP Print Service plugin all reach 500 million installs
        • Android Nougat kind of arrives on the Nexus 5, if you’re bold
        • Google may let you add clipboard, keyboard switcher to Android’s navigation bar
        • LG V20 leak shows the Android phone is keeping its second screen

          LG’s V20 is set to debut on September 6th, but mobile leaker Evan Blass has already got his hands on a high-resolution image of the Android flagship and posted it to Twitter. The image shows off a rather bland-looking smartphone with an uncluttered home screen devoid of any duplicate apps and unnecessary bloatware. What we can see from this image is LG’s commitment to the second screen concept it debuted with last year’s V10.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Education

    • 4 tips for teaching kids how to build electronics

      Kids are naturally curious about how things work, and with a new trend in hardware companies creating open source hardware products, it’s a great time to teach kids about electronics. But modern technology can seem too complex to even begin to understand. So where do you start?

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • more, less, and a story of typical Unix fossilization

      In the beginning, by which we mean V7, Unix didn’t have a pager at all. That was okay; Unix wasn’t very visual in those days, partly because it was still sort of the era of the hard copy terminal. Then along came Berkeley and BSD. People at Berkeley were into CRT terminals, and so BSD Unix gave us things like vi and the first pager program, more (which showed up quite early, in 3BSD, although this isn’t as early as vi, which appears in 2BSD). Calling a pager more is a little bit odd but it’s a Unix type of name and from the beginning more prompted you with ‘–More–’ at the bottom of the screen.

      All of the Unix vendors that based their work on BSD Unix (like Sun and DEC) naturally shipped versions of more along with the rest of the BSD programs, and so more spread around the BSD side of things. However, more was by no means the best pager ever; as you might expect, it was actually a bit primitive and lacking in features. So fairly early on Mark Nudelman wrote a pager with somewhat more features and it wound up being called less as somewhat of a joke. When less was distributed via Usenet’s net.sources in 1985 it became immediately popular, as everyone could see that it was clearly nicer than more, and pretty soon it was reasonably ubiquitous on Unix machines (or at least ones that had some degree of access to stuff from Usenet). In 4.3 BSD, more itself picked up the ‘page backwards’ feature that had motived Mark Nudelman to write less, cf the 4.3BSD manpage, but this wasn’t the only attraction of less. And this is where we get into Unix fossilization.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • Uganda: Govt to Cut Costs With Open Source Software

      The private sector and government departments have been urged to adopt Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to increase their efficiency and competitiveness, writes ALI TWAHA.

      FOSS is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance to suit their needs, something that is not possible with commercial software currently being used in most government departments.

      Speaking during the seventh African conference on FOSS at Speke Resort hotel in Munyoyo, ICT minister Frank Tumwebaze said government departments will gradually integrate the use of FOSS to reduce the cost of public service delivery.

      “Presently, government has been spending over $40m (Shs132bn) annually on commercial software from the like of Oracle systems and Microsoft Cooperation. [Using] FOSS will result into enormous savings that can be re-injected into other under-funded areas,” Tumwebaze said.

    • Uganda: New Software Policy to Boost Innovation in Offing

      A Science, Technology and Innovations driven economy may soon be a reality in Uganda if Cabinet approves a free and open software being developed.

      Speaking at the 7th Africa Conference on Open Source Software at the Commonwealth Resort in Munyonyo on Monday, Mr James Saaka, the executive director of National Information and Technology Authority Uganda, said there is a lot of registered software being used but is very costly.

      He said globally, people develop Free Open Source Software (Foss) which Uganda would emulate for national development.

      Mr Saaka said the country is in the initial stages to develop Foss, adding that the software can spur investment in research and development.

      “We see that the Proprietary software is still expensive and if we are going to develop more online services, we can’t afford but use alternative means to develop our e-government service,” Mr Saaka said.

      He also added that in Uganda, there is an advent of talent skilled in Foss and can help in innovations.

    • Open Source: Of the people, for the people, by the people

      Open Source is the best option for e-Governance. Its open nature allows constant improvements from the open source community, and when built in the correct method using firewalls, the security is protected as well. The best part of the open source for Governments is that the overall cost of building these solutions are much less than other frameworks as it is built, improved, and maintained by a strongly, connect open source community. Truly… ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Data

      • Oil companies joining open source world by sharing data [Ed: No, oil companies, sharing data is open data and not open source. More openwashing, like greenwashing]

        The oil and gas industry has long collected huge volumes of data, but it hasn’t always known quite what to do with it all. Often, the terabytes aren’t even stored on computer systems that readily talk to each other.

        Industry insiders are used to it, said Michael Jones, senior director of strategy at the oil and gas software maker Landmark. But it’s not OK, he said. So, about a year ago, Jones and some of his oil industry colleagues set about to fix it.

        This week, at Landmark’s Innovation Forum & Expo at the Westin hotel in northwest Houston, the company unveiled the beginnings of a collaborative its members called groundbreaking. In a move to drive technology further, faster — and, perhaps, take a bigger piece of the burgeoning big-data market — Landmark is pushing its main computing platform into the cloud, for all to use.

    • Open Access/Content

  • Programming/Development

    • Go! Speed Racer Go!

      I finally reached a point where I could start running the go version of sm-photo-tool. I finished the option validation for the list command. While I was testing it I noticed how much faster the Go version felt. Here are the python vs Go versions of the commands.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Semantic Interoperability for European Public Services will be presented at the SEMANTiCS 2016 conference

      The revision of the European Interoperability Framework and the importance of data and information standardisation for promoting semantic interoperability for European Public Services will be presented by Dr. Vassilios Peristeras, DG Informatics, ISA unit at the SEMANTiCS 2016 conference which takes place in Leipzig on September 13th and 14th 2016. The title of the presentation is “Promoting Semantic Interoperability for European Public Services: the European Commission ISA2 Programme” (slideset to appear here soon).

Leftovers

  • How Rio Ratings Surprised NBC and Will Impact Future Olympics

    Heading into the Summer Olympics, NBCUniversal executives were bullish on ratings for Rio de Janeiro. With a host city just one hour ahead of the Eastern Time Zone and a mountain of data pointing toward heightened interest in the games, NBCU projected that Rio would outpace the 2012 London Games in viewership.

    It did not. Instead of a bulletproof success story, Rio delivered a complex portrait of the rapid changes affecting the TV business and of a viewership still hungry for Olympics coverage, but also for new ways to consume it.

    Over 15 days of competition, NBCU’s Olympics coverage averaged 27.5 million viewers across all platforms, including digital streaming — down 9% from 2012. But traditional TV ratings told a far grimmer story, one that began with Nielsen numbers that showed viewership for the Aug. 5 Opening Ceremony decline 28% from London.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • A Spike in Rates of Pregnancy-related Deaths in Texas Spurs Soul-searching

      Last week, researchers studying maternal mortality in the U.S. reported an ominous trend: The rate of pregnancy-related deaths in Texas seemed to have doubled since 2010, making the Lone Star State one of the most dangerous places in the developed world to have a baby. Reproductive health advocates were quick to blame the legislature for slashing funding in 2011–12 to family-planning clinics that serve low-income women, calling the numbers a “tragedy” and “a national embarrassment.”

      Now a 15-member state task force has issued its own maternal mortality report, offering a new view of what might be going on. The bottom line: Maternal deaths have indeed been increasing in Texas, members said, and African-American women are bearing the brunt of the crisis. For 2011 and 2012, black mothers accounted for 11.4 percent of Texas births but 28.8 percent of pregnancy-related deaths.

    • Everything has water flowing through it

      And how do we communicate the health risks from contaminated water without causing panic? Sometimes people don’t even want to know about water contamination, as they have so many other things they are already dealing with – water is just another one of many worries. Community wide communication is a real challenge on a large reservation.

    • Stop Playing Politics With Reproductive Rights

      Young women voters have a lot to worry about this election cycle, from a flurry of anti-abortion messaging to diminishing access to reproductive services.

      Just this month, in fact, Congress put the brakes on vital legislation that would fund efforts to prevent the spread of Zika because they’re arguing over birth control.

      I have grown up in a generation of women who can take for granted our right to vote, work for money, own land, and not be treated as property—but I can never take for granted my right to choose what to do with my own body.

      Like 58 percent of the women who use the pill, I rely primarily on birth control to treat many medical conditions. I have hormone-based migraines, endometriosis, and polycystic ovary syndrome, which puts me at a higher risk for a whole slew of other health issues—from cardiovascular disease to diabetes.

      But I’m lucky. Birth control treats all three of my conditions where other methods have failed.

    • The Louisiana Catastrophe Proves the Need for Universal, Single-Payer Disaster Insurance

      Of the tens of thousands of Lousianans who had their homes flooded this month, most do not have flood insurance. They weren’t supposed to need it, because flooding had never been a problem where they live. And now it is clear that the federal emergency help they receive will be wholly inadequate.

      Louisiana’s flood victims are in a terrible predicament, and they are not alone. In the America of 2016, thousand-year catastrophes seem to be occurring on a monthly schedule, while we remain stuck with pre-greenhouse home insurance. That is leaving countless families economically devastated.

  • Security

    • Wednesday’s security updates
    • This Android botnet relies on Twitter for its commands
    • Android Security Flaw Exposes 1.4B Devices [Ed: Alternative headline is, “Android is very popular, it has billions of users. And yes, security ain’t perfect.” When did the press ever publish a headline like, “Windows flaw leaves 2 billion PCs susceptible for remote takeover?” (happens a lot)]
    • Wildfire ransomware code cracked: Victims can now unlock encrypted files for free

      Victims of the Wildfire ransomware can get their encrypted files back without paying hackers for the privilege, after the No More Ransom initiative released a free decryption tool.

      No More Ransom runs a web portal that provides keys for unlocking files encrypted by various strains of ransomware, including Shade, Coinvault, Rannoh, Rakhn and, most recently, Wildfire.

      Aimed at helping ransomware victims retrieve their data, No More Ransom is a collaborative project between Europol, the Dutch National Police, Intel Security, and Kaspersky Lab.

      Wildfire victims are served with a ransom note demanding payment of 1.5 Bitcoins — the cryptocurrency favored by cybercriminals — in exchange for unlocking the encrypted files. However, cybersecurity researchers from McAfee Labs, part of Intel Security, point out that the hackers behind Wildfire are open to negotiation, often accepting 0.5 Bitcoins as a payment.

      Most victims of the ransomware are located in the Netherlands and Belgium, with the malicious software spread through phishing emails aimed at Dutch speakers. The email claims to be from a transport company and suggests that the target has missed a parcel delivery — encouraging them to fill in a form to rearrange delivery for another date. It’s this form which drops Wildfire ransomware onto the victim’s system and locks it down.

    • PNScan Linux Trojan Resurfaces with New Attacks Targeting Routers in India

      A trojan thought to have died out resurfaced with new attacks and a new and improved version, launching new attacks on routers running Linux-based firmware located in India’s cyber-space.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Provoking nuclear war by media

      The exoneration of a man accused of the worst of crimes, genocide, made no headlines. Neither the BBC nor CNN covered it. The Guardian allowed a brief commentary. Such a rare official admission was buried or suppressed, understandably. It would explain too much about how the rulers of the world rule.

      The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague has quietly cleared the late Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, of war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including the massacre at Srebrenica.

    • The Two Tales of Russia Hacking NYT

      It’s quite possible both of these stories are misleading. But they do raise questions about why the spooks want to sensationalize these Russian hacks while NYT chooses to downplay them.

    • The Bogus ‘Humanitarian’ War on Serbia

      The exoneration of a man accused of the worst of crimes, genocide, made no headlines. Neither the BBC nor CNN covered it. The Guardian allowed a brief commentary. Such a rare official admission was buried or suppressed, understandably. It would explain too much about how the rulers of the world rule.

    • Fighting Absurdity With Absurdity: Heaven Forbid the Penis

      Arguing that carrying firearms on campus will be as effective against random gun violence as carrying dildos, thousands of students at the University of Texas at Austin protested the state’s insane new open carry law Wednesday by gleefully hoisting “Armed With Reason” and “Guns Do Kill People” signs along with over 4,500 donated dildos, flesh color to fluorescent, in what may prove to be the state’s largest ever anti-gun rally. The #CocksNotGlocks campaign, started by one alum as a bit of “defiant nonsense” aimed at fighting absurdity with absurdity, kicked off on the first day of classes by drawing big crowds, with some inventive students juggling dildos and others hawking them with “Come get a dick!”

      The campaign seeks to repeal Senate Bill 11, signed into law by GOP Gov. Gregg Abbott in June but only implemented August 1, allowing students or faculty at public universities to carry their favorite guns to class, because what could possibly go wrong? The law has been vociferously opposed at the relatively progressive Austin campus, where many spoke against it at earlier public forums, an esteemed Architecture Dean resigned rather than live with it, and three professors sought an injunction to block guns from their classrooms; a federal judge just denied their request. Campaign organizers have asked students to “open carry” or hang the sex toys on backpacks until the law is changed: “Why leave your dildos at home if other people won’t leave their guns at home? Wear ‘em proudly until SB11 is repealed.”

    • Top 6 Reasons Turkey is Finally attacking ISIL in Syria’s Jarabulus

      Turkey and coalition allies launch air strikes Wednesday morning against the Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) stronghold of Jarabulus, on the Syrian side near the Turkish border. At the same time, Turkish artillery on the ground pounded the town. With Manbij in the hands of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, Jarabulus is the last town affording a smuggling route for men and arms from Turkey into Syria’s al-Raqqa, the HQ of Daesh in the country. Turkey has left Jarabulus alone for years and winked at the Daesh smugglers. Why is it acting now?

    • Every Syrian fighter is waging an existential battle that can only end in victory or death

      Five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, his face bloody and bruised from bomb blast, stares out in bafflement at a world in which somebody had just tried to kill him. Pictures of his little figure in the back of an ambulance in Aleppo have swiftly become the living symbol of the slaughter in Syria and Iraq.

      In the past there would have been more demands for spurious responses to the latest atrocity in Syria, with calls for the immediate overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad or no-fly zones – measures that sound positive but are never going to happen. This time round there is greater wariness internationally about such quick-fix solutions, opening the way for more realistic action to reduce the present horrendous level of violence.

      I am always edgy about proposing anything that might mitigate the barbarity of the war in Syria and Iraq because explaining what aspects of the situation, however murderous, cannot be changed looks like justifying them. For instance, British policy since 2011 has been that Assad should go, but this was never going to happen because he controlled most of the population centres and was backed by Russia and Iran. To pretend otherwise might sound benign, but was in reality providing the ingredients for war without end.

    • Ankara’s climbdown on Assad

      Sharp changes in the war on Syria have impacted the policy of the Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Initially Mr. Erdogan believed that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would fall precipitously. It did not. Rather than overthrow Mr. Assad, the war has placed Turkey itself in danger — a ‘failed coup’ on July 15 came alongside a renewed war against Turkey’s Kurdish population, just as Islamic State (IS) attacks in the country have raised alarm bells about Mr. Erdogan’s adventurism. An adjustment of Turkey’s policy is now on the cards. The President’s August 9 trip to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and the warm words exchanged when the Iranian Foreign Minister came to Turkey on August 10 indicate a change.

    • Arms Industry Donating to Hawkish Clinton Over Incoherent Trump

      Employees of 25 of the nation’s largest defense companies—such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Raytheon—are choosing to fill the coffers of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over those of her rival, GOP nominee Donald Trump.

      That’s according to a new analysis by Politico, published Wednesday and based on federal campaign finance filings.

      Indeed, Politico found that Clinton—whose hawkish tendencies have been front-and-center during the 2016 campaign—is leading Trump “by a ratio of 2-to-1 in campaign donations from employees working for defense giants like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. That’s a sharp turnaround from 2012, when defense contractors gave more to then-Republican nominee Mitt Romney than to President Barack Obama.”

      Specifically, employees of those 25 firms have donated $93,000 to Clinton, compared with $46,000 for Trump. “Clinton’s donor rolls also include more than two dozen top defense executives, while Trump’s show just two,” Politico adds.

    • Let the Peace Games Begin

      After the Olympic games in Rio drew to a close, another set of games have begun: military exercises between the United States and South Korea to prepare for a possible armed conflict with North Korea.

    • U.S.-Backed Turkish Offensive in Syria Targets U.S.-Backed Kurds

      Turkey has “launched a major military intervention in Syria,” the Guardian reports, dispatching tanks and warplanes to purportedly reclaim the city of Jarabulus, currently held by the Islamic State (ISIS), and to attack Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria.

      “At 4am this morning, operations started in the north of Syria against terror groups which constantly threaten our country,” said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara on Wednesday, according to the Guardian. Turkey’s government classifies Kurdish nationalists as terrorists, although Erdoğan also pointed to a bomb attack that killed 54 in Southern Turkey, which the Turkish regime blamed on ISIS, as justification for Wednesday’s siege in Syria.

      Turkey’s onslaught is backed by the U.S., while the Kurdish group that Turkey is targeting, the leftwing Kurdish nationalist YPG, is also backed by the United States.

      “If Turkey’s forces drive out ISIS,” observes the Christian Science Monitor, “it could lead to a messy confrontation between the Turkish government and the U.S.-backed YPG.”

      And while Turkey has long battled against Kurdish nationalists both within and outside of its borders while the West turned a blind eye, Wednesday marks the first large-scale Turkish military operation against Kurdish militias in Syria.

    • U.S. Weapons Sales Are Drenched in Yemeni Blood

      When Pope Francis visited the U.S. Congress in September 2015, he boldly posed a moral challenge to his American hosts, asking: “Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?”

      “Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money,” he solemnly concluded. “Money that is drenched in blood.”

      In this case, it’s innocent Yemeni blood.

      During his almost eight years in office, President Obama has approved a jaw-dropping, record-breaking $110 billion in weapons sales to the repressive Saudi regime, all with Congressional backing.

      “In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and stop the arms trade,” Pope Francis said. Our lawmakers have failed miserably at heeding the Pope’s call.

    • Muslim leader ‘murdered by IS supporters for practising Islamic healing’

      Two IS supporters murdered an imam because they viewed his practice of Islamic healing as “black magic”, a jury has heard.

      Jalal Uddin, 71, suffered multiple injuries to his head and face in an attack, thought to have involved a hammer, in a children’s play area in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, on the evening of February 18 this year.

      The Crown say the Bangladeshi national was targeted after he left the mosque where he usually prayed, ate a meal at a friend’s house and then walked home.

      Mohammed Hussain Syeedy, 22, and Mohammed Abdul Kadir, 24, were said to have developed “a hatred” of Mr Uddin when they discovered last year that he practised Ruqya healing – which involves the use of amulets.

    • Lawyer: Timbuktu Residents Felt Shame After Sites Destroyed

      By reducing historic mausoleums in Timbuktu to dusty piles of rubble, Islamic extremists desecrated holy sites, leaving residents ashamed and impoverished, a lawyer said Wednesday at the trial of the man accused of leading the destruction.

      Mayombo Kassongo, who represented victims at the trial of Muslim radical Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, said locals expressed “shame at seeing their saints stripped naked.”

      Al Mahdi led pickax-wielding rebels who wrecked the simple mud-brick mausoleums covering the saints’ tombs in June and July 2012 in the famed city in the Saharan nation of Mali. Kassongo said the destruction of the World Heritage-listed sites was also a financial blow to residents, crippling tourism in the remote African city.

      Al Mahdi pleaded guilty and expressed remorse Monday for his role in leading the destruction of nine mausoleums and a mosque door in Timbuktu and urged Muslims around the world not to commit similar acts.

      “They are not going to lead to any good for humanity,” he said.

      The trial is continuing despite Al Mahdi’s guilty plea to give Timbuktu residents a chance to speak about the impact of the destruction and to allow prosecutors and his defense lawyer to discuss a possible sentence.

      Prosecution lawyer Gilles Dutertre said Al Mahdi played “a key role” in the 2012 destruction and urged judges to sentence him to between nine and 11 years in prison.

    • Margaret Thatcher’s role in securing controversial £42bn arms deal with Saudi Arabia revealed

      Newly released files have exposed the role Margaret Thatcher personally played in securing one of the UK’s biggest and most controversial arms deals.

      The previously secret files show how officials helped then Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher carefully negotiate the notorious Al-Yamamah deal which saw Britain sell fighter jets to Saudi Arabia.

      The documents detail a meeting and private lunch between Mrs Thatcher and King Fahd, soon after which the £42bn contract was clinched, sparking anger form arms-trade campaigners.

      It came back to haunt Tony Blair who intervened to stop an investigation into the deal, that was exploring claims of ran a multimillion-pound “slush fund”.

    • US arms sale to Saudi Arabia under fire from lawmakers

      A bipartisan quartet of lawmakers is circulating a letter that seeks to delay a pending arms sale to Saudi Arabia.

      The lawmakers are targeting the arms sale as part of their opposition to U.S. support for the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen against Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

      Lawmaker criticism of U.S. support for the campaign has recently grown louder, following Saudi airstrikes that hit a school and a hospital, killing dozens of civilians.

      The $1.15 billion arms sale, which the State Department approved on Aug. 9, would include up to 153 tanks, hundreds of machines guns, ammunition and other equipment.

      By law, Congress has 30 days to block the sale, but the lawmakers are concerned that notification was given during Congress’s summer recess and that the 30-day period will end with lawmakers having just returned to D.C.

      “Any decision to sell more arms to Saudi Arabia should be given adequate time for full deliberation by Congress,” the letter to President Obama will say, according to a draft. “We are concerned, however, that the timing of this notification during the August congressional recess could be interpreted to mean that Congress has little time to consider the arms deal when it returns from recess within the 30 day window established by law.”

    • Filipino maid ‘raped by employer’ in Saudi Arabia dies in hospital

      A Filipino maid has reportedly died in Saudi Arabia after seeing her alleged rapist in the hospital where she was confined.

      Imra Edloy, 35, was rushed to King Salman Hospital in Riyadh on 13 August with severe injuries suspected to be from sexual assault. She fell into a coma soon after arriving in the hospital.

      While she was unable to identify her attacker, before falling unconscious she pointed at her employer when asked who abused her, ABS CBN News reports.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Global warming signal can be traced back to the 1830s, climate scientists say

      When Charles Dickens, the English novelist, was detailing the “soft black drizzle” of pollution over London, he might inadvertently have been chronicling the early signs of global warming.

      New research led by Australian scientists has pegged back the timing of when humans had clearly begun to change the climate to the 1830s.

    • North Dakota and Feds Suppress Native American Pipeline Protesters

      What’s the difference between these two pipelines? Only variations are the origin of the oil they may transport and their location as far as I can tell since they are described as competing pipelines.

      Oh, and the Keystone XL pipeline was vetoed by President Obama a year ago this past February because Congress tried to ram through approval, attempting to “circumvent longstanding and proven processes for determining whether or not building and operating a cross-border pipeline serves the national interest,” according to the president.

      In both cases — Keystone XL and the Dakota Access — the planned pipelines traversed Native American tribal lands and/or water systems upon which these sovereign nations relied. The affected tribes have protested the credible threats these pipelines pose to their health and safety as well as their heritage and sovereignty.

    • As Court Hears Arguments in Dakota Pipeline Suit, Protesters Say ‘Protect Our Water’

      As peaceful prayer camps grow in North Dakota against the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, demonstrators in Washington, D.C. are marching and chanting in solidarity while a U.S. federal court hears arguments regarding the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s motion to halt pipeline construction.

    • Scale of Threat Seismic Blasting Poses to Whales, Dolphins Laid Bare

      Though the Obama administration in March put a halt on drilling for oil and gas in Atlantic, the dolphins and whales inhabiting the waters are still at risk, says one ocean conservation group, as proposed seismic airgun blasting to look for reserves of the fossil fuels would leave the marine mammals “profoundly impacted.”

      The scale of the threat they face was laid bare on Wednesday with a pair of new maps released by by Oceana. Based on extensive research from Duke University’s Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab, the maps—one for bottlenose dolphins and the other for endangered humpback, fin, and sperm whales—show the overlapping areas of the proposed blasting in the area stretching from Delaware to Florida and the density of the whales and dolphins in those waters over a 12-month period.

  • Finance

    • 20 Years Later, Poverty Is Up, But Architects of “Welfare Reform” Have No Regrets

      A gathering Monday in Washington, D.C., featured a bipartisan group of former government officials agreeing on the benefits of slashing the nation’s safety net.

      This week marks the 20th anniversary of “welfare reform,” the 1996 law passed by Congress and administered by President Bill Clinton that strictly limited the amount of federal cash assistance that the poorest Americans can receive — transforming the Aid for Families with Dependent Children program into the more restrictive Temporary Aid for Needy Families.

      One of the main impacts of the law was to help double the number of American households living in extreme poverty in America – defined as living on less than $2 a day.

      The Capitol Hill event, hosted by the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute and the Progressive Policy Institute, which has been referred to as President Bill Clinton’s “idea mill,” celebrated the 20th anniversary of the law. Its architects said they had no regrets about its passage.

      Former Michigan Republican governor John Engler, who pioneered state-level welfare cutbacks and who today serves as the head of the corporate lobbying group the Business Roundtable, recounted how Bill Clinton’s support helped make national welfare reform possible.

      “It was pretty stunning in 1992 to have a Democratic candidate for president, albeit a 12-year veteran in the governor’s office talking about ending ‘welfare as we know it,’” he said. “That was a pretty decisive moment.”

      Right-wing praise for Bill Clinton was a reoccurring theme at the event. Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation scholar who has been dubbed the “intellectual godfather” of welfare reform, claimed that Clinton took up the same cause as Ronald Reagan, allowing him to outmaneuver George W.H. Bush. “In my perspective that’s the issue that put Clinton in the White House in ’93,” Rector said.

    • Where Has All the Money for Our Schools Gone?

      As fall approaches, millions of moms and dads are scrambling to prepare for the first day of school, excited to support their children’s success.

      But are schools ready to receive our kids and foster that success? Increasingly, the answer is no.

      In at least 18 states, local government funding levels are declining, according to an analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. And as a result, many schools will open with fewer teachers than last year, among other detrimental losses.

      As lawmakers throw up their hands and say, “sorry, there’s just not enough money,” we must ask: Where has all the money gone?

    • Stiglitz Blasts ‘Outrageous’ TPP as Obama Campaigns for Corporate-Friendly Deal

      Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has reiterated his opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), saying on Tuesday that President Barack Obama’s push to get the trade deal passed during the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress is “outrageous” and “absolutely wrong.”

      Stiglitz, an economics professor at Columbia University and chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute, made the comments on CNN’s “Quest Means Business.”

      His criticism comes as Obama aggressively campaigns to get lawmakers to pass the TPP in the Nov. 9 to Jan. 3 window—even as resistance mounts against the 12-nation deal.

      Echoing an argument made by Center for Economic and Policy Research co-director Mark Weisbrot, Stiglitz said, “At the lame-duck session you have congressmen voting who know that they’re not accountable anymore.”

    • Mississippi Parents Demand an Answer: Are Charter Schools Constitutional?

      Mississippi parents are challenging the public funding of charter schools on the grounds that it’s not constitutional.

      The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an advocacy group, filed a motion for a summary judgment this week on behalf of the parents, for a speedy answer to this question.

      The only debate in the case is that of constitutionality, which makes it prime for answering, SPLC told Hinds County Chancery Judge Dewayne Thomas. The SPLC in July backed the lawsuit by several parents against Governor Phil Bryant, the Mississippi Department of Education, and the Jackson Public School District that challenged the funding of state charter schools.

      Plaintiffs say that because the privately-run, publicly-funded, corporate institutions are not overseen by the state or local superintendents, they do not qualify as “free” schools and therefore shouldn’t be eligible for taxpayer money. Three charter schools in Jackson are currently slated to receive $4 million in public funds this year.

    • Mississippi Charter School Challengers Seek Quick Judgment

      The plaintiffs project that the state and Jackson will transfer $4 million this year to three charter schools. About one-third of that money is collected from property taxes on buildings, vehicles and equipment.

    • Can Workers Get a Fair Deal in the Gig Economy?

      More and more businesses are exploiting what is known as the “1099 worker loophole”—hiring workers as “independent contractors” instead of as regularly employed workers. In some cases, companies have laid off all or most of their regular workers and then hired them back, but as independent contractors.

    • It Is Time to Begin the Process of Rebuilding Our Middle-Class Economy

      In The New York Times recently, the paper’s former Washington bureau chief, the veteran journalist Hedrick Smith, asked an important question: “Can the States Save American Democracy?” Smith, who traveled the country to write his latest book, Who Stole the American Dream?, also serves as the executive editor of the Reclaim the American Dream website, where he keeps a keen eye on efforts to revitalize politics closest to where people live. In his op-ed essay he answered his own question by reporting that “a broad array of state-level citizen movements are pressing for reforms… to give average voters more voice, make elections more competitive and ease gridlock in Congress.”

    • President Obama Aligns with Big Business to Smash Opposition to the TPP

      The Democratic primary of 2008, much like that of 2016, featured a sharp debate on global trade — about who writes the rules, who benefits, and who, ultimately, is harmed.

      And like 2016, the 2008 discussion was largely dominated by so-called trade agreements, namely the North American Free Trade Agreement. Signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1993, NAFTA encompassed the economies of Mexico, Canada, and the United States, and its implementation was accompanied by the usual lofty promises.

      Whether these promises were fulfilled is another question entirely. Barack Obama, during his run for the presidency, made his view quite clear.

      After noting that Hillary Clinton celebrated NAFTA in her memoir, calling it a “legislative victory,” Obama lamented that “One million jobs have been lost because of NAFTA.”

      “And yet, 10 years after NAFTA passed, Senator Clinton said it was good for America,” he continued. “Well, I don’t think NAFTA has been good for America — and I never have.”

    • 38 Degrees and the 52 per cent: ‘Members who voted Leave are just as much members as those who voted Remain.’

      Martin Shaw has recently criticised 38 Degrees for adopting a neutral stance on whether or not the UK should leave the European Union. Quite a lot of members voted for Brexit on 23 June; probably around half. It’s no wonder that some people find this surprising – Brexit is a polarising issue, and it’s been widely observed that social media feeds can amplify a sense that all our friends share all our views. Particularly in the immediate aftermath of the vote, when emotions were running high, I heard some 38 Degrees members on both sides of the divide express incredulity that they shared values and campaigns with people who’d voted the opposite way to them.

    • Venturing Into ‘the Capitalist Labyrinth’ (Video)

      In this week’s episode of “On Contact,” Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges sits down with Rob Urie, author of “Zen Economics,” to discuss “the capitalist labyrinth.”

      The two dive into the concept of the “economic man” or “economic woman” that Urie introduces in his book. Urie explains that humans are conditioned to feel that capitalism is a “natural” state of being. It’s “the integration of psychology with corporate desire,” he explains.

      Urie and Hedges then discuss the “radical alienation” produced by capitalism, particularly how the system is responsible for nuclear weapons, climate change and even imperialism. “Alienation is the bedrock of consumer culture,” Hedges notes.

    • Basic Income — slides in English

      I will be speaking about basic income in Turku, Finland, tomorrow Thursday August 25, at a seminar organized by the Finnish Pirate Party and Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Finland.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Get campaigning, UKIP’s Farage tells Donald Trump rally

      Outgoing UKIP leader Nigel Farage has urged Republicans to “get your walking boots on” and drum up support for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

      He appeared before 15,000 activists in Jackson, Mississippi, being introduced by and sharing the stage with Mr Trump.

      And he said the party could “beat the pollsters” in the presidential race.

      Mr Trump, who is trailing his rival Hillary Clinton in the opinion polls, backed the UK’s exit from the EU.

      In a tweet last week, Mr Trump said: “They will soon be calling me Mr Brexit.”

      Mr Trump introduced Mr Farage as the man who “brilliantly” led the UK Independent Party’s campaign to secure a vote on the future of the UK’s 40-year membership of the European Union.

    • Donald Trump is Spending More on Hats and Other Merchandise Than on Campaign Staff

      Some GOP operatives and other political observers are starting to suspect that Donald Trump’s campaign is structured more as a publicity tour than a quest for the White House.

      Federal disclosures released this past weekend help make the case that the real estate mogul, at the very least, is not conducting a traditional campaign operation.

      They show, among other things, that Trump’s organization spent more money in July on the now-iconic “Make America Great Again” red hats, Trump T-shirts, and mugs than on the staff whose job it is to run the campaign.

      The Trump campaign paid more than $1.8 million to two vendors — California-based headwear-maker Cali-Fame and Louisiana’s Ace Specialties — for T-shirts, mugs, stickers, and the red hats (which the campaign spent over $400,000 on alone).

    • The Debut of Our Revolution: Great Potential. But.

      If Bernie and Our Revolution continue to evade the present-day realities of “the madness of militarism,” their political agenda will be significantly more limited than what our revolution requires for a truly progressive future.

    • ‘Our Revolution’ Kick-Off Signals New Phase for Movement Sanders Built
    • Bernie’s Next Revolution: New National Group to Launch to Promote Progressives

      Bernie Sanders returns to the political stage on Wednesday to try to do what no progressive has successfully done in decades—keep alive national grassroots momentum that led millions to support him and his agenda in 2016’s presidential nominating contests.

      At 9 PM Eastern, Sanders will address 2,600-plus meetings across the country to lay out the next steps in pushing the nation’s politics toward the progressive left. He will kick off a new group called Our Revolution, which will support like-minded candidates running for office and hold pro-corporate officeholders accountable on key issues.

    • Dear Us and Dear Bernie: A Few Notes on Our Revolution

      Left commentary berates mainstream media for serving up ‘too much Trump.” Fair enough, but left writers also flood us with endlessly repetitive Trump coverage.

      Left commentary claims that at election time an endless stream of writers overemphasize the ephemeral and ignore the serious. True, but left writers also continually repeat what people already know while offering few usable lessons for the future.

      Left commentary worries that Sanders will ratify the idea that politics is only about candidates and leave nothing lasting in place. Also fair, but left writers not only worry about this prospect, we contribute to it when we fixate on one person’s possible choices and ignore our own responsibility for achieving more.

      Left commentary bemoans distraction. Sensible, but the complaint becomes ironic when left writers continually repeat that elections don’t matter while not addressing what does matter, the longer term.

    • Understanding Trump’s Use of Language

      I have been repeatedly asked in media interviews about such use of language by Trump. So far as I can tell, he is simply using effective discourse mechanisms to communicate what his wants to communicate to his audience. I have found that he is very careful and very strategic in his use of language. The only way I know to show this is to function as a linguist and cognitive scientist and go through details.

      Let’s start with sentence fragments. It is common and natural in New York discourse for friends to finish one another’s sentences. And throughout the country, if you don’t actually say the rest of a friend’s sentence out loud, there is nevertheless a point at which you can finish it in your head. When this happens in cooperative discourse, it can show empathy and intimacy with a friend, that you know the context of the narrative, and that you understand and accept your friend’s framing of the situation so well that you can even finish what they have started to say. Of course, you can be bored with, or antagonistic to, someone and be able to finish their sentences with anything but a feeling of empathy and intimacy. But Trump prefers to talk to a friendly crowd.

    • Green Party’s Jill Stein Praises WikiLeaks, Calls Julian Assange a Hero
    • Questions About Clinton Campaign’s Transparency Ramp Up After a Weekend of Closed Fundraisers

      Meanwhile, concerns are growing about a potential conflict of interest between the Clinton Foundation and the government during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. And on Monday, it was announced that an additional 14,900 documents from Clinton’s private email server would be released by the State Department before the November election.

    • Donald Trump Isn’t Really Reaching Out To African-Americans

      Contrary to recent headlines, Donald Trump isn’t reaching out to African-Americans. He isn’t even talking to us. He’s talking past us, and saying exactly what his alt-right base wants to hear him saying to black folks.

      Donald Trump is telling African-Americans that our biggest problems are simply the result of listening to the wrong white people.

    • 4 experts make the case that the Clinton Foundation’s fundraising was troubling

      During the four years Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation run by her husband took tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments and corporations.

      Many of these donors had a lot riding on Clinton’s decisions. Saudi Arabia gave the foundation up to $25 million, and Clinton signed off on a controversial $29 billion sale of fighter jets to the country. Oil companies gave the foundation around $3 million, and Clinton approved a lucrative gas pipeline in the Canadian tar sands they’d long sought.

      We’ve known the basics of this story for months now. But another media feeding frenzy over the foundation kicked off again on Monday, when the State Department was forced to release emails showing that the foundation’s leadership tried to land its top donors meetings with the secretary of state.

    • Hillary Clinton’s Fundraisers: No Press Allowed

      Campaign donors will see and hear a lot from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the next month as she embarks on a fundraising tour, but voters will have little clue as to what she says behind closed doors.

    • FBI docs linked to Hillary Clinton role in Vince Foster’s suicide missing – report

      The FBI’s reports linked to Hillary Clinton’s role in the death of Vince Foster, a White House counsel and her friend, have allegedly gone missing. A journalistic investigation says it could be Clinton’s humiliation that pushed Foster to suicide.

      According to Daily Mail, documents containing interviews of Clinton conducted after Foster’s death in July 1993 have vanished from the National Archives.

      The report claims that author and journalist Ronald Kessler visited the National Archives and Records Service in College Park, Maryland multiple times to review the reports submitted by FBI agents investigating Foster’s suicide.

    • Huma Abedin’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood

      The Clinton campaign is attempting once again to sweep important questions under the rug about top aide Huma Abedin, her family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and to Saudi Arabia, and her role in the ballooning Clinton email scandal.

      The New York Post ran a detailed investigative piece over the weekend about Ms. Abedin’s work at the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs from 1995 through 2008, a Sharia law journal whose editor in chief was Abedin’s own mother.

      This is not some accidental association. Ms. Abedin was, for many years, listed as an associate editor of the London-based publication and wrote for the journal while working as an intern in the Clinton White House in the mid-1990s.

      Her mother, Saleha Abedin, sits on the Presidency Staff Council of the International Islamic Council for Da’wa and Relief, a group that is chaired by the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

      Perhaps recognizing how offensive such ties will be to voters concerned over future terrorist attacks on this country by radical Muslims professing allegiance to Sharia law, the Clinton campaign on Monday tried to downplay Ms. Abedin’s involvement in the Journal and the Muslim Brotherhood.

    • Why Did the Saudi Regime and Other Gulf Tyrannies Donate Millions to the Clinton Foundation?

      As the numerous and obvious ethical conflicts surrounding the Clinton Foundation receive more media scrutiny, the tactic of Clinton-loyal journalists is to highlight the charitable work done by the Foundation, and then insinuate – or even outright state – that anyone raising these questions is opposed to its charity. James Carville announced that those who criticize the Foundation are “going to hell.” Others Clinton loyalists insinuated that Clinton Foundation critics are indifferent to the lives of HIV-positive babies or are anti-gay bigots.

      That the Clinton Foundation has done some good work is beyond dispute. But that fact has exactly nothing to do with the profound ethical problems and corruption threats raised by the way its funds have been raised. Hillary Clinton was America’s chief diplomat, and tyrannical regimes such as the Saudis and Qataris jointly donated tens of millions of dollars to an organization run by her family and operated in their name, one whose works has been a prominent feature of her public persona. That extremely valuable opportunity to curry favor with the Clintons, and to secure access to them, continues as she runs for President.

    • Clinton Foundation Investigation Update: Key Details About Financial And Political Dealings

      The release of documents shedding more light on connections between the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton-led State Department has touched off a new political firestorm only weeks before voters begin heading to the polls in the 2016 election.

      Republican nominee Donald Trump — himself a foundation donor — has called for a special prosecutor to investigate the foundation, and Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, has said the new disclosures are “evidence of the pay-to-play politics.” By contrast, the Clinton campaign has argued that there is no proof of any quid pro quo — a message echoed by her supporters in the pundit world.

      As the rhetoric about the Clintons’ public and private financial dealings intensifies, here is a brief review of the major investigative reporting that has been done about the Clinton Foundation.

    • Army Training Lesson Cited Clinton as ‘Insider’ Threat Risk

      An Army training presentation on insider threats included Hillary Clinton among a rogue’s gallery of killers and leakers, citing the former secretary of state as an example of “careless or disgruntled employees,” NBC News confirmed on Tuesday.

      The unclassified slide, which first emerged on a Facebook page that spoofs the military, was confirmed by a U.S. military officials, who said it was used as part of a lesson on how to secure classified materials and improve safety.

      A spokesperson from the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command said the slide was developed 18 months ago.

      “As is common with Army training requirements, the local unit was given latitude to develop their own training products to accomplish the overall training objective,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Europeans In Exodus To Russian Facebook to Avoid Censorship

      Germans who are critical of Islam and mass migration are fleeing to the site VK, known as the Russian Facebook to avoid censorship of their remarks and possible raids on their homes.

    • Council censorship eliminates free speech and thought

      There are a lot of TV and print and talk shows about terrorism here and terrorism there. It is a serious matter, terrorism is. What makes it worrisome is that it is not well defined, and it seems some government officials want it that way.

      Some of you may not recognize total censorship or censorship as terrorism. The Peoples got punished over the last few years for having an opinion about corruption in Colville tribal government from the top down. Letters to the editor were removed from our tribal newsprint in total.

      The “Clowncil” and its staff are lying about the censorship imposed since 2013. And now the Clowncil, through its staff, are lying about the censorship again, as they lifted “total censorship” and replaced it with “censorship.”

      Please re-read the December 2014 Tribal Tribune (TT) edition, page A6 “Letter To The Editor Policy.” “Policy” restricts tribal members’ freedom to have a letter also printed in outside newspapers while getting printed in the TT (paragraph 1) with a threat of total censorship; narrows the scope of topics a tribal members may write about (paragraph 3); requires a “respectful/professional tone” but does not define it, leaving censorship in whole (paragraph 4); Editor determines his or her own “facts” (paragraph 5); Editor determines what “hatred, contempt, suspicion or wrongdoing, scorn or ridicule” means and will censor according to the editor’s “belief” (paragraph 6). These standards are outside the bounds of journalistic “libel laws;” therefore, they narrow the scope of free speech and free thought, and, in actuality, eliminate both.

    • You don’t need to look abroad to find rampant censorship – it’s right here in Britain

      Since 9/11, Britons are increasingly watched, shadowed and snooped. This week the wall featuring the mural was smashed. I suspected silent censorship. Turns out it was a dopey builder. So, as it turns out, I was being somewhat paranoid and hasty. But is that worse than being sluggishly trusting and complacent? I was raised in Uganda where the state censored the media, books, art, and song lyrics. Citizens there were more alert to the danger than we are in the UK.

    • Censorship or smart thinking? UWM ‘Inclusive Excellence” group pushing to silence certain words

      But Williford said a list of words some deem offensive has him questioning a relatively new campus guideline.

      [...]

      Hill said “Just Words” is merely a suggestion — not censorship.

      “We are not doing that at all. As a matter of fact, we`re trying to improve and have open dialogue,” Hill said.

      Also on the list: ‘ghetto,’ ‘Nazi’ and even ‘politically correct.’

    • Cloudflare Fights RIAA’s Piracy Blocking Demands in Court

      Cloudflare has made it clear that the company isn’t going to block piracy sites without a proper court order. In addition, it now opposes an injunction requested by the RIAA, under which it would have to disconnect alleged MP3Skull accounts based on a keyword and IP-address.

    • CloudFlare Protects Internet Users By Insisting On Lawful Orders Before Blocking Customers

      This month, the online service provider CloudFlare stood up for its website-owner customers, and for all users of those websites, by telling a court that CloudFlare shouldn’t be forced to block sites without proper legal procedure. Copyright law limits the kinds of orders that a court can impose on Internet intermediaries, and requires courts to consider the pros and cons thoroughly. In this case, as in other recent cases, copyright (and trademark) holders are trying to use extremely broad interpretations of some basic court rules to bypass these important protections. As special interests keep trying to make things disappear from the Internet quickly, cheaply, and without true court supervision, it’s more important than ever that Internet companies like CloudFlare are taking a stand.

      The current dispute between CloudFlare and a group of record labels arose from the labels’ case against the music streaming site MP3Skull. The website’s owners never appeared in court to defend themselves against a lawsuit by the labels. The labels, who are all members of the Recording Industry Association of America, won a court judgment by default in March of this year. The judgment included a permanent injunction against the site and those in “active concert and participation” with it. On the last day of June, the labels’ lawyers sent the order to CloudFlare and demanded that they immediately stop providing services to various Internet addresses and domain names connected with MP3Skull.

    • Goodbye to the Loudest Drunk in NPR’s Online Bar

      Good riddance to NPR’s comment section, which is shutting down Tuesday after eight years. There has to be a better way for news organizations to engage with the public.

      NPR is joining a growing list of media organizations that have said “finito” to comments including, ‘This American Life,’ Reuters, Recode, Mic, The Chicago Sun-Times, Popular Science, CNN, The Toronto Star and The Week.

      When comments sections were initiated on news sites, they were hailed as a means to democratize the media, allowing a two-way conversation between readers and the journalists who serve them.

    • Singapore to cut off public servants from the internet

      Singapore is planning to cut off web access for public servants as a defence against potential cyber attack – a move closely watched by critics who say it marks a retreat for a technologically advanced city-state that has trademarked the term “smart nation”.

      Some security experts say the policy, due to be in place by May, risks damaging productivity among civil servants and those working at more than four dozen statutory boards, and cutting them off from the people they serve. It may only raise slightly the defensive walls against cyber attack, they say.

      Ben Desjardins, director of security solutions at network security firm Radware, called it “one of the more extreme measures I can recall by a large public organisation to combat cyber security risks”. Stephen Dane, a Hong Kong-based managing director at networking company Cisco Systems, said it was “a most unusual situation” and Ramki Thurimella, chair of the computer science department at the University of Denver, called it both “unprecedented” and “a little excessive”.

    • The gatekeepers are dead. Long live the World Wide Web!

      Until recently the tools for mass communication were expensive and in the hands of a small number of gatekeepers. Then, the price rapidly fell towards zero. With the Internet and the World Wide Web (that just turned 25 years old) anyone can communicate with the world by words, pictures, sound, and video – 24/365 – on a shoestring budget.

      Still, people need to know about you. So fame, reputation, and status are factors to take into consideration. But content, quality (in some sense) and virality is the new gold standard.

      This has upset the people who used to be in power, like bigwig politicians. They used to have their press releases copy-pasted into the media news flow without too much hassle. Today they still are visible in the slowly dying mainstream media. But on the Internet, they have to compete for attention with everybody and everything else.

      Also, media proprietors, the copyright industry and the big brick and mortar chains are upset – just to mention a few.

      It could have been very different.

      Tim Berners-Lee – who invented the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) together with his friends at W3C at Cern – decided not to patent this method of connecting the dots in the Matrix, but to give it to the world.

    • No Press Intimidation by Trump – hence: BREAKING REPORT: Melania Trump Was A Sex Worker After Moving To United States – repeating story the Trump Attorneys are now making bigger story than it was

      There is a story in a major British newspaper The Daily Mail, which reports that there are now stories that Melania Trump, who was a nude model in her past – that is not under question, had also been an Escort model ie a hooker ie a prostitute and has been working as a hooker, ie Escort in New York before she married Donald Trump. I do take it upon myself to ridicule and laugh at Donald Trump’s absurd political run this year. I did laugh at Melania when she was caught plagiarizing Michelle Obama’s speech at the Republican Convention in July and as it since emerged, she has lied about having a college degree from Ljubljana University in Slovenia, which she does not (they have removed references to the fake degree from her website since this news broke out). But this blog is not at war with Trump’s third wife, bought by Trump sixteen years ago, to rear some kids for Trump that Trump himself won’t bother to get to know until they’ve grown up to be adults. Wives, that Trump buys from East Europe and replaces roughly every 16 years. I was mainly focused on mocking Trump himself.

      [...]

      The Trump attorneys attacked Liberal America and Andrew Bradford insisting he must apologize or be sued .Andrew is not rich enough to defend himself against a Billionaire’s attorney attack-dogs so he relented and wrote an apology. Its quite an epic apology which does its best to keep all of the accusations still in view, and he also published in full the attorney’s letter. A letter which uses such phrases as “Melania Trump was a sex worker after moving to the United States” haha. So it is that letter in verbatim, which is now on the blogsite and further hopefully adding to smear Melania Trump’s name. But still, I feel very strongly about freedom of speech and feel a strong personal sense of support to Mr Bradfort that I have never met. I have never even heard of their publication, the Liberal America. But I now of course add my blog to the support of that issue. I link from this blog to Liberal America and I urge my readers to go read Andrew’s very smart article where he deals with the attorneys’ demand for apology.

    • How Facebook censors your posts
    • Activists Call for Facebook to Adopt ‘Anti-Censorship’ Policy
    • Unlike This: Social Media Companies Bow to Government Censorship Requests
    • Open letter to Facebook asks for ‘anti-censorship’ policy after Korryn Gaines death
    • Teen Vlogger Amos Yee Pleads Guilty To Two Charges, May Face Jail Time
    • Amos Yee pleads guilty to three out of six remaining charges
    • ‘That’s a Couple of Weeks in Jail’ – Singaporean Blogger Tweets During Trial
    • Amos Yee does U-turn and pleads guilty to two of his eight charges
    • Blogger Amos Yee, in another U-turn, pleads guilty to three more charges
    • Amos Yee pleads guilty to two charges

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • US parents largely unaware of what their children do online, research finds

      The parents of America’s digitally literate teenagers are largely in the dark about their children’s internet activity, new research has shown.

      The new study on teen internet use by the National Cyber Security Alliance found that only 13% of teens thought their parents understood the extent of their internet use.

      The survey of 804 online teens and 810 parents of teens found that 60% of teens have created accounts for apps or social media sites without their parents’ knowledge. Only 28% of parents thought their teens had accounts they didn’t know about.

      The gap between what teens are doing and what their parents know about is indicative of what the NCSA is calling a “digital disconnect between American teens and parents”.

    • Using PGP Phones Doesn’t Make You a Criminal, Ontario Judge Says

      Messaging your gun-toting, drug-trafficking friends by way of encrypted message isn’t proof that you’re a gun-toting drug-trafficker, an Ontario court has ruled.

      That useful bit of information comes after police booked a Hamilton man following a search of his room that turned up a 9mm Smith & Wesson unloaded handgun, a sock full of bullets, and a few grams of cocaine. They slapped five criminal charges on him, and hauled him before a judge.

      The Hamilton man was caught up in the investigation as police looked into a suspected drug trafficking ring. He just happened to be living at an address that was connected to the investigation.

      But his defense lawyers were quick to pick apart the search warrant that allowed the cops to bust down his door, and pry open his safe.

    • Germany, France demand golden key AND strong encryption just when you thought politicians had clued in to basic reality

      In a new level of dumb, Germany and France are demanding strong encryption for all citizens at the same time as they demand this strong encryption to be breakable. They also demand messaging providers of end-to-end encryption to provide police with keys they don’t have, and for terrorists to stop using freely available strong encryption without a messaging provider. You really couldn’t sound dumber if you tried.

    • Kuwait’s new DNA collection law is scarier than we ever imagined

      Horrible laws often follow major terrorist attacks. After 9/11, the U.S. Congress passed the Patriot Act. After the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris last year, European powers contemplated sweeping, strikingly bold internet surveillance laws. Following a July attack in Nice, French officials have passed laughably absurd laws against Muslim women wearing burkinis at public beaches.

      But after an ISIS-linked man ignited a bomb in a Shiite mosque in Kuwait last year, killing 27, the mother of all troubling laws was rushed through the country’s Parliament. The law requires that all citizens, residents and visitors to the country submit DNA samples to enter or stay in the country. It was passed in the name of national security and in helping identify victims of large scale attacks.

    • Liberal, Moderate or Conservative? See How Facebook Labels You

      You may think you are discreet about your political views. But Facebook, the world’s largest social media network, has come up with its own determination of your political leanings, based on your activity on the site.

      And now, it is easy to find out how Facebook has categorized you — as very liberal or very conservative, or somewhere in between.

      Try this (it works best on your desktop computer):

      Go to facebook.com/ads/preferences on your browser. (You may have to log in to Facebook first.)

      That will bring you to a page with your ad preferences. Under the “Interests” header, click the “Lifestyle and Culture” tab.

      Then look for a box titled “US Politics.” In parentheses, it will describe how Facebook has categorized you, such as liberal, moderate or conservative.

      (If the “US Politics” box does not show up, click the “See more” button under the grid of boxes.)

    • Report Shows Post-9/11 NYPD Spying on Muslims to Be ‘Highly Irregular’ [Ed: Not spying sufficiently on Wall Street hedge funds/banks because “Expensive lawyers”, “Job creators”, and “Free market”]

      In the wake of 9/11, New York City police repeatedly violated safeguards meant to protect lawful political and religious activities from unwarranted surveillance, according to the department’s own inspector general.

      A report (pdf) from the New York Police Department (NYPD)’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), released Tuesday, found the department to be “often non-compliant with a number of the rules” by failing to secure proper authorization or extensions for investigations of political activity, particularly those involving Muslims.

      The probe examined a sample of all closed cases between 2010 and 2015, some of which were opened as far back as 2004. More than 95 percent of the cases, according to the document, involved Muslims or political activity associated with Islam.

    • FMA joins National Privacy Commission in holding public consultations on privacy rules

      Following a successful, albeit brief consultation during a Philippine Computer Society meeting on June 28, the NPC partnered with a variety of groups from civil society, the research community, and the government to hold back-to-back consultations on July 13 and 14 at the University of the Philippines Diliman and Ateneo de Davao University, respectively. FMA participated in both consultations as a co-organizer. FMA organized another public consultation in Cebu City on July 28, whereas UP Manila hosted the last round on August 16.

    • Takedowns of Shadow Brokers Files Affirm Files as Stolen

      Now, don’t get me wrong. These are dangerous files, and I can understand why social media companies would want to close the barn door on the raging wild horses that once were in their stable.

      But underlying it all appears to be a notion of property that I’m a bit troubled by. Even if Shadow Brokers stole these files from NSA servers — something not at all in evidence — they effectively stole NSA’s own tools to break the law. But if these sites are treating the exploits themselves as stolen property, than so would be all the journalism writing about it.

      Finally, there’s the question of how these all came down so quickly. Almost as if someone called and reported their property stolen.

    • US Intelligence Still Sorting Out NSA Hack

      The US is still probing the extent of a recent cyber leak of what purports to be hacking tools used by the National Security Agency, the nation’s top intelligence official said Wednesday.

      “We are still sorting this out,” James Clapper, director of national intelligence, said at an event at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California.

      “It’s still under investigation,” Clapper said. “We don’t know exactly the full extent – or the understanding – of exactly what happened.”

      The tool kit consists of malicious software intended to tamper with firewalls, the electronic defenses protecting computer networks. The leak has set the information security world atwitter – and sent major companies rushing to update their defenses.

    • Word Games: What the NSA Means by “Targeted” Surveillance Under Section 702

      We all know that the NSA uses word games to hide and downplay its activities. Words like “collect,” “conversations,” “communications,” and even “surveillance” have suffered tortured definitions that create confusion rather than clarity.

      There’s another one to watch: “targeted” v. “mass” surveillance.

    • A hacker claims he has more leaked NSA files to view — If you can solve this puzzle

      A hacker named 1×0123 claims he has the other half of the recently-leaked NSA hacking toolkit for sale — but samples of the dataset are only available if you can figure out his cryptographic puzzle.

      On Sunday, the hacker posted on Twitter that he was selling the entire archive of files for $8,000, seemingly undercutting the mysterious “Shadow Brokers” hacking group that leaked one-half of the archive last week at various file-sharing websites with claims of an “auction” for the rest.

      It appears that 1×0123 is indeed a hacker who has found and sold security vulnerabilities in the past. Even ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden praised him in April for finding an issue on the Freedom of the Press website.

    • NSA’s leaked exploits affect Cisco, Juniper… and US foreign policy?

      An unprecedented data dump, of security exploits believed to originate form within the US National Security Agency (NSA) has left some firms scrambling to fix security holes dating back years, and revealed the extent to which the NSA stockpiles cyber-weapons..

      The dump includes attacks on network products from several vendors, including Cisco and Juniper. These so-called ’zero day exploits’ take advantage of software vulnerabilities which have been found, and kept secret from the vendor. Until the vendor knows and fixes these weaknesses, they can be attacked, and the exploits can be used with ’cyber weapons’. The dump appears to show the US agency is stockpiling these exploits, but that another power gained access to its stash of weapons – revelations which could have serious ramifications for the US cyber security and cyber warfare team, as well as for foreign relations.

    • Juniper confirms leaked “NSA exploits” affect its firewalls, no patch released yet

      Juniper confirmed exploits leaked by the Shadow Brokers group appear to affect its firewalls, but has not yet patched the vulnerabilities.

      The firewall manufacturer is “investigating the recent release of files reported to have been taken from the so-called Equation Group,” Juniper’s security incident response manager Derrick Scholl wrote in a corporate blog post.

      Juniper identified an exploit affecting its NetScreen firewall devices that run on the ScreenOS operating system. Initial analysis of the exploit “indicates it targets the boot loader and does not exploit a vulnerability on ScreenOS devices,” Scholl wrote in the post.

      On Tuesday, Ixia’s application and threat intelligence unit discovered an exploit that targets Watchguard Firewalls, according to Steve McGregory, senior director of the ATI group said in emailed comments to SCMagazine.com. Four of the exploits affect TopSec firewalls, primarily used in China, he added.

    • Second Snowden could be behind sale of NSA hacking tools

      WE ARE getting closer to unmasking the Shadow Brokers. Last week, the group put hacking tools from the National Security Agency up for auction, including security flaws in companies’ systems and remote access tools. There have been no serious bidders, but the documents have been confirmed as the real deal, raising the spectre of another whistleblower at the agency.

      Initially, the prime suspect was Russia, but this theory has now been downgraded. Certain naming conventions in the files point to scripts only accessible on a machine physically isolated from the network and therefore inaccessible to anyone not physically present in the NSA building. The idea that it was an accidental upload has also been debunked, shifting the focus internally.

      However, it couldn’t have been Edward Snowden, pictured, as it looks like the tools were stolen around October 2013, five months after he fled to Hong Kong.

    • Everyone’s Already Using the Leaked NSA Exploits

      Last week, an anonymous group calling itself the Shadow Brokers leaked a bunch of National Security Agency hacking tools. Whoever they are, the Shadow Brokers say they still have more data to dump. But the preview has already unleashed some notable vulnerabilities, complete with tips for how to use them.

      All of which means anyone—curious kids, petty criminals, trolls—can now start hacking like a spy. And it looks like they are.

      Curious to learn if anyone was indeed trying to take advantage of the leak, Brendan Dolan-Gavitt—a security researcher at NYU—set up a honeypot. On August 18 he tossed out a digital lure that masqueraded as a system containing one of the vulnerabilities. For his experiment, Dolan-Gavitt used a Cisco security software bug from the leak that people have learned to fix with workarounds, but that doesn’t have a patch yet.

      Within 24 hours Dolan-Gavitt saw someone trying to exploit the vulnerability, with a few attempts every day since. “I’m not surprised that someone tried to exploit it,” Dolan-Gavitt says. Even for someone with limited technical proficiency, vulnerable systems are relatively easy to find using services like Shodan, a search engine of Internet-connected systems. “People maybe read the blog post about how to use the particular tool that carries out the exploit, and then either scanned the Internet themselves or just looked for vulnerable systems on Shodan and started trying to exploit them that way,” Dolan-Gavitt says. He explains that his honeypot was intentionally very visible online and was set up with easily guessable default passwords so it would be easy to hack.

    • France, Germany Want Encrypted App Makers To Help Stop IS

      France and Germany pushed Tuesday for Europe-wide rules requiring the makers of encrypted messaging apps such as Telegram to help governments monitor communications among suspected extremists.

      Privacy advocates argue that encryption is essential to online security, notably for banking transactions. But security experts say encrypted apps are increasingly used by extremists to hide their location, coordinate operations and trade weapons and sex slaves.

      Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said French authorities have detained three people this month with “clear attack plans,” but police need better tools to eavesdrop on encrypted text conversations utilizing the kinds of powers used to wiretap phones.

    • New leaks prove it: the NSA is putting us all at risk to be hacked

      The National Security Agency is lying to us. We know that because of data stolen from an NSA server was dumped on the internet. The agency is hoarding information about security vulnerabilities in the products you use, because it wants to use it to hack others’ computers. Those vulnerabilities aren’t being reported, and aren’t getting fixed, making your computers and networks unsafe.

      On August 13, a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers released 300 megabytes of NSA cyberweapon code on the internet. Near as we experts can tell, the NSA network itself wasn’t hacked; what probably happened was that a “staging server” for NSA cyberweapons — that is, a server the NSA was making use of to mask its surveillance activities — was hacked in 2013.

    • Nick Asks the NSA: Shadow Brokers and the Leaking Ship

      For the second installation of Nick Asks the NSA, I offer Congress my services as to what questions in their oversight capacity they should be asking NSA about the Shadow Broker leak.

      It now safe to say that the “Equation Group” leak by Shadow Brokers is real and consists of a genuine trove of NSA tools used to hack firewalls. The leaked code references known programs, uses a particularly unusual RC6 and cruddy crypto techniques previously associated with NSA implants, and the Washington Post has confirmed the authenticity of the materials with two anonymous ex-NSA employees.

    • NSA Targeted Chinese Firewall Maker Huawei, Leaked Documents Suggest

      When the mysterious Shadow Brokers dumped a cache of hacking tools used by an NSA-linked group last week, researchers quickly identified a number of the spy agencies’ targets, including American security companies like Cisco, Juniper, and Fortinet.

      But until now, no one noticed that the leaked files suggest the NSA has also been targeting—and was likely able to hack—firewalls made by Huawei, a Chinese manufacturer of network infrastructure often seen as a threat to American companies given the suspicion that the Chinese government might have a backdoor and could spy in its products. The revelation is contained in an instruction file part of the leak.

      Within one of the leaked files (TURBO_install-new.txt) there are references to VRP 3.30, a version of Huawei’s proprietary operating system. While 3.30 is an older version, it still appears to be popular, according to a search on Shodan, which returns more than 1,600 devices running that version, mostly in China.

    • After NSA leaks, a renewed interest in vulnerability disclosure

      The code leaked by the Shadow Brokers group last week has set off calls from security researchers and tech groups for a national conversation about vulnerability disclosure policy.

      The code contains about a dozen vulnerabilities affecting firewall manufacturers that many industry professionals believe to be exploits used by the National Security Agency (NSA).

      While the Obama administration’s Vulnerability Equities Process (VEP) calls on intelligence agencies to disclose security vulnerabilities by default, tech companies and security pros are concerned by the prospect of an unknown number of zero-day vulnerabilities possessed by intelligence agencies.

      The Shadow Brokers leak highlights the need for transparency in the government’s disclosure process, according to Mozilla senior policy manager Heather West. “If the government chooses to engage in lawful hacking, it must also support responsible disclosure,” she wrote in an email to SCMagazine.com.

    • FISA Court: Government Can Collect Content Along With Dialing Data Using Pen Register Orders

      The Director of National Intelligence’s office has cleared another FISA court opinion [PDF] for release. These are getting far more interesting to read, even if little seems to be changing about the FBI/NSA’s collection methods. The process is now a little bit more adversarial, thanks to the USA Freedom Act, which introduced the possibility of someone arguing on behalf of the surveilled and in the interest of privacy and the Fourth Amendment.

      Unfortunately, this opinion finds the FISA court mostly unimpressed with the counterarguments. The discussion involved the use of pen register orders to capture “post-cut through” dialing digits — the sort of thing the court determined to be content, rather than metadata in the past.

      This time around, the court seems more amenable to the government’s arguments that any digits obtained along with dialed phone numbers is fair game — whether or not the orders actually allow for the collection of communications content.

    • Warrant for former DA Paul Zellerbach in wiretap case

      A judge issued an arrest warrant Tuesday for former Riverside County District Attorney Paul Zellerbach after he failed to appear at a court hearing to answer questions about an eavesdropping operation so vast it once accounted for nearly a fifth of all U.S. wiretaps.

      The warrant, however, will not be sent to law enforcement for Zellerbach to be arrested unless he does not show up for another hearing on wiretaps, now scheduled for Sept. 30.

      “He should have been there,” said Jan Ronis, the attorney who subpoenaed Zellerbach. “But he just blew us off. We could have had court today.”

    • Arrest Warrant Issued For District Attorney Involved In DEA’s California Wiretap Warrant Mill

      It’s not uncommon for Zellerbach to go missing when people need him. When Zellerbach ran the DA’s office, he was rarely there. The DEA found his office to be just as accommodating, with or without him, though. Although the DEA was supposed to run its wiretap warrant requests through federal judges and have them signed by the district attorney himself, it often found it easier to obtain a signature from whoever happened to be at the office and run them by Riverside County judge Helios Hernandez, who approved five times as many wiretap applications as any other judge in the US.

      The wiretap applications’ reach frequently exceeded their jurisdictional grasp, traveling far outside of Riverside County, California, to be deployed against suspects as far away as North Carolina. But that was only one issue with the warrants applications approved by Zellerbach’s office.

      The DOJ’s lawyers didn’t like the DEA’s skirting of federal rules for wiretap applications.

    • Baltimore Police Are Secretly Spying on Residents from the Air: Bloomberg

      Since January, the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) has been using small aircrafts to spy on residents for as much as 10 hours a day, without informing the public, in a project financed by a private donor and facilitated by a private company, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

      The BPD, Bloomberg’s Monte Reel wrote, has been using aerial surveillance to investigate “all sorts of crimes, from property thefts to shootings.” The cameras capture an area of roughly 30 square miles and transmit images to analysts on the ground, while footage gets automatically saved to hard drives for later review.

      The technology comes from a company called Persistent Surveillance Systems. Its president, Ross McNutt, developed a similar tool for the Pentagon while working for the U.S. Air Force in 2006. Over time, he modified the technology for commercial use. McNutt eventually pitched the service to the BPD after his company had faltered in finding a department for a long-term contract. He opened his office in Baltimore in January, above a parking garage, denoted only by a piece of paper taped to his door that reads, “Community Support Program.”

    • Baltimore PD Can Keep Tabs On The Entire City, Thanks To Privately-Donated Aerial Surveillance System

      When all you have is repurposed war gear, everything looks like a war zone.

      It’s not just the Pentagon handing out mine-resistant vehicles and military rifles to any law enforcement agency that can spell “terrorism” correctly on a requisition form. It’s also the FBI acting as a gatekeeper (and muzzle) for cell phone-tracking hardware originally developed for use in Iraq and Afghanistan.

      The latest addition to the pantheon of “war gear, but for local law enforcement” is aerial surveillance. While this sort of surveillance is nothing new — police have had helicopters for years — the tech deployed to capture recordings is.

      Bloomberg has a long, in-depth article on aerial surveillance tech deployed by the Baltimore Police Department — all without ever informing constituents. Baltimore isn’t the first city to deploy this repurposed military tech. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department gave the same gear a test run back in 2014. The LASD also did little to inform the public about its purchase, claiming that people might get paranoid and/or angry if they knew.

      Baltimore’s acquisition of Persistent Surveillance Systems’ 192-million megapixel eye in the sky also occurred under the cover of governmental darkness. The tech was given to the police and paid for by a private donor — which kept the public out of the loop and any FOIA-able paper trail to a minimum.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Deaf driver’s shooting death by trooper under investigation

      The North Carolina Highway Patrol is urging people not to jump to conclusions as state agents investigate how a deaf driver with a history of minor offenses ended up dead after leading a trooper on a 10-mile chase.

      The family of Daniel Kevin Harris said he was unarmed and suggested the sequence of events last week was a tragic misunderstanding — the type the state’s training manual warns troopers to avoid when dealing with the hearing impaired.

      The investigation into the shooting is ongoing, Secretary Frank Perry of the state Department of Public Safety said in a news release.

      “Let us all refrain from making assumptions or drawing conclusions prior to the internal and independent reviews” by the patrol, the State Bureau of Investigation and the district attorney, said Perry, whose agency oversees the Highway Patrol.

    • Some thoughts that I don’t want to have, regarding people getting shot

      A number of (hearing) friends from a bunch of my (different) social circles recently sent me — almost simultaneously — links to news stories about Deaf people getting killed by cops who couldn’t communicate with them.

      This is nothing new. It’s been happening for ages. Someone with a gun gets scared and pulls the trigger, and someone else is dead. Maybe that person is Deaf. Maybe that person is Black. In any case, that person is now dead, and that’s not okay. (Maybe that person is both Deaf and Black, and we mention the second part but not the first. That’s disability erasure that, statistically, correlates highly with race; that’s also not okay.)

      I’ve been deaf as long as I can remember, and I’ve known these stories happened for a long, long time. But this is the first time I’ve watched them from inside the conversations of a Deaf community — for some definition of “inside” that includes confused mainstreamed-oral youngsters like me who are struggling to learn ASL and figure out where they fit.

    • Self-driving cars don’t care about your moral dilemmas

      As self-driving cars move from fiction to reality, a philosophical problem has become the focus of fierce debate among technologists across the world. But to the people actually making self driving cars, it’s kind of boring.

      The “trolley problem” is the name for a philosophical thought experiment created as an introduction to the moral distinction between action and inaction. The classic example is a runaway mine cart, hurtling down tracks towards a group of five oblivious people. With no time to warn them, your only option is to pull a switch and divert the cart on to a different track, which only has one person standing on it. You will save five lives, but at the cost of actively killing one person. What do you do?

      All kinds of tweaks and changes can be made to the basic problem, to examine different aspects of moral feeling. What if, rather than pulling a switch, you stop the mine cart by pushing one particularly large person in its way? What if the five people are all over the age of 80 and the one person is under 20? What if the five people are in fact five hundred kittens?

    • Engineers Say If Automated Cars Experience ‘The Trolley Problem,’ They’ve Already Screwed Up

      As self-driving cars inch closer to the mainstream, a common debate has surfaced: should your car be programmed to kill you if it means saving the lives of dozens of other people? This so-called “trolley problem” has been debated at universities for years, and while most consumers say they support automated vehicles that prioritize the lives of others on principle, they don’t want to buy or ride in one, raising a number of thorny questions.

      Should regulations and regulators focus on a utilitarian model where the vehicle is programmed to prioritize the good of the overall public above the individual? Or should self-driving cars be programmed to prioritize the welfare of the owner (the “self protective” model)? Would companies like Google, Volvo and others prioritize worries of liability over human lives when choosing the former or latter?

      [...]

      It’s still a question that needs asking, but with no obvious solution on the horizon, engineers appear to be focused on notably more mundane problems. For example one study suggests that while self-driving cars do get into twice the number of accidents of manually controlled vehicles, those accidents usually occur because the automated car was too careful — and didn’t bend the rules a little like a normal driver would (rear ended for being too cautious at a right on red, for example). As such, the current problem du jour isn’t some fantastical scenario involving an on-board AI killing you to save a busload of crying toddlers, but how to get self-driving cars to drive more like the inconsistent, sometimes downright goofy, and error-prone human beings they hope to someday replace.

    • Indonesia’s 51-Year-Old Ban on Communism to Stay in Place

      Indonesia’s current criminal code can send individuals to prison for “communist activities” for up to seven years.

      Indonesia maintained its ban on communism in its revision of the country’s criminal code system—controversial laws that have been in place for more than five decades.

    • School Board Elections in Ferguson Are Rigged Against Black Voters

      Nearly two years ago, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division began an investigation into the Ferguson Police Department for racial bias in the aftermath of the police shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager. What federal investigators found wasn’t pretty: a police department that consistently engaged in unconstitutional policing and that thought of the overwhelmingly Black community it was supposed to protect and serve as revenue sources for the city’s government. After the Justice Department’s report was released, it was only fair to ask how many other local institutions in the Ferguson area were afflicted with bias.

      Yesterday, the answer came when a federal court held that the Ferguson-Florissant School District’s system for electing its school board members violates the Voting Rights Act. The court recognized what many Ferguson-area residents know all too well: Once official discrimination — in education, housing, and public infrastructure — was outlawed in the Ferguson area, it shifted in form to other means of achieving the same ignoble goals.

    • French Police Create Propaganda for ISIS by Ticketing Muslim Women on Beaches

      Photographs and video of French police officers issuing tickets to Muslim women — for violating new local ordinances that ban modest beachwear as an offense against “good morals and secularism” in more than a dozen towns along the Riviera — spread widely on social networks on Wednesday, prompting waves of outrage and mockery by opponents of the laws.

    • My Brother Was Brutally Murdered, But the Delaware Supreme Court’s Decision to Ban the Death Penalty Was the Right One

      As the sister of a murder victim who opposes the death penalty, the Delaware Supreme Court’s decision in early August declaring the state’s death penalty statute unconstitutional gives me hope. The court’s decision affirms what death penalty opponents have known all along: Delaware’s death penalty doesn’t achieve justice for many reasons.

      The death penalty not only violates the rule of law, but it is costly, biased, prone to error, and ineffective at reducing violent crime and healing communities. Delaware’s statute, however, was particularly flawed. It had allowed a jury to recommend death without getting the approval of all 12 jurors, and it had allowed the judge in a capital case to override the jury’s sentencing recommendation to not put the convicted to death. Because the Delaware scheme diluted the historic role of a unanimous jury in criminal proceedings — to the point of denying capital defendants their constitutional right to a jury trial — the court struck it down.

    • “Deadly Heat” in U.S. Prisons Is Killing Inmates and Spawning Lawsuits

      In the summer months, 84 inmates at the Price Daniel Unit, a medium-security prison four hours west of Dallas, share a 10-gallon cooler of water that’s kept locked in a common area. An inmate there can expect to receive one 8 oz. cup every four hours, according to Benny Hernandez, a man serving a 10-year sentence at the prison. The National Academy of Medicine recommends that adults drink about twice that amount under normal conditions and even more in hot climates. According to Hernandez, in the summer the temperature in his prison’s housing areas can reach an astonishing 140 degrees.

      The prison provides ice for the cooler twice a day, but the ice has long melted before the hottest part of the day, he wrote in a post on Prison Writers, a website where inmates share their experiences behind bars. “Prisoners look upon the summer months in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) with dread and trepidation,” he wrote. “For one is acutely aware that one may not survive another summer. Many do not.”

    • Adam Curle, peace scholar: a centenary symposium

      Bradford University’s pioneering department devoted to peace education and research is honouring its founding professor. The world’s conflicts make it a timely event.

    • Political Writer, Daughter of Ukrainian Dissident, Detained and Charged in Ukraine

      On August 16, 2016, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) made another step in the intimidation and silencing of Ukrainians with dissenting opinion – SBU searched the apartment of Myroslava Berdnyk, a popular blogger and political writer who openly criticizes the post-Euromaidan authorities and exposes Ukrainian nationalism. She was detained for interrogation and later released.

      As with many other Ukrainians who refuse to join the anti-Russia crusade of the government in Kyiv, Myroslava Berdnyk now stands accused of undermining the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine.

      Myroslava’s case is particularly significant and important because she is the daughter of Oles Berdnyk, a famous Ukrainian dissident who spent many years in Soviet prisons who was also a famous writer, writing many science fiction novels.

    • In Major Ruling, Grad Students Win Right to Unionize at Private Universities

      The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) said Tuesday that graduate students who work as teaching and research assistants at private colleges are employees—a ruling with “big implications” for both higher education and organized labor in the United States.

    • Held 14 Years Without Charge, CIA Torture ‘Guinea Pig’ Abu Zubaydah Asks for Freedom

      After 14 years of being held without charge, Guantánamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah, who was subject to brutal torture and is known as the “guinea pig” for the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) “enhanced interrogation program,” made his first appearance on Tuesday before the Periodic Review Board and requested to be set free.

      In a statement (pdf) read by his personal representative, he explained how he “initially believe that he did not have any chance or hope to be released” but has “come to believe that he might have a chance to leave Guantánamo.”

      Further, Zubaydah “expressed a desire to be reunited with his family and begin the process of recovering from injuries he sustained during his capture.” Among other abuses, the detainee lost an eye while in CIA custody.

    • A Rare Glimpse of Abu Zubaydah 14 Years After First CIA Torture Session

      Abu Zubaydah, 45, made his first appearance Tuesday on video from Guantanamo in a hearing before a Periodic Review Board, 14 years after the last day of a month-long interrogation at a CIA black site in Thailand. It was the first time the “enhanced interrogation techniques” approved by the Bush administration were used on a detainee.

      Back then, Abu Zubaydah still had his left eye.

      Representatives from the media, nongovernmental organizations, and academia were permitted to view the unclassified opening portion of the hearing from a conference room at the Pentagon, but the segment does not include any statement or comments from the detainee. It was the first glimpse outside observers got of Zubaydah since a photo of his face with an eye patch was published by Wikileaks in 2011; at one point he was touted as al Qaeda No. 3.

      [...]

      Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian whose real name is Zayn al Abidin Muhammad, was captured in a raid of a Faisalabad, Pakistan, house on March 28, 2002, suffering severe bullet wounds. The interrogation techniques used on him included stress positions, sleep deprivation, insects placed in a confinement box, and waterboarding, among others.

      Most notably perhaps, he was waterboarded 83 times.

    • Critics Say French Burkini Bans Employ Language of Human Rights to Limit Human Rights

      So-called ‘burkini bans’ in France have come under fierce criticism after images surfaced this week of police in Nice surrounding and forcing a Muslim woman to remove some of her clothes.

      A burkini, or burquini, is a full-body swimsuit “intended to accord with Islamic traditions of modest dress,” as Wikipedia put it.

      Last week, Nice became the latest of 15 French towns to ban the garment, arguing that it “overtly manifests adherence to a religion at a time when France and places of worship are the target of terrorist attacks.” Last month, 86 people were killed in the seaside resort town when a truck drove into a Bastille Day celebration.

    • The Heart of Order

      He’d left the water running, flooding neighbors’ apartments. He’d been running around outside naked. By the time police arrived, he was standing in the window of his fourth-floor apartment on Farwell Avenue — a few blocks from where I live in the diverse, unpredictable Chicago neighborhood called Rogers Park — threatening to jump.

      He pointed his finger at the cops, pretending he had a gun. “Fuck the police,” he said. The standoff lasted four hours.

      But eventually he capitulated. The forces of sanity held sway. He was taken to a hospital. No one was hurt. (Phew-w-w!) And life in Rogers Park moved on.

      [...]

      Sixteen years — of war — later, I remain transfixed by that question. Why must social authority be symbolized with escalating bombast? Assault rifles, body armor, MRAPs? Then a scene from Robert Duvall’s 1997 movie The Apostle flickered for an instant in my mind. Billy Bob Thornton’s character, a racist with a bulldozer, is threatening to demolish the church that Duvall, a preacher on the run from the law, has constructed with his racially mixed congregation. Duvall sets his Bible in front of the bulldozer and Thornton is immobilized, indeed, reduced to tears. His hatred melts; the threat disappears.

    • [Older] Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction

      Corporate forces, long before the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, carried out a coup d’état in slow motion. The coup is over. We lost. The ruling is one more judicial effort to streamline mechanisms for corporate control. It exposes the myth of a functioning democracy and the triumph of corporate power. But it does not significantly alter the political landscape. The corporate state is firmly cemented in place.

      The fiction of democracy remains useful, not only for corporations, but for our bankrupt liberal class. If the fiction is seriously challenged, liberals will be forced to consider actual resistance, which will be neither pleasant nor easy. As long as a democratic facade exists, liberals can engage in an empty moral posturing that requires little sacrifice or commitment. They can be the self-appointed scolds of the Democratic Party, acting as if they are part of the debate and feel vindicated by their cries of protest.

    • A black homeowner called 911 to report a carjacking. He wound up getting shot by police.

      An Indianapolis homeowner who called police to report an attempted armed robbery at his house was apparently mistaken for the suspect and shot in the stomach by a responding officer, authorities said.

      Carl Williams, a 48-year-old black man, called 911 early Tuesday morning and told the emergency dispatcher that an armed man tried to assault his wife outside their home, then stole her car keys and drove away in her car, according to a statement from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.

      When two officers arrived at the property on the city’s east side, the homeowner, who was also armed and apparently prepared to confront the carjacker, emerged from his home, a law enforcement official told ABC affiliate RTV6.

    • HP hit with age-discrimination suit claiming older workers purged

      Four former employees of Silicon Valley tech icon Hewlett-Packard have filed an age discrimination lawsuit alleging they were ousted amid a purge of older workers.

      Hewlett-Packard began layoffs in 2012, before the company broke into HP Inc. and HP Enterprise last year, and have escalated the layoffs since, eventually hitting tens of thousands of workers.

      The goal “was to make the company younger,” said the complaint filed Aug. 18 in U.S. District Court in San Jose. “In order to get younger, HP intentionally discriminated against its older employees by targeting them for termination … and then systematically replacing them with younger employees. HP has hired a disproportionately large number of new employees under the age of 40 to replace employees aged 40 and older who were terminated.”

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Plagiarism Actions

        Drobetsky was a masters degree student at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. In her assigned 5-page reflection paper of the Benjamin Button movie, she apparently copied from Wikipedia and a blog post by Richard Larson. The allegations are “that a portion of one sentence in the reflection paper was copied word for word from the Wikipedia article, and portions of two other sentences were copied word for word from the Larson blog, without quotation marks, citation or attribution.”

        The school dismissed Drobetsky for plagiarism in violation of school policy – she sued in Illinois state court for readmittance, recover of the $53,000 paid to the school, etc.

      • EU Copyright Law Undermines Innovation and Creativity on the Internet. Mozilla is Fighting for Reform

        The internet is an unprecedented platform for innovation, opportunity and creativity. It’s where artists create; where coders and entrepreneurs build game-changing technology; where educators and researchers unlock progress; and where everyday people live their lives.

        The internet brings new ideas to life everyday, and helps make existing ideas better. As a result, we need laws that protect and enshrine the internet as an open, collaborative platform.

        But in the EU, certain laws haven’t caught up with the internet. The current copyright legal framework is outdated. It stifles opportunity and prevents — and in many cases, legally prohibits — artists, coders and everyone else from creating and innovating online. This framework was enacted before the internet changed the way we live. As a result, these laws clash with life in the 21st century.

      • SUPER-BREAKING NEWS: Leaked draft Impact Assessment shows that Commission intends to introduce new mandatory exceptions, address value gap and introduce related right for publishers

        What does the EU Commission intend to propose when it releases its next copyright package next month?

        This is a question that has been haunting EU copyright enthusiasts for a few months now.

      • Linking & Copyright rapid response event on 13 September: come join us!

        This is a reference for a preliminary ruling from the Dutch Supreme Court. It was made in the context of proceedings between Sanoma (the publisher of Playboy magazine) and GS Media, concerning the publication by the latter on a website that it operates (GeenSijl) of hyperlinks to other websites hosting unpublished photographs taken for a forthcoming issue of Playboy

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/08/25/networkmanager-turns-1-4/feed/ 0 Links 24/8/2016: More From LinuxCon, Uganda Wants FOSS http://techrights.org/2016/08/24/uganda-wants-foss/ http://techrights.org/2016/08/24/uganda-wants-foss/#comments Thu, 25 Aug 2016 00:00:21 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=95058

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • OpenIndiana Operating System Gets MATE 1.14 Desktop Environment, New ISOs

    Alexander Pyhalov from the OpenIndiana development team was happy to announce the availability of the latest MATE 1.14 open-source desktop environment for the Solaris-derived operating system.

  • 3 open source alternatives to Office 365

    It can be hard to get away from working and collaborating on the web. Doing that is incredibly convenient: as long as you have an internet connection, you can easily work and share from just about anywhere, on just about any device.

    The main problem with most web-based office suites—like Google Drive, Zoho Office, and Office365—is that they’re closed source. Your data also exists at the whim of large corporations. I’m sure you’ve heard numerous stories of, say, Google locking or removing accounts without warning.

    If that happens to you, you lose what’s yours. So what’s an open source advocate who wants to work with web applications to do? You turn to an open source alternative, of course. Let’s take a look at three of them.

  • NGINX’s Plan to Create a $1 Billion Business from its Open Source Software

    NGINX Inc. has a set an ambitious goal for itself: To become a $1 billion company within the next eight to 10 years. It will not be an easy task, especially given that its biggest competitor may be its own well-engineered open source software. For NGINX, the key to success will be to successfully get customers from additional markets.

    The open source NGINX project, which began in 2002, is a widely-used high-performance web server and reverse proxy. However, the commercial company, NGINX Inc., created to support the open source project, was founded much later, in 2011, with the first commercial product in 2013.

  • Hazelcast Releases Version 3.7

    Hazelcast, a provider of an open source in-memory data grid, has announced the general availability of Hazelcast 3.7. According to the company, the latest release is 30% faster than previous versions and is the first fully modularized version of Hazelcast. Each client/language and plugin is now available as a module – speeding up the development process for open source contributors, with new features and bug fixes released as modules alongside Hazelcast 3.7.

    Hazelcast continues to expand its footprint beyond its traditional “Java heartland,” the company says. The Hazelcast open source community has created clients for programming environments including Java, Scala, .Net/C#, C++, Python, Node.js, and Clojure. Java and Scala can be used for both clients and embedded members.

  • Hazelcast releases 3.7: cloud-enabled, 30% faster and the first fully modularized in-memory data grid
  • How to measure your community’s health

    How do you measure the health of your community, identify problems, and track progress towards your goals? What should you be measuring?

    Last month we discussed vanity metrics, those metrics that might sound impressive on the surface, but ultimately give you little insight or guidance to improve the health and well-being of your community. This naturally begs the question: What should you be measuring? And as I mentioned last month, the obvious but annoying answer: It depends. The first and foremost dependency relates to the nature of your community and where you and your members want it to go.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Alphabet Inc (GOOGL) to Remove Chrome applications from Mac, Linux, Windows
      • Google Makes Changes to the Chrome App Ecosystem

        Google is making some sweeping changes in the way Chrome, Chrome OS and Android handle apps and applications. The company has announced that it is moving away from the app platform on its Chrome browser for all platforms aside from Chromebooks. Beginning in late 2016, you will require a Chromebook to be able to download new Chrome apps, although existing apps will be usable and developers can still release updates.

        Meanwhile, many Chrome OS users are beginning to use Android apps on the platform. Android apps arrived on Chromebooks in a heavy-handed way in June, but the developer channel was still buggy. Now, a new implementation has entered the beta channel with some much needed stability.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • Walmart, Comcast Hasten Innovation, Improve Agility With OpenStack

      As new technologies like applications and programming languages are introduced, it’s important for companies to remain flexible and fast enough to adapt, which is why Walmart and Comcast have embraced OpenStack.

      By adopting OpenStack solution OneOps, Walmart doesn’t have to spend unnecessary time writing code or automating new processes in order to keep up with new technologies, Andrew Mitry, OpenStack Lead at Walmart, explained today at OpenStack East 2016.

      Walmart already uses more than 3,000 applications and services and has more than 170,000 cores in more than 30 regions, with more than 60 Open Source products that are deployed more than 40,000 times each month. With OneOps, Walmart can automate low-level processes like load balance and firewalls using OneOps, which Mitry said frees up time and resources to manage more intricate processes that require manual oversight.

  • Databases

    • MySQL daddy Widenius: Open-source religion won’t feed MariaDB

      MySQL daddy Monty Widenius has dismissed claims the MariaDB fork is veering away from open source.

      Rather, the chief technology officer of MariaDB corporation called his firm’s embrace of a commercial licence for part of MariaDB “critical” to delivering new revenue and for the continued development of open-source software.

      Widenius told The Register in an interview that he believes criticism of MariaDB’s commercial licence for its new database proxy sever, MaxScale 2.0, is motivated by a “religious” belief in free and open source software.

      Not that Widenius is against the belief per se, he told The Register, it’s just: “Religion doesn’t put meat on the table.”

    • Percona Celebrates 10 Years of Leading the Open Source Database Revolution

  • CMS

    • How to Resolve Your Open Content Management Quandary

      After years of development and competition, open source content management systems (CMS) have proliferated and are very powerful tools for building, deploying and managing web sites, blogs and more. You’re probably familiar with some of the big names in this arena, including Drupal (which Ostatic is based on) and Joomla.

      As we noted in this post, selecting a CMS to build around can be a complicated process, since the publishing tools provided are hardly the only issue. The good news is that free, sophisticated guides for evaluating CMS systems have flourished. There are even good options for trying open CMS systems online before you choose one. Here, in this newly updated post, you’ll find some very good resources.

      he first thing to pursue as you evaluate CMS systems to deploy, including the many free, good platforms, is an overview of what is available. CMSMatrix.org is a great site for plotting out side-by-side comparisons of what CMS systems have to offer. In fact, it lets you compare the features in over 1200 content management system products. Definitely take a look. This site also has a good overview of the options.

    • Postleaf is an open-source blogging platform for the design-conscious

      Content management systems are boring until you have to use one. You can install a little Drupal or WordPress, pick up some Squarespace, or just dump to Medium, the graveyard for posts about protein shakes and VC funding. But what if you could roll your own CMS? And what if you made it really cool?

      That’s what Cory LaViska did. LaViska is the founder of SurrealCMS and has been making it easy to edit stuff on the web for nine years. Rather than build and sell an acceptable CMS, however, he took all of his best ideas and made a far better CMS. And he made it open source and called it Postleaf.

  • Education

    • Schools that #GoOpen should #GoOpenSource

      School administrators know that traditional proprietary textbooks are expensive. Teachers in budget-strapped schools often face shortages of textbooks. Worse, print content is usually out-of-date as soon as the ink dries on the page. There has to be something better than students hauling bulbous backpacks loaded with dead knowledge stamped on dead trees.

      In the fall of 2015, the U.S. Department of Education launched the #GoOpen campaign, an initiative encouraging public schools to adopt openly-licensed digital educational materials to transform teaching and learning, and perhaps lighten both backpacks and textbook bills. The Department recently published the #GoOpen District Launch Packet, a useful step-by-step implementation guide for schools planning a transition from traditional textbooks to Open Educational Resources (OER).

      We should applaud the Department of Education’s efforts to promote affordable, equitable, and quality educational materials for all schools. Their initiative empowers educators to curate, shape, and share educational content at a local level. No longer is the written word of proprietary publishers like Pearson the fountain of all classroom knowledge. Districts that choose to #GoOpen opt to honor teacher expertise, empower them to build communities of shared practice, and encourage collaboration with colleagues across counties and states. Given unfettered permission to revise, remix, and redistribute curriculum material, teachers are trusted to become active agents in the creation of high-quality learning materials.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Funding

    • Be Bold, Be Curious, and Be Open, Advise Outreachy Participants

      In Tuesday afternoon’s “Kernel Internship Report and Outreachy Panel” session at LinuxCon North America, interns and mentors involved with the Outreachy program spoke enthusiastically of their experiences with the program. The panel was moderated by Karen M. Sandler, Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, and organizer of Outreachy.

      Sandler provided an overview of the Outreachy program, which offers a paid three-month internship for women and other underrepresented groups to work on a free and open source software project. Helen M Koike Fornazier, a former Outreachy intern and now a Software Engineer at Collabora, described her Linux kernel project involving video4linux, with Laurent Pinchart as her mentor. She wrote a driver, which simulates some media hardware using the Media API.

  • BSD

  • Public Services/Government

    • Uganda eager to tap into open source

      Uganda’s Ministry of ICT recently developed a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) policy to regulate the deployment of open source software and use of open standards to accelerate innovation and develop local content.

      At the 7th African Conference on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), organised in conjunction with Uganda’s National Information Technology Authority (NITA-U) to encourage industry partnerships and uptake of OSS in East Africa, open software was recognised for its contribution to innovation.

      Frank Tumwebaze, Minister of ICT and National Guidance in Uganda, said, “Free and open software services will help my ministry to innovate better because it forms the platform (for) many of the innovative ideas. Free and open source software in Uganda is certainly something we have been talking about and I am sure we will do so even more in the next few days. Some of the things Uganda has put in place to harness the benefit from free and open source software include a Software Strategy and Policy in accordance with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD) Trade, Services and Development expert meeting’s determination that free and open source software is an inseparable component of the global technology ecosystem.”

    • Ireland’s govt IT: Recession and job cuts forced us to adapt

      Ireland was hit hard by the global financial crunch of 2007 and 2008. It was the first of the EU member states to slip into recession immediately following the bursting of the economic bubble.

      As the economy contracted, banks faced default and government debt increased, with Ireland eventually taking an €67.5bn loan from the European Commission, European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

      Falling tax income and the need to bail out banks saw the Irish government spending in other areas of public life.

      The government had introduced the Public Sector Recruitment Embargo in 2009, which stopped hiring of all civil servants across government and cut pay and pensions – in return for a promise of no compulsory redundancies.

    • Oh! The Horror! Ireland Stays Enslaved To MS

      For 15 years or so, I was in those same financial straits in schools where I taught and GNU/Linux and FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) was the obvious solution. Obviously, one is better off to have IT for all rather than paying monopolistic prices for IT for a few. In schools, that meant extending the life of IT, elimination of malware and re-re-reboots, freedom from paper, freight for paper, storage for paper, … For governments freedom from lock-in to M$ and “friends” saved huge sums which could have been better spent on hardware or employees. Sigh.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Programming/Development

    • Digital Asset Holdings to open up DAML for developers

      Digital Asset Holdings, the blockchain start-up commanded by Blythe Masters, has announced that it will be open-sourcing its DAML modelling language.

      DAML, which Digital Asset describes as a “smart-contact-like” system for financial applications and supporting tools, is hailed by the company as a solution to the current market of modelling languages being unsuitable for regulated financial applications.

      “Many that are exploring the use of smart contracts — legal agreements written as executable code to automate the processing of rights and obligations on a distributed ledger — are discovering the deficiencies with available smart contract languages,” the firm writes in a statement.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • 20% of scientific papers on genes contain gene name conversion errors caused by Excel

      These scientists didn’t have to write a scientific paper on the problems that Microsoft Excel causes. An easier fix would be “to raise awareness of the problem” via Excel UserVoice or reach out to the Excel team on Twitter for a faster response. It is a bit alarming that 20% of scientific papers have errors due to Excel, but it’s even more confusing that scientists don’t try to figure out a way to solve the problem. This latest scientific paper is not the first of its kind, as a Bing search can easily reveal.

    • Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature

      The spreadsheet software Microsoft Excel, when used with default settings, is known to convert gene names to dates and floating-point numbers. A programmatic scan of leading genomics journals reveals that approximately one-fifth of papers with supplementary Excel gene lists contain erroneous gene name conversions.The spreadsheet software Microsoft Excel, when used with default settings, is known to convert gene names to dates and floating-point numbers. A programmatic scan of leading genomics journals reveals that approximately one-fifth of papers with supplementary Excel gene lists contain erroneous gene name conversions.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Officials Pull Water Supply as Dakota Access Protest Swells in Number and Spirit

      Growing in number and spirit, the Standing Rock Sioux protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline is swiftly gaining strength ahead of a federal hearing on the controversial project. Support has spread across the country, and thousands have descended on the peaceful “prayer camps” in recent days, prompting state officials on Monday to remove the demonstrators’ drinking water supply.

      North Dakota homeland security director Greg Wilz ordered the removal of state-owned trailers and water tanks from the protest encampment, despite the sweltering heat, because of alleged disorderly conduct, according to the Bismarck Tribune, including reports of laser pointers aimed at surveillance aircraft.

    • After 525 years, it’s time to actually listen to Native Americans

      The center of the fight for our planet’s future shifts. But this week it’s on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation straddling the border between North Dakota and South Dakota. There, tribal members have been, well, standing like a rock in the way of the planned Dakota Access Pipeline, a huge hose for collecting oil out of the Bakken shale and carrying it off to the Midwest and the Gulf where it can be made into gasoline.

      The standoff has been picturesque and dramatic, featuring American Indians on horseback. But mostly it’s been brave and lonely, far from most journalists and up against the same forces that have made life hard for Indigenous Peoples for centuries.

      The U.S. Army, for instance. It’s the Army Corps of Engineers that last month granted Energy Transfer Corporation the permit necessary to start construction near the reservation, despite a petition signed by 150,000 people, and carried—on foot—by young people from the reservation all the way to Washington. That would be the same U.S. Army that—well, google “Wounded Knee.” Or “Custer.” “Washita River.” “Pine Ridge.”

    • EpiPen Uproar Highlights Company’s Family Ties to Congress

      The CEO of a Fortune 500 company, who is also the daughter of a U.S. senator, is under fire from for jacking up the rates of life-saving anti-allergy device known as the EpiPen.

      Heather Bresch, whose father is U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), became president of Mylan Pharmaceutical in 2009 and CEO in 2012. She is no stranger to controversy: She moved Mylan’s headquarters to The Netherlands last year, after a corporate “inversion” merger with Abbott Laboratories.

      The move enabled the company to operate its headquarters in the U.S. but maintain corporate citizenship in Holland, benefiting from a lower tax rate.

      But the EpiPen scandal, sparked by a sudden price hike, could cause more trouble for the company, its CEO, and her lawmaker father. This week, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust Subcommittee, demanded hearings on the EpiPen’s 450 percent price increase in just seven years.

    • WTO, WHO, WIPO Host Discussions On Antimicrobial Resistance In October

      Antimicrobial resistance has been described as a major threat to public health, as infections, even minor, might become killers again, if no new antibiotics are discovered. In October, the World Health Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization and World Trade Organization will join forces for a symposium organised to discuss how to foster innovation, and access.

      A Joint Technical Symposium on “Antimicrobial Resistance: How to Foster Innovation, Access and Appropriate Use of Antibiotics?” will be held on 25 October at WIPO.

      Antibiotic resistance, although occurring naturally as microbes become resistant to treatment, is said to worsened by overuse or misuse of antibiotics. Another factor accounting for the lack of private sector innovation seems to be that once a new antibiotic is found, it must be used sparsely in order to keep microbes from developing resistance, an approach that runs contrary to successful commercial markets.

    • WHO Pandemic Flu Review Group Meets Next Week

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • UN Calls for 48-Hour Ceasefire So Aid Can Reach War-Ravaged Aleppo

      The United Nations is urging all factions inside Syria to commit to a 48-hour ceasefire so that emergency aid and relief workers can save lives and offer assistance to those caught inside the war-ravaged city of Aleppo.

    • Life and Death In Aleppo

      It is all still going on in Aleppo, where the U.N. has now dubbed desperate relief efforts “the apex of horror.” Omran Daqneesh, 5, the stunned and bloodied boy in the ambulance, survived. This weekend his 10-year-old brother Ali, buried longer in rubble from the same airstrike, has died, one of over 100 children of Aleppo killed just this month in similar attacks. Their deaths, it must be noted, were not as widely publicized, but just as deeply mourned.

      As much as the viral image of Omran came to represent Syria’s devastation for those distant from it, says Syrian activist Kenan Rahmani, Omran was a fleeting symbol, a trending hashtag soon gone from many memories. Ali, he says, is grim, ongoing reality. “Ali is the suffering itself, that which Omran tried to convey to us,” he writes. “Ali is the utter loss of everything. Ali is Syria as Syrians know it.” While Rahmani sorrowfully argues “no story in Syria has a happy ending,” there are at least shards of hope and moments of respite. In this extraordinary footage, newly surfaced from July, doctors perform an emergency C-section trying to save a mother and baby wounded in a barrel bomb attack. See the moment one calls, “That’s it! Cry! Cry!” Then help them save more here or here.

    • Propaganda for Syrian ‘Regime Change’

      Neocons and liberal hawks have poured millions of dollars into propaganda to justify “regime change” in Syria and are now desperate to keep the war going until President Hillary Clinton gets a chance to escalate, as Rick Sterling describes.

    • Militant Leader Talks About Break With Al Qaeda and Possible Syrian Rebel Merger

      Such a merger would also make it easier for U.S. officials to justify targeting other Syrian opposition groups like Ahrar al-Sham, as it would more closely associate them with a designated terrorist organization. Along with the Syrian government and mainstream opposition groups, Jabhat Fath al-Sham has been accused by monitoring organizations of committing systematic human rights abuses over the course of Syria’s civil war, including kidnappings and extrajudicial executions.

    • What’s Next for Turkey’s Exiled Cleric Fethullah Gülen?

      At the time, I was shocked by this description of a massive organization. The Gülenists were, according to Mr. X, recruiting in the police, the judicial system, and other government agencies. Gülen’s followers were creating a playbook for religious adherents to survive in a government dominated by a rigid secular ideology promulgated by the Kemalists.

    • Is Turkey’s Pivot to Russia about Erdogan’s Survival?

      The attempted coup of July 15, 2016 in Turkey shook that country’s political system to the core. Although President Tayyip Erdogan of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) had broken in 2013 with his former allies, the right wing religious cult around Fethullah Gulen, he appears to have believed that he had tamed it. He survived the members’ leak of recorded conversations pointing to AKP corruption and support of fundamentalist militias in Syria. His party went on winning elections without the Gulenists, who were revealed to have less popular support than they had imagined.

    • A revolution is not a dinner party

      Does the word “revolution” mean the same thing to the Kurdish liberation movement and to American leftists who supported Bernie Sanders? A little history…

    • Israel sold weapons to Argentina at height of Falklands War, reveal declassified Foreign Office files

      Israel sold weapons to Argentina at the height of the Falklands War in 1982, according to newly declassified Foreign Office files.

      British diplomats cited evidence that Israel had supplied the Argentine military junta with arms that were used against the Task Force during the campaign to liberate the islands.

      Israeli military exports before the war included the Skyhawk jets that would later be used to bomb British warships, killing dozens of soldiers, sailors and marines.

      Four British warships were sunk by bombs dropped from Skyhawks, including RFA Sir Galahad, a troop carrier that was set ablaze while anchored in Bluff Cove, killing 48 sailors and soldiers. Simon Weston, the badly burned veteran, was among the survivors. Another four ships were damaged by Skyhawks.

    • Such a long silence on Yemen

      Early this August, the Pentagon announced plans to sell weapons worth $1.15 billion to Saudi Arabia. The news itself was not surprising as the Arab kingdom is one of America’s biggest arms buyers, but the timing of the announcement was rather conspicuous. The Saudis had resumed heavy bombardment of Yemen after a lull as part of the peace process. By deciding to send in more tanks and armaments to Saudi Arabia at a time when the kingdom faces severe international criticism for rights violations in Yemen, including the killing of children, the U.S. was unmistakably sending a message that it’s with Riyadh in this war.

    • Lawmakers, Peace Groups Team Up to Block ‘Disturbing’ US-Saudi Arms Deal

      Anti-war advocates are launching an 11th-hour bid to stop U.S. Congress from approving a $1.15 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia in its fight against Houthi rebels in Yemen, which was announced earlier this month.

      Chief among them are the activist group CODEPINK and U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), who are calling on Congress to block the sale at least long enough to give lawmakers time to “give these issues the full deliberation that they deserve.”

      Congress has 30 days to object to the deal, announced August 9. Lieu has bipartisan support in the House of Representatives from Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), and Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), all of whom are sending a letter to the Obama administration on Thursday asking to delay the trade, citing the recent bombings of hospitals, schools, and residential areas by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

      “I taught the law of war when I was on active duty,” Lieu told The Intercept on Monday. (Lieu served in the U.S. Air Force and is an Air Force Reserves colonel.) “You can’t kill children, newlyweds, doctors and patients—those are exempt targets under the law of war, and the coalition has been repeatedly striking civilians. So it is very disturbing to me. It is even worse that the U.S. is aiding this coalition.”

    • Deadline This Thursday: Urge Your Representative to Block Saudi Arms Deal
    • Moscow, August 1991: a world-changing failure

      25 years ago, an attempted takeover by communist hardliners led to the Soviet Union’s collapse.

    • British woman stabbed to death at Australian hostel by attacker shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’

      A British woman has been killed after being stabbed at a hostel in Australia by man who allegedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the attack.

      A 30-year-old British man is also in a critical condition following the attack at the Shelly’s Backpackers in the town of Home Hill in Queensland at around 11:15pm local time on Tuesday, police said.

      Queensland Police Service said up to 30 people witnessed the “senseless act of violence” at a room in the hostel.

      A 29-year-old French national was arrested at the scene and taken into custody. He was then transferred to hospital for treatment for “non-life threatening” injuries.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Leading Doctor Calls Climate Change Gravest Health Threat of 21st Century

      Climate change is the greatest threat to public health worldwide and doctors must step up to help mitigate it, according to a leading advocate speaking at the annual Canadian Medical Association (CMA) meeting in Vancouver on Monday.

      Dr. James Orbinski, a former top official with the medical charity Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who is now an an associate professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, urged physicians to “step up and step out” in the fight against climate change as part of their duties to create “health-in-all” policies.

      “We’re not separate from our biosphere, or our planet,” Orbinski told the audience of 600. “We can’t possibly live, survive, and thrive without our biosphere. It affects us and we affect it.”

      “Climate change is very much of our own making…but as doctors, we have a vital responsibility to urge the development of a health-in-all-policies approach,” he said.

      The summit is taking place following extreme weather events and other environmental catastrophes throughout Canada, from wildfires in Fort McMurray to a massive oil spill in Saskatchewan.

    • Gulf Residents Arrested Telling Obama: More Drilling Equals More Floods

      A group of Gulf residents were arrested after occupying the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) office in New Orleans on Tuesday, where they were demanding that President Barack Obama cancel an imminent lease sale for offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

      The BOEM auction scheduled for Wednesday would sell off an area the size of Virginia for fossil fuel drilling and exploration. It is set to take place in the Superdome “behind locked doors,” according to a press statement from protest organizers.

      Obama will tour Baton Rouge on Tuesday, in the wake of catastrophic flooding that hit Louisiana last week.

    • Louisiana Climate-Deniers Who Refused Sandy Victims Now Want Federal Flood Relief

      As residents of Louisiana this week struggle to recover from “one of the worst floods in modern history,” there is a chance that federal aid may not be so forthcoming thanks to a trio of Bayou State Republicans, who back in 2013 voted against helping victims of another storm: Sandy.

      House majority whip Rep. Steve Scalise, Rep. John Fleming, and Sen. Bill Cassidy all cast their votes against the $50.5 billion relief package because of their dogmatic adherence to austerity economics. At the time, Scalise said, “Paying for disasters and being fiscally responsible are not mutually exclusive.”

      But, as Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik and others noted this week, that decision may come to haunt them.

      “No one is saying that the flood-stricken communities of Louisiana don’t deserve all the assistance that the U.S. government can provide them,” Hiltzik wrote. “But so did the residents of the Sandy zone. How do the lawmakers’ 2013 votes to deny relief to those Northeast communities square with their demand for emergency flood assistance now?”

      All three signed onto a letter sent to President Barack Obama earlier this month calling for a disaster declaration and requesting “that vital federal resources be made available in an expedited manner.”

    • State pulls relief resources from swelling Dakota Access Pipeline protest camp

      North Dakota’s homeland security director ordered the removal of state-owned trailers and water tanks from the Dakota Access Pipeline protest campsite Monday, citing mounting reports of unlawful activity — the latest involving lasers — and the risk of damage.

      “Based on the scenario down there, we don’t believe that equipment is secure,” Homeland Security Division Director Greg Wilz said.

    • Indonesian parliament to investigate fire-linked firms in Riau

      The Indonesian parliament will form a task force to look into the cancelling of investigations against 15 companies alleged to be complicit in fires in Riau, the country’s top palm oil producing province.

      Legislators made the announcement on Friday as burning in Sumatra and Kalimantan continued to spread, prompting emergency responses from authorities there. The fires are an annual scourge caused by illegal slash-and-burn land clearing practices by companies and farmers, usually to make way for oil palm and timber plantations.

      The fires this week were most concentrated in West Kalimantan province, on Indonesia’s part of Borneo island, with 158 hotspots there on Friday, according to Indonesia’s disaster management agency chief Sutopo Purwo Nugroho. That was up from 106 a day earlier. Following a request from the governor, the agency will begin cloud seeding operations next week and send in two water-bombing helicopters in the meantime.

    • Climate change will mean the end of national parks as we know them

      After a century of shooing away hunters, tending to trails and helping visitors enjoy the wonder of the natural world, the guardians of America’s most treasured places have been handed an almost unimaginable new job – slowing the all-out assault climate change is waging against national parks across the nation.

      As the National Parks Service (NPS) has charted the loss of glaciers, sea level rise and increase in wildfires spurred by rising temperatures in recent years, the scale of the threat to US heritage across the 412 national parks and monuments has become starkly apparent.

      As the National Parks Service turns 100 this week, their efforts to chart and stem the threat to the country’s history faces a daunting task. America’s grand symbols and painstakingly preserved archaeological sites are at risk of being winnowed away by the crashing waves, wildfires and erosion triggered by warming temperatures.

      The Statue of Liberty is at “high exposure” risk from increasingly punishing storms. A national monument dedicated to abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who will be enshrined on a new $20 note, could be eaten away by rising tides in Maryland. The land once walked by Pocahontas and Captain John Smith in Jamestown, the first English settlement in the US, is surrounded by waters rising at twice the global average and may be beyond rescue.

    • Blue lakes are appearing in Antarctica – and that’s a bad thing

      In a new study, scientists who study the largest ice mass on Earth – East Antarctica – have found that it is showing a surprising feature reminiscent of the fastest melting one: Greenland.

      More specifically, the satellite-based study found that atop the coastal Langhovde Glacier in East Antarctica’s Dronning Maud Land, large numbers of “supraglacial” or meltwater lakes have been forming – nearly 8,000 of them during summer months between the year 2000 and 2013. Moreover, in some cases, just as in Greenland, these lakes appear to have then been draining down into the floating parts of the glacier, potentially weakening it and making it more likely to fracture and break apart.

      This is the first time that such a drainage phenomenon has been observed in East Antarctica, the researchers say – though it was previously spotted on the warmer Antarctic Peninsula and was likely part of what drove spectacular events there like the shattering of the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002.

      When it comes to East Antarctica, however, “that’s the part of the continent where people have for quite a long time assumed that it’s relatively stable, there’s not a huge amount of change, it’s very, very cold, and so, it’s only very recently that the first supraglacial lakes, on top of the ice, were identified,” said Stewart Jamieson, a glaciologist at Durham University in the UK and one of the study’s authors.

    • Nuclear waste accident 2 years ago may cost more than $2 billion to clean up

      The Los Angeles Times is estimating that an explosion that occurred at a New Mexico nuclear waste dumping facility in 2014 could cost upwards of $2 billion to clean up.

      Construction began on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico’s Carlsbad desert in the 1980s (PDF). The site was built to handle transuranic waste from the US’ nuclear weapons program. The WIPP had been eyed to receive nuclear waste from commercial, power-generating plants as well.

      According to the LA Times, the 2014 explosion at the WIPP was downplayed by the federal government, with the Department of Energy (DoE) putting out statements indicating that cleanup was progressing quickly. Indeed, a 2015 Recovery Plan insisted that “limited waste disposal operations” would resume in the first quarter of 2016. Instead, two years have passed since the incident without any indication that smaller nuclear waste cleanup programs around the US will be able to deliver their waste to the New Mexico facility any time soon.

      Ars contacted the DoE for comment and has not received a response. We will update this article if we hear back.

    • Nuclear accident in New Mexico ranks among the costliest in U.S. history

      When a drum containing radioactive waste blew up in an underground nuclear dump in New Mexico two years ago, the Energy Department rushed to quell concerns in the Carlsbad desert community and quickly reported progress on resuming operations.

      The early federal statements gave no hint that the blast had caused massive long-term damage to the dump, a facility crucial to the nuclear weapons cleanup program that spans the nation, or that it would jeopardize the Energy Department’s credibility in dealing with the tricky problem of radioactive waste.

      But the explosion ranks among the costliest nuclear accidents in U.S. history, according to a Times analysis. The long-term cost of the mishap could top $2 billion, an amount roughly in the range of the cleanup after the 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

      The Feb. 14, 2014, accident is also complicating cleanup programs at about a dozen current and former nuclear weapons sites across the U.S. Thousands of tons of radioactive waste that were headed for the dump are backed up in Idaho, Washington, New Mexico and elsewhere, state officials said in interviews.

    • Germany: Renewable gains, won by people’s power, face corporate threat

      In 2000, renewable energy made up just 6.3% of Germany’s electricity. By last year, it had risen to 31%.

      Cloudy Germany became a leading innovator in solar energy. It did so not by subsidising large power utility companies, but by mobilising hundreds of thousands into energy cooperatives. The two legs of this democratic energy transition are Germany’s commitment to phase out nuclear power and its feed-in tariffs, which allowed small renewable energy producers to sell their electricity.

      Both policies were fruits of the environmental movement. Now, the feed-in tariffs are under attack by the right-wing Angela Merkel government, which wants to hand over renewable energy to large corporations.

      The anti-nuclear leg of the renewable energy transition came out of protest. It was born out of a struggle against a nuclear power plant begun in the early 1970s.

      By the time the plant’s construction was stopped in 1977, the anti-nuclear movement had organised a 10-month occupation by 20,000-30,000 people at the construction site. The victory sparked similar protests across the country.

  • Finance

    • Postal Workers To Rally Against TPP Tuesday

      The 200,000-member American Postal Workers Union (APWU) is holding its biennial convention in Orlando this week. As part of that convention, there will be a rally to publicize opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The rally will take place Tuesday, August 23 at 3:30 pm beginning in the Hemisphere Ballroom of Orlando’s Dolphin Hotel.

    • From the destruction of Greece to democracy in Europe

      In protesting the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I, John Maynard Keynes wrote: “The policy . . . of depriving the lives of millions of human beings, of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable — abhorrent and detestable, even if it were possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilized life of Europe.”

      Last year’s third bailout of Greece, imposed by Europe and the International Monetrary Fund, does to Greece what Versailles did to Germany: It strips assets to satisfy debts. Germany lost its merchant marine, its rolling stock, its colonies, and its coal; Greece has lost its seaports, its airports — the profitable ones — and is set to sell off its beaches, the public asset that is a uniquely Greek glory. Private businesses are being forced into bankruptcy to make way for European chains; private citizens are being forced into foreclosure on their homes. It’s a land grab.

    • Is the TPP falling apart? Let’s take a look at where the 12 nations are at

      As the ratification fight intensifies, we’re watching closely as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) winds its way through national legislatures across the globe. So grab your popcorn, and let’s take a look at where the TPP stands in each country yet to ratify.

      United States

      In addition to opposition from both major U.S. presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the TPP recently faced two significant setbacks as Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi came out against the deal and House Speaker Paul Ryan deemed it pointless to even bring it up during the Lame Duck session of Congress later this year.

      However, President Obama is convinced he’s “got the better argument,” for this “political football” and is continuing to push hard for TPP ratification, as claims abound that a failure to do so could have costly consequences for the U.S. as a power in the Asian-Pacific region and in the eyes of its partners. He recently put Congress on notice that the TPP is coming, so it looks like we’ve a major fight ahead of us this fall.

    • Race and Class Gap Widening: Katrina Pain Index 2016 by the Numbers

      Summary: Hurricane Katrina hit eleven years ago. Population of the City of New Orleans is down by over 95,000 people from 484,674 in 2000 to 389,617 in 2015. Almost all this loss of people is in the African American community. Child poverty is up, double the national average. The gap between rich and poor in New Orleans is massive, the largest in the country. The economic gap between well off whites and low income African Americans is widening. Despite receiving $76 billion in assistance after Katrina, it is clear that poor and working people in New Orleans, especially African Americans, got very little of that help. Here are the numbers.

    • The average American family had the same amount of wealth in 2013 as it did in 1989

      The analysis shows the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans now hold three-quarters of the nation’s wealth, up from two-thirds in 1989, and a three percentage-point increase from the start of the recession. Most Americans found themselves with less wealth in 2013 than Americans of a similar age had in 1989; the only age group doing better than its counterparts from a quarter-century ago was senior citizens.

      The report was commissioned at the request of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who made inequality a central theme of his run for the Democratic presidential nomination this year. In a statement, he said the analysis “makes clear that since the 1980s there has been an enormous transfer of wealth from the middle class and the poor to the wealthiest people in this country.”

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Stoking Russia Panic for Partisan Gain Will Have a Long-Term Price for Peace

      Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein doesn’t have a show at all, let alone on RT. She once attended a function hosted by RT, which, by our current standards of liberal discourse, makes her a Kremlin agent, but the fact that such a demonstrably false statement could be made on cable news to thousands of people without anyone bothering to correct it shows how easy Russia panic is to stoke.

      Earlier in the segment, Nance made the claim that “someone” in Trump’s campaign “may” be an “agent of Russia,” citing a recent report in the Financial Times (8/19/16) alleging that Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s former translator “may” have “links” to Russian intelligence.

      The irony, of course, is that Nance himself has far more recent and better documented ties to US intelligence, but MSNBC feels no need to convince viewers he is not a CIA plant spreading disinformation.

      Nance had a hot tip, offered in smarmy “insider” tones: “Here’s a bit of strategic intelligence for you. Russia is doing a military massing of forces in Crimea in what appears to be an ‘October Surprise.’” That’s correct, an MSNBC contributor is openly speculating Russia will invade Ukraine for the express purposes of influencing the US elections.

      [...]

      Asking questions about Trump’s links to overseas money is entirely fair and above board (as are questions about Clinton’s ties to foreign funders). But to give the Trump charges more moral urgency, liberal pundits are dusting off old Cold War panic and playing up the reach, scope and sinister motives of Russia.

      The effects of this, if and when Clinton takes the White House, will be hard to downplay. How can the US negotiate the end of the Syrian conflict or the Ukrainian crisis if the public, even MSNBC-watching liberals, views Russia as irredeemably aggressive and incapable of ever being a US “friend”? In the interest of short-term partisan gain, pundits on America’s nominally liberal cable network are damaging the prospects of normalizing relations with Russia for years to come.

    • Let them debate

      Before 1988 the non-partisan League of Women Voters was the sponsor of presidential debates. Before that year’s debates between Republican George H.W. Bush and Democrat Michael Dukakis, however, the League pulled out.

      The candidates, the League claimed, had entered into deal deciding how the debates would unfold, including which candidates would be allowed and who would get to ask the questions. They wanted no part of that.

      Stepping into the void to decide the rules was the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has run all the presidential debates since. They are comprised of Democrats and Republicans. Essentially, the candidates are still deciding the rules.

      And to the surprise of no one, Democrats and Republicans are doing their best to keep other parties out, forcing Americans to choose between them. This year both the Republican and Democratic candidates are hugely unpopular, setting new records for unfavorable ratings. To many Americans, it is truly a choice of the lesser evil.

    • Emails threaten to shadow Clinton through Election Day

      The fallout over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server appears certain to dog her until Election Day, after a federal judge ordered the State Department to accelerate its production of nearly 15,000 previously-unreleased emails uncovered by the FBI.

      The State Department is under intense pressure from Republicans to release the full set before Nov. 8.

      But sorting through all 14,900 documents is a gargantuan task. The first batch likely won’t be released until mid-October — just weeks before Americans head to the polls.

      It’s also not clear what the emails contain. They weren’t in the original trove of 30,000 documents that Clinton voluntarily turned over to the State Department in 2014. And their release could put her on the defense in the critical final stretch of the election.

      The revelation of the thousands of additional documents dovetailed with Monday’s release of another set of emails that exposed uncomfortably close ties between Clinton’s staff and the Clinton Foundation during her tenure as secretary of State.

      It was only the latest development in a long controversy Clinton has struggled to move beyond.

    • Clinton e-mail service providers served subpoenas by House, Senate

      Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, has sent subpoenas to three companies that provided services related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server. The subpoena seeks information on how secure the server was and whether it was protected within the guidelines set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for systems used by government employees. Smith’s subpoenas were supported by Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

      The subpoenas were sent to executives of the data security firm Datto, SECNAP Network Security, and the ISP and managed services provider Platte River Networks. Datto’s SIRIS disaster recovery service was used to back up the e-mail server hosting ClintonEmail.com, and SECNAP provided its Cloudjacket managed intrusion detection and prevention service to the Clinton server. Platte River Networks apparently managed the server for at least part of the period that Clinton and her staff used e-mail accounts on it while at the State Department. All three companies had previously declined to provide information to Smith’s committee voluntarily.

    • Hillary Clinton’s Latest Email Scapegoat: Colin Powell

      Hillary Clinton has struggled for months to find a satisfactory explanation for why she chose to use a private email server and a personal email address while she was secretary of state, a choice that FBI Director James Comey described as resulting in “extremely careless” handling of classified information. Publicly, none of her excuses have met with much success.

    • Democrats are kidding themselves: The House is out of reach, period [Ed: mentioned before, reposted]

      Hillary Clinton has put the Electoral College into checkmate. She’s closer to Donald Trump in many red states like Kansas and Texas than he is to her in key swing states.

      As her lead swells, naturally, fired-up Democrats and a restless media have turned their attention to a more exciting story: Can Democrats retake the House of Representatives? But the outcome there is not really in doubt, either.

      It’s not going to happen. Democratic House candidates will likely get many more votes than Republican ones — as they did in 2012, when Democrats received 1.4 million more votes nationwide, but Republicans maintained a 234-201 advantage. Indeed, Trump is more likely to rebound in swing states than Democrats are to capture the 30 congressional seats they need to pry the speaker’s gavel from Paul Ryan.
      Even if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency in a landslide, there are simply not enough competitive districts remaining to give the Democrats any chance at winning the House.

    • Latest Hillary Email Scandal Revelation

      Hillary lied about not having classified State Department material on her personal home server. She lied about turning over to the State Department all emails relating to agency business.

      On Monday, the FBI announced discovery of 15,000 previously undisclosed emails. Some are personal. Others show foreign officials sought favors in return for large Clinton Foundation donations.

      Judicial Watch (JW) president Tom Fitton asked “(w)hen will State release them? It looks like the State Department is trying to slow-roll the release of the records. They’ve had them for at least a month, and we still don’t know when we’re going to get them.”

    • Donald Trump’s Odd Pitch for the Black Vote: Wooing With Insults

      Donald Trump has a problem. He is polling as low as 1 percent among African-American voters nationwide, and in the key swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, he has earned an astonishing 0 percent of the black vote.

      So what’s Trump to do? Make a bold play for the black vote? Yes.

      But here’s the problem—the same problem that has earned him his meager support from black voters: The words of appeal he speaks drip with his deep contempt for black people.

      The heart of his new pitch to the African-American community is this: “You live in your poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”

      When I heard him speak these words, I was astonished at how quickly an appeal for votes could devolve into an insult. Frankly, I felt more than insulted—I felt oddly traumatized, like I had heard these words before. Then it hit me: the memory of the scene from “The Color Purple,” where Celie (Whoopi Goldberg) finally decides she’s had enough abuse, but Albert (Danny Glover) won’t let her go without one last “appeal.”

    • Photo Op
    • Trump’s New Billionaire Backer Also Funds Huge Stockpile of Human Urine

      The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post have all noticed that Robert Mercer, co-CEO of the giant hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, has emerged as a key backer of Donald Trump.

      Mercer, who first spent over $10 million trying to make Ted Cruz president, just gave $2 million to a Super PAC supporting Trump. Mercer is also a top investor in the Breitbart News Network. According to the Post, Mercer’s daughter Rebekah nudged Trump to bring in Stephen Bannon, Breitbart’s executive chairman, to run his campaign.

      But here’s what the mainstream media won’t tell you: Robert Mercer and his daughter have also funded a gigantic stockpile of human urine in Oregon.

    • A Clinton Family Value: ‘Humanitarian’ War

      The current debate over the future of U.S. foreign policy is largely over whether the U.S. should continue its self-anointed role as the policeman of the world, or whether it might be wise for the next administration to put, in the words of Donald J. Trump, “America First.”

      On the other hand, Hillary Clinton has repeatedly called for a more active U.S. foreign policy. The 2016 election is shaping up to be, among other things, a battle between the inarticulate isolationism of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s liberal interventionism. Hers is an approach which came into vogue during the administration of her husband.

    • Could a New York Times Exposé Help Level the Playing Field for Advocates in the Press?

      In its recent series “Think Tanks Inc.,” the New York Times exposed the deep financial ties between corporations and think tanks, outlining how corporate donors reaped influence and rewards from such “mutually beneficial” relationships. As someone who has worked in Washington, D.C. for 15 years in communications roles, and in corporate communications and PR prior to that, this is not surprising to me. Every piece of research or analysis that comes from an organization — whether it’s a company, a non-profit, or even a government entity — puts forth an agenda.

    • No Need to Build The Donald’s Wall, It’s Built

      At the federal courthouse, Ignacio Sarabia asks the magistrate judge, Jacqueline Rateau, if he can explain why he crossed the international boundary between the two countries without authorization. He has already pleaded guilty to the federal misdemeanor commonly known as “illegal entry” and is about to receive a prison sentence. On either side of him are eight men in the same predicament, all still sunburned, all in the same ripped, soiled clothes they were wearing when arrested in the Arizona desert by agents of the U.S. Border Patrol.

      Once again, the zero tolerance border enforcement program known as Operation Streamline has unfolded just as it always does here in Tucson, Arizona. Close to 60 people have already approached the judge in groups of seven or eight, their heads bowed submissively, their bodies weighed down by shackles and chains around wrists, waists, and ankles. The judge has handed out the requisite prison sentences in quick succession — 180 days, 60 days, 90 days, 30 days.

    • Belted by Trump

      I wondered about confronting Mr. Trump with my concerns and imagined his “customer service” skills. First, he would blame and then insult me for putting on weight over the past few years. He might even insult me with a short person joke or two just for good measure despite being totally unrelated to the belt problem. Then I would be berated for being so stupid as to buy a product with his name on it and expecting any type of quality or satisfaction (I do deserve that one). The whole experience would be a “gotcha” moment, where like other hucksters, once the money changes hands, you are stuck with the product, like it or not. Those of us with marketplace expectations of fair play, quality merchandise and honest representation of the product are easy pickings for con artists like him.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Sony Apparently Issuing Takedowns To Facebook For News Articles About PS4 Slim Leak

      Recently, Sony had let it be known that it would soon be announcing some new offerings for its PlayStation 4 console. While most of the media coverage had focused on what is suspected to be a new, more powerful version of the console, a leak this week instead revealed a different console offering, consisting of a newly slimmed down form factor PlayStation 4 with a slightly redesigned controller. As an owner of a PS4, I can join others’ interest in this design, with the original console being somewhat bulky. I can also join others in having only a mild bit of surprise as a reaction, given that Microsoft had already announced a slimmed down version of its Xbox product, and given that Sony has done this with previous versions of the console as well.

      But I was slightly surprised to learn that Sony has apparently been setting its lawyers on spooking gaming media sites and taking down news articles from social media accounts about the leak. Reports of the latter have just started coming in.

    • Think Tank That First Proposed SOPA Now Claims ‘Proof’ That SOPA Would Have Been Great

      Oh boy. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) is a DC-based think tank that, from it’s name, you might think would promote things that are important for innovation. And yet, this misleadingly named think tank has been on the wrong side of almost every major tech issue over the last few years — perhaps because a large segment of its funding comes from anti-technology industries, like the entertainment industry and the large telco/broadband providers. This is the same organization that argued that net neutrality was bad, that kicking people off the internet for piracy was a good idea, that the US gov’t should encourage countries to censor the internet and, most recently, that broadband companies charging more to not track your every move is “pro-consumer.”

      But perhaps the pinnacle of bullshit policy proposals from ITIF was that it was the organization (again, funded by the entertainment industry) that first proposed the basic framework of site blocking as a response to copyright infringement, back in 2009. The basis of that proposal was then turned into SOPA, leading ITIF to take a victory lap for creating what it believed was such a good law.

      Of course, you know how that all went down. After actual technologists pointed out how problematic the ITIF approach to site blocking would be, and the public spoke up, the bill went nowhere. And ITIF is basically the sorest of sore losers. Last fall, ITIF published a bogus snarky “report” insisting that it’s original SOPA plan for DNS blocking “did not break the internet.” This, of course, conveniently misstates what was meant by “breaking the internet” when tech experts like Paul Vixie explained the problems with SOPA. It wasn’t that the overall internet would just stop working or that fewer people would use it, but rather than basic ways in which the internet is expected to function (I reach out to this DNS entry, I get back the proper response) would fail, and that would open up opportunities for serious mischief, from man in the middle attacks to breaking how certain security protocols work.

    • Peter Thiel’s Lawyer Now Sending Questionable Defamation Threat Letters To Media On Behalf Of Melania Trump

      Charles Harder is the California lawyer who likely will forever be known as “Peter Thiel’s lawyer” after Thiel helped set up his own law firm with the “focal point” of hunting for any lawsuit that might destroy Gawker. It appears that Thiel is happy to share his pet lawyer with his new best buddy, Donald Trump, or Trump’s wife, Melania. On Monday the UK’s Daily Mail (not exactly known for its accuracy in reporting) received a threat letter from Harder, representing Melania Trump, claiming that its recent article on Melania was defamatory.

      I’m not exactly sure where Mr. Harder is looking to sue but, if it’s in the US, it’s difficult to see how the article reaches the level of defamation by any stretch of the imagination. Melania Trump is, obviously, a public figure and, under US law, for a news report to be defamatory it needs to not only be incorrect and harmful but also published “with actual malice” — meaning that the Daily Mail would have known that the published statements of fact were false, or they had a reckless disregard for the truth. Reading through the original Daily Mail article, I don’t see how that could possibly be the case. The supposed “bombshell” claims in the piece are statements from a couple of different sources alleging that Melania was an escort when she first came to NY (and that may be how she met Donald in the first place). But the Mail is actually (somewhat surprisingly, given its reputation), quite careful with those statements, pointing out that they came from a book, but also noting that there’s little evidence to back them up. It also points to a Slovenian magazine article claiming that the modelling agency Melania worked for was actually an escort service, but the Mail only notes that the magazine said this, and then gets a quote from the guy who ran the modelling agency saying (vehemently) that the story wasn’t true.

    • Ece Temelkuran: Turkey’s drive to make theatre “suitable”

      In 2013, the Ministry of Culture began to evaluate its subsidies to private theatres under the criterion of being “suitable with regard to public decency”. This enforcement arose as part of the Turkey Art Association (TÜSAK), which was put forward in a bill advocating the audition and support of art associations affiliated with the state. In this way, the legal foundation for state-imposed censorship was laid.

      For the evaluation of private theatre companies’ grant requests to the Ministry of Culture, submission of the play’s script was made obligatory. Shakespeare’s Macbeth was removed from the State Theatre repertoire in 2014.

    • Cloudflare Faces Lawsuit For Assisting Pirate Sites

      In recent months CloudFlare has been called out repeatedly for offering its services to known pirate sites, including The Pirate Bay. These allegations have now resulted in the first lawsuit after adult entertainment publisher ALS Scan filed a complaint against CloudFlare at a California federal court.

    • How censored is China’s first Tibetan-language search engine? It omits the Dalai Lama’s website

      China launched its first Tibetan-language search engine this week, called Yongzin. It aims to be a “unified portal for all major Tibetan-language websites in China,” according to the state news agency Xinhua.

      Yongzin means “master” or “teacher” in Tibetan. It is the world’s first search engine solely in the Tibetan language, and also the one and only choice for China’s seven million Tibetan people, unless they use a VPN to jump China’s Great Firewall. Chinese search engines like Baidu and Sogou don’t search in Tibetan, while Google, which does, has been blocked in China for years.

      Yongzin features sections for news, images, videos, and music just like Google, and even has a logo with similar colors and designs to Google’s, which was quickly noticed.

    • Some questions for those who are cheering Gawker’s demise

      Gawker.com, the pioneering and controversial media blog, officially died yesterday. It was killed by billionaire Peter Thiel in his successful quest to bankrupt Gawker Media Group through a series of lawsuits he funded – most notably wrestler Hulk Hogan, who sued over the publication of a portion of his sex tape four years ago.

      Out of all the controversial topics that we’ve tweeted about at Freedom of the Press Foundation – and there have been a lot – by far the most negative response we’ve received is from Gawker critics who are happy to see the website die.

      The Hogan case certainly brings up a lot of tangled questions about the tension between privacy and free speech and it’s understandable that many people have found Gawker’s decision to publish a clip of Hulk Hogan’s sex tape deplorable. (It’s also true that Gawker did a lot of exemplary investigative journalism). But condemning a specific story and cheering the demise of a media organization at the hands of the legal system are two very different things.

    • Bogus Defamation Lawsuit With Fake Defendant Results In Negative Reviews Of Dentist Being Taken Down

      Earlier this year, complaint site Pissed Consumer noticed a disturbing new trend in the dark art of reputation management: unnamed rep management firms were using a couple of lawyers to run bogus defamation lawsuits through a local court to obtain court orders demanding the removal of “defamatory” reviews.

      What was unusual wasn’t the tactic itself. Plenty of bogus defamation lawsuits have been filed over negative reviews. It’s that these lawsuits were resolved so quickly. Within a few weeks of the initial filing, the lawsuit would be over. Each lawsuit improbably skipped the discovery process necessary to uncover anonymous reviewers and proceeded straight to judgment with a (bogus) confessional statement from each “reviewer” handed in by the “defamed” entity’s lawyer for the judge’s approval. Once these were rubber stamped by inattentive judges, the lawyers served Google with court orders to delist the URLs.

      To date, no one has uncovered the reputation management firm behind the bogus lawsuits. In each case, the companies purporting to be represented by these lawyers were shells — some registered as businesses on the same day their lawsuits were filed.

      It’s one thing to do this sort of thing from behind the veil of quasi-anonymity afforded by the use of shell companies. It’s quite another to file a bogus lawsuit with an apparently forged signature (of the supposed defamer) under your own name. But that’s exactly what appears to have happened, as detailed in this post by Public Citizen’s Paul Alan Levy.

    • Why are GitHub and WordPress.com censoring content?

      The Great Equalizer. The Great Democratizer. Many such phrases have been used to describe the internet over the years—mostly focusing on the rapid dissemination of uncensored information.

      Even social media sites (such as Twitter) have played critical roles in real-world revolutions. The ability for the average person to spread ideas, news and information—without corporate or government censorship—has brought about massive power and freedom to the people of the world.

      But what happens when the key websites and services—the ones we rely upon to spread those messages—censor that content? That’s a bad thing, right? Well, this seems to be happening a lot recently, especially in relation to leaked content (regardless of the type of content or the source from which it originated).

      GitHub, a service primarily used for open source and free culture projects, recently completely censored a repository that contained information proving the NSA developed malware targeting numerous systems.

      Maybe there’s a legitimate reason for this. But if there is, GitHub is staying quiet. I reached out to GitHub’s press department for comment one week ago, and as of today, I have not received any response of any kind.

      And WordPress.com, the company that runs the popular blogging platform, censored content posted by “Guccifer 2” that was potentially damaging to the reputation of the Democratic party.

    • BANNED TOGETHER: A CENSORSHIP CABARET Set for Banned Books Week in NYC

      The Dramatists Legal Defense Fund (“DLDF”) will present “Banned Together: A Censorship Cabaret” as a part of Banned Books Week (September 25-October 1st), the annual celebration of the freedom to read. The performance will take place on September 29th and 30th at 5PM at the Drama Book Shop (250 W 40th St).

      “Banned Together: A Censorship Cabaret” is a celebration of songs and scenes from shows that have been censored or challenged on America’s stages, created to raise awareness around issues of censorship and free expression in the Theater. The performances will feature selections from “Cabaret”, “Chicago”, “Almost, Maine”, “Rent” and “Angels in America,” among other notable works, with contextual commentary by DLDF president John Weidman.

    • Muthambi defends SABC censorship
    • SABC to face music at parliament
    • South African minister faces grilling over SABC crisis
    • Muthambi to explain SABC editorial policy
    • Activists call for Facebook ‘censorship’ change after Korryn Gaines death
    • Facebook censorship of Korryn Gaines police killing puts Zuckerberg in crosshairs
    • Facebook deactivation during fatal police standoff alarms civil rights, consumer activists
    • Why Did You Shut Down Korryn Gaines’ Account? Facebook C.E.O Asked
    • How Facebook censors your posts
    • Facebook and politics’ relationship status: It’s complicated
    • Trolls and spam not welcome in Twitter’s new features
    • Twitter to give everyone ‘quality filter’, letting them mute tweets judged to be bad
    • How to Remove Twitter’s New ‘Quality Filter’ Censorship Setting
    • Twitter has a really good anti-harassment tool
    • Twitter (TWTR) Rolls Out New Feature to Filter Tweets
    • Twitter has a really good anti-harassment tool – and it’s finally available to everyone
    • Twitter ‘quality filter’ works because it’s about news, not social
    • Twitter’s ‘Quality Filter’ Gets Rid Of Trolls, But There’s A Major Catch
    • Twitter Unveils Features to Filter Tweets, Notifications
    • Twitter Updates Quality Filter Tool for All
    • Quality Filter Comes To Twitterati’s Rescue
    • Twitter adds more user control with latest features
    • Now Ignore Trolls on Twitter [Ed: Just the start: expect on by default, expansion of scope of “trolls”, later no option to toggle it off, Like UK ISPs…]
    • Twitter’s New “Quality Filter” Addresses Abuse on the Platform, Also Try New Notification Settings [Ed: Twitter has already done so-called 'quality filtering' for a while but called it shadow-banning. Suppression of particular ideas.]

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Pokémon Go loses its luster, sheds more than 10 million users [Ed: Nintendo's experiment with crowd-sourced CCTV (with microphone) and hotspot collector is rapidly failing]

      It had almost 45 million daily users in July, but this figure appears to have sunk by more than 12 million since the start of August, to just over 30 million said to be playing Pokémon Go. Further decline is expected, as downloads, engagement, and the time users spend on the app have all also visibly flopped, according to data provided by Sensor Tower, SurveyMonkey, and Apptopia.

      Bloomberg, which saw the raw data, reported that other major apps such as Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat “can breathe a sigh of relief” that Pokémon Go is finally wobbling, as the game’s popularity had apparently been costing them considerable amounts of users.

      “Given the rapid rise in usage of the Pokémon Go app since the launch in July, investors have been concerned that this new user experience has been detracting from time spent on other mobile focused apps,” said Axiom Capital Management analyst Victor Anthony.

    • Encryption under fire in Europe as France and Germany call for decrypt law

      A fresh chapter of the crypto wars looks to be opening up in Europe, after the French and German interior ministers took to a podium yesterday to lobby for a law change that would enable courts to demand that Internet companies decrypt data to help further criminal investigations.

      So, in other words, to effectively push for end-to-end encryption to be outlawed. Yes we’ve been here before — many times.

      Giving a joint press conference in Paris yesterday with German’s Thomas de Maizière, France’s interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve called for the European Commission to change the law to afford security agencies the ability to access encrypted data.

      They want their proposals discussed by the European Commission at a meeting next month.

      The context here is that France and Germany have suffered a spate of terrorist attacks over the past year, including a co-ordinated attack in Paris in November 2015 that killed 130; a July 2016 attack in Nice where a truck driver ploughed into crowds celebrating Bastille Day; and a stabbing in a church in Northern France that killed an elderly priest.

    • Secret Cameras Record Baltimore’s Every Move From Above

      The sky over the Circuit Court for Baltimore City on June 23 was the color of a dull nickel, and a broad deck of lowering clouds threatened rain. A couple dozen people with signs—“Justice 4 Freddie Gray” and “The whole damn system is guilty as hell”—lingered by the corner of the courthouse, watching the network TV crews rehearse their standups. Sheriff’s officers in bulletproof vests clustered around the building’s doors, gripping clubs with both hands.

      Inside, a judge was delivering the verdict in the case of Caesar Goodson, the only Baltimore police officer facing a murder charge for the death of Freddie Gray. In April 2015, Gray’s neck was broken in the back of a police van, and prosecutors had argued that Goodson purposefully drove the vehicle recklessly, careening through the city, to toss Gray around.

    • At 25, the World Wide Web Is Still a Long Way From Reality [Ed: 24/7 tracking, camera/s, microphone]

      In recent years, the web has lost some of its mojo. It hasn’t quite lived up the lofty ideals laid down by Berners-Lee and so many of his disciples. Facebook makes 84 percent of its money from its mobile app—not the web. Tinder, Snapchat, and many other newer apps aren’t even available on the web.

    • AshleyMadison security protocols violated privacy laws, watchdog says

      AshleyMadison used inadequate privacy and security technology while marketing itself as a discreet and secure way for consenting adults to have affairs, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada says.

      In a report Tuesday, the privacy watchdog says the Toronto-based company violated numerous privacy laws in Canada and abroad in the era before a massive data breach exposed confidential information from their clients to hackers.

      The hack stole correspondence, identifying details and even credit card information from millions of the site’s users. At the time of the breach in July 2015, AshleyMadison claimed to have 36 million users and took in more than $100 million in annual revenue.

    • Poor privacy at Ashley Madison site at time of hack

      The dating website Ashley Madison was in violation of Australian and Canadian privacy laws at the time when it suffered a security breach last year.

      Australian and Canadian authorities carried out a joint investigation into the breach and made this finding in a report which has been released today.

      Avid Life Media, the owner of the website, has been asked to enhance privacy safeguards, amend information retention practices, improve information accuracy and increase transparency.

      ALM has signed an enforceable undertaking with the Australian Information Commissioner to implement these measures.

    • Facebook can guess your political preferences — here’s how to see how it’s categorized you

      This is yet another case of Facebook knowing way more about you than you think.

      The social network is categorizing its users as liberal, conservative, or moderate. This information is valuable for campaign managers and advertisers, especially in the midst of election season.

      For some, Facebook is able to come to conclusions about your political leanings easily, if you mention a political party on your page. For those that are less open about politics on social media, Facebook makes assumptions based on pages you like.

      As The New York Times explained, if you like Ben and Jerry’s Facebook page and most of the other people that like that page identify as liberal, Facebook might assume you, too, are liberal.

      I’m not too politically active on Facebook, and I was curious to see how it categorized me. To my surprise, I am “very liberal,” when I was expecting “moderate” or “conservative.”

    • Apple Acquires Personal Health Data Startup Gliimpse

      Apple’s ambitions in the health sector continue to expand, with its digital health team making its first known acquisition—personal health data startup Gliimpse, Fast Company has learned.

      Silicon Valley-based Gliimpse has built a personal health data platform that enables any American to collect, personalize, and share a picture of their health data. The company was started in 2013 by Anil Sethi and Karthik Hariharan. Sethi is a serial entrepreneur who has spent the past decade working with health startups, after taking his company Sequoia Software public in 2000. He got his start as a systems engineer at Apple in the late 1980s.

      The acquisition happened earlier this year, but Apple has been characteristically quiet about it. The company has now confirmed the purchase, saying: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

    • First on CNN: FBI investigating Russian hack of New York Times reporters, others

      Hackers thought to be working for Russian intelligence have carried out a series of cyber breaches targeting reporters at The New York Times and other US news organizations, according to US officials briefed on the matter.

      The intrusions, detected in recent months, are under investigation by the FBI and other US security agencies. Investigators so far believe that Russian intelligence is likely behind the attacks and that Russian hackers are targeting news organizations as part of a broader series of hacks that also have focused on Democratic Party organizations, the officials said.

      The Times said email services for employees are outsourced to Google. CNN requested comment from Google but didn’t receive comment. The FBI declined to comment.

      Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said the company had seen “no evidence” that any breaches had occurred.

    • Russia’s Hackathon Continues, Targeting The New York Times And Other News Agencies
    • The Real Russian Mole Inside NSA [Ed: The latest Rubbophobia from ‘ex’ NSA staff John “Watch My Dick” Schindler]
    • Former NSA analyst: Russia ‘can listen in on anything it wants’
    • Hints suggest an insider helped the NSA “Equation Group” hacking tools leak
    • A Second Snowden at the NSA? Here’s What We Know
    • Juniper Confirms Shadow Brokers Firewall Implants
    • Juniper confirms leaked NSA exploits affect its firewalls
    • NSA leak: Juniper Networks confirms its firewalls are vulnerable to leaked ‘Equation Group’ exploits
    • NSA-linked Cisco exploit poses bigger threat than previously thought
    • Hacking the hackers: everything you need to know about Shadow Brokers’ attack on the NSA
    • Why Twitter Was the Platform of Choice for Ripping Apart the NSA Dump
    • Snowden’s Long Shadow Darkens NSA’s Reputation
    • Not Even NSA Can Keep Software Exploits Secret
    • Who Are The NSA’s Elite Hackers?
    • A Peek Inside The Matrix: What The Shadow Brokers Affair Means For A Cyber Future
    • Your ‘Smart’ Power Outlets Are Now Botnets Thanks To The Internet Of Broken Things

      Making fun of the Internet of Things has become a sort of national pastime, made possible by a laundry list of companies jumping into the space without the remotest idea what they’re actually doing. When said companies aren’t busy promoting some of the dumbest ideas imaginable, they’re making it abundantly clear that the security of their “smart,” connected products is absolutely nowhere to be found. And while this mockery is well-deserved, it’s decidedly less funny once you realize these companies are introducing thousands of new attack vectors in every home and business network the world over.

      Overshadowed by the lulz is the width and depth of incompetence on display. Thermostats that fail to heat your home. Door locks that don’t protect you. Refrigerators that leak Gmail credentials. Children’s toys that listen to your kids’ prattle, then (poorly) secure said prattle in the cloud. Cars that could, potentially, result in your death. The list goes on and on, and it grows exponentially by the week.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • With Voting Rights at Risk Across US, International Monitors Called to Help

      With the right to vote “more vulnerable now than at any time in the past 50 years,” an American civil rights coalition is calling for an increase in international election monitors during the 2016 election.

      In a letter sent this weekend, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, comprised of more than 200 national organizations, urged the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to expand its election monitoring mission in the United States this November.

      The body has sent observers to every U.S. presidential election since 2002 and intends to send 500 observers for 2016.

      However, citing the 2013 gutting of the Voting Rights Act (VRA)—as well as recent news that as a result of the decision in Shelby County v. Holder, the U.S. Justice Department is scaling back its deployment of election observers in 2016—the group wrote “to emphasize that the OSCE’s plans to monitor the upcoming U.S. presidential election will be more essential than ever before and to encourage the OSCE to greatly expand its election monitoring mission in the United States for this election.”

    • FBI Apparently Made Darkweb Child Porn Site Faster During Its Hosting Of Seized Server

      Another FBI/Playpen/NIT case has moved to the point of a motion to dismiss. The lawyer for defendant Steven Chase is arguing the government should abandon its prosecution because the FBI’s activities during its conversion of child porn site Playpen into its own Rule 41-flouting watering hole were “outrageous.” What did the FBI do (besides traveling beyond — far beyond — the warrant’s jurisdiction to strip Tor users of their anonymity) to merit this accusation? It made Playpen a better, faster child porn website. Joseph Cox reports for Motherboard…

    • Lawyer: Dark Web Child Porn Site Ran Better When It Was Taken Over by the FBI

      In February 2015, the FBI took control of Playpen, the largest dark web child pornography site at the time. But instead of shutting the site down, the agency kept it going for just under two weeks, in order to deliver malware to its visitors in the hope of identifying suspects in its investigation.

      Newly filed court exhibits now suggest that the site performed substantially better while under the FBI’s control, with users commenting on the improvements. The defense for the man accused of being the original administrator of Playpen claims that these improvements led to the site becoming even more popular.

      “The FBI distributed child pornography to viewers and downloaders worldwide for nearly two weeks, until at least March 4, 2015, even working to improve the performance of the website beyond its original capability,” Peter Adolf, an assistant federal defender in the Western District of North Carolina, writes in a motion to have his client’s indictment thrown out.

    • What It Looks Like When The Terrorists Win: The JFK Stampede Over Fans Cheering For Usain Bolt

      We’ve talked a great deal here about what a theater of security our national airports have become. Far from accomplishing anything having to do with actually keeping anyone safe, those in charge of our airports have instead decided to engage in the warm fuzzies, attempting to calm an easily-spooked traveling public through bureaucracy and privacy invasion. The hope is that if everyone suffers the right level of inconvenience and humiliation, we’ll all feel safe enough traveling.

      But it’s quite easy for the 4th wall in this security theater to be broken by the right sort of circumstance. In case you missed it, one such circumstance happened recently at JFK Airport. The fallout was described in a first-person account in New York Magazine by David Wallace-Wells.

    • ‘Assange kill attempt’? Unknown man climbs Ecuador’s London embassy, sheltering WikiLeaks chief

      Social media users are in a panic after WikiLeaks said an unknown man had climbed the Ecuadorian embassy in London where Julian Assange has been staying for four years. Users suggested that it was probably an assassination attempt, “ordered by Clinton.”

      “…At 2:47am an unknown man scaled the side wall [and the] window of the Ecuadorian embassy in London; fled after being caught by security,” a statement from WikiLeaks said early Monday morning.

    • ‘Cardboard justice’ | Youth groups stand against killings

      Hundreds of students spoke out against the rising number of killings, with the continuation of the counterinsurgency program Oplan Bayanihan, now coupled with President Duterte’s war on drugs.

      Youth groups Anakbayan and League of Filipino Students (LFS) led simultaneous candle-lighting protests on August 11, at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman and Manila campuses, Polytechnic University of the Philippines in Sta. Mesa, Manila and the University of Sto. Tomas in España, Manila.

    • NBN leaks: AFP carries out raid at parliament house

      The Australian Federal Police has conducted a raid at the Department of Parliamentary Services at Parliament House to try and find out the source of leaks that led to a number of stories about the NBN.

      AFP personnel met staff of shadow special minister of state Stephen Conroy after they arrived at parliament house at about 10am. The meeting took place in a room of the basement of parliament.

      Media personnel were asked to leave a section of the basement, but were later allowed to film AFP personnel as they left the area. The AFP officers are said to be looking at the email records and logs of Labor staffers, in order to try and track the media they were in contact with.

      In February, there were claims in the mainstream media that the Coalition multi-technology mix broadband network faced mounting delays and rising costs.

    • Passengers back Jeremy Corbyn’s claim that Virgin Train was ‘ram-packed’

      Other people on the train have however come forward to say it was in fact very busy, at least at the start of the journey.

      One passenger, Keren Harrison, posted a picture of herself on the train with Mr Corbyn and gave an account of events that contradicted the company’s version.

      “I was on said train and it was very busy!” she said. “He got seat about 45 mins in when staff started shuffling people around!”

      She added in another tweet that the train was “chock-a”.

      Separately, Charles Anthony, a Corbyn-supporting video journalist who shot the original film also released new footage and disputed the company’s account.

    • Hijab approved as uniform option by Scotland Police
    • French police make woman remove clothing on Nice beach following burkini ban

      Photographs have emerged of armed French police confronting a woman on a beach and making her remove some of her clothing as part of a controversial ban on the burkini.

      Authorities in several French towns have implemented bans on the Burkini, which covers the body and head, citing concerns about religious clothing in the wake of recent terrorist killings in the country.

      The images of police confronting the woman in Nice on Tuesday show at least four police officers standing over a woman who was resting on the shore at the town’s Promenade des Anglais, the scene of last month’s Bastille Day lorry attack.

      After they arrive, she appears to remove a blue long-sleeved tunic, although one of the officers appears to take notes or issue an on-the-spot fine.

    • Nice Officials Say They’ll Sue Internet Users Who Share Photos Of French Fashion Police Fining Women In Burkinis

      This seems pretty ridiculous on all sorts of levels, but never think things are so ridiculous that some politicians can’t make them worse. Guillaume Champeau from the excellent French site Numerama alerts me to the news that the deputy mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi is threatening to sue those who share these images over social media. Yup, France, a country that claims to pride itself on freedom is not just telling women that they can’t cover themselves up too much on the beach, but that it’s also illegal to report on the police following through on that.

    • In Wake of Burkini Ban, Muslim Women Demand Criminalization of Fat White Men in Speedos

      A French-Muslim group has called for a ban on what it terms “woefully-endowed white walruses terrorizing our kids in public,” alongside the repeal of a string of municipal measures outlawing the burkini in southern France.

      Speaking to reporters yesterday, Dr. Yasmina Al-Hazeemi of France’s Think of the Children! Foundation urged the nation’s parliament to criminalize the tight-fitting male swimsuit, framing the so-called ‘budgie smuggler scourge’ as a public safety crisis: “These obscene bathers are in fact evil terrorists imperiling the mental health of millions,” claimed the Algerian-born pediatrician. “For the sake of our traumatized children and the very soul of our Republic, we must crush this shameless cult of sagging manboobs, shrivelled racoon balls and itsy-bitsy Sarkozian wee wees!”

      The Front for the Supremacy of Stocky Indigenous Speedo Lovers, meanwhile, slammed the proposed ban as “yet another Islamic attack on France’s noble secularism.” “From the beaches of Corsica to the shores of distant Thailand, it’s our natural-born right to let it all hang it, no matter how many millions of juvenile nightmares it may cause,” said FSSIS chair Jean-Paul Le Grosporc, who then blasted Al-Hazeemi’s “slanderous attack on the honor of the Frenchman’s glorious manhood – unlike the dark savages flooding our continent, we natives are growers, not showers!”

    • Mansplaining Science To A Doctor, Cycling To An Olympian

      I have to say — the invention of the word “mansplaining” was something of a relief to me. Finally, there was a word for that weird, creepy thing men do when they assume authority over you when they have none. “You wrote a book? I read a book once. It was green. The thing about writing books is…”

      The word was born from an essay called “Men Explain Things To Me” by Rebecca Solnit. In it, she tells an anecdote where she was at a party when a man, on hearing that she wrote books about the photographer Eadweard Muybridge, told her that she really should read this wonderful new book on Muybridge that he had just read and proceeded to tell her all about this Muybridge guy.

    • NLRB: Graduate Students at Private Universities May Unionize

      In a blow to private institutions and a boon to their graduate student employees, the National Labor Relations Board ruled Tuesday that graduate research and teaching assistants are entitled to collective bargaining under the National Labor Relations Act.

      Graduate student unions at public institutions are common, as students’ collective bargaining status on public campuses is governed by state law. But the NLRB oversees graduate student unions on private campuses. Tuesday’s decision in favor of a graduate student union bid at Columbia University effectively reverses an earlier NLRB ruling against a graduate student union at Brown University, which had been the law of the land since 2004. The decision also overturns a much longer-standing precedent against collective bargaining for externally funded research assistants in the sciences.

      Graduate students at Columbia and elsewhere celebrated Tuesday’s decision, saying they planned to move forward with their union drives. While many professors applauded the decision to recognize students as legitimate workers, other groups described it as reckless, with the potential to transform — for the worse — the relationship between institution and student. Columbia or other universities could move to challenge the ruling in federal court.

      Columbia’s graduate assistants are affiliated with the United Auto Workers, but there are active drives on a number of other campuses affiliated with different unions, including the American Federation of Teachers and Service Employees International Union. The latter was a key player in a wave of recent adjunct faculty union drives.

    • The Blacklist – how to go on the run

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • One More Time With Feeling: Net Neutrality Didn’t Hurt Broadband Investment In The Slightest

      You’ll recall that ISPs (and the lobbyists, think tanks, politicians, and consultants paid to love them) argued incessantly that if we passed net neutrality rules, investment in broadband infrastructure would grind to a halt, leaving us all weeping gently over our clogged tubes. ISPs like Verizon proudly proclaimed that net neutrality rules would “jeopardize our investment and the development of innovation in Broadband Internet and related services.” ISP-tied think tanks released study after statistically-massaged study claiming that net neutrality (and the reclassification of ISPs as common carriers under Title II) would be utterly catastrophic for the broadband industry and its consumers alike.

      But as time wore on it became abundantly clear that these warnings were the empty prattle of a broken industry, using a thick veneer of bunk science to defend its monopoly over the uncompetitive broadband last mile.

      Since net neutrality was passed there has been absolutely no evidence that a single one of these claims had anything even remotely resembling merit, with broadband expansion pushing forward at full speed, constrained only by the ongoing lack of competition in many markets. We’ve watched as outfits like Google Fiber continue to expand its footprint. We’ve watched as Verizon suddenly promised to deploy fiber to cities long neglected. We’ve watched as Comcast and AT&T rushed to try and keep pace with gigabit investments of their own. In short, nothing changed, and things may have even improved.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Review Of WIPO Development Agenda Implementation: Good Progress But Expectations Unfulfilled

      A group of independent reviewers has found definite progress on implementing the landmark 2007 Development Agenda Recommendations at the World Intellectual Property Organization. But the UN agency needs to elevate the debate, tie in with UN development agencies, create reporting mechanisms, make projects more compatible with local development levels, and detail use of financial and human resources, the reviewers found.

    • Trademarks

      • Little Tree Air Freshener Company Sues Non-Profit For Making Tree Shaped Ornaments

        At the time, we noted how odd it was to take out a full page ad warning people against supposed trademark infringement, and over-claiming its own rights at the same time (e.g., “no matter how you use it.”). So it comes as little surprise that Car-Freshener corporation is a bit of a trademark bully in court. Though, perhaps it’s met its match — and it may result in it losing some trademarks.

        Trademark lawyer Marty Schwimmer, who runs the excellent Trademark Blog, is representing a non-profit organization, Sun Cedar, that has been sued by Car-Freshener for daring to create tree-shaped blocks of wood (cedar!) that smell good. The answers and counterclaims from Sun Cedar is worth the read in full, but we’ll hit a few high points here. Sun Cedar is not just a non-profit, but an organization that tries to train and to employ “at risk” individuals, including those who are homeless, ex-felons and substance abusers to help them get back on their feet. The organization creates objects out of wood, including tree shaped ornaments. It even ran a very successful Kickstarter project last year.

      • And Just Like That, The Dumbest Trademark Suit Over Saying ‘Thank You’ Disappears

        It is with mostly pleasure, but a little bit of sadness, that I am here to inform you, dear reader, that the idiotic trademark lawsuit brought by Citigroup against AT&T because it dared to say “thank you” to its customers is dead. Yes, what started only a couple of months ago as an unintentional test to see just how far a large corporation could twist trademark law out of its useful intentions has been dropped by both parties with prejudice, meaning that no further legal action can be taken on the matter.

        At issue was AT&T including the phrase “thank you” in some of its messaging and branding. Citigroup, as it turns out, somehow got the USPTO to approve a trademark for the phrase “thankyou” and declared that, largely because the two companies had done some co-branding work in the past, customers might be confused by an AT&T ad thanking them for their business into thinking that it has something to do with Citigroup. I read the argument Citigroup made in its filing as to why this confusion was likely, but my brain came to a screeching halt every few sentences, distracted by questions like, “How much can a bank’s lawyers drink during the day?” and “Precisely how many peyote buttons would I have to swallow before ‘thank you’ equalled ‘Citigroup’ in my addled mind?”

    • Copyrights

      • Copyright Group, In Arguing Against FCC’s Set Top Box Proposal, Appears To Argue That VCRs & DVRs Are Also Illegal

        Earlier this month, we wrote about how the Copyright Officer had filed a really bizarre and legally dubious comment with the FCC concerning the FCC’s plan to open up competition in TV set top boxes, ending cable company’s monopoly on those boxes (for which they bring in $21 billion in revenue per year). The FCC’s plan was pretty straightforward — and the cable companies have attacked it on all sides, with the one argument that seems to be sticking is that this plan is somehow an affront to copyright, and would result in piracy. This is blatantly, factually incorrect. The FCC’s plan makes it clear that any system would retain existing technology protection measures against piracy (for better or for worse). If this new system resulted in infringement, it would because there’s infringement on the internet already, not because of these new rules.

        [...]

        Except, if what I’ve bolded above is actually copyright law, then the VCR, the DVR, the MP3 player, photocopiers and much of the very internet itself are inherently against copyright law. But that’s not what courts have found. If you look at the classic Betamax lawsuit, it made it abundantly clear that even when there were license agreements between content providers and TV stations that end users could absolutely record and watch content via an “unlicensed” device, known as the VCR. This just takes the Copyright Office’s ridiculous assertion that copyright holders and ISPs can somehow write fair use out of their agreements for end users, and takes it even further to effectively write the Betamax ruling out of existence and set up a framework that says there can be no fair use in new consumer electronics.

        That’s both wrong and crazy. And, yes, I know that the former Copyright Office boss Ralph Oman has argued that all technology should be considered infringing until Congress says it’s okay, but that’s not the actual law, and it’s incredibly dishonest to suggest it’s the case.

        Here’s the important thing that the Copyright Office and the Copyright Alliance don’t seem to understand (or are willfully ignoring). This content is already licensed. The only people who will get access to it are those who have a legitimate right to access the content from their cable providers. In other words, everything is licensed. There is no “harm” at all. The only issue is that the content can be accessed (by the paying subscribers!) via alternative hardware (which might add some more features, but which will still have the same copy protection). But nothing in this creates any problems for the content creators, because the overall setup is the same. They have licensed the work. The hardware alternatives that may arise may include some additional features, such as recording and such, but that’s well within their legal rights under fair use. The complaint here seems to just be that the Copyright Alliance and the Copyright Office don’t like fair use and don’t want the Betamax standard to exist any more.

        The Copyright Alliance and its funders in the entertainment industry may wish that the VCR were never made legal (even though it was a device that basically saved Hollywood by bringing in massive new markets and revenue streams), but they don’t get to rewrite history and pretend it doesn’t exist.

      • Techdirt Podcast Episode 87: An Interview With Kim Dotcom’s Lawyer

        Ira Rothken is a lawyer on the front lines of many major legal battles relating to copyright and piracy, including defending Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom and, most recently, taking up the defense of Kickass Torrents operator Artem Vaulin. This week, Ira joins us on the podcast to discuss the ins and outs of these and other cases where the entertainment industry has come down hard on consumers and innovators.

      • Singapore Government launches public consultation on major copyright reform

        Singapore is currently engaged in a significant reform of its Copyright Act. In this context, yesterday Government launched a public consultation [open until 24 October 2016, 5 pm GMT+8] to seek feedback on proposed changes to this country’s copyright regime. This is the full consultation paper.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/08/24/uganda-wants-foss/feed/ 0 Links 9/8/2016: Chrome 53 Beta, SQLite 3.14 http://techrights.org/2016/08/09/sqlite-3-14/ http://techrights.org/2016/08/09/sqlite-3-14/#comments Tue, 09 Aug 2016 15:05:47 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=94835

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • STEAMpunking Linux: The Physical Computing Stack

    I’ve been on a quest lately to add nano-Linux boards to steampunk projects. The effort has been pretty successful and it’s fun doing things like putting a Raspberry Pi into my “Conference Personality Identification Device,” which everyone recognizes as a name badge. The badge sports a 1.8-inch color TFT screen that plays little sepia toned promotional videos and an orbing tricolor LED “ozone tube.” I wear the badge to my conference tech talks and it tends to be a big hit.

  • More Fun with Windows 10, Yabba Dabba Do Bedrock Linux

    Windows 10 is back in the news and back up to their old tricks. The latest Windows 10 updates has been reported to delete Linux partitions without confirmation or even warning. Even pure Windows users have reported unbootable systems and Linux is the bad guy in a security question with Linux on Windows. Elsewhere, Lumina Desktop Environment hit milestone version 1.0.0 today and Linux Mint had an oopsy with their Firefox 48 update. New Bedrock Linux introduced a different approach to universal packaging and Christine Hall shared her top five favorite Linux distributions.

  • Desktop

    • London’s Met Police has missed the Windows XP escape deadline [Ed: known problem, London’s police is a prisoner of NSA and also China, Russia etc. [1, 2]]

      London’s Metropolitan Police has missed its deadline to dump Windows XP, with tens of thousands of copper still running the risky OS.

      The force, on the front line against terrorist threats and criminals in the capital city, is running Windows XP on around 27,000 PCs.

      At last count, in May 2015, the Met had a total of 35,640 PCs, with 34,920 of them running XP. Policemen set themselves a deadline of March 2016 to finish migrating to Windows 8.1.

      London Mayor Sadiq Khan, however, has apparently now revealed that just 8,000 of the force’s PCs have moved to Windows 8.1 since last September. The target is for another 6,000 by the end of September 2016.

      Khan provided the update in response to a question from Conservative Greater London Assembly member Andrew Boff.

    • Met Police still running Windows XP on 27,000 computers [iophk: "forget XP, Windows in general is dangerously out of date"]

      LONDON BOYS IN BLUE the Metropolitan Police may be armed with tasers and extendable batons, but they are backed up by Windows XP in a lot of cases, which is a really bad thing.

      Windows XP no longer gets official security updates, and Microsoft sees it as the sort of thing that should be scraped off shoes before walking on the carpet.

      The company will let people pay to keep using it, but only on a case-by-case basis. We do not know the police arrangement with Microsoft, but the Met needs to accelerate the updating of its computer systems as it puts Londoners’ information at risk, according to London Assembly member Andrew Boff.

  • Server

    • What is Private Cloud?
    • Safety first: The best use of the public cloud for analytics apps and data
    • Huawei Launches Labs to Drive Open Cloud Networks

      The Cloud Open Labs are part of the vendor’s All Cloud strategy to make it easier for telco operators to migrate their infrastructures to the cloud.
      Huawei is unveiling an interconnected group of laboratories that are designed to help network operators more quickly and easily embrace and deploy cloud computing solutions in their environments.

    • Data Center Architecture Lessons From Isaac Newton

      Sir Isaac Newton remains our favorite source for axiomatic laws of physics, despite giving us the language of calculus. Particularly relevant for today’s discussion is Newton’s third law as formally stated: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

      In the cosmology of the data center, this existentially proves itself in the network whenever there are significant changes in application infrastructure and architectures. As evidence, consider the reaction to first, virtualization, and now, containerization, APIs, and microservice architectures.

      These changes, while improving speed and agility of application development and delivery, have created greater mass in the data center, essentially changing the center of gravity and pulling many network services toward it. Application-focused services like load balancing and even web application security have been pulled toward the development environment as scale and security have become a necessary component of application architectures.

      [...]

      Achieving the agility and speed necessary in the app network requires software — virtual or containerized — with APIs and programmatic methods of integration into the orchestration engines driving the build and release process. These components must also be scalable, but not of the same magnitude as the core network. Software solutions rule in this growing division in the data center.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • Open vSwitch Joins Linux Foundation Open Networking Ecosystem
    • Refereed Talk Deadline Approaching for Linux Plumbers Conference

      The refereed talk deadline for Linux Plumbers Conference is only a few weeks off, September 1, 2016 at 11:59PM CET. So there is still some time to get your proposals in, but time is growing short.

      Note that this year’s Plumbers is co-located with Linux Kernel Summit rather than LinuxCon, so the refereed track is all Plumbers this year. We are therefore looking forward to seeing your all-Plumbers refereed-track submission!

    • Graphics Stack

      • Radeon RX 460 Released, Linux Review Later This Week

        Just days after the Radeon RX 470 began shipping, the Radeon RX 460 is shipping this morning and the embargo concerning the RX 460 has expired.

        This Polaris 11 graphics card has 14 compute units, 896 stream process, 1090MHz boost clock speed with 1200MHz boost clock speed, and is rated for up to 2.2 TFLOPS of compute power. The video memory is GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus. The TDP for this graphics card is less than 75 Watts.

      • AMD GPUOpen’s CodeXL 2.2 Now Supports Linux With AMDGPU-PRO

        Earlier this year AMD made CodeXL 2.0 open-source as a developer tool with GUI centered around profiling/optimizing D3D, OpenGL, and Vulkan (since CodeXL 2.1) under Windows and Linux. Today marks the release of CodeXL 2.2.

      • Lower Memory Use For The VC4 Raspberry Pi Gallium3D Driver

        One of the latest initiatives worked on by Eric Anholt at Broadcom for the VC4 Gallium3D driver — the open-source driver used most famously by the Raspberry Pi hardware — is lower memory use.

        Over the past week he’s been working on lowering the memory use for the VC4 open-source Linux driver stack. Eric ended up making various fixes and optimizations to reduce the memory consumption, which is important considering the limited RAM available on the Raspberry Pi boards.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Rainbow Folders

        Breeze Icons follow the colorscheme that’s not new but now the folder icons also follow the color scheme.

      • QRPC: A Qt remoting library

        This project of mine has been around for quite a while already. I’ve never much publicised it, however, and for the past year the code hasn’t seen any changes (until a few days ago, anyway). But related to my current job, I’ve found a new need for remote procedure calls, so I came back to the code after all.

      • Qt 5.8 Is Preparing For Its Feature Freeze

        Qt developers are preparing for the feature-freeze of the upcoming Qt 5.8 tool-kit.

        The branching of “dev” to “5.8″ is happening with developers preparing for Qt 5.8 to set out on its final course ahead of the official release later this year. The actual feature freeze is set to happen one week from today on 15 August.

        Qt developers concerned about the logistics of the 5.8 branching can see this mailing list post.

      • My experiences with SOCIS 2016

        This post is a small synopsis of my experiences so far as a student in this years Summer of Code in Space, where I shall recount the whole adventure of integrating Sentinel-2 data into Marble Virtual Globe.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Need an ARM board to do GNOME development?

        As per the Qualcomm boards, they run with the freedreno driver (by the way, props to Rob Clark for his amazing work on this driver) and I was able to run a GNOME on Wayland on them using the official Debian image, so they are more suitable if you want to focus on the upper layers of the stack.

        I would like to reiterate my gratitude to Banana Pi and Qualcomm for their generosity for the hardware, as well as ARM and Codethink for the server side stuff that is already being used in our GNOME Continuous efforts.

        And of course, I’m going to GUADEC! I’ll be taking the boards with me, so if you think you have something interesting to do with them and you are attending just find me around.

      • Missing GUADEC this week

        This week is the annual GNOME Users And Developers European Conference (“GUADEC”). I’m sad that I am not able to attend this year. I was looking forward to being there.

        As I’ve reported before, I have a few work conflicts this year. I started a new job in late December, as CIO in county government. The new position comes with new responsibilities and a new schedule.

      • GSoC coding – Part 4

        Yes, I know it has been a while since I did any update on my GSoC project with GNOME. The reasons being that, I was busy with my visa and travel documents for Germany (GUADEC). As this trip would mark my international travel debut (yay!), it took some time for me to get familiarize with the process of visa and required travel documents. I applied in Ahmedabad (where I live currently), but looks like visa granting people were not satisfied and they called for a personal interview at Mumbai.

      • GNOME Improves Handling of Unknown Audio Devices (Thanks to Unity)

        Is it a mic? Is it a speaker? No, it’s a … Well, actually GNOME doesn’t know either — but the open-source desktop is about to be smarter about finding out.

      • Blog backlog, Post 4, Headset fixes for Dell machines

        Many thanks to David Henningsson for the original code, and his help integrating the functionality into GNOME, Bednet for providing hardware to test and maintain this functionality, and Allan, Florian and Rui for working on the UI notification part of the functionality, and wiring it all up after I abandoned them to go on holidays ;)

  • Distributions

    • Reviews

      • Trying two new distributions

        I recently decided to do something different and, instead of reviewing one of the distributions in the DistroWatch database, I opted to select two projects at random from the waiting list. I was not sure what I would get when I spun the virtual roulette wheel, but I was eager to try something new.

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • openSUSE Asia Summit 2016 opens up event registration

        openSUSE.Asia Summit is a 2 day event hosted every year in different regions of Asia to promote openSUSE and open source. Hosting a variety of workshops, talks and a hackathon, openSUSE Asia summit is expecting over 400 participants. Attendees will learn how to use openSUSE and incorporate it in their personal as well as professional lives. They will also understand the dynamics of the openSUSE project and meet the openSUSE contributors and board.

        In addition, we have chance to learn free and open technologies, to share experiences with each other, and most of all, have fun at the Summit, and, in beautiful tropical scene of Yogyakarta region (a travel guide for you coming soon). In previous years openSUSE.Asia Summit has been held in Beijing, China in 2014 and National Taipei University of Education,Taipei / Taiwan, Republic Of China 2015.

    • Red Hat Family

      • A new technology called ‘containers’ is creating ‘winners and losers’ says Red Hat CEO

        By now you may have heard of a three-year old tech startup called Docker, valued at over a billion dollars, and the new tech market it created called containers.

        But what you may not realize is that the insane popularity of containers, a tech used by computer programmers, promises to completely change the multi-trillion-dollar enterprise software market, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst tells us.

      • Could Red Hat’s Acquisition of API Management Technology Revolutionize Software Development Again?

        Open source is a big part of my life. So far, I’ve been the CEO of three open source companies. Red Hat is a superlative example of how to create revenue and maintain an organization through the monetization of open source technology via subscriptions and support. And yet, as the entire tech industry transforms with a dramatic shift toward the cloud, Red Hat will have to modify its business structure in order to stay ahead of the game. Their acquisition of 3scale shows that they’ve already identified this necessity, and are taking steps to address it.

      • Managers: Do you delegate or donate?
      • The Red Hat Paradox

        When one thinks of Red Hat, Linux emerges as the top of mind software application. The Red Hat Linux software solution paradigm represented, to many, a “crazy” business model in its early days. Prior to the emergence, the likes of Microsoft, IBM, HP, etc. had defined the software development, sales and support model narrative in a clear objectified manner. Organizations paid a monetized licencing fee, and monetized annual support. Modifications to core software were often reliant upon the vendor, based upon established pricing models. Also, core product upgrades were solely the responsibility of the provider.

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Flock 2016

          The annual Flock was held last week in Poland. This year was much busier for me than last year. I’ve been on the team for well over a year now (my how time flies!) so I was more involved with everything.

          I gave the annual kernel talk. This was mostly a status report/update. If you’ve been to Flock in the past, this talk will seem very familiar. One item I tried to emphasize this year was that we really wanted to get more people involved. Our policy is still ‘go upstream’ but we still want to build an active Fedora community of kernel participants as well. The distro is probably going to be most users first interaction with the kernel and we want the best experience possible. The slides are super boring but you can read them if you want.

        • Flock 2016 – krakow – Travel home (saturday/sunday)
        • Identifying Fedora Contributors – Stats for Flock

          I was working on generating statistics for Flock this week. Bhagyashree (bee2502), my GSoC mentor, had delivered a talk on Fedora Contributors and Newcomers Onboarding and I was assigned the task of generating statistics of the whole Fedora Community. At first thought, this was a pretty hectic thing to do. To accomplish this, I will need data of all the contributors from the beginning of fedmsg -i.e from 2012. And, I will have to find when a user had signed up for a FAS account and track his/her activity. Phew!

        • Siddarth Sharma: How do you Fedora?

          Sharma is a software engineer on the Red Hat product security team. He focuses on security of storage products such as Ceph and Gluster. He used to work as a software maintenance engineer at Red Hat, looking after the GNOME and KDE desktop packages. “I learned from the most talented people in the software security industry and still have a lot to learn,” said Sharma. He started using Linux in 2004 with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, but later switched to Fedora Core 2.

        • Fedora 25 Alpha Freeze Goes Into Effect, Still Eyeing November Release

          Today marks the Fedora 25 Alpha release that also means it’s time for the software string freeze and Bodhi activation point. If all goes well, Fedora 25 will be released three months from yesterday.

          The various freezes are beginning to take place for Fedora 25 so it can hopefully be on target for its release on 8 November. Details on the various milestones hit today can be found via this mailing list post.

        • Flock 2016 & my talk on ABI checking in Fedora

          Flock is the annual Fedora conference where you can find Fedora contributors as the main audience. This year the conference was held at the beautiful city Kraków, Poland from 2nd to 5th August. Being a schedule of 4 days, it was split into first 2 days of talks and later on workshops. Majority of talks were enriched with various Fedora related topics.

        • FAD and Flock to Fedora 2016

          Brace yourselves, this is going to be a long one! In the past 2 weeks I’ve been traveling a lot: first to Westford, US for Design Team Fedora Activity Days 2016 and then to Krakow, Poland for Flock to Fedora 2016.

    • Debian Family

      • Is that a Debian all-in-one PC in your pocket?

        I’ve experimented with Next Thing’s Chip SBC, connected to a big screen TV via its composite video output, and controlled with a wireless keyboard/mousepad, for about a month now. It’s a nice little full-featured Linux machine that runs LibreOffice and other desktop applications reasonably well.

        The Chip sports a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 based Allwinner R8 processor, accompanied by 512MB of RAM and 4GB of eMMC flash. The board’s built-in WiFi is convenient, and its $9 cost is easy on the wallet.

      • My Debian Activities in July 2016

      • Derivatives

        • Emmabuntus Debian Edition 1.0: the new story begins

          Emmabuntus Debian Edition is a nice distribution that works for the particular niche. It delivers Linux and computer enablement into remote areas of the world where computers are rare and Internet connection could be something exotic. That is why it contains “all you can eat” software in the same ISO image.

          It is the reason of one of the issues I listed above as different applications may use different design styles.

          However, there are some more issues mentioned above that could be solved if the team looked into the distribution polishing a bit more. Luckily, they are mostly in the design area, meaning they are very likely to be resolved in the next releases.

          I remember the early version of Emmabuntus which had many similar issues at that time. Most of them are no longer in the system. Let’s hope that Emmabuntus DE will follow the case.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • The Business of Open Source Software

    Although open source software (OSS) has been around for decades, only within the past several years has there been a surge in its acceptance within the business world. Today, open source is perceived as a viable business alternative to commercial solutions, and is used by 64 percent of companies. Several factors have led to this shift in perception of OSS, including an evolving culture of software developers, undeniable business advantages, and, perhaps most importantly, the success of Linux—the leading open source operating system. The background of how and why the open source model has matured is also a key to understanding why organizations of all sizes continue to not only adopt OSS but to also actively support and contribute to open source projects.

  • Open Source Can Drive True Innovation and Growth

    To win in today’s market, in which disruptive startups and nimble competitors are advancing on all sides, digitizing the enterprise to inject greater agility and promote innovation is critical. You need to transform your operating model and reinvent products, services, and business processes and business functions across the entire enterprise. Undeniably, software is a central part of this transformation. And open-source software is leading the way, because what the digital era needs are “connected economies of expertise” that can capitalize on the power of our collaborative imagination.

  • Advice for building a career in open source

    Back in 1998 when I discovered Linux and open source, I never would have believed that I would make a career out of this. Back in those days I didn’t have a clue about what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted it to involve technology in some way.

    Since those dim distant days filled with teenage inexperience and … well, hair … I have learned so many things about what works and what doesn’t in building a career in open source. So here are some broader principles I have learned that may be handy for those of you starting out on your journey. Irrespective of whether you want to be a programmer, community leader, documentation writer, entrepreneur, or something else, I think these principles will help in setting you up for success and differentiating you from the pack.

  • Google open-sources Parsey’s Cousins, a set of parsers for 40 more languages

    Google today is announcing that it’s open-sourcing pre-trained models for parsing text in 40 languages. Think of it as an extension of Google’s decision in May to open-source the interestingly named Parsey McParseface English-language parser. The new parsers are available on GitHub under an open-source Apache license.

    Parsing language might not sound like a big deal — it involves looking at a sentence and picking out the nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on. But Parsey McParseface works at Google scale, that is to say it is very good, good enough for machines to use it to understand users’ web search queries. Researchers can now take advantage of the technology in more languages without worrying about where they’ll get the data for teaching the models.http://venturebeat.com/2016/08/08/google-open-sources-parseys-cousins-a-set-of-parsers-for-40-more-languages/

  • Events

    • Doha and the Supreme Court of DFSG Free

      So, it was a sheer stroke of luck that I met Mr. Bradley M. Kuhn who works with Karen Sandler on Software Conservancy. While I wanted to be there for his presentation, it was just one of those days which doesn’t go as planned. However, as we met socially and over e-mail there were two basic questions which I asked him which also imbibes why we need to fight for software freedom in the court of law. Below is a re-wording of what he shared .

      Q1. why do people think that GPL still needs to be challenged in the court of law while there are gpl-violations which has been more or less successfully defended in the court of law ?

  • Web Browsers

  • Databases

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • The Importance of Bell Labs Unix

      Unix was first developed by Ken Thompson in the summer of 1969 on the DEC PDP-7 minicomputer. By 1979 Unix version 7 was making the rounds at universities all over the world. Bell Labs Unix has enormous importance: It was the basis for many operating systems that followed including BSD, and the template for Minix and Linux.

    • Lumina Desktop 1.0.0 released
    • Version 1.0.0 Released

      After roughly four years of development, I am pleased to announce the first official release of the Lumina desktop environment! This release is an incredible realization of the initial idea of Lumina – a simple and unobtrusive desktop environment meant for users to configure to match their individual needs. I hope you all enjoy it, and I look forward to working with all of you on the next iterations of this desktop!

    • Lumina Desktop 1.0 Released

  • Public Services/Government

    • White House software code sharing policy gains steam

      The White House has released its Federal Source Code policy that promotes reuse of new source code developed by government agencies across the federal government.

      The new policy also sets up a pilot program “that requires agencies, when commissioning new custom software, to release at least 20 percent of new custom-developed code as Open Source Software (OSS) for three years,” Tony Scott, U.S. CIO and Anne E. Rung, chief acquisition officer, wrote in a memorandum to heads of departments and agencies on Monday.

    • US government to Open Source bespoke code and allow contributions
    • Consider government open source, don’t mandate it [Ed: Not everyone agrees with ACT. This one could be titled "government should be allowed to pay for back-doored binaries."]
    • Argentina introduced the Czech open source system FRED for the administration of its internet domains

      The Argentinian national domain registrar will use the Czech registration system FRED (Free Registry for ENUM and Domains) for the administration of its internet domains with the .AR extension. NIC Argentina currently administers around 530,000 domains and has used FRED for their administration since the beginning of July 2016. The FRED registration system was developed by the Czech national domain registrar, the CZ.NIC association, in 2007 and besides Argentina and the Czech Republic it is also used in Albania, Angola, Costa Rica, Macedonia, Malawi, Tanzania and the Faroe Islands.

  • Licensing/Legal

    • ETSI workshop on FRAND and open source controversy

      The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is organising a workshop on the conundrum between FRAND intellectual property rights (patents) and open source software. The organisation, one of the key players in European standardisation, also hopes to increase cooperation with open source communities.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Medical Researchers Want Up To Five Years Exclusivity For Clinical Trial Data Derived From Volunteers

      A year ago, we wrote about how TPP’s requirement for “data exclusivity” risked undermining one of science’s fundamental principles: that facts cannot be owned. Data exclusivity is just the latest attempt by Big Pharma to extend its monopoly over drugs, whether using patents or other means. To a certain extent, you might expect that: after all, companies are designed to maximize profits, and if it means more people suffer or die along the way, well, that’s regrettable but sort of beside the point. However, it’s surprising to see a group of medical researchers writing in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) calling for just the same kind of data exclusivity. The post is in response to an earlier NEJM article by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), entitled “Sharing Clinical Trial Data”…

  • Programming/Development

    • 7 reasons to love Vim

      When I started using the vi text editor, I hated it. I thought it was the most painful and counter-intuitive editor ever designed. But I’d decided I had to learn the thing, because if you’re using Unix, vi was everywhere and was the only editor you were guaranteed to have access to. That was back in 1998, but it remains true today—vi is available, usually as part of the base install, on almost every Linux distribution in existence.

      It took about a month before I could do anything with any proficiency in vi and I still didn’t love it, but by then I’d realized that there was an insanely powerful editor hiding behind this bizarre facade. So I stuck with it, and eventually found out that once you know what you’re doing, it’s an incredibly fast editor.

    • devRant Releases The Most Annoying Programming Languages List — Which One Do You Use?

      devRant, an online community for developers, has released its data, revealing the most annoying programming languages. The developers with SQL in their profile skills rant +56.0 percent more than the average rate. On the contrary, Objective-C developers are the most content

    • ELLCC 0.1.32 Embedded Cross-Compiler Released
    • ELLCC 0.1.32 Released

      A new binary release of the ELLCC cross compilation tool chain is available. ELLCC is a pre-packaged set of tools designed to support cross compilation for a variety of target processors.

Leftovers

  • Will Uber Go Under?

    Uber, the huge taxi service, is undoubtedly still reeling from its defeat in China. After investing $2 billion to get a foothold in the Chinese market, Uber sold out to its competitor, Didi Chuxing, and agreed to be a junior partner in China.

    While this is a dramatic story that made headlines across the country, a less covered story could have a far more impact on Uber’s future. This is the story of Uber’s departure from Austin, Texas.

    Uber, along with Lyft, stopped operating in Austin in early May after the city’s voters endorsed a requirement that drivers for these services had to be fingerprinted and undergo background checks. The companies complained that the requirement placed an onerous burden on them and instead said that they would just stop operating in the city.

  • Find This Secret Command In MS-DOS Code To Win $100,000 And “Embarrass” Microsoft

    If we start reading Microsoft’s history, the MS-DOS chapter comes very early. The operating system acts as a foundation of the Microsoft Empire. Bill Gates got his big break in 1980 when he licensed this OS to IBM.

    You might know that Microsoft didn’t develop this operating system in-house. Instead, it acquired another operating system named QDOS–Quick and Dirty Operating System. QDOS was developed by SCP’s Tim Paterson, who was later hired by Gates to modify QDOS into MS-DOS.

    If you turn more pages of the history, you’ll come across another technology pioneer named the late Gary Kildall. He was the founder of DRI (Digital Research Inc.) and creator of an early PC OS named CP/M.

  • Man held after climbing Buckingham Palace fence

    A 22-year-old man has been arrested after he climbed over a security fence at Buckingham Palace, police have said.

    The man from Croydon, south London, was arrested in the early hours after he was seen by officers who were monitoring CCTV cameras.

    He was arrested at 04:15 BST within a security perimeter. He did not gain access to the palace.

    The Met said the suspected intruder had been drinking and that the incident was not thought to be terrorism related.

    The force added the man was not armed and no Taser was deployed by officers.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Medicaid expansion under ACA linked with better health care, improved health for low-income adults

      Two years after Medicaid coverage was expanded under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in their states, low-income adults in Kentucky and Arkansas received more primary and preventive care, made fewer emergency departments visits, and reported higher quality care and improved health compared with low-income adults in Texas, which did not expand Medicaid, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The findings provide new evidence for states that are debating whether to expand or how to expand coverage to low-income adults.

    • Despite GOP Opposition, Mounting Evidence That Medicaid Improves Health

      Bolstering the call for universal coverage and undercutting a key Republican talking point, a new study finds that Medicaid expansion in Arkansas and Kentucky resulted in better healthcare and improved health outcomes among low-income Americans.

      The research from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health shows that two years after Medicaid coverage was expanded under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in their states, low-income adults in Kentucky and Arkansas received more primary and preventive care, made fewer emergency room visits, had less trouble paying bills, and reported higher quality care and improved health compared with their counterparts in Texas, one of 19 states that did not expand Medicaid.

  • Security

    • Security updates for Monday
    • We’re figuring out the security problem (finally)

      If you attended Black Hat last week, the single biggest message I kept hearing over and over again is that what we do today in the security industry isn’t working. They say the first step is admitting you have a problem (and we have a big one). Of course it’s easy to proclaim this, if you just look at the numbers it’s pretty clear. The numbers haven’t really ever been in our favor though, we’ve mostly ignored them in the past, I think we’re taking real looks at them now.

    • Hackers Fool Tesla S’s Autopilot to Hide and Spoof Obstacles [Ed: When Tesla makes a lot of noise about “Open Source” it talks about patents, must make all its software Free as well, or else…]
    • Computers That Don’t Track You

      Todd Weaver, the Founder and CEO of Purism shows Leo Laporte and Aaron Newcomb the Librem line of secure Linux computers. They discuss PureOS the operating system based on Debian, and how the computers are sourced and built. Plus, he talks about their line of no-carrier, encrypted smartphone coming next year.

    • The state of cyber security: we’re all screwed

      When cybersecurity professionals converged in Las Vegas last week to expose vulnerabilities and swap hacking techniques at Black Hat and Defcon, a consistent theme emerged: the internet is broken, and if we don’t do something soon, we risk permanent damage to our economy.

      “Half of all Americans are backing away from the net due to fears regarding security and privacy,” longtime tech security guru Dan Kaminsky said in his Black Hat keynote speech, citing a July 2015 study by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. “We need to go ahead and get the internet fixed or risk losing this engine of beauty.”

    • Oh, not again: US reportedly finds new secret software in VW diesels [Ed: cannot trust proprietary software]

      Volkswagen first ended up in this situation after it admitted to intentionally installing secret software in its 2.0-liter diesels. That software curtailed nitrogen oxide emissions in lab-testing environments, but once on the road, the diesels would pollute well in excess of legal limitations. It was allegedly used in response to ever-stricter emissions regulations.

    • Chinese Hunting Chinese Over POP3 In Fjord Country

      More specifically, here at bsdly.net we’ve been seeing attempts at logging in to the pop3 mail retrieval service using usernames that sound distinctively like Chinese names, and the attempts originate almost exclusively from Chinese networks.

    • ‘Sauron’ spyware attacking targets in Belgium, China, Russia and Sweden

      A previously unknown hacking group called Strider has been conducting cyber espionage against selected targets in Belgium, China, Russia and Sweden, according to Symantec.

      The security firm suggested that the product of the espionage would be of interest to a nation state’s intelligence services.

      Strider uses malware known as Remsec that appears primarily to have been designed for espionage, rather than as ransomware or any other nefarious software.

      Symantec has linked Strider with a group called Flamer which uses similar attack techniques and malware.

      The Lord of the Rings reference is deliberate as the Remsec stealth tool contains a reference to Sauron, the necromancer and main protagonist in a number of Tolkien’s stories.

      “Strider has been active since at least October 2011. The group has maintained a low profile until now and its targets have been mainly organisations and individuals that would be of interest to a nation state’s intelligence services,” said Symantec in a blog post.

    • New MacBooks expected to feature Touch ID power button as well as OLED touch-panel [iophk: "as UID or password? Former is ok latter is insecure"]

      A source who has provided reliable information in the past has informed us that the new MacBook Pro models, expected to be launched in the fall, will feature a Touch ID power button as well as the previously-reported OLED touch-sensitive function keys.

    • it’s hard work printing nothing

      It all starts with a bug report to LibreSSL that the openssl tool crashes when it tries to print NULL. This bug doesn’t manifest on OpenBSD because libc will convert NULL strings to ”(null)” when printing. However, this behavior is not required, and as observed, it’s not universal. When snprintf silently accepts NULL, that simply leads to propagating the error.

    • Researchers crack open unusually advanced malware that hid for 5 years [Ed: Windows]

      Security experts have discovered a malware platform that’s so advanced in its design and execution that it could probably have been developed only with the active support of a nation-state.

      The malware—known alternatively as “ProjectSauron” by researchers from Kaspersky Lab and “Remsec” by their counterparts from Symantec—has been active since at least 2011 and has been discovered on 30 or so targets. Its ability to operate undetected for five years is a testament to its creators, who clearly studied other state-sponsored hacking groups in an attempt to replicate their advances and avoid their mistakes. State-sponsored groups have been responsible for malware like the Stuxnet- or National Security Agency-linked Flame, Duqu, and Regin. Much of ProjectSauron resides solely in computer memory and was written in the form of Binary Large Objects, making it hard to detect using antivirus.

    • 5 Best Hacks From The Black Hat 2016

  • Defence/Aggression

    • The U.S. Government Accused a Salvadorian Human Rights Activist of Gang Activity – Now He’s In Jail

      In the early morning hours of July 28, Salvadoran police arrested 77 people in a nationwide raid of alleged members of a multimillion-dollar financial network run by El Salvador’s Mara Salvatrucha gang, known as MS-13. Among those arrested was Dany Balmore Romero García, a former member of MS-13 who for the past decade has served as the director of the OPERA Youth Group, a violence-prevention organization that works with former and current gang members.

      At a hearing on August 1, the judge presented three formal charges against Romero: being a leader of a terrorist organization, conspiring to commit terrorist acts, and conspiring to commit homicide against someone with the code name “Meme,” who will serve as a key witness in the trial, according to a lawyer present for the proceedings. The judge announced that the investigation to substantiate the charges will last at least six months.

    • Drone warfare: Why the whole truth matters

      The Defence White Paper released early this year signals that the Australian Government will spend $2 billion acquiring armed drones by the early 2020s. They will be used to assist the US in the ongoing “war on terror”. Before this investment is made, it is important the Australian public has a chance to debate the ethics of drone warfare. Is the use of armed drones ethically justifiable? Should our taxpayer dollars go on acquiring drones?

    • The Classified Appendix Fifth Bullet on “Certain Counterterrorism Matters”

      As part of its implementation of the Rule Book, DOD released a Report on Congressional Notification of Sensitive Military Operations and Counterterrorism Operational Briefings (DOD released several related documents; CIA released nothing). Throughout the short document, it says the 2014 Defense Authorization (which was introduced after the Rule Book was signed but before DOD issued its Drone Rule Book implementation procedures and signed into law on December 23, 2013) and the PPG require Congress be informed of sensitive military operations. That’s the Executive Branch’s way of saying, “Congress has required we tell it what we’re doing but so has the President” as if they came up with the idea to do that additional reporting in the first place.

      [...]

      As I said, this is a fairly minor point. But it also suggests that even while the Executive was leaking wildly to get good press about this Drone Rule book, Congress was at the same time mandating specifically some of the things the Rule Book only nodded to in theory.

    • Details Abound in Drone ‘Playbook’ — Except for the Ones That Really Matter Most

      In response to a court order in an ACLU lawsuit, the government late Friday evening (as is its wont) released five documents relating to its process for nominating terrorism suspects for kill or capture. Most notable was the “Presidential Policy Guidance,” a document particularly central to the government’s targeted killing program.

      The release is important and illuminating, especially considering the backdrop of extreme secrecy surrounding the program since its inception. Before a 2013 ACLU victory in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the government had claimed that it could neither “confirm nor deny” that the program existed at all. But surprisingly, and disappointingly, the Presidential Policy Guidance (PPG) and other records released over the weekend do nothing to assuage concerns about the government’s standards governing who it decides to kill.

    • More Neocon Excuses to Bomb Syria

      Official Washington’s influential neocons continue to dream up new excuses for expanding U.S. military intervention in Syria, including why to bomb Syrian government forces and confront Russia, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

    • Canada resistance to Iraq War resisters must end

      The time has come for Prime Minister Trudeau to allow American deserters who resisted the war begun in Iraq by the U.S. and the U.K. in 2003 to stay in Canada. During the election, he signalled this was where his moral instincts lay. Unfortunately, so far his Liberal government is not showing leadership on this issue.

      I have a double worry about where a Trudeau government may be heading. One is that this government is prone to buying into certain Harper-era ‘moral’ and geopolitical arguments. A second worry is that factual confusion amongst Canadians who are against allowing these conscientious objectors to stay will be used as a political shield by the government.

      Let’s start with this second worry. Letters to the Editor in the Star’s pages following a column by Bob Hepburn (“Trudeau should act on U.S. war resisters,” July 20, 2016) show some think they have a knock-down argument against the war resisters because the Vietnam analogy does not work. We are told that, when former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s government gave sanctuary to war resisters, they were “draft dodgers” being compelled to fight whereas the current Iraq War resisters are “deserters” who volunteered.

    • Hospital Bombing in Pakistan Targeted Lawyers, Killed 70

      A suicide bomber killed at least 70 people and wounded more than a hundred in Quetta, Pakistan, on Monday.

      “There are many wounded, so the death toll could rise,” said Rehmat Saleh Baloch, the provincial health minister, to Reuters.

      Many of those killed were lawyers who had gathered at the hospital “after the body of their colleague, prominent attorney Bilal Kasi was brought there,” Associated Press (AP) reports.

    • Suicide Attack Targets Lawyers at Pakistan Hospital, 70 Dead

      Pakistani militants struck at the heart of the country’s legal profession on Monday, killing a prominent attorney and then bombing the hospital where dozens of other lawyers had gathered to mourn. The twin attacks killed at least 70 people, most of them lawyers, authorities said.

      A breakaway faction of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks in Quetta, the capital of restive Baluchistan province, which also wounded dozens of others.

      In a statement, Ahsanullah Ahsan, spokesman for the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar militant group, said its fighters killed Bilal Kasi, the president of the Baluchistan Bar Association, then as dozens of lawyers gathered at the government-run Civil Hospital, a suicide bomber targeted the mourners.

    • A Job Well Done: Someone Made Bond For the Inmate Who Assaulted Dylann Roof

      In a much-hailed if modestly problematic act of righteous revenge, an African-American inmate allegedly sucker-punched racist creep and murderer Dylann Roof – an act that sparked much online praise for the “vigilante hero,” a fundraiser for donations to his commissary account, and, finally, the posting of his $100,000 bond by a supporter. Roof is in protective custody at the Charleston County Detention Center for killing nine African-American churchgoers in South Carolina in 2015; he was in the shower when Dwayne Stafford, a 26-year-old inmate reportedly doing time for either weed violations or strong arm burglary, allegedly got out of his cell, reached Roof, and landed a couple of punches to his face. The sheriff said Roof was attacked “for no reason,” which many would argue was less than accurate.

    • Terror group Lashkar-e-Islam threatens Kashmiri pandits asking them to leave or get killed

      Posters in Pulwama are threatening Kashmiri Hindus to exit the valley of Kashmir. The poster is allegedly been put up by Lashkar-e-Islam (LeI) militant.

      This is not the first time that Kashmiri Hindus have been threatened. In mass rapes and killings in the 90’s, a genocide by Kashmiri Hidus, there was a mass exodus of Hindus from the valley. Initially the government provided security to the population, but the then governor asked the minority population to exit to safety.

      The black and white poster flaunts the flag and the logo of the outfit. What has created a flutter is the flag that is similar to the Jamat-ud-dawa, the fountainhead of Lashkar-e-Taiba headed by Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed.

    • Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews in WW2 then disappeared was ‘liquidated by Soviet KGB’

      The newly-published memoirs of the first chief of the KGB may shed light on the fate of a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust only to disappear in the final weeks of the Second World War.

      Raoul Wallenberg is honoured around the world for rescuing tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis by issuing them with fake Swedish passports or housing them in diplomatic buildings.

      But in January 1945 he vanished from the streets of Soviet-occupied Budapest and was never seen again.

      His family has long suspected that he was kidnapped by the Soviet Union but have never received definitive proof of what happened to him.

      Moscow’s story has changed over the decades. At first Russia claimed that Soviet intelligence had nothing to do with Wallenberg’s case, they later said he died of a heart attack in a prison camp.

      Now, the memoirs of KGB chief Ivan Serov offer another explanation – he was executed at Stalin’s orders.

      “I have no doubts that Wallenberg was liquidated in 1947,” Serov wrote in his memoirs, according to the New York Times.

    • Looming Aleppo Battle indicts both sides of Civil War for breaking Cease-Fire

      The only thing worse than the new hero status of now-covert al-Qaeda operative Abu Muhammad al-Julani and his Army of Syrian Conquest (ASC) is the news that he plans to subject all of Aleppo.

      Aleppo is Syria’s largest city, or at least it used to be, with some 2.5 million people. Some reporters who have been there think that although a lot of people have left, others have come flooding in from the countryside, so that its current population may be similar but rearranged. Many more people, perhaps 1.2 million, live in relatively well-off West Aleppo, still controlled by the Syrian regime, which by all accounts is still very popular among them. Some 250,000 live in slummy East Aleppo, ruled by a congeries of fundamentalist militias who are supported from the outside by the al-Qaeda-linked al-Julani.

    • Washington Slapdown: Turkey Turns to Moscow for Help

      On August 9, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburg The two leaders will discuss political developments following the recent coup-attempt in Turkey, tourism, and the launching of Turkstream, the natural gas pipeline that will transform Turkey into southern Europe’s biggest energy hub.. They are also expected to explore options for ending the fighting in Syria. Putin will insist that Erdogan make a concerted effort to stop Islamic militants from crossing back-and-forth into Syria, while Erdogan will demand that Putin do everything in his power to prevent the emergence of an independent Kurdish state on Turkey’s southern border. The meeting will end with the typical smiles and handshakes accompanied by a joint statement pledging to work together peacefully to resolve regional issues and to put an end to the proxy war that has left Syria in tatters.

      All in all, the confab will seem like another public relations charade devoid of any larger meaning, but that’s certainly not the case. The fact is, the normalizing of relations between Russia and Turkey will foreshadow a bigger geopolitical shift that will link Ankara to Tehran, Damascus and other Russian allies across Eurasia. The alliance will alter the global chessboard in a way that eviscerates the imperial plan to control the flow of energy from Qatar to Europe, redraw the map of the Middle East and pivot to Asia. That strategy will either be decimated or suffer a severe setback. The reasons for this should be fairly obvious to anyone who can read a map. Turkey’s location makes it the indispensable state, the landbridge that connects the wealth and modernity of the EU with the vast resources and growing population of Asia. That vital connecting piece of the geopolitical puzzle is gradually slipping out of Washington’s orbit and into enemy territory. The July 15 coup is likely the final nail in the NWO coffin for reasons we will discuss later. Here’s a clip from Eric Draitser’s insightful piece titled “Erdogan’s Checkmate: CIA-Backed Coup in Turkey Fails, Upsets Global Chessboard” that summarizes what’s going on:

    • Team Clinton Focuses on the Demise of Hezbollah

      This according to sources at the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) Judicial Council on which this observer served representing his State of Oregon many moons ago. One staffer reports that the Neocon-Zionist lobby has a Middle East Policy deal with the Clinton campaign as a linchpin of her pledge to “eternally cover Israel’s back.” The Clinton camp, which appears to be gaining adherents within the CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon, believes that the Obama administration’s policy toward Russia and Syria is badly flawed partly because, so they claim, Obama wrongly assumes that Russia wants to limit its involvement in Syria. Clinton advisers claim that, on the contrary, Putin’s key objectives include demonstrating that Russia is winning in Syria, that the US has become a paper tiger in the region, and that the Arab states best follow Russia’s lead as it dramatically returns to the region a la the former USSR.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Climate politics heat up Ohio’s role as an electoral battleground

      With Ohio shaping up to once again be a battleground state for this year’s presidential election, contrasts on energy and climate policy could affect whether Democrats or Republicans win the state’s 18 votes in the Electoral College.

      And while Republican nominee Donald Trump’s promises to revive the state’s coal industry may resonate with some voters, the party’s continued denial of climate science appears to be a growing political liability.

      “Most people believe that climate change is happening,” Mercury political strategist Jai Chabria said at a panel in Cleveland last month, hosted during the Republican National Convention by Politico and sponsored by Vote4Energy, a project of the American Petroleum Institute. Chabria previously served as an advisor to Ohio Gov. John Kasich and helped launch his bid for the Republican nomination.

    • Iowa could go 100% Green with Wind in only 14 years, w/ Few Birds Killed, Mr. Trump

      Iowa gets 31% of its electricity from wind turbines, the highest percentage in the nation (though Texas generates more than twice as many megawatts from wind). But you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. Some Iowa planners think that in only 14 years Iowa will be able to power its entire grid with wind and have some electrical generation capacity to spare, enabling it to supply other states, as well.

      Trump has notoriously pronounced that the wind turbines kill all the birds. Actually as the turbines have gotten taller it has been found that the birds typically fly under them. But if Trump is so concerned about the birds, maybe he should take on the mighty house cat instead. According to the Nature Conservancy, house cats polish off 2.4 billion birds annually. Wind turbines? Only 500k a year, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

    • Greenpeace Responds to New Energy Proposals from Donald Trump
    • Our Deteriorating Environment: Is Anybody Listening?

      *Five scientists from the Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in College Park, Maryland, give findings on the rate of climate change increase—“unprecedented for at least the past 1,000 years”—and therefore the need for an accelerated response.

      *To the now familiar melting of the Arctic ice packs—which the most recent study shows is likely to cause a sea level rise of “at least several meters”– should be added the equally if not more dangerous thawing of the permafrost, which means increasing emissions of methane and carbon dioxide. “Indeed,” Chris Mooney reports, “scientists have discovered a simple statistic that underscores the scale of the potential problem: There may be more than twice as much carbon contained in northern permafrost as there is in the atmosphere itself. That’s a staggering thought.” (Methane, by the way, seems to be the unsung villain: all the attention to carbon dioxide, Bill McKibben tells us in The Nation, detracts from methane’s equally potent heat trapping. Increased use of natural gas, plus fracking, are significantly increasing methane emissions in the U.S.)

      *The world’s largest forest “carbon sink,” the Amazon basin, is losing its ability to soak up excess carbon dioxide, a British study reports. In a nutshell, growth—i.e., conversion of forest land to agriculture—is outpacing forest sustainability.

      *Human expansion, such as in the Amazon basin, is imperiling the ecosystem itself. A study by European scientists finds that biodiversity levels have fallen below the point where the ecosystem can remain intact. Species decline of 10 percent, the scientists estimate, is dangerous; “but their study found that overall, across the globe, the average decline is already more like 15 percent. In other words, original species are only about 85 percent as abundant (84.6 percent to be precise) as they were before human land-use changes.” Climate change will add substantially to this sobering assessment.

    • Humanity Just Ate Through Planet’s Annual Resource Budget Faster Than Ever

      Earth Overshoot Day—the day on which people worldwide have officially used up more natural resources like air, food, and water than the planet can regenerate in a year—has come early.

      The 2016 threshold was hit on Monday, making it the fastest pace yet, according to a new report by the Global Footprint Network, which measures the dubious milestone every year.

      That’s five days earlier than last year, about five weeks earlier than in 2003, and months earlier than it was in 1987, when it fell on December 19. In 1961, the global population didn’t even use up 100 percent of the world’s natural resources, according to the network. But the next decade propelled the planet into an era of overconsumption, the group said.

      “This is possible because we emit more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than our oceans and forests can absorb, and we deplete fisheries and harvest forests more quickly than they can reproduce and regrow,” Global Footprint Network said in a statement.

    • BP Greenwashes the Olympics … Again

      As the Olympic Games officially opened last Friday, oil giant BP placed a two-third of a page advert in the global business newspaper, the Financial Times, featuring its sponsorship of Team GB, the British Olympic team.

      “The dreaming. The training. The waiting. The hoping. The best of luck to Team GB. Its time to harness the #Energywithin,” ran the strap-line.

      The hashtag #Energywithin is no co-incidence. BP, which is also an international partner of the International Paralympic Committee and the national Olympic committees of the US, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Trinidad & Tobago, is keen to make the comparison between Olympic excellence and the oil giant.

    • Chevron wins U.S. ruling blocking $8.6 billion Ecuador rainforest award

      Chevron Corp persuaded a federal appeals court on Monday to block enforcement in the United States of an $8.65 billion Ecuadorean pollution judgment that it said, and which the court agreed, was obtained through bribery and fraud.

      The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan upheld a lower court ruling against the American lawyer Steven Donziger, who has spent more than two decades battling Chevron to hold it responsible for pollution in the Ecuadorean rain forest.

    • ‘Justice Denied’ as Court Sides with Chevron in Amazon Pollution Case

      A U.S. appeals court on Monday “inexplicably” sided with oil giant Chevron in a massive case over its legacy of pollution in the Amazon.

      Chevron persuaded the court to block enforcement of an $8.65 billion judgment delivered by Ecuador against the energy company for rainforest damage.

      The three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York agreed with a March 2014 ruling by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan that found the judgment had been obtained through bribery, coercion, and fraud—a decision that astonished environmental rights activists following the case.

    • Siberian Child Dies After Climate Change Thaws an Anthrax-Infected Reindeer

      This story originally appeared on the Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

      A 12-year-old boy in the far north of Russia has died in an outbreak of anthrax that experts believe was triggered when unusually warm weather caused the release of the bacteria.

      The boy was one of 72 nomadic herders, including 41 children, hospitalized in the town of Salekhard in the Arctic Circle, after reindeer began dying en masse from anthrax.

      Five adults and two other children have been diagnosed with the disease, which is known as “Siberian plague” in Russian and was last seen in the region in 1941. More than 2,300 reindeer have died, and at least 63 people have been evacuated from a quarantine area around the site of the outbreak. “We literally fought for the life of each person, but the infection showed its cunning,” the Yamal governor, Dmitry Kobylkin, told the Russia-based Interfax news agency. “It returned after 75 years and took the life of a child.”

    • Pence: Trump will ‘end the war on coal’

      Gov. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) on Monday said his running mate, Donald Trump will not undermine the coal industry, should he become president.

      “Donald Trump is going to end the war on coal on Day 1 of his administration,” he said during a campaign stop in Sioux City, Iowa, on Monday evening. “We’re going to free up coal production in this country for the American people.”

      Pence, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee, said Trump is much more receptive to fossil fuels than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

      “Hillary Clinton wants to reduce the use of fossil fuels. We’re going to have an all-of-the-above energy strategy under President Trump.”

      Pence said Trump’s admiration for blue-collar voters guides the GOP presidential nominee’s economic agenda.

    • Hiroshima, Presidential Campaigns and Our Nuclear Future

      We have brief reminders of this danger from time to time and passing acknowledgements to the extreme peril we face, yet we never have the courage to take the steps necessary to eliminate this threat. In a classic bullying posture we continue to threaten the use of these weapons, effectively holding the rest of the world hostage to our delusion of safety, akin to a smoker floating on a raft in a pool of gasoline. We now recognize the dangers posed by these weapons is much greater than we had previously thought. Physicians for Social Responsibility, the U.S. affiliate of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, has scientifically shown that the detonation of “only” 100 nuclear warheads could kill two billion people from the devastating climate change and nuclear famine that would follow. There are currently more than 15,000 weapons on the planet. The United States and Russia have approximately 7,000 each.

  • Finance

    • Brexit Britain and the political economy of undemocracy: part 1 – the right
    • Brexit Britain and the political economy of undemocracy: part 2 – the left
    • Are Basic Income Proposals Crazy?

      As much of the developed world struggles to address the growth of income inequality, there has been emerging consideration of a guaranteed basic income. There are a number of variations, but the basic idea is that government would eliminate the various forms of social welfare that are currently in place, and would instead send each citizen an annual amount sufficient to cover basic living expenses.

      Most of us understand that without economic freedom, guarantees of personal, political and religious freedom aren’t worth much. If your day-to-day existence is consumed with the struggle for survival, the fact that you have freedom of speech is small comfort.

    • American Greed: Trump’s Economic Team Is a Who’s Who of What’s Wrong

      Trump’s tone-deafness was in full effect last week, when he announced his team of economic advisers in advance of what is being billed as “a major economic address” in Detroit on Monday.

      Trump’s team isn’t just monochromatic and male. At least four, and perhaps as many six, of the men are billionaires. They range in age from 50 to 74 – or, from “younger old white guy” to “older old white guy.”

      Five team members are named Steve – which means that eight of them are not. For diversity, that will have to do.

      There are only two economists on the team – and one of them believes in the flat tax.

    • Trump Offers Huge Favors to Billionaires, and Calls It a Big Economic Speech
    • ‘America is Back,’ Trump Declares, Announcing Tax Cuts for Billionaires

      Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump introduced his most detailed policy plan yet on Monday at the Detroit Economic Club, in a speech that was ostensibly targeted toward the working class but mostly outlined benefits for the wealthy.

      The speech was also widely panned for lacking substance: New York Magazine editor Annie Lowrey commented on CNN that “it was self-contradictory word salad,” adding that “there was just not much detail here.”

      Presumably channeling the advice of an economics policy team comprised of wealthy white men over age 50—five out of 13 are named “Steve”—Trump announced a hodgepodge of economic reforms that he promised would enrich the working class and “make America grow again.”

    • While Hillary Courts the Billionaire Class, Democratic Socialists Organize for a Better Future

      There has always existed a fundamental tension between those who seek to amplify the voices of the oppressed and the vulnerable and those who paint a rosier picture, one that acknowledges superficial flaws but seeks, ultimately, to justify the prevailing order, economic or otherwise.

      In January of 1963, Dwight Macdonald, in his famous essay reviewing Michael Harrington’s groundbreaking book The Other America, cast a light on this perpetual conflict.

      “For a long time now,” Macdonald wrote, “almost everybody has assumed that, because of the New Deal’s social legislation and — more important — the prosperity we have enjoyed since 1940, mass poverty no longer exists in this country.”

      Referring to John Kenneth Galbraith’s declaration in his 1958 work The Affluent Society that poverty “can no longer be presented as a universal or massive affliction,” Macdonald expressed dismay at the fact that such a “humane critic” as Galbraith could downplay (and, in some cases, overlook entirely) the tremendous suffering felt in marginalized communities — particularly in communities of color.

      [...]

      It is a party now dedicated to the trope that “America is already great,” a rhetorical flourish that provides both a shameful defense of the status quo and little comfort — much less material relief — to those victimized by American capitalism.

    • ‘We Triggered Something Epic’: An Interview with Naquasia LeGrand of the Fight for $15

      When Naquasia LeGrand first got involved with the Fight for $15 workers’ movement, it was, she says, “underground.” No one, least of all her, knew how far the movement would spread in the four years since she helped launch the first fast-food workers’ strike, in New York City in November 2012. New York fast-food workers won their raise in 2015, though it won’t be fully phased in in the city until 2018.

      Cities and states around the country have acted to raise wages since the movement began, and the battle has spilled over into the presidential election. Fast-food workers, including LeGrand, are demanding that the candidates endorse the $15 an hour wage. LeGrand is now in North Carolina and continues to organize her fellow workers in one of the least union-friendly states in the country, having become a national leader in the movement. We spoke about what’s changed—and what still needs changing—since the beginning of the Fight for $15.

    • Time for a UK agricultural policy that doesn’t subsidise the rich

      Let’s get one thing straight. The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is a disaster. It is essentially a £50 billion welfare system for the landed gentry and other big landowners across Europe. While people who genuinely need public funds find their benefits cut to the bone, these people get huge amounts of public money for doing absolutely nothing. It amounts to one of the most glaring transfers of money from poor to rich in the UK. The CAP has also been disastrous for people in the global south. For decades, Europe dumped excess agricultural produce into markets in the global south, ruining the livelihoods of local farmers who could not compete with the artificially cheap imports. But cleverly, through the WTO, rich countries have ensured that poor countries cannot raise equivalent subsidy programmes of their own. For example, India has been castigated for its food security policy that gives cheap food to the poor, while relatively rich EU farmers gets huge sums for doing not very much at all.

    • Billionaire Bonanza as Wealth Surges Among One Percent

      There is little doubt that the global one percent is winning. In fact, a new study has found that the number of billionaires reached an all-time high in 2015 at the same time that their portfolios and piggy banks also continued to grow to record proportions.

      According to the 2015-2016 Billionaire Census by international market research firm Wealth-X, which bills itself as “the global authority on wealth intelligence,” the billionaire population grew by 6.4 percent last year and now totals 2,473 people worldwide. The combined wealth of those individuals also increased by 5.4 percent, amounting to $7.7 trillion—which is more than every country’s gross domestic product (GDP), except the United States ($17.9 tr) and China ($11 tr).

      Billionaires, defined as individuals with a net worth of $1 billion or above, are not all created equal. While North America trails Europe in the number of billionaires—628 compared with 806, respectively—they hold more wealth ($2,561 bn versus $2,330 bn) than their cross-Atlantic compatriots.

      Wealth-X attributes the overall billionaire population growth largely to inherited wealth. According to the report, “billionaires with partially inherited wealth continue to be the fastest growing segment of this population, up 29.9% year on year, while responsible for nearly two thirds of total billionaire additions.”

      Also, Wealth-X found that fear of a global market collapse has prompted many to liquidate their assets, further shoring up their wealth and adding to the overall rise in combined net worth.

    • Grassroots Democrats Are Making the TPP a Big Issue in Congressional Races

      Trade policy in general—and the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement in particular—has become a vital concern for Democrats up and down the ballot.

      Just ask Wisconsin Congressman Ron Kind, one of the few congressional Democrats who continue to make arguments for agreements such as the TPP.

      Kind, who has served almost two decades as the Democratic representative from farm and factory towns of western Wisconsin, did not receive a warm welcome from Wisconsin delegates to this month’s Democratic National Convention.

    • Ecuador’s Correa: It’s Neoliberalism, Not Socialism That Has Failed

      Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa on Sunday denounced “fantasies of trickle-down theories” and said that it’s neoliberalism, not socialism that has failed his region.

      Latin America has largely pursued “socialism of the 21st century,” TeleSUR reports the leftist leader as saying in an interview. Despite current external factors affecting his country’s economy—like the fall in the price of oil and trade partners’ economic slowdown—that model has helped the country weather the impacts far better compared to the situation in 1999 when the country was under conservative rule and “external shocks [...] made the economy crash.”

      “Neoliberalism is what failed, not socialism of the 21st century; on the contrary, socialism of the 21st century is what has us firmly on our feet, withstanding all of these difficulties,” he said.

      Correa also said, “Inequality in a poor country means misery,” and added that only the pursuit of the kind of growth “that favors the poor, growth with social justice, growth with equity,” was important.

    • Brexit was a crisis long in the making

      The Brexit vote was the reaping of years of deepening inequality, sown by the neoliberal policy programmes of successive governments.

    • Three million working families are ‘one pay cheque away from losing their home’

      Cash-strapped working families in England are so “stretched to breaking point” that one in three could not afford to pay their rent or mortgage for more than a month if they lost their job, according to new figures.

      The high cost of housing added to having little or no personal savings to fall back on, and means that three million working families could be just one pay cheque away from losing their home, the Shelter and YouGov study found.

      The figures come from a July 2016 poll of 8,381 adults which included 1,581 working families with children. They were asked how long, if at all, did they think they could afford to pay their rent or mortgage from their savings if they lost their job and could not find work?

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Lead Attorney In Anti-Clinton DNC Fraud Case Mysteriously Found Dead

      Call it conspiracy theory, coincidence or just bad luck, but any time someone is in a position to bring down Hillary Clinton they wind up dead. In fact, as we noted previously, there’s a long history of Clinton-related body counts, with scores of people dying under mysterious circumstances. While Vince Foster remains the most infamous, the body count is starting to build ominously this election cycle – from the mysterious “crushing his own throat” death of a UN official to the latest death of an attorney who served the DNC with a fraud suit.

      As GatewayPundit’s Jim Hoft reports, on July 3, 2016, Shawn Lucas and filmmaker Ricardo Villaba served the DNC Services Corp. and Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz at DNC’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., in the fraud class action suit against the Democrat Party on behalf of Bernie Sanders supporters (this was before Wikileaks released documents proving the DNC was working against the Sanders campaign during the 2016 primary).

    • Pentagon, CIA Form Praetorian Guard for Clinton as Warmonger President

      Former director of the Central Intelligence Agency Michael J Morell is the latest in a phalanx of senior US military-intelligence figures who are shedding any pretense of political neutrality and giving their full-throated endorsement to Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

      In a New York Times opinion piece, Morell starkly backed Clinton as the most «highly qualified to be commander-in-chief… keeping our nation safe».

      The ex-CIA chief’s op-ed piece also served as a blunt hatchet job on Republican presidential rival Donald J Trump. Morell said the New York billionaire-turned politician is «not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security».

      The hoary, old scare-theme of «national security» is being rehabilitated as the criterion for electing Clinton. It also has the disturbing connotation of an increasingly militarized totalitarian regime that the United States is becoming.

    • The Real Threat to American Sovereignty

      “Without a border, we just don’t have a country,“ Donald Trump says repeatedly. For him, the biggest threats to American sovereignty are three-dimensional items that cross our borders, such as unwanted imports and undocumented immigrants.

      He’s wrong. The biggest threats to American sovereignty are invisible digital dollars wired into U.S. election campaigns from abroad.

      Yet Trump seems to welcome foreign influence over our democracy.

      Sovereignty is mainly about a government’s capacity to govern. A government not fully accountable to its citizens won’t pass laws that benefit and protect those citizens – not just laws about trade and immigration but about national security, the environment, labor standards, the economy, and all else.

    • A Former CIA Officer Enters the Presidential Race as a Republican Alternative to Trump

      On Monday, a new GOP presidential contender threw their hat in the ring. Anti-Trump Republican Evan McMullin announced he’s running for president to offer voters a choice other than Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in November. McMullin resigned from his position as the chief policy director for the House Republican Conference in order to run and previously worked as a CIA counterterrorism officer.

    • Collins Dumps Trump, and About Time

      Maine’s four-term Sen. Susan Collins, one of the last of a dying breed of moderate, occasionally coherent Republicans , has finally summoned the strength of character to announce she will not support Trump in the election, thus becoming one of the most high-profile GOP members to abandon their lunatic flag-bearer. After months of waffling and cautious criticism of Trump’s more outrageous stands, Collins announced her decision in a Washington Post op-ed, listing several excellent examples of Trump’s “unsuitability for office” – even at a Burger King. Those include his “lack of self-restraint,” “barrage of ill-informed comments,” and “disregard for the precept of treating others with respect, an idea that should transcend politics.” She adds, “Donald Trump does not reflect historical Republican values nor the inclusive approach to governing that is critical to healing the divisions in our country.” You think? As Maine goes, so goes, hopefully, the nation.

    • Not Alone, But Together: Sanders Campaign Declares Creation of ‘Our Revolution’
    • 2020 Vision: Four Steps to Get There

      The progressive vision for 2020 is focused on the needs of average working people, on the strength of society rather than on winner-take-all individualism, on the cooperative efforts of underpaid people who have been forced out of the middle class.

    • Hopelessly Divided? Think Again.

      Surprisingly, though, despite all the handwringing about dysfunctional division, there is much that unites us — even on contentious topics. A 2014 study comparing red congressional districts and states to blue ones asked 388 questions on hot-topic issues ranging from abortion to gun control. In two-thirds of cases, researchers found “no statistical differences” in the answers between Republican and Democratic strongholds.

    • Not All Bernie Backers Buying His Clinton Pitch

      Bernie Sanders has urged his supporters to back Hillary Clinton—a point he reiterated in an op-ed at the Los Angeles Times last week.

      But a string of recent polls shows that about one-third of Sanders backers aren’t willing to do that, as political website FiveThirtyEight points out.

      Harry Enten writes Monday that since the Democratic National Convention, Clinton has seen a boost in support from Sanders supporters. Looking at the average of four post-convention polls—CNN, Fox News, Marist, and YouGov—78 percent of Sanders backers said they’d vote for Clinton compared to nine percent for Donald Trump when presented with a two-way match-up. That’s up from about half of Sanders supporters ahead of the conventions, he writes.

      But when given the option of third party candidates, the number drops, with the four polls showing an average of 63 percent of Sanders supporters saying they’d back Clinton.

    • Can Clinton corner Condi, Kissinger?

      As Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign reaches out to Republicans alarmed by Donald Trump’s national security blunders, there’s a group of high-profile GOP hold-outs whose endorsement would be a major coup if the Democrat could win them over.

      Condoleezza Rice, James Baker, George Shultz and Henry Kissinger are among a handful of so-called Republican “elders” with foreign policy and national security experience — people who have held Cabinet-level or otherwise high-ranking positions in past administrations — who have yet to come out for or against Trump.

    • Clinton Bonds with Neocons as GOP Elites Launch Final Bid Against Trump

      Hillary Clinton is reaching out to Republican elites—including fellow former secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Henry Kissinger—to support her campaign over Donald Trump’s, suggesting a growing alliance between Clinton and neoconservatives, according to Politico.

      Clinton’s charm offensive comes amid a growing public rift between the Republican party and its own nominee. The backlash against Trump has seen numerous high-profile Republicans defecting to the Democrats and explicitly denouncing Trump’s suitability for office. At a fundraiser for ‘foreign policy professionals’ in July, prominent neoconservative Robert Kagan told attendees that “a majority of people in my circle will vote for Hillary.”

    • Trump and Authoritarianism

      In the 1930s in key countries, it was a Hitler in Germany, a Mussolini in Italy, a Stalin in the USSR, a Franco in Spain, et al. In our own time, it’s a Putin in Russia, an Erdogan in Turkey, a Xi in China, a Thaksin in Thailand, a Mugabe in Zimbabwe, a Duterte in the Philippines, an al-Sisi in Egypt — and, our own homegrown Mussolini in America, Donald J. Trump. 

It must be understood that these authoritarians often differ widely in their origins (Erdogan, for example, assumed power through elections) and methods of operation, degree of brutality, etc. Every society has a multiplicity of forces affecting its manner of governance. There is no one template that explains the various expressions of authoritarianism across the globe.

But there are enough similarities to draw some tentative conclusions.

    • 50 Former National Security Officials and Advisers From GOP Administrations Denounce Trump
    • Hillary Clinton Should Push Hard for Disability Civil Rights

      This year, the Democratic National Convention mentioned the civil rights of Americans with disabilities. That this happened now, decades into a movement, speaks volumes about the priorities of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Hillary Clinton deserves credit for being the first United States presidential candidate from a major party to address the civil rights of these 56 million Americans.

      Does Clinton assume that all those votes are going her way? Even after Clinton launched an ad focused on Donald Trump’s bullying of a reporter with a disability, the DNC balked at mentioning the Disability Integration Act in Philadelphia.

      The DIA was introduced to the Senate by Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., on Dec. 18, 2015, and into the House of Representatives by Christopher Gibson, R-N.Y., on July 8. According to DIA advocate Bruce Darling, “Democrats need to not take disabled voters for granted and support DIA like they support the [LGBTQ] Equality Act. It isn’t enough to say Trump made fun of a disabled journalist.”

    • The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism

      College-educated elites, on behalf of corporations, carried out the savage neoliberal assault on the working poor. Now they are being made to pay. Their duplicity—embodied in politicians such as Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama—succeeded for decades. These elites, many from East Coast Ivy League schools, spoke the language of values—civility, inclusivity, a condemnation of overt racism and bigotry, a concern for the middle class—while thrusting a knife into the back of the underclass for their corporate masters. This game has ended.

      There are tens of millions of Americans, especially lower-class whites, rightfully enraged at what has been done to them, their families and their communities. They have risen up to reject the neoliberal policies and political correctness imposed on them by college-educated elites from both political parties: Lower-class whites are embracing an American fascism.

      These Americans want a kind of freedom—a freedom to hate. They want the freedom to use words like “nigger,” “kike,” “spic,” “chink,” “raghead” and “fag.” They want the freedom to idealize violence and the gun culture. They want the freedom to have enemies, to physically assault Muslims, undocumented workers, African-Americans, homosexuals and anyone who dares criticize their cryptofascism. They want the freedom to celebrate historical movements and figures that the college-educated elites condemn, including the Ku Klux Klan and the Confederacy. They want the freedom to ridicule and dismiss intellectuals, ideas, science and culture. They want the freedom to silence those who have been telling them how to behave. And they want the freedom to revel in hypermasculinity, racism, sexism and white patriarchy. These are the core sentiment

    • Jeremy Corbyn Launches Bold Progressive Vision to Transform UK

      Leader of the British Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn announced a 10-point plan on Thursday designed to “rebuild and transform” the U.K. while undoing the damage wrought by privatization schemes and concerted attacks on the public good.

    • Gunning for Corbyn, not the Conservatives, is Labour’s tragedy

      Give the grown-ups back control of the Labour party. Wasn’t that supposed to be the idea? Yet with each fresh turn of events, the coup against Jeremy Corbyn looks less like an adult intervention, and more like a slapstick farce.

    • Can Corbynism claim the centre ground?

      Whatever happens this summer, Jeremy Corbyn leaves a major legacy. Most notable is the longterm leftwards shift in Labour’s centre of gravity. The party’s right in retreat, Corbyn’s challenger Owen Smith campaigns on an almost identical platform, Trident and the EU aside. Smith’s pitch is to present it better and add much-need policy heft. The course steered may need a new captain, but politically Corbyn binds Labour left for the foreseeable future.

    • Green Party Nominee Jill Stein: “We Are Saying No to the ‘Lesser Evil’ and Yes to the Greater Good”

      In Houston, Texas, Dr. Jill Stein formally accepted the Green Party’s nomination for president at the party’s convention over the weekend. Interest in the Green Party has jumped in recent weeks since Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination, defeating Bernie Sanders. In 2012, Dr. Stein ran on the Green ticket and won less than 1 percent of the national vote. But according to CNN’s Poll of Polls, Stein is now polling at 5 percent. The same poll finds Clinton at 45 percent, Republican Donald Trump at 35 percent and Libertarian Gary Johnson at 9 percent. Neither Stein nor Johnson will be invited to take part in this fall’s presidential debates, however, unless they top 15 percent in national polls. For more, we hear excerpts of Dr. Jill Stein speaking at the Green Party convention.

    • What the Democratic Party Could Learn From Its Overseas Footsoldiers

      Party politics is messy and often inefficient. And in today’s political climate, one filled with distrust and apathy, ensuring representation and active participation is more important than ever. Democrats Abroad serves as a very successful model for how other state parties can reinvigorate faith in the party.

    • AARP to Drop Membership in Right-Wing Lobby Group ALEC After Progressive Groups Apply Pressure

      Progressives dedicated to protecting safety nets for seniors have pressured AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired People, to drop its dues-paying membership at ALEC, the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, whose work includes drafting and promoting bills that would undermine and privatize Social Security and Medicare.

      “After hearing from many of you, we’ve decided not to renew our membership to ALEC,” said a post on AARP’s Facebook page Friday. “We would never work against the interests of older Americans and our engagement with ALEC was NOT an endorsement of the organization’s policies, but an opportunity to engage with state legislators and advance our members’ priorities.”

      “AARP is and always has been non-partisan,” the statement continued. “We meet with legislators from both sides of the aisle in order to do our job: fighting to improve the lives of people 50+. We will continue to explore ways to serve our diverse membership and fulfill our responsibility.”

    • How Repealing the Johnson Amendment Could Ruin Politics Forever

      Donald Trump is the Republican nominee and despite his previous time as a Democrat and his Johnny-come-lately stances on many of the social conservative issues that the religious right has come to love, he has managed to get a myriad of Christian leaders to back him in his battle for the White House. Exactly what magical spell has he worked that has brought around the values voters and made them believe that a business mogul with multiple ex-wives is now the person who should lead their country?

    • We Have to Stop Demeaning or Ignoring Trump Voters—Elitism Won’t Defeat Trumpism

      Anyone with confidence in the American people (and I have quite a lot of it) had to believe that Donald Trump’s unpreparedness, instability and just plain meanness would catch up with him eventually. This, as the polls show, is what happened over the last week or so. Simply by revealing who he really is, Trump sent millions of voters fleeing him in disgust.

      But understanding what still attracts many voters to Trump is important, not only to those who want to prevent Trump from staging a comeback but also to anyone who wants to make our democracy thrive in the long run. Those of us who are horrified by Trump’s hideous lack of empathy need empathy ourselves.

      It’s certainly true that Trump appeals to outright racists and nativists. He is, first and foremost, the product of a Republican Party that has exploited extremism since President Obama took office. GOP leaders should be called to account whenever they try to prettify Trump by ignoring his assaults on Mexican-Americans and Muslims or a checkered business record that belies his pretensions of being a friend to the working class.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • John Oliver Warns That Problems Plaguing Journalism Will Lead to Widespread Corruption (Video)
    • Newspaper Association Of America Complains That Comedian John Oliver Failed To Solve Newspaper Biz Model Problem

      This is pretty ridiculous. First of all, much of the mocking was over the Tribune Company’s ridiculous rebranding as “tronc,” and specifically the absolutely ridiculous “tronc employee video” the company put together, that I still am partially convinced is a parody of the kind of idiocy big newspapers put out these days to pretend they get technology. “Artificial intelligence!” “The future of journalism!” “Tech startup culture!” “Evolving, changing — the fun part!” “Optimization group!” “Feed it into a funnel and then optimize it!” “Maximize all the time.” “Monetize video!” “The role of tronc is to transform journalism — from pixels to Pulitzers.”

    • John Oliver Exposes the Abject Dangers of Billionaires Buying Up Newspapers

      We’re so used to getting our news for free that we’ve forgotten what that means for journalism. And as “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver points out, the decades long financial battle newsrooms have been facing affects all of us. Think about local government reporting. While it’s not as clickbaity as puppies or a “raccoon cats,” it’s a crucial part of urban reform. But often, because it does not pay, good local civic reporting is the first thing to go.

      “A study of over 200 papers found between 2003 and 2014, the number of full-time State House reporters declined by thirty-five percent,” Oliver pointed out. “And that’s not good because while there are some great web outlets some of which do cover local government there aren’t nearly enough to replace what has been lost.”

    • Heresy: A Reporter Investigates Evidence That Jesus Had a Wife

      Walter Fritz had been an East German museum director, a real estate agent, an auto-parts business executive, an Egyptology student, and an amateur pornographer.

      But his most recent achievement might well be his most lasting and ignominious – his involvement in an audacious antiquity transaction, wherein a piece of papyrus made its way into the hands of Harvard scholar Karen King, who then declared before the Vatican that it showed Jesus may have been married.

    • Federal Health Officials Seek to Stop Social Media Abuse of Nursing Home Residents

      Federal health regulators have announced plans to crack down on nursing home employees who take demeaning photographs and videos of residents and post them on social media.

      The move follows a series of ProPublica reports that have documented abuses in nursing homes and assisted living centers using social media platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram. These include photos and videos of residents who were naked, covered in feces or even deceased. They also include images of abuse.

      The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees nursing homes, said in a memo to state health departments on Friday that they should begin checking to make sure that all nursing homes have policies prohibiting staff from taking demeaning photographs of residents. The memo also calls on state officials to quickly investigate such complaints and report offending workers to state licensing agencies for investigation and possible discipline. State health departments help enforce nursing home rules for the federal government.

    • Israel Calls on Citizens to Track and Report Activists in ‘Ruthless’ War Against BDS

      Amplifying the growing crackdown on dissent and specifically the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights, the Israeli government this weekend unveiled a new initiative to track and deport activists suspected of supporting the campaign.

      Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan and Interior Minister Arye Dery on Sunday announced the creation of a new government task force charged with gathering intelligence on pro-Palestininian activists and organizations with the intent, as Haaretz put it, of collecting enough evidence to legally deport them from Israel or the occupied West Bank.

      “We have the responsibility to do all we can to crush the boycott and say clearly that we will not allow the State of Israel to be harmed,” Dery said.

      Later, Erdan took to Facebook to call on Israeli citizens to help by informing the government of suspicious activities.

    • Olympics fan claims Twitter killed his account after posting Rio videos

      Venezuelan free software activist Luigino Bracci Roa has claimed that his Twitter account was closed down permanently by the US company without any prior warning, after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) complained about videos he had posted on the micro-blogging service.

      The @Lubrio account was popular: Bracci says that he tweeted 133,000 times since he created the account in 2008, and had garnered nearly 43,000 followers in that time.

      On his blog, Bracci shared the letters of complaint sent by the IOC to Twitter, which show that the committee did not demand that his account be shut down, but instead asked Twitter to “immediately and permanently remove the material” from its website. That’s hardly surprising given the IOC’s attempts to impose strict controls on all media outlets and how they use material connected with the Olympics.

    • Art magazine covers nipples of nude by celebrated artist with huge yellow stickers

      Controversy over the cover of an Australian art magazine has resurrected a debate of the digital age: when, if ever, are nipples acceptable?

      The latest issue of Vault, a quarterly art periodical, was distributed last week with round yellow stickers covering the nipples of a female nude in a painting on its cover.

      Its editor, Neha Kale, told Guardian Australia the stickers were added at the request of its distributor, which feared its stockists would refuse to display the magazine.

    • Art magazine questions censorship of Lisa Yuskavage nude

      The latest issue of art periodical Vault Magazine is being censored in Australian newsagents because it features a Lisa Yuskavage painting of a nude pregnant woman on the front cover. What does this say about how Australia responds to women in art?

    • Divya Khosla speaks up on ‘Pyaar Manga Hai’ being termed as ‘semi-porn’
    • There Is No Censorship for Internet: Divya Khosla Kumar
    • Divya Khosla Kumar: We cater to demand
    • Zareen Khan hot kissing scenes video crosses 1 crore mark on Youtube

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • CensusFail: the ABS hasn’t convinced the public their privacy is protected

      The Australian Census, which takes a snapshot of the demographics of the Australian population, is embroiled in a last minute furore around the mandatory collection of names and addresses.

      South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon has declared he will not be providing his name and address. In doing so, he risks a A$180 fine for each day of “non-compliance”.

      Xenophon argues that the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has not made “a compelling case why names must be provided”. However, the rationale is actually quite simple.

      With names and addresses, the Census data can be linked to other data sets where we have already allowed our name and address to be used. This includes health, education and other data. Together, they should help give a more complete and accurate picture of how the distribution of people in Australia matches present and future services.

    • Police Scotland told to pay journalist £10,000 over illegal intercepts

      Police Scotland has been ordered to pay a journalist £10,000 in damages after it illegally intercepted his communications data in an investigation into a botched murder case.

      The investigatory powers tribunal ruled the force had breached the human rights of Gerard Gallacher, a former police officer turned freelance journalist, who had spent 18 months investigating a cold murder case in which a prime suspect had been released without charge.

      Gallacher said he suffered “invasion of privacy, familial strife, personal stress and strain and loss of long-standing friendships” after detectives accessed 32 days of his communications data, ignoring clear court rulings to protect journalists and their sources.

      Police Scotland had been braced for an adverse ruling after Sir Stanley Burnton, the communications interception commissioner, ruled last November that the force had been reckless in its repeated abuse of its powers.

      Detectives in an elite anti-corruption unit breached the law five times when they collected phone records for Gallacher and two police officers suspected of leaking information, Burnton said.

      In its ruling on Monday on the cases of the six people affected – Gerard Gallacher and his wife Marjorie, the two officers David Moran and Steven Adams and a former officer and his wife named only as Mr and Mrs O – the tribunal agreed that the collection of their data breached the Human Rights Act and the European convention on human rights.

    • The US Marines are testing a pocket-sized helicopter drone

      The U.S. Marine Corps is testing a pocket-sized drone that can deliver live video feeds from three cameras and is small enough that it’s almost invisible from the ground.

      The Black Hornet PD-100 can stay aloft for 25 minutes and has a range of 1.6 km (1 mile). That means Marines can use it for surveillance far beyond their current position.

      It can fly missions guided by GPS yet fits in a pocket. The cable hanging out the back in this image is an antenna, not a cord for power or data.

    • ABS head must take blame if census compromised

      If the data that is collected in the Australian census in any way lacks integrity, then one man will have to bear the blame: the head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, David Kalisch.

      Remember, just a 5% non-response will screw up the whole works.

      For the uninitiated, or those who have been living under a rock for the last two months, there has been an uncharacteristic amount of jaw about the census this time.

      And all because an unelected bureaucrat suddenly decided to act like a mini-dictator and make changes in what was once a source of excellent detail about the population at large.

      First, the ABS announced, in the quiet news period in December, that the names and addresses of Australians would be retained indefinitely in this year’s census.

      And while the ABS had claimed all along that it was not retaining names and addresses and tying them to personal data, Kalisch revealed that this had been a big lie and since 2006, these personal details had indeed been retained for 18 months.

    • The founder of the Pirate Party joins to share liberty ideas with Steem

      Hi! I’m Rick Falkvinge, and during business hours, I’m Head of Privacy at the VPN company Private Internet Access, which ttobmk is the only VPN company to have court records prove we don’t keep any logs whatsoever. We love decentralization and privacy.

      However, I’m more known for being the founder of the Pirate Party, an international collection of technopunk parties that have won elections to take office in the European Parliament and elsewhere. The Pirate Party in Iceland is currently the largest party in the polls there, leading to very interesting scenarios worldwide after the next election. (It only takes one country out of 196 to create a safe data haven and guarantee freedoms of speech and expression worldwide.)

      I’ve also written a book, Swarmwise, that outlines how we were able to beat the establishment in the elections – their struggle for centralized power – despite having less than one percent of their campaign budget. Basically, it comes down to the tactical and strategic advantage of running an organization on decentralized voluntaryism.

    • SoylentNews Deploys HSTS and Mandates HTTPS Everywhere

      So after an extended period of inactivity, I’ve finally decided to jump back into working on SoylentNews and rehash (the code that powers the site). As such, I’ve decided to scratch some long-standing itches. The first (and easiest) to deploy was HSTS to SoylentNews. What is HSTS you may ask?

    • Want cheaper Internet access? Hand over your privacy

      It seems a simple enough proposition: Would you agree to receive marketing pitches in return for a discount on your high-speed Internet service?

      Telecom heavyweight Comcast made just such a case last week in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission. The company defended what it called “a bargained-for exchange of information for service,” which it said “is a perfectly acceptable and widely used model throughout the U.S. economy.”

      And that’s true. You can spend less on a Kindle e-reader from Amazon if you agree to see “special offers” when you turn on the device. Your free use of online search engines, email and other services is subsidized in part by an acceptance of marketers peeking at your browsing habits.

      But privacy advocates are starting to worry about a society of privacy haves and have-nots. That is, keeping one’s personal info under wraps or avoiding incessant intrusions from advertisers would be a privilege enjoyed only by those who can afford it.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Facebook Removes Potential Evidence of Police Brutality Too Readily, Activists Say

      As more details emerge about last week’s killing by Baltimore County police of 23-year-old Korryn Gaines, activists have directed growing anger not only at local law enforcement but also at Facebook, the social media platform where Gaines posted parts of her five-hour standoff with police.

      At the request of law enforcement, Facebook deleted Gaines’ account, as well her account on Instagram, which it also owns, during her confrontation with authorities. While many of her videos remain inaccessible, in one, which was re-uploaded to YouTube, an officer can be seen pointing a gun as he peers into a living room from behind a door, while a child’s voice is heard in the background. In another video, which remains on Instagram, Gaines can be heard speaking to her five-year-old son, who’s sitting on the floor wearing red pajamas.

      “Who’s outside?” she asks him. “The police,” he replies timidly. “What are they trying to do?” “They trying to kill us.”

    • Just Another Misogynist Monday

      I’m not watching the Olympics on NBC. I see more than enough of the events in my social media feed that I don’t need to turn on the television. This post is based on the observations and media content shared online, an indicator of just how much content there is about the Olympics, both corporate and personal.

      And I am SO glad I haven’t bothered to watch based on the persistent anger in my timeline. NBC’s coverage has been a bunch of sexist and racist nonsense, framing female athletes not by their performance but by the men or white family members in their lives.

      Like noting a particular athlete became a mother since her last competition — gee, how many of the male athletes became fathers? The narrative NBC built around each woman competitor sounds more like an observation of their performing femininity. “She’s turned in the best time and look, she can still clean house and wear a dress!” Obnoxious.

    • An Impolitic Situation: When Rights Disappear

      For months, political parties and presidential candidates fight for the highest office in the land, where the job duties include protecting the consitutional rights of all Americans.

      Few things illustrate the practice of our most basic rights—namely those of speech, assembly and petitioning our government— better than the run-up to the presidential election. Candidates stake out their turf and the public listens, discusses, and absorbs the constant 24-hour election media cycle, opposing and supporting candidates with friends and family, on Facebook and in the streets. The product of this constitutional civics lesson is our new national political leadership.

      So it’s ironic that both parties’ showcases—their national conventions—have historically been constitutional black holes. In 2004, hundreds of protesters at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in New York were wrongly arrested and held in abysmal detention conditions. Of course, the ACLU was there for them—the New York Civil Liberties Union and others filed suit on behalf of protesters that resulted in a total victory and a nearly $18 million award for those wrongly arrested, detained and fingerprinted.

    • Obama Prepares to Reinforce the Militarized Police Occupation of Black America

      Barack Obama is “responsible for the biggest escalation in the history of the one-sided war against Black America.” He increased militarization of local police 24-fold before banning some kinds of Pentagon weapons transfers, but is now preparing to send more battlefield weaponry to the streets of our cities. “Clinton or Trump will surely build on Obama’s lethal legacy.”

    • Apartheid Israel’s war on water

      Sumaya Awad explains how Israel uses access to the essential resource of water to impose horrific conditions on life for Palestinians in the West Bank.

    • ‘On Contact’ With Chris Hedges: The Big Business of Keeping People in Cages

      On this week’s episode of RT’s “On Contact,” Chris Hedges discusses mass incarceration with prison reform advocates Walter Fortson and Boris Franklin.

      From the school-to-prison pipeline, to solitary confinement, to preventing recidivism, they reflect on their experiences to address how to fix one of today’s major civil rights issues. RT correspondent Anya Parampil also reports on the business of locking people up.

    • Remembering Lenny Bruce, 50 years after his death

      It’s almost 50 years since the death of Lenny Bruce. The groundbreaking comedian died on Aug. 3, 1966 from an overdose of morphine while his New York obscenity conviction was still on appeal. On that same day he received a foreclosure notice at his Los Angeles home.

      But his death was an overdose, not a suicide. In the kitchen, a kettle of water was still boiling, and in his office, the electric typewriter was still humming. He had stopped typing in mid-word: “Conspiracy to interfere with the 4th Amendment const” … constitutes what, I wonder?

      Lenny was a subscriber to my satirical magazine, the Realist, and in 1959 we met for the first time in his Times Square hotel. He was amazed that I got away with publishing those profane words for which other periodicals used asterisks or dashes. He had been using euphemisms and asked, “Are you telling me this is legal to sell on the newsstands?” I replied, “The Supreme Court’s definition of obscenity is that it has to be material which appeals to your prurient interest.”

    • Hillary Clinton is no feminist: Just look at her stance on Palestine

      With Hillary Clinton now running as the Democratic Party’s official nominee, there has been much discussion about the glass ceiling finally shattering now that a woman is running for president on a major party ticket for the first time in US history.

      “I can’t believe we just put the biggest crack in that glass ceiling yet,” she told the convention crowd in Philadelphia last month after she was introduced with shattering glass sound effects.

      But this accolade needs to be qualified on a number of levels.

      Firstly, Senator Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman to be nominated to run for president, at the 1964 Republican National Convention (she eventually lost out to Barry Goldwater).

      And in 1972, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm became the first woman to run for the Democrat nomination. She also broke another barrier, that of being the first black politician to run for president for a major political party.

    • The dangers of exposing corruption in Russia’s jails

      Campaigner Vladimir Osechkin, who has exposed corruption and torture in Russian prisons, fled the country after being targeted by Russia’s secret police. But life outside Russia hasn’t been easy.

    • Police Violence: Peace Isn’t The Priority

      Precisely how did Korryn Gaines die? We don’t know, and probably never will.

      The Baltimore County, Maryland Police Department admits that one of its officers shot her dead on August 1. In fact, the department admits that the officer shot first and that Gaines then returned fire in self-defense and defense of her five-year-old son (no, the department does not use those terms) before being gunned down.

      The police also admit that before forcing their way into Gaines’s apartment and killing her, they went out of their way to ensure their actions would be hidden from public view. The department contacted two social media services, Facebook and Instagram, asking that Gaines’s accounts be disabled so as to cut off her photo and video streams of what was happening. To their everlasting shame, the two firms complied with the request.

    • What Brexit could mean for refugee protection in Britain

      Survivors of Torture and other refugees who came here for protection and a safe recovery environment now worry about their future in this country. For their sake, we need to use this time to work out what we want to fight for within the EU asylum acquis, and what we are willing or even happy to let go. We need to be clear on what trade-offs to support and which ones to prevent. And we need to be ready to exploit the opportunities that present themselves along the way. Only then will we be in a position to effectively influence the course and impact of a withdrawal from the EU to maximise protection for refugees.

    • Turkey’s Constitutional Court stirs outrage by annulling child sex abuse clause

      The Constitutional Court has ruled to annul a provision that punishes all sexual acts against children under the age of 15 as “sexual abuse,” stirring outrage from academics and women’s rights activists who warn that the decision will lead to cases of child abuse going unpunished.

      The Constitutional Court discussed the issue upon an application from a district court, which complained that the current law does not discriminate between age groups in cases of child sexual abuse and treats a 14-year-old as equal to a four-year-old.

      The local court said the law does not provide legal consequences for the “consent” of victims in cases where the child victim is from 12 to 15 years of age and able to understand the meaning of the sexual act. “This creates an imbalance between legal benefits and sanctions that should be preserved in crime and punishment,” the application stated.

      With seven votes against six, the Constitutional Court agreed with the local court and decided to annul the provision. The decision will come into effect on Jan. 13, 2017.

      The local court’s argument and the Constitutional Court’s endorsement have drawn a backlash from academic and human rights circles, which underlined that all individuals under the age of 18 are considered children according to international conventions to which Turkey is a party.

    • Forced underage marriages rise in Switzerland

      The number of forced marriages involving minors has increased significantly in Switzerland, with a specialist Swiss website reporting 119 cases so far this year, compared with fewer than 60 for all of 2015.

      According to zwangsheirat.ch (a website focused on forced marriages) of particular concern is that of the 119 cases, 26 were with girls under the age of 16, most of whom came from Iraq, Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Somalia. This figure is five times the total number reported between 2005 and 2015.

      One case involved a ten-year-old Somali girl at a Swiss school where a social worker discovered that the girl was married, Anu Sivaganesan, president of zwangsheirat.ch, told the NZZ am Sonntag.

    • Iran regime tries to justify the execution of young people

      A notorious torture expert and official of the mullahs’ regime has attempted to justify the executions in Iran of young adults, who were under 18 when they were charged.

      On August 4, Mohammad-Javad Larijani, who in a bizarre twist is the secretary of the Iranian regime’s so-called Human Rights Council, told the regime-affiliated Tasnim News Agency that minors are not executed until they have reached the age of 18.

      Indeed, he blamed Western criticism for bringing this to media attention and suggested that the United Nations take the mullahs’ so-called ‘Islamic laws’ into account when addressing the rights of children in legal cases. He attacked the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran for exposing the regime’s brutal intimidation tactics and bloody history of human rights abuses.

      He said: “Ahmed Shaheed was the least successful choice in case of discussing our human rights. We have never authorized his position and we will not also accept the newly elected person for this position.”

    • “Clock boy” Ahmed Mohamed sues Irving schools, police for wrongful arrest

      Ahmed Mohamed, who was arrested last year after showing a home-made clock to a teacher at his high school, has filed a lawsuit against his former school district, its principal, and the city of Irving, Texas.

      Mohamed’s lawsuit (PDF), filed earlier today, claims that the school district has a history of racial discrimination, and that the treatment he received violated both US civil rights laws and his 14th Amendment right to equal treatment under the law.

    • Is the Fight to End Mass Incarceration Wasting Away in Washington?

      Mass incarceration’s profile as a national issue appears to be on the wane. Throughout 2015, the nation’s over-reliance on imprisonment drew a constant spotlight, producing a plethora of bipartisan policy proposals and expressions of moral outrage in Beltway circles. In March last year, Newt Gingrich and Democrat stalwart Van Jones co-hosted an unprecedented Washington, D.C. conference of nearly 500 key role players billed as a “Bipartisan Summit on Criminal Justice Reform.” The Koch Brothers Foundation teamed up with George Soros’ Open Society forces to sponsor it. Author and formerly incarcerated activist Shaka Senghor spoke, as did Georgia’s Republican governor Nathan Deal. At a moment of great congressional discord, people across the spectrum were finally agreeing on at least one thing: the U.S. was spending too much money on corrections and locking up too many people, especially black folks.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

    • Copyrights

      • The Coming Copyright Fight Over Viral News Videos, Such As Police Shootings

        There are two subjects we write about frequently on Techdirt that we didn’t think would ever have all that much overlap: copyright and people using their mobile phones to record events in real time. This can cover a lot of stuff, but lately it’s been getting extra attention in the world of police shootings and police protests. We didn’t necessarily think these two kinds of stories would overlap very often, but when you’ve got video, you’ve got copyright. Last year, for example, there was a bit of a copyright dustup when the guy who shot the infamous video of Walter Scott being shot in the back by police officer Michael Slager, started demanding to get paid. As we pointed out at the time, news programs using the video were almost certainly protected by fair use.

        And that’s still true. But… eventually this is going to go to courts. And that’s especially true because of the new group of middlemen who are racing to buy up any viral video within hours (or minutes!) of it going viral, and then trying to license it everywhere. If you follow the space, you may have heard of some of these guys: Jukin Media is the most well-known, but there are others like ViralHog, ViralNova and Newsflare. And they don’t seem all that thrilled about this part of the law called fair use.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/08/09/sqlite-3-14/feed/ 0 Links 30/7/2016: Sysadmin Day, Stardew Valley on GNU/Linux http://techrights.org/2016/07/30/sysadmin-day/ http://techrights.org/2016/07/30/sysadmin-day/#comments Sat, 30 Jul 2016 15:34:51 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=94663

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Student survey data shows Open Source training uptake amongst women and young people remains extreme

    Future Cert, the UK and Ireland representative for the LPI (Linux Professional Institute), is calling for more awareness of Open Source software training amongst the under 21s and especially women, which the industry is so desperately in need of.

    New figures from a recent Future Cert student survey reveals that the number of women and young people taking LPI Certification in Open Source computing remains extremely low.

    Of those questioned, 98% were male, and just 2% were female, taking an LPI exam. This figure is significantly less than an already low figure of around 15% to 17% of women in IT careers in general. It raises the question, what does the industry need to do to make an Open Source career attractive to women?

  • Quality in open source: testing CRIU

    Checkpoint/Restore In Userspace, or CRIU, is a software tool for Linux that allows freezing a running application (or part of it) and checkpointing it to disk as a collection of files. The files can then be used to restore and run the application from the point where it was frozen. The distinctive feature of the CRIU project is that it is mainly implemented in user space.

    Back in 2012, when Andrew Morton accepted the first checkpoint/restore (C/R) patches to the Linux kernel, the idea to implement saving and restoring of running processes in user space seemed kind of crazy. Yet, four years later, not only is CRIU working, it has also attracted more and more attention. Before CRIU, there had been other attempts to implement checkpoint/restore in Linux (DMTCP, BLCR, OpenVZ, CKPT, and others), but none were merged into the mainline. Meanwhile CRIU survived, which attests to its viability. Some time ago, I implemented support for the Test Anything Protocol format into the CRIU test runner; creating that patch allowed me to better understand the nature of the CRIU testing process. Now I want to share this knowledge with LWN readers.

    [...]

    The CRIU tests are quite easy to use and available for everyone. Moreover, the CRIU team has a continuous-integration system that consists of Patchwork and Jenkins, which run the required test configurations per-patch and per-commit. Patchwork also allows the team to track the status of patch sets to make the maintainer’s work easier. The developers from the team always keep an eye on regressions. If a commit breaks a tree, the patches in question will not be accepted.

  • Open-source Wire messenger gets encrypted screen-sharing

    Chat app Wire has been rapidly adding feature as of late as it looks to gain some traction against the myriad of competitors out there. The latest trick in its arsenal is screen sharing.

    Now you can click on the new screen-sharing button to, well, share your screen during a call (if you’re on a desktop, that is). It works during group chats too and, as with all Wire communications, is encrypted end-to-end. Wire believes it’s the first messaging app to include end-to-end encryption.

  • SPI board election results are available

    Software in the Public Interest (SPI) has completed its 2016 board elections. There were two open seats on the board in addition to four board members whose terms were expiring. The six newly elected members of the board are Luca Filipozzi, Joerg Jaspert, Jimmy Kaplowitz, Andrew Tridgell, Valerie Young, and Martin Zobel-Helas. The full results, including voter statistics, are also available.

  • Events

    • SFK 2016 – Call for Speakers

      Software Freedom Kosova is an annual international conference in Kosovo organized to promote free/libre open source software, free culture and open knowledge, now in its 7th edition. It is organized by FLOSSK, a non governmental, not for profit organization, dedicated to promote software freedom and related philosophies.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GIMP 2.9.4 and our vision for GIMP future

      So you may have heard the news: we recently released a new development version of GIMP, version 2.9.4 (as well as a bugfix release 2.8.18, but this is not as awesome).

  • Licensing/Legal

    • On the boundaries of GPL enforcement

      Last October, the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and Free Software Foundation (FSF) jointly published “The Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement”. That document described what those organizations believe the goal of enforcement efforts should be and how those efforts should be carried out. Several other organizations endorsed the principles, including the netfilter project earlier this month. It was, perhaps, a bit puzzling that the project would make that endorsement at that time, but a July 19 SFC blog post sheds some light on the matter.

      There have been rumblings for some time about a kernel developer doing enforcement in Germany that might not be particularly “community-oriented”, but public information was scarce. Based on the blog post by Bradley Kuhn and Karen Sandler, though, it would seem that Patrick McHardy, who worked on netfilter, is the kernel developer in question. McHardy has also recently been suspended from the netfilter core team pending his reply to “severe allegations” with regard to “the style of his license enforcement activities”.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Big Food’s Win Over GMO Labeling Bill Shows Failure of Democracy

      In 2014, Vermont passed the first legislation in the U.S. to require labeling of foods containing genetically engineered ingredients. A year earlier, Connecticut and Maine passed GMO labeling bills though these were dependent on several other states passing similar laws.

    • Did Their Backs Hurt Your Knives?

      For the first-time ever, the platform of a major political party includes an explicit call to repeal the Hyde Amendment, a federal law that has denied eligible poor and low-income women coverage for abortion care for nearly four decades. This has anti-abortion democrats saying they have been betrayed.

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Finland beefs up arms exports to Middle East

      Over the last 18 months, Finland’s Ministry of Defence has awarded domestic companies 50 permits to sell weapons to countries in the Middle East. Finland is currently supplying arms to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, for example, both of which have recently bombed civilian targets in Yemen.

    • U.S. Awards $1.7 Billion Contract to Buy Radios for Afghan Army

      I always found myself giggling during the Democratic debates when Hillary would ask Bernie how he was going to pay for things like healthcare or college tuition, and then Bernie stammering to find an answer.

    • Do Civilisations Really Have to Clash?

      We are living in a world when it is normal to think that civilisations are incompatible and have to clash with each other. But this is a perversion of the truth as Dr. Paul Craig Roberts points out.

    • Hillary Clinton and Her Hawks

      Focusing on domestic issues, Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech sidestepped the deep concerns anti-war Democrats have about her hawkish foreign policy, which is already taking shape in the shadows, reports Gareth Porter.

    • The Fallacy of ‘Regime Change’ Strategies

      “Regime change” or destabilizing sanctions are Official Washington’s policy options of choice in dealing with disfavored nations, but these aggressive strategies have proved harmful and counterproductive, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

    • Intervention Fail: ISIS Makes Bloody Gains in Post ‘Liberation’ Afghanistan

      Shortly after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 1996 (their rise to power itself a result of the 1979 Soviet intervention in Afghanistan), we began to hear endless stories of the horrors of this student movement turned governing power. They ruled by Sharia law, they treated women badly, they even blew up ancient statues!

      The US rhetoric against the Taliban began long before the attacks of 9/11 (which were carried out largely by Saudis who trained in Afghanistan with the knowledge of the Taliban). But it was the 9/11 attacks that opened the door to a direct US intervention in Afghanistan.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • From Kalamazoo to Husky, Parallel Pipeline Disasters

      There are many parallels between last week’s heavy oil spill from a Husky Energy pipeline in Saskatchewan and the Enbridge pipeline rupture in Kalamazoo Michigan almost exactly six years ago.

      Both ruptures occurred while control room staff were restarting the flow in the pipelines.

      In both cases, “anomalies” were indicated by computers systems monitoring the pipelines.

      In both cases, the companies failed to interpret the “anomalies” as leaks.

      In both cases, significant periods of time elapsed before the companies were made aware of the leaks by members of the public seeing the oil floating down river. 17 hours for Enbridge, 14 hours for Husky.

      In both cases, diluents had been added to the pipeline to facilitate pumping.

      In both cases, emergency responses were inadequate to deal with the quantity spilled and the conditions on the rivers the spills flowed into.

    • David Perry on Disabilities and Police Violence, Harvey Wasserman on Nuclear vs. Renewables

  • Finance

    • Hedge-Fund Money: $48.5 Million for Hillary Clinton, $19,000 for Donald Trump

      Hedge funds are playing a far bigger role in 2016 than in past elections—and Hillary Clinton has been the single biggest beneficiary.

    • Facebook could face extra $5bn tax bill after US investigation

      Facebook could be liable to pay between $3 to $5bn in extra US tax after an extensive investigation by the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) into the way the tech company transferred assets to Ireland.

      The tax agency has been exploring whether Facebook deliberately deployed complex financial processes designed to minimize the amount of US tax it paid.

    • Amazon boss Bezos becomes world’s third richest

      Strong earnings from Amazon and a boost to the company’s stock have made its founder, Jeff Bezos, the world’s third richest person, according to Forbes.

      Mr Bezos owns 18% of Amazon’s shares, which rose 2% in trading on Thursday. Forbes estimated his fortune to be $65.3bn (£49.5bn).

    • Why Make Something When Nothing Sells Just as Well?

      It’s a fundamental law of nature… or at least nature legislation: For every action that the government takes to protect the natural environment, there is a cleverly corrupt reaction. An investigation by Bloomberg Businessweek profiled an extraordinary case of fraud that exploited the Renewable Fuel Standard program, which President George W. Bush signed into law in 2005. That’s what he gets for trying to lessen our dependence on foreign oil… sucker!

    • Challenges and opportunities of the unbanked and under-banked

      Talking about access to appropriate and affordable finance is one thing but what happens when people reject those banks? What happens if some consumers never feel banks can provide for them?

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Jill Stein is not Ralph Nader 2.0; she is much, much better. She can win. Here’s why

      Progressives in America aren’t happy. In fact, for the first time in recent memory, progressives are finally good and angry at the political establishment. Leak after leak, lawsuit after lawsuit, the facts just keep rolling in like so many punches, again and again exposing how the DNC methodically shut out and shut down the first candidate many of them had gotten excited about in years. Thousands of man hours and millions of dollars, many of those dollars pinched from the tightest of household budgets, poured into what turned out to be a totally rigged election. Ouch.

    • Trump: A vote for the Green Party helps me
    • Democratic National Committee Claims That Wikileaks Has ‘Malware Embedded Throughout The Site’

      We’ve seen various organizations impacted by Wikileaks come up with all sorts of excuses and claims about why people shouldn’t use the site, but “the site is embedded with malware” is a new one. It also seems hellishly unlikely. It’s the kind of thing that someone would discover and it would destroy whatever credibility Wikileaks has left. I guess anything is possible, but this sounds like the DNC freaking out over the leaks and trying to spread bogus rumors in the hopes that it will get people to stop looking at their leaked files.

    • Julian Assange: We have more material on Clinton

      WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange speaks with CNN’s Anderson Cooper about his organization releasing hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee.

    • Cool Catchphrase, Hillary, But Science Isn’t About Belief

      On Thursday night, Hillary Clinton made history when she became the first woman to lead a major presidential ticket. In a speech filled with reminders of her experience and her plans for reform, one remark stood out: “I believe in science!” she said, chuckling. “I believe climate change is real, and that we can save our planet while creating millions of good paying clean energy jobs.”

      Delegates filling the convention hall in Philadelphia roared in approval. Pockets of Twitter, too. Just as quickly, though, reactions turned cynical: How awful it is, in this day and age, that a presidential candidate must say she believes in science? In the retelling, Clinton’s laugh became a nod to the absurdity of the moment.

    • How a cooked Assange quote ended up media gospel

      Wikileaks, the clearing house for state secrets, seems more about founder Julian Assange’s grudges these days: especially the one for Hillary Clinton. Much fuss was made over a quote—that he had “enough evidence” to guarantee an indictment of her—that was widely attributed to him. It turns out, though, that the quote doesn’t check out: most point to a mangled interview on the UK’s ITV where it isn’t even said. Jesse Singal set out to track down a source that no-one bothered to verify. It’s a surprisingly tantalizing and teasing journey, but the tl;dr seems to be that the quote was originally fabricated by the blog Zero Hedge.

    • THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY NO LONGER EXISTS

      The Democratic Party that once was concerned with workers’ rights, the elderly, civil rights, and the constitutional protections of America liberty no longer exists. As the just completed Democratic presidential primaries and the Democratic presidential convention have clearly demonstrated, the United States now has two Republican parties in service to the One Percent.

      The organized Democrats–the Democratic National Committee–have shown themselves to be even more venal and corrupt than the Republicans. Leaked emails document that the Democratic National Committee conspired with the Hillary campaign in order to steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders. It is clear that Sanders was the choice of Democratic Party voters for president, but the nomination was stolen from him by vote fraud and dirty tricks.

      The DNC and the media whores have tried to discredit the incriminating emails by alleging that the leaked emails resulted from a plot by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in behalf of “Putin’s American agent,” Donald Trump. “A vote for Trump is a vote for Putin,” as the presstitute scum put it.

    • Obama Said Hillary will Continue His Legacy and Indeed She Will!

      Leading up to Monday’s Democratic Party convention, Hillary chose Blue Dog Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia as her VP. This was followed by the Wikileaks release of Democratic National Committee (DNC) e-mail files showing it acting as the Clinton Campaign Committee even to the point of using the same lawyers as her own campaign to oppose Bernie Sanders.

      The response across the Democratic neocon spectrum, from Anne Applebaum at the Washington Post to red-baiting Paul Krugman and the Sunday talk shows it was suggested that behind the Wikileaks to release DNC e-mails was a Russian plot to help elect Trump as their agent. Former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul lent his tattered reputation to claim that Putin must have sponsored the hackers who exposed the DNC dirty tricks against Bernie.

      The attack on Trump was of course aimed at Sanders. At first it didn’t take off. Enough delegates threatened to boo DNC head (and payday-loan lobbyist) Debbie Wasserman Schultz off stage if she showed her face at the podium to gavel the convention to order. The down-note would have threatened the “United Together” theme, so she was forced to resign. But Hillary rewarded her loyalty by naming her honorary chairman of her own presidential campaign! If you’re loyal, you get a pay-off. The DNC was doing what it was supposed to do. No reform seems likely.

    • Sheriff Arpaio Paved the Way for Trump

      Before there was Donald Trump and his promise of a “beautiful wall” across the U.S.-Mexican border there was Sheriff Joe Arpaio from Arizona who pushed cruel treatment of illegal immigrants and other Latinos, reports Dennis J Bernstein.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • How California’s Identity Fraud Law Has Been Interpreted To Criminalize Defamation, Publicity Rights Violations And More

      Eugene Volokh has a somewhat terrifying look at how very broad interpretations of California’s identity fraud law, California Penal Code § 530.5(a) has been so broadly interpreted by the courts that it, in effect, creates a crime out of things that were normally considered, at best, civil offenses. This includes defamation, publicity rights infringements and disclosure of private facts. He discusses a few cases, but focuses on a key one that we’ve mentioned: the state of California’s recent legal win over Kevin Bollaert, a revenge porn creep. In our writeup, we were mainly concerned with how the ruling seemed to run against Section 230′s protections, but as Volokh makes clear, it’s much, much worse than that.

    • The West Kowtows to China Through Self-Censorship

      Human rights lawyer Teng Biao was commisioned to write a book reflecting on his 11 years as a rights activist in China for the American Bar Association in 2014. Last year, the ABA informed Teng that they would not be publishing the book over “concern that we run the risk of upsetting the Chinese government.” The ABA subsequently denied that as the reason for the cancellation, leading to protest from the China-focused legal rights community.

    • Melbourne graffiti artist Lushsux’s Instagram account deleted in ‘politically-motivated censorship’

      MARIBRYNONG City Council has declared that a large mural depicting US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a skimpy stars and stripes bathing suit must go.

      The huge mural is on the side of the Mr Mobility store in Footscray.

      The owner is away but a friend looking after his small business, Mitch, said she strongly disagreed with the council’s stance.

      “It’s art,” she said.

      “I can’t see any problem with someone expressing themselves with art. I think it’s a wonderful thing.”

      Mitch said far more offensive images could be found on the streets, yet they were not removed.

      “I’m a woman and I’m not offended by it. It’s just a one piece bathing suit with large breasts but the nipples and private parts are covered.”

    • Removal of Repeal the Eighth mural shows that censorship cuts both ways
    • New Tool to Help Notify Users When Their Content is Taken Offline

      When user content is threatened with removal from the Internet, it’s unlikely that anyone is going to put up more of a fight than the user who uploaded it. That’s what makes it so critically important that the user is informed whenever an Internet intermediary is asked to remove their content from its platform, or decides to do so on its own account.

      Unfortunately this doesn’t consistently happen. In the case of content taken down for copyright infringement under the DMCA or its foreign equivalents, the law typically requires the user to be informed. But for content that allegedly infringes other laws (such as defamation, privacy, hate speech, or obscenity laws), or content that isn’t alleged to be illegal but merely against the intermediary’s terms of service, there is often no requirement that the user be informed, and some intermediaries don’t make a practice of doing so.

      Another problem is that even when intermediaries do pass on notices about allegedly illegal content to the user who uploaded it, this notice might be inaccurate or incomplete. This led to the situtation in Canada where ISPs were passing on misleading notices from US-based rightsholders, falsely threatening Canadian users with penalties that are not even applicable under Canadian law.

    • OPINION: Why Taylor Swift’s Instagram Censorship COULD Be A Problem For Free Speech

      But first, a caveat. The tweet was slightly misleading. It may have implied that Taylor Swift was herself somehow violating the law on free speech, which, I agree, would be odd and not really possible within our current legal system. But I said ‘violate free speech principles’ for a reason. Principles are not law. In this context, they are the idea behind a law, the reason that law exists, while not being legally enforceable themselves.

    • Te Bitcoin Subreddit Censorship Debate Reignited by Roger Ver?
    • Coinbase and Reddit CEOs Discuss Removal of Theymos as Moderator of Bitcoin Subreddit

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The RCMP Is Trying to Sneak Facial and Tattoo Recognition Into Canada

      In November of 2015, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had a problem.

      At the time, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation had been using its massively controversial database of biometric information—photos of people’s faces, tattoos, iris scans, and more—at “full operational capacity” for about a year. The RCMP, on the other hand, was stuck with a national fingerprint database that didn’t allow officers to scan and search people’s faces or other body parts. Canada’s federal police force was falling behind its southern counterpart.

      The RCMP had “no authority” to support new capabilities for its nationwide Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS, according to an internal presentation from November 24 of 2015 that Motherboard obtained through an access to information request. Still, the police felt a pressing need to improve “interoperability with international partner systems”—in other words, to make sure their system meshed with what police in other countries were doing—but lacked an opportunity to do so.

      Undeterred, the RCMP went ahead and began working to procure a new AFIS system that could analyze and capture faces, fingerprints, palm prints, tattoos, scars, and irises—all without clear authorization or approval by the country’s federal privacy watchdog, or even a plan to implement it.

      So, yeah, the RCMP is trying to bring biometric identification to Canada without anybody noticing.

    • How synced can (and should) NSA and CIA be on cyber? [Ed: Loaded headline from this Microsoft-connected propaganda network]
    • ExpressVPN protects your on-line anonymity and privacy

      This post reviews ExpressVPN, a hosted Virtual Private Network (VPN) service. A hosted VPN service is a paid subscription service. With a VPN, all your Internet communication is encrypted and passed through a secure proxy (the VPN server) before continuing to the intended destination. To the rest of the world, the Internet traffic appears to come from the VPN server, not your home computer.

    • Smartwatch Shipments Slipped in Q2 Amid Slowing Demand [Ed: mass surveillance/mass collection devices/facilitators]
    • Enterprise Wearables: 35 Top Picks
    • Smartphone Market Flattens Out
    • IoT Security and Privacy: An Afterthought?

      Security and privacy are widely identified as major concerns for the Internet of Things (IoT), but few people discuss them in any detail.

      An exception is Jim Hunter, chief scientist and technology evangelist at Greenwaves Systems, a provider of IoT software and services. Holding several IoT-related patents and a co-chair on the Internet of Things Consortium, he works regularly with the security and privacy concerns that are often acknowledged only in passing.

      While security and privacy are often discussed in the same breath, Hunter views them as at least partly separate. According to Hunter, security concerns center on how software and hardware are designed. Too often, security is an afterthought — or as Hunter puts it, “it’s not baked into the product, but is instead sprinkled on top.”

      By contrast, he says privacy problems exist “because of the ‘I’ in Iot. “When I put information into my web browser, it brings value to someone else — this is the way that the Internet runs and the agreement we have with it. By keeping ‘Internet’ in front of ‘Internet of Things, we’re enabling companies to think things will continue to work in the same way. Companies are taking your information to the cloud and then using it to make their product(s) better or selling it to other people. The mentality that your data doesn’t have value is where the problem exists.”

      Both security and privacy problems could have been foreseen, Hunter continues — and in some larger companies, they were. But smaller companies often overlook them. “The industry itself hasn’t really been educated to the importance of security,” he says, although he adds that “the tide is turning,” partly because of platforms that offer secure infrastructure, such as Parse on Facebook and Fabric on Twitter.

    • 75 Top IoT Devices
    • 20 Russian high-profile organizations attacked by spy malware in coordinated op – FSB

      Computer networks of some 20 Russian state, defense, scientific and other high-profile organizations have been infected with malware used for cyberespionage, the Russian Security Service (FSB) reported, describing it as a professionally coordinated operation.

      “The IT assets of government offices, scientific and military organizations, defense companies and other parts of the nation’s crucial infrastructure were infected,” the FSB said in a statement as cited by the Russian media.

      The security agency said that all the cases are linked and appear to be part of a well-coordinated attack requiring considerable expertise. The coding of the malware and vectors of attack are similar to those used in previous cyber-offensive operations against targets in Russia and other nations, the report stated.

    • NSA Whistleblower Skeptical of US-EU Privacy Shield to ‘Paper Over’ Spying

      NSA whistleblower Mark Klein said that the latest US-EU agreement aimed at protecting European data privacy standards may appear to be a reform, but will unlikely change expansive US surveillance practices.

    • British Spies Used a URL Shortener to Honeypot Arab Spring Dissidents [iophk: "url shorteners, sock-puppet Twitter accounts"]

      A shadowy unit of the British intelligence agency GCHQ tried to influence online activists during the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests and the 2011 democratic uprisings largely known as the Arab Spring, as new evidence gathered from documents leaked by Edward Snowden shows.

      The GCHQ’s special unit, known as the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group or JTRIG, was first revealed in 2014, when leaked top secret documents showed it tried to infiltrate and manipulate—using “dirty trick” tactics such as honeypots—online communities including those of Anonymous hacktivists, among others.

      The group’s tactics against hacktivists have been previously reported, but its influence campaign in the Middle East has never been reported before. I was able to uncover it because I was myself targeted in the past, and was aware of a key detail, a URL shortening service, that was actually redacted in Snowden documents published in 2014.

    • LulzSec Member Reveals More Details About GCHQ Covert Operations

      Mustafa Al-Bassam, aka tFlow, co-founder of the LulzSec hacking crew, published today more details about how the GCHQ used the covert Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) to attack hacktivism crews, but also that they tried to influence elections in Iran and boost and help the Arab Spring uprising in Syria.

    • WhatsApp Forensic Artifacts: Chats Aren’t Being Deleted

      To test, I installed the app and started a few different threads. I then archived some, cleared, some, and deleted some threads. I made a second backup after running the “Clear All Chats” function in WhatsApp. None of these deletion or archival options made any difference in how deleted records were preserved. In all cases, the deleted SQLite records remained intact in the database.

      Just to be clear, WhatsApp is deleting the record (they don’t appear to be trying to intentionally preserve data), however the record itself is not being purged or erased from the database, leaving a forensic artifact that can be recovered and reconstructed back into its original form.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Attorney for Man With Autism Urges DOJ to Investigate North Miami Police Shooting

      An attorney for a man with autism who was placed in a psychiatric unit after witnessing another man get shot by a police officer is urging the Department of Justice to investigate the North Miami Police and state of Florida.

      Matthew Dietz, the attorney for Arnaldo Rios, wrote a letter Monday to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, claiming that Rios was placed in a facility “inappropriate for his needs” after the shooting. The Arc, a national organization that advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, sent a letter to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division on Thursday in support of Dietz’s request for an investigation. Arc said “it is vital that Mr. Rios secures an appropriate community placement as soon as possible.”

    • After Cracking Down On Tens Of Thousands Of Enemies, Erdogan Says He’s Dropping His 2000 Lawsuits Over Insults

      For the last few months we’ve poked fun at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has ridiculously thin skin. As we noted, he had filed upwards of 100 lawsuits per month against people for “insulting” him — and this included things as ridiculous as posting a meme on social media that compared Erdogan to Gollum.

      Of course, more recently (as you’ve heard) there was a coup attempt in Turkey, which failed, and Erdogan has spent the last few weeks basically using the coup as an excuse to crush all his enemies.

    • NYPD Dodges Another Legislative Attempt To Inject Accountability And Transparency Into Its Daily Work

      Law enforcement officers are pretty used to being able to stop nearly anyone and demand to know who they are and what they’re doing. Sure, there are plenty of laws that say they can’t actually do that, but the public is generally underinformed about their rights, and this works in cops’ favor. As a recent Appeals Court decision pointed out, citizens are “free to refuse to cooperate with police before a seizure.”

      Obviously, this perfectly legal act of noncompliance just won’t do, and it certainly won’t be cops pointing out to citizens the rights they have available to them. New York City legislators thought they could force this transparency on the NYPD.

    • Security Researchers Sued For Exposing Internet Filtering Company’s Sale Of Censorship Software To Blacklisted Country

      Rather than meet the situation head on, Netsweeper chose to hang back and lob a lawsuit at Citizen Lab after it published its report. Fortunately for the security researchers, Netsweeper has chosen to drop its lawsuit entirely, possibly because pursuing the questionable defamation claims would have put it up against Ontarios’s version of anti-SLAPP laws: the Protection of Public Participation Act.

      The world of security research is still a dangerous place. When researchers aren’t being arrested for reporting on their findings, they’re being sued for exposing security flaws and highly-questionable behavior. It’s a shame there aren’t more built-in protections for researchers, who tend to receive a lot of legal heat just for doing their job.

    • Yavuz Baydar: Tough times ahead for Turkey

      The latest journalist arrested in Turkey is Arda Akın, a young reporter with the Hürriyet daily, part of the “mainstream” Doğan Media Group. Arda was in the “first” arrest list, issued on Monday, which mainly consisted of investigative reporters. In May, he was among those who won the European Union Investigative Journalism Award 2016, a prestigious prize delivered every year in six Balkan countries and Turkey. In his award-winning article, Akın told of corruption related to ruling Justice and Development Party figures.

    • Body-camera video shows fatal police shooting in Ariz.

      Body-camera footage released by the city of Winslow on Wednesday shows the seconds leading up to the fatal shooting of a 27-year-old Navajo woman by a Winslow police officer, with the woman advancing toward the officer with a pair of silver scissors in her left hand.

      The video footage from March 27 shows the encounter between Loreal Tsingine and Officer Austin Shipley. Tsingine’s death on Easter Sunday drew an immediate outcry in the city and strained relations between the city and Native Americans. The Navajo Reservation borders Winslow.

      A shooting investigation was conducted by the Arizona Department of Public Safety, which was reviewed by Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery. He announced Friday that no charges would be filed against Shipley.

      The footage released Wednesday does not have audio initially. It shows Shipley leaving his patrol vehicle to encounter Tsingine, who is a suspect in a convenience-store shoplifting that had occurred minutes before. His hand movements indicate that he is giving her orders to stop and to turn around.

      He attempts to grab her hands when she turns back to face him, and Shipley takes Tsingine to the ground. As she gets up, a pair of silver scissors can be seen in her left hand.

    • ‘It’s Been Harrowing’: Alleged Hacker Lauri Love Awaits Extradition Decision

      Early in the evening of 25 October 2013, a man dressed as a UPS delivery guy arrived at Lauri Love’s family home in Suffolk holding a box. When Love’s mum answered the door, she was told that only her son could sign for the delivery. She called him downstairs, and when he emerged wearing his dressing gown, he was told that the man was in fact an officer of the National Crime Agency, and that he was being arrested on suspicion of hacking into a long list of systems, including those controlled by the US Federal Reserve, NASA, and the FBI. Love asked if he still got to keep the box.

      Almost three years later, on 25 July 2016, 31-year-old Love and his parents were at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London for the final arguments in his extradition hearing. Judge Nina Tempia is hearing the case, and will rule on 16 September as to whether the UK will allow Love to be extradited to the US where he would face three separate trials in New York, New Jersey, and Virginia.

      “It’s been harrowing, this whole process,” said Love, speaking to me a couple of days later. “The US didn’t even really make any arguments, they were just casting doubt on the evidence from us.”

    • YouTubers use FGM ‘cuts’ to help raise awareness

      There are at least 200 million women and girls alive today in 30 countries that have undergone female genital mutilation.

      44 million of those who have undergone the procedure, typically performed on children under the age of five, are still younger than 14.

      The procedure is rooted in patriarchal notions of purity, modesty and appearance; but health effects include infections, chronic pain, infertility, complications during menstruation and childbirth and potentially fatal vaginal bleeding.

      Only a third of British adults are aware of these long-term effects according to new research by ActionAid UK and ActionAid Kenya.

    • Mix and Match Cyber-Priorities Likely Elevates Gut Check To National Level

      The PPD integrates response to cyberattacks with the existing PPD on responding to physical incidents, which is necessary (actually, the hierarchy should probably be reversed, as our physical infrastructure is in shambles) but is also scary because there’s a whole lot of executive branch authority that gets asserted in such things.

      And the PPD sets out clear roles for responding to cyberattacks: “threat response” (investigating) is the FBI’s baby; “asset response” (seeing the bigger picture) is DHS’s baby; “intelligence support” (analysis) is ODNI’s baby, with lip service to the importance of keeping shit running, whether within or outside of the federal government.

    • When Black Lives Surely Didn’t Matter

      Many whites counter the Black Lives Matter movement with the rejoinder “all lives matter,” a way of ignoring the ugly American history of torturing, shooting and lynching blacks, as Gary G. Kohls recalls, citing two notorious cases.

    • We, The Heart of Our Democracy

      If you just couldn’t watch Hillary – and we get it – you might have missed the electrifying call by Rev. William Barber, head of North Carolina’s NAACP and leader of its Moral Mondays, to embrace “a moral revolution of values” and continue fighting for progressives causes. Barber urged his audience to take action to stop gun violence and police brutality, to support voting rights and Black Lives Matter, to make universal health care and a $15 minimum wage a reality for all. “Some issues are not left versus right or liberal versus conservative – they are right versus wrong,” he said. Pointedly citing Jesus, “a brown-skinned Palestinian Jew” – and only briefly referencing Clinton – Barber proclaimed, “We must shock this nation with the power of love. We must shock this nation with the power of mercy. We must shock this nation and fight for justice for all. We can’t give up on the heart of our democracy. Not now, not ever.” He left the crowd, lit up and on its exhilarated feet, with, “Lead with love…Find the glory.” Amen. And no, it’s not over.

    • Report: Fox News Allegedly Paid $3.15 Million Settlement to Woman Claiming Roger Ailes Sexually Harassed Her

      Over the course of the last three weeks, a steady stream of women have come forward detailing their accounts of alleged sexual harassment at the hands of former Fox News chief Roger Ailes. Ailes, who has firmly denied all allegations of wrongdoing, stepped down from his top position at the network last week, after longtime host Gretchen Carlson sued him for what she claimed was years of inappropriate behavior and retaliation for not complying with his advances.

      A number of women followed suit, sharing accounts of alleged interactions with Ailes that occurred over the span of the last half-century. Most notably, Fox News star Megyn Kelly reportedly told investigators hired by 21st Century Fox that Ailes had sexually harassed her a decade ago when she was just starting out (Ailes denied this, as well, saying that he helped her career tremendously).

      The most recent alleged account of sexual harassment by Ailes is particularly disturbing. On Friday afternoon, New York published a story about a former Fox News employee that details more than 20 years of what she called “psychological torture,” including allegations that Ailes paid her for sex, that he taped their encounters as a means of keeping her silent, and that he used promotions within Fox News as a way to keep their relationship secret.

      Laurie Luhn, who served as Fox News’s director of booking, told New York that she got in touch with the law firm conducting 21st Century Fox’s investigation, claiming that she had been harassed by Ailes since 1991 and that Fox News executives were not only aware of their relationship, but also helped cover it up.

    • ‘A Travesty’: Chelsea Manning Faces New Charges After Suicide Attempt

      U.S. whistleblower Chelsea Manning may face additional charges and solitary confinement relating to a suicide attempt earlier this month, according to her attorneys.

      The charges include “resisting the force cell move team,” “conduct which threatens,” and “prohibited property,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said Thursday. If convicted, Manning could face an additional nine years on her sentence, indefinite solitary confinement, and placement back into maximum security. She may also lose any chances of parole.

      Manning is currently serving 35 years at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas military prison for helping WikiLeaks expose classified government and U.S. military documents in 2010. She confirmed her suicide attempt on July 8 after several days of being kept out of contact with her defense team.

    • Trump’s Bigotry Reminds US Media of Anywhere but Home

      Donald Trump is an objectively terrifying candidate. He’s a racist, a xenophobe and a misogynist (in a surprisingly underrated manner). He dabbles in antisemitism and mocks his opponents like a middle school bully.

      However, in their effort to critique Trump in a way that is “relatable” and generates clicks, corporate media all too often turn to lazy orientalist tropes and patriotic schlock to “other” him without having to do the messy work of ideological analysis, or running the risk of offending America’s nationalist sensibilities…

    • Technical Response to Northpointe

      Northpointe asserts that a software program it sells that predicts the likelihood a person will commit future crimes is equally fair to black and white defendants. We re-examined the data, considered the company’s criticisms, and stand by our conclusions.

    • ProPublica Responds to Company’s Critique of Machine Bias Story

      Northpointe asserts that a software program it sells that predicts the likelihood a person will commit future crimes is equally fair to black and white defendants. We re-examined the data, considered the company’s criticisms, and stand by our conclusions.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Comcast: The Economics Of Offering Cheaper, Better Streaming TV Service ‘Unproven’

      As cable operators consolidate and AT&T and Verizon continue to hang up on millions of unwanted DSL customers they don’t want to upgrade, cable’s monopoly control over the U.S. broadband market is actually stronger than ever. In most markets, cable broadband’s “competition” still consists of either a cash-strapped telco incapable of offering speeds greater than 6 Mbps, or no competition at all. That’s why we’ve seen Comcast rush to impose usage caps on many of these captive markets; an effort to protect legacy TV revenues from Internet video — a move only made possible by a lack of competition.

      Despite this lack of competition, Comcast has at least flirted with the idea of adapting to streaming competition and offering a cheaper, more flexible streaming TV option of its own. About a year ago the company launched a product creatively-dubbed “Stream,” which for $15 a month offers Comcast broadband customers access to its traditional cable service. But despite the company’s promise that every market would see this service by the end of 2016, the rollout of this product appears to have stalled, in large part because it appears Comcast only wanted to appear innovative.

    • Comcast’s Still Not Sure There’s Any Money In This Whole “Streaming” Thing

      You might have heard that it’s 2016, and streaming your TV via the internet is all the rage. And yet despite being just as susceptible to cord-cutters as anyone (everyone) else, Comcast is still not thinking the whole streaming-TV thing is a moneymaker.

      In the company’s quarterly investor call this week (transcript), Comcast executives faced many questions about over-the-top (broadband) TV. And they were… less than enthusiastic.

      Neil Smit, the CEO of Comcast Cable (as opposed to the whole Comcast company), told investors that, “We haven’t seen an OTT model that really is very profitable for us.”

    • Blizzard withdrawing support for IPv6?

      It seems that once again Blizzard have their IPv6 connectivity for World of Warcraft not working properly. I opened a ticket and explained the issue in detail. The connectivity issue is entirely in their network. My guess is, as they seem to be using SLAAC addresses, they have simply failed to update addresses when they changed hardware and MAC. That is only a guess though.

      The impact – I could not log in to play the game for several days. I assumed they had a fault or were busy and to be honest, given that I use IPv6 for almost everything I do (google, Facebook, all A&A web sites and internal systems) and have done for about 14 years, it did not even occur to me to check if turning off IPv6 would fix it for a while. These days I rarely play, but have been off ill for a few days and though I may have a game or two.

    • Mysterious firm pays £135m for .web domain

      A MYSTERY BUSINESS called Nu Dot Co has paid a rather sizeable $135m for the right to the .web generic top-level domain (gTLD).

      The firm beat off competition from the likes of Google and web registry firms Afilias, Radix and Donuts, so it clearly means business.

      The auction went ahead despite calls from others involved that the mystery surrounding Nu Dot Co meant that ICANN, the organisation selling the gTLD, could not satisfy the condition that it must know who, or what, controls the gTLD after auction.

      However, ICANN hurriedly dismissed the claim and proceeded with the auction.

      Akram Atallah, president of ICANN’s Global Domains Division, explained that the auction process was the fairest way to allocate the domain.

      “New gTLD Program auctions are the community-established, last resort method to help determine which applicant will have the opportunity to operate a particular new gTLD when multiple entities vie for the same or confusingly similar domains,” he said.

      “We look forward to seeing the community’s recommendations for the use of these proceeds.”

    • First Aereo, Now FilmOn: Another Fight for Innovation and Competition in TV Technology

      For over four years, major TV producers like Comcast, Viacom, Fox, Time Warner, and Disney, along with TV station owners like Comcast, Fox, Disney, and Sinclair, and cable companies like–well, Comcast–have fought in court to shut down new services that deliver local broadcast TV via the Internet. In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled that one of those services, Aereo, performed a function that was so similar to a traditional cable system that, like a cable system, it needed permission from copyright holders for the TV programs it transmitted.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Mr Justice Arnold refers questions on Article 3(b) SPC Regulation to CJEU

      What do you do if your patent is about to expire, but despite notice that Member States have agreed to grant your marketing authorization (MA) under the decentralized procedure, a MS has not yet taken the step to actually grant it? You still make your SPC application, of course.

    • Trademarks

      • Book Review: Trade Secret Protection

        As Cook notes in the introduction, “Trade secrets have only grudgingly started to form an accepted part of the world intellectual property order since TRIPs.” I’m really pleased to see more work on trade secrets. Certainly this book will appeal to the reader eager to access synopses of trade secret protection in key jurisdictions, and in particular non-English speaking ones where information may be less readily accessible. There isn’t an index, which I would have liked to have seen as it would enable cross-country comparison. However, most readers will be looking for jurisdiction-specific information, and the book’s standard chapter format and organisation by country will satisfy that need.

    • Copyrights

      • BitTorrent is fifteen years old. What would a file sharing technology developed today look like?

        BitTorrent was developed in 2001: today’s file-sharing technology predates the launch of Facebook, Twitter, and the iPhone. In those fifteen years, surveillance and repression technologies have advanced massively. If we designed file sharing today to keep up with these developments, sharing technology would be an uncensorable, untrackable, and unidentifiable peer-to-peer mesh network between mobile devices.

        Ten years ago, activists argued that file sharing was unstoppable and would adapt to any threat using mobile transmissions. However, this innovation hasn’t taken place, maybe out of a lack of urgency. Let’s examine how such a technology could work.

      • Gotta catch ‘em all without infringing copyright: Pokémon and Freedom of Panorama

        Pokémon Go requires players to search for Pokémon in the real world, a revolutionary move in the gaming industry. Pokémon are randomly generated by the game software, using GPS tracking technology. When a player is near to a Pokémon, it will appear on her phone screen in camera mode and allow her to ‘throw’ a Pokéball at it to ‘catch’ it. The screen shows the Pokémon in the surrounding environment, making it a life-like experience. While photographs of the capture are not saved to the game, players have the option of saving the photos to their phone, thereby reproducing any surrounding works of architecture or sculptures.

      • The Selfie-Taking Monkey Who Has No Idea He Has Lawyers Has Appealed His Copyright Lawsuit

        Welp. Here we go again. For many, many years, we’ve been tracking the insane legal situation of the selfie-taking monkey, whose name we were told only recently is “Naruto.” Early on in this saga, back in 2011, our focus was on how the photographer whose camera was used, David Slater, had no legitimate claim to the copyright in the image, in large part because the copyright goes to whoever took the photo, and the copyright cannot go to a monkey, because copyright law is limited to “persons.” Every so often Slater would pop up somewhere or somehow and yell about this — twice representatives of his even threatened us with completely bogus legal action.

        However, things took a turn for the even more bizarre a year ago when PETA, an organization that sometimes appears to focus more on professional trolling rather than on the “ethical treatment of animals” as its name suggests, claimed to represent the monkey (Naruto!) and sued Slater himself for falsely claiming the copyright. While we agree that Slater doesn’t hold the copyright, neither does the monkey, because no one holds the copyright.

        Amazingly, PETA, claiming to represent the interests of an Indonesian monkey, somehow secured the services of a really big name law firm, Irell & Manella, whose name should always be associated with the fact that it took this insane case. Irell & Manella (again, somehow, this is considered a respected law firm) took the nutty position that there must be a copyright in the image, and thus the monkey deserves to get it. It completely ignores the fact that not everything gets a copyright. It’s as if the lawyers at Irell & Manella don’t even understand how copyright law works.

      • Sony Hack Results in Lawsuit Over Failure to Prevent Movie Piracy

        Movie distributors obviously don’t like piracy, but a new lawsuit raises the question of whether they have any obligation to curtail it.

        On Wednesday, Sony Pictures was hit with a complaint in Florida federal court by Possibility Pictures, the producer of To Write Love on Her Arms, starring Kat Dennings and Rupert Friend. The film, which had Justin Bieber’s mother Pattie Malette serving as an executive producer to help out with marketing, was based on a true story about the treatment of a teenager suffering from depression and addiction and the launch of a non-profit to help others similarly afflicted.

      • Irony: Sony Pictures Sued For Failing To Stop Piracy

        For many years now, the MPAA and the various studios that make it up have filed various lawsuits against various internet platforms for not waving a magic wand and making piracy disappear. This also appears to be their big complaint against Google, which has bent over backwards trying to appease the industry and it’s still not enough (of course, that may be because what the industry really wants from Google is money, not stopping piracy). But now the shoe is somewhat on the other foot as Sony Pictures is being sued for failing to stop piracy. Really.

        The case stems from the infamous Sony hack from a year and a half ago, where all of Sony Pictures’ emails were released onto the internet. Possibility Pictures is suing Sony claiming the hack created a breach of contract in its failure to stop piracy of its film, To Write Love On Her Arms (TWLOHA), a 2012 movie starring Kat Dennings, based on the true story of the struggles a woman went through leading to the founding of her charity (which goes by the same name as the movie). While most people focus on the emails from the hack, it should be noted that before those emails were released, the hackers released some pre-release films… including TWLOHA. And that, Possibility claims, is a breach of Sony’s contract.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/07/30/sysadmin-day/feed/ 0 Links 24/7/2016: Elive 2.7.1 Beta, New Flatpaks and Snaps http://techrights.org/2016/07/24/elive-2-7-1-beta/ http://techrights.org/2016/07/24/elive-2-7-1-beta/#comments Sun, 24 Jul 2016 20:10:43 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=94573

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Linux in the Mainstream. What Will it Take?

      If you Google “Why Linux is Better Than Windows,” you’ll be able to go 20 pages deep and still find articles from tech blogs and news sites alike proclaiming reasons for Linux’s superiority. While most of these articles are just rehashing the same points, they are valid points nevertheless. And with all this ruckus over Linux, it begs the question: if Linux is so much better, why is it not competing for users at the same level that Windows is?

  • Server

    • Docker adds orchestration and more at DockerCon 2016

      DockerCon 2016, held in Seattle in June, included many new feature and product announcements from Docker Inc. and the Docker project. The main keynote of DockerCon [YouTube] featured Docker Inc. staff announcing and demonstrating the features of Docker 1.12, currently in its release-candidate phase. As with the prior 1.11 release, the new version includes major changes in the Docker architecture and tooling. Among the new features are an integrated orchestration stack, new encryption support, integrated cluster networking, and better Mac support.

      The conference hosted 4000 attendees, including vendors like Microsoft, CoreOS, HashiCorp, and Red Hat, as well as staff from Docker-using companies like Capital One, ADP, and Cisco. While there were many technical and marketing sessions at DockerCon, the main feature announcements were given in the keynotes.

      As with other articles on Docker, the project and product are referred to as “Docker,” while the company is “Docker Inc.”

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • MATE Dock Applet 0.73 Released With Redesigned Window List, Drag And Drop Support

      MATE Dock Applet was updated to version 0.73 recently, getting support for rearranging dock icons via drag and drop (only for the GTK3 version), updated window list design and more.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Double Post – Lakademy and Randa 2016

        I Have a few favorites kde conventions that I really love to participate.

        Randa and Lakademy are always awesome, both are focused on hacking, and I surely do love to hack.

        On LaKademy I spend my days working on subsurface, reworking on the interface, trying to make it more pleasant to the eye,

        In Randa I worked on KDevelop and Marble, but oh my…

      • Plasma’s Publictransport applet’s porting status

        You might remember that I spoke about Plasma’s Publictransport applet getting some reworking during the summer. It’s been over a month since I made that announcement on my blog and while ideally, I’d have liked to have blogged every week about my work, I haven’t really been able to. This is largely down to the fact that I was occupied with work on a project back at my university and I shifted back to home from my hostel as well, after finishing four years of undergraduate studies.

      • KDE Community Working Group 2016
      • KDE Brasil Telegram group and IRC United

        That’s why the KDE Irc channel now has a bot that will forward all messages to our Telegram Channel and vice-versa, this way all the new cool kids can talk to all the old geeks around and continue to make the KDE awesome in their platform of choice.

      • Wiki, what’s going on? (Part 7)

        Tears followed by joy and happiness, discussions followed by great moments all together, problems followed by their solution and enthusiasm. Am I talking about my family? More or less, because actually I am talking about a family: the WikiToLearn community!

      • Kubuntu 16.04.1 LTS Update Out

        The first point release update to our LTS release 16.04 is out now. This contains all the bugfixes added to 16.04 since its first release in April. Users of 16.04 can run the normal update procedure to get these bugfixes.

      • Kubuntu Podcast #14 – UbPorts interview with Marius Gripsgard
      • KDStateMachineEditor 1.1.0 released

        KDStateMachineEditor is a Qt-based framework for creating Qt State Machine metacode using a graphical user interface. It works on all major platforms and is now available as part of the Qt Auto suite.

      • KDAB contributions to Qt 5.7

        The star of Qt 5.7 is the first stable release of Qt 3D 2.0. The new version of Qt 3D is a total redesign of its architecture into a modern and streamlined 3D engine, exploiting modern design patterns such as entity-component systems, and capable to scale due to the heavily threaded design. This important milestone was the result of a massive effort done by KDAB in coordination with The Qt Company.

      • Krita 3.0.1 Development Builds

        Because of unforeseen circumstances, we had to rejig our release schedule, there was no release last week. Still, we wanted to bring you a foretaste of some of the goodies that are going to be in the 3.0.1 release, which is now planned for September 5th. There’s lots to play with, here, from bug fixes (the double dot in file names is gone, the crash with cheap tablets is gone, a big issue with memory leaks in the graphics card is solved), to features (soft-proofing, among others). There may also be new bugs, and not all new features may be working correctly. Export to animated gif or video clips is still in development, and probably will not work well outside the developers’ computer.

      • KDE blowing out candles on FISL 17!

        My talk was the next. Its title was “20 anos de KDE: de Desktop a Guarda-Chuva de Projetos” (20 years of KDE: From Desktop to Project Umbrella). I presented the evolution process of our community, which led it from a desktop project to a incubator community. For those who did not attend the event the talk was recorded and it is available here. Below I also make available the slides of my presentation:

      • LabPlot 2.3.0 released

        Less then four months after the last release and after a lot of activity in our repository during this time, we’re happy to announce the next release of LabPlot with a lot of new features. So, be prepared for a long post.

      • Core improvements in digiKam 5.0

        Version 5.0.0 of the digiKam image-management application was released on July 5. In many respects, the road from the 4.x series to the new 5.0 release consisted of patches and rewrites to internal components that users are not likely to notice at first glance. But the effort places digiKam in a better position for future development, and despite the lack of glamorous new features, some of the changes will make users’ lives easier as well.

        For context, digiKam 4.0 was released in May of 2014, meaning it has been over two full years since the last major version-number bump. While every free-software project is different, it was a long development cycle for digiKam, which (for example) had released 4.0 just one year after 3.0.

        The big hurdle for the 5.0 development cycle was porting the code to Qt5. While migrating to a new release of a toolkit always poses challenges, the digiKam team decided to take the opportunity to move away from dependencies on KDE libraries. In many cases, that effort meant refactoring the code or changing internal APIs to directly use Qt interfaces rather than their KDE equivalents. But, in a few instances, it meant reimplementing functionality directly in digiKam.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Hamster-GTK 0.10.0 Released

        Just a few seconds ago the initial release of Hamster-GTK, version 0.10.0, has been uploaded to the cheese shop. That means that after the rewritten backend codebase hamster-lib has been out in the wild for a few days by now you can now have a first look at a reimplementation of the original hamster 2.0 GUI. It will come as no surprise that this current early version is rather unpolished and leaves a lot to be desired. However, if you are familiar with legacy hamster 2.0 aka hamster-time-tracker you will surely see some major resemblance.

  • Distributions

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the Week 2016/29

        Week 29 brought us, as usual, 4 snapshots. Those were 0715, 0716, 0718 and 0720. The most spectacular update was in 0715, but the entire week is noteworthy as Tumbleweed brought you those updates:

        Plasma 5.7.0
        KDE Framework 5.24.0
        KDE Applications 16.04.3
        Freetype 2.6.5
        Kernel 4.6.4
        The Live images again contain an installer option – now based on NET install

    • Slackware Family

      • KDE 5_16.07 for Slackware 14.2 and -current

        I released a Slackware Live ISO containing Plasma 5.7.0 a few weeks ago, but did not make a fuss out of it – in other words, I did not write any communication about it on this blog. The Live ISO was made upon request of the KDE developers who wanted to show off the new Plasma 5.7 on Live Editions of as many distro’s as possible.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Elive 2.7.1 beta released

        The Elive Team is proud to announce the release of the beta version 2.7.1
        This new version includes:

        Audacity (audio wave editor) included by default
        Timezone detection improved
        Detector of systems improved and updated to detect last windows installed systems
        Linux Kernel updated with a lot of new patches for new hardware, bugfixes and improvements
        Google Voice search on internet using your microphone

      • Ubuntu & Debian Abandon Intel X.Org Driver For Most Hardware, Moves To Modesetting DDX

        Ubuntu and Debian (and thus other Debian-based distributions too) have abandoned the xf86-video-intel X.Org driver for all recent generations of Intel graphics hardware and instead makes use of the xf86-video-modesetting generic driver in its place.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu tablet and smartphone: a personal “mini” review

            So when Ubuntu and Canonical revealed they were partnering with actual, big manufacturers for Ubuntu mobile devices, a spark of hope was rekindled in my heart. Let it be clear, I am by no means an Ubuntu user, not even a fan. I left the fold nearly a decade ago, after having spent quite some time using and contributing to Kubuntu (to the point of becoming a certified “member” even, though I never ascended to the Council). In terms of loyalties and usage, I am a KDE user (and “helper”) foremost. I use Fedora because it just works for me, for now. So, yes, an Ubuntu Touch device would be another compromise for me, but it would be the smallest one. Or so I hoped.

          • Ubuntu tablet and smartphone: a personal “mini” review

            So when Ubuntu and Canonical revealed they were partnering with actual, big manufacturers for Ubuntu mobile devices, a spark of hope was rekindled in my heart. Let it be clear, I am by no means an Ubuntu user, not even a fan. I left the fold nearly a decade ago, after having spent quite some time using and contributing to Kubuntu (to the point of becoming a certified “member” even, though I never ascended to the Council). In terms of loyalties and usage, I am a KDE user (and “helper”) foremost. I use Fedora because it just works for me, for now. So, yes, an Ubuntu Touch device would be another compromise for me, but it would be the smallest one. Or so I hoped.

          • Using snap with confinement on Arch Linux

            This week I was a guest on the Snappy Sprint in Heidelberg, hosted by Canonical, because I’m the maintainer of snaps packages on Arch Linux.

            Actually with official packages on Arch Linux, you can only use snaps without confinement (aka you can only install packages in devmode) and this is bad for security since any snap is not confined and it can do (almost) anything it want.

            The reason is that snap for confinement uses the ubuntu-patched version of apparmor not available in mainline kernel yet.

          • Get Pitivi directly from us with Flatpak

            Distributing apps as packages (deb, rpm, etc) is problematic. For example, the Pitivi package depends on the GTK package and Pitivi 0.95 broke in the distributions which updated to GTK version 3.20, because of the incorrect way we were using a virtual method. This is not the first time something like this happens. To avoid the slippery dependencies problem, two years ago we started making universal daily builds. They allowed everybody to run the latest Pitivi easily by downloading a large binary containing the app and all the dependencies.

          • LibreOffice 5.2.0.2 available in the snap store

            The latest release candidate of the upcoming LibreOffice 5.2.0 feature release is available for installation from the snap store. This makes it very easy to install this prerelease of LibreOffice for testing out new features (an incomplete glimpse on what to look forward for can be found on the LibreOffice 5.2 release notes page, which is still under construction, go on #libreoffice-qa if you want to help with testing).

          • Lunduke & Whatnot – Ubuntu 10-inch Tablet
          • Ubuntu 16.10 Supertux2 on Unity 7 vs Unity 8
          • Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS Released for Desktop, Server, and Cloud with All Flavors

            Canonical has announced the first point release of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, finally allowing users of Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS (Trusty Tahr) to upgrade their installations.

          • Mozilla Thunderbird 45 Finally Lands in the Main Ubuntu Linux Repositories

            After a long wait, Canonical has finally decided that it was time to upgrade the Mozilla Thunderbird software on all of its supported Ubuntu Linux operating systems, where it is used as the default email and news client.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • The fall of Open Source

    Once upon a time FOSS was about Freedom. It was about exposing equality within source code. It allowed everyone equal rights and equal access to the technology they were using. An idea that if you were capable, you could fix code or pay someone to fix code. An ideology that there was something greater than yourself and that there was an inherent right built into what it is to be human with software.

  • Why Open Source is gaining momentum in Digital Transformation?

    Once upon a time in IT, using open source simply meant Linux instead of Windows, or maybe MySQL instead of Oracle.

    Now, there is such a huge diversity of open source tools, and almost every leading digital business and tech startup is making extensive use of them. It’s been a remarkable turnaround for open source over the last 10 years, placing the trend firmly at the heart of the digital revolution.

    The explosive growth of e-commerce, mobile and social media has completely altered the customer’s lifestyle and buying habits. Today, organizations are expected to engage with customers in Omni-channel environment. They need to create a customer journey. This is the driver of digital transformation.

  • Building an Open Source Company: Interview with GitLab’s CEO

    Please note that while we think of ourselves as an open source company it would be more accurate to call it an open core company since we ship both the open source GitLab Community Edition and the close source GitLab Enterprise Edition. Thanks to paxcoder for pointing this out on Hacker News.

    GitLab began as a labor of love from Dmitriy Zaporozhets and Valery Sizov, who built the first version together in 2011. Like many open source authors, they were only able to work on the project part time. Sid Sijbrandij joined forces a year later and created GitLab.com, the first SaaS offering and first experiment with monetization.

    Today GitLab is a model for open source sustainability and stewardship. It is being used in over 100,000 organizations including RedHat, NASA, Intel, Uber, and VMWare, to name just a few. Large organizations buy enterprise licenses, sustaining and growing both the company and the free open source project. GitLab now has over 90 employees, including Sid and Dmitriy who serve as CEO and CTO, respectively.

  • You can now build your own Wire client

    Interview with Wire CTO and co-founder Alan Duric about open source.

  • 50 Top Open Source Marketing Applications

    Clearly, open source marketing apps have their place. These days, marketing departments are responsible for a sizable percentage of enterprise application purchases and deployment decisions. In fact, Gartner has predicted that by 2017 chief marketing officers (CMOs) will spend more on IT than chief information officers (CIOs) do.

    While the accuracy of that forecast is open to debate, marketing teams are certainly becoming more involved in the selection of software. The marketing automation industry alone is now worth an estimated $1.62 billion per year, and many marketing teams are also involved in choosing content management systems, customer relationship management, ecommerce software and other solutions.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox to start blocking Flash content in August

        In Firefox 48, Mozilla will enable a new Firefox plug-in blocklist by default. Initially the blocklist will be small, mostly containing URLs of Flash SWF files that have been identified by Mozilla as supercookies (i.e. cookies that are very hard to shake off) or fingerprinting files (i.e. they scan your system and create a unique fingerprint, again usually for tracking purposes).

      • Firefox sets kill-Flash schedule

        Mozilla yesterday said it will follow other browser markers by curtailing use of Flash in Firefox next month.

        The open-source developer added that in 2017 it will dramatically expand the anti-Flash restrictions: Firefox will require users to explicitly approve the use of Flash for any reason by any website.

        As have its rivals, Mozilla cast the limitations (this year) and elimination (next year) as victories for Firefox users, citing improved security, longer battery life on laptops and faster web page rendering.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • PSPP 0.10.2 has been released

      I’m very pleased to announce the release of a new version of GNU PSPP. PSPP is a program for statistical analysis of sampled data. It is a free replacement for the proprietary program SPSS.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Super-hard metal ‘four times tougher than titanium’

      A super-hard metal has been made in the laboratory by melting together titanium and gold.

      The alloy is the hardest known metallic substance compatible with living tissues, say US physicists.

      The material is four times harder than pure titanium and has applications in making longer-lasting medical implants, they say.

    • Dolly the sheep’s clones are perfectly healthy, which could be huge for the future of cloning

      When Dolly the sheep died of lung disease and severe arthritis in 2003 after a relatively short seven year life, many scientists speculated that perhaps cloning had something to do with it. Could cloning an adult mammal, they wondered, make the clone adult-like right from birth. Maybe clones were not meant to live very long.

      It appears that is not the case.

      Scientists at the UK’s University of Nottingham just released a study showing that clones can lead long, healthy lives after all. It is the first long-term study of the health effects of cloning in a large animal. As the video above shows, the scientists followed the lives of 13 cloned sheep, four of which were actually cloned from the very same cells that Dolly came from.

    • How a Guy From a Montana Trailer Park Overturned 150 Years of Biology

      In 1995, if you had told Toby Spribille that he’d eventually overthrow a scientific idea that’s been the stuff of textbooks for 150 years, he would have laughed at you. Back then, his life seemed constrained to a very different path. He was raised in a Montana trailer park, and home-schooled by what he now describes as a “fundamentalist cult.” At a young age, he fell in love with science, but had no way of feeding that love. He longed to break away from his roots and get a proper education.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • How average income earners will be pushed into private health insurance by 2020

      By 2020 average income earners will be forced to buy private health insurance or pay extra tax after the government quietly extended a freeze in the threshold for the Medicare Levy Surcharge.

    • Rio Olympics 2016: Russia not given blanket Games ban by IOC

      Russia will not receive a blanket ban from Rio 2016 following the country’s doping scandal.

      The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will leave it up to individual sports’ governing bodies to decide if Russian competitors are clean and should be allowed to take part.

    • Male circumcision: the issue that ended my marriage

      I was in my kitchen getting my children ready for the school run when my phone pinged. I glanced at my friend’s message: “Maybe of interest…!” I paused on seeing the news report she’d sent – a High Court ruling against a Muslim father’s wish that his two young sons be circumcised. The children in the case were to decide for themselves when they were old enough to do so. I felt stunned. Like the mother in the case, I’m from the UK, with a background in which male circumcision is no longer routine. Like the father, my ex-partner is Muslim and wished to have our sons circumcised according to his cultural and religious beliefs. The boys in the High Court case were a similar age to our sons, too – mine are now seven and five. The court’s decision felt extremely close to home.

      I took the children to school. On returning home, I sat down to re-read the all-too-brief news report. I cried tears of sadness, relief and remaining fears. While our family has managed to avoid taking our conflict over circumcision to court, the issue has been a major factor in the break-up of our marriage. It also remains alive for us as we negotiate the upbringing of our children. It is something I never imagined would affect me – I’m not Jewish or Muslim and think most parents in the UK don’t for a moment consider circumcising their sons. When you know it is not medically necessary, that it is painful and that there is no other reason to, why would you?

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Situation in Aleppo “devastating and overwhelming” says ICRC’s most senior official in Syria
    • US Media Find European Terror Deaths 19 Times More Interesting Than Mideast Terror Deaths

      A survey conducted by FAIR of US media coverage of ISIS or ISIS-inspired attacks in Europe and the Middle East reveals a disparity of coverage, showing that European deaths are roughly 1,800 percent more newsworthy than deaths in the Middle East.

      For the purposes of this survey, both articles and video reports were included. We chose the three most-circulated “traditional media” newspapers and Buzzfeed, one of the most popular newsites for “Millennials,” to get another perspective. The list was compiled using a combination of the Nexis news database and Google.

    • Study Says Drones Generate More Terrorism

      The idea of using lethal drones to kill “bad guys” on the other side of the planet is offensive to many people on moral grounds, but a new study suggests that it is also ineffective in reducing terrorism, observes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

    • The Right Way to Defeat Terrorism

      The recent attacks on Turkey, Bangladesh, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia are just the most recent examples of the horrific terrorist acts taking place around the world. The Islamic State’s recent bombing in Baghdad killed 250 people and wounded hundreds. The uptick of ISIS murderous attacks is likely due to the would-be caliphate’s loss of territories in Iraq and Syria.

    • Behind Turkey’s Post-Coup Crisis

      The political crisis in Turkey, after a failed coup and mass arrests, sees President Erdogan consolidating his power and blaming his troubles on a Turkish exile living in Pennsylvania, as ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller explains.

    • Horrific Suicide Bombing Targets Minority Group In Afghanistan

      ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack in the Afghan capital, calling it a planned attack on a “gathering of Shi’ites,” though it can be difficult to independently verify ISIS’ level of involvement. If the bombing was carried out by ISIS, it could “signal its first deliberate effort to target Afghanistan’s Shiite minority, which it views as infidel,” according to the Washington Post’s reporting.

    • At Least 80 Dead in Kabul After Massive Attack on Peaceful March

      At least 80 people were killed, and more than 230 wounded, in Kabul on Saturday by suicide bombers who targeted a peaceful protest march by ethnic Hazaras, a minority Shia group in Afghanistan.

      “We were holding a peaceful demonstration when I heard a bang and then everyone was escaping and yelling,” Sabira Jan, a protestor who witnessed the attack and saw bloodied bodies strewn across the ground, told Reuters. “There was no one to help.”

    • Syrians Use Pokemon Go to Depict Their Plight

      The war in Syria, now in its sixth year with no end in sight, has killed more than 280,000 people. It is as if the only real question to be decided is if the West will run out of ammunition, or Syria out of people, first

    • The Appalling Violence of the World’s Three Superpowers

      Certainly none has a peaceful past. The United States, Russia, and China have a long history of expansion at the expense of neighboring countries and territories, often through military conquest. Those nations on their borders today, including some that have wrenched themselves free from their imperial control, continue to fear and distrust them. Just ask Latin Americans, East Europeans, or Asians what they think of their powerful neighbors.

    • Failed Turkish Coup Accelerated a Purge Years in the Making

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • How climate change is rapidly taking the planet apart

      Writing up articles on climate change is difficult these days. Last week alone, 46 new papers and reports were published. I am certain that there are many more. The figure only refers to the sources I usually consult. I try to read all abstracts and all articles I find interesting, but sometimes I shy away from it: it is just too depressing. According to Naomi Oreskes, a great number of climate change scientists (she interviewed most of the top 200 climate change scientists in the US) suffer from some sort of mood imbalance or mild or serious depression. It is easy to understand why: we see the climate change taking the planet apart right in front of our eyes. We also clearly see, right in front of us, what urgently needs to done to stave off global disaster on an unprecedented scale. We need carbon taxes and the reconversion of industry and energy towards zero CO2 emissions systems. This route is without any doubt technically and economically feasible, but politically it seems to be permanently locked. If we do not unlock it, the future looks bleak, not to say hopeless, for humankind.

    • Rise in plunder of Earth’s natural resources

      Humans’ appetite for gnawing away at the fabric of the Earth itself is growing prodigiously. According to a new UN report, the amount of the planet’s natural resources extracted for human use has tripled in 40 years.

      A report produced by the International Resource Panel (IRP), part of the UN Environment Programme, says rising consumption driven by a growing middle class has seen resources extraction increase from 22 billion tonnes in 1970 to 70 billon tonnes in 2010.

      It refers to natural resources as primary materials, and includes under this heading biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores and non-metallic minerals.

    • US Failing Dismally on Sustainable Development, Despite Vast Wealth

      The United States is far behind other wealthy countries when it comes to sustainable development, a new report found this week, meaning the country is “seriously far” from achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ratified by United Nations member states in September 2015.

    • Australia Appoints “Mr Coal” As New Climate Change Minister

      Australia’s new climate change minister is an MP once dubbed “Mr Coal” who believes the climate polluting fossil fuel is the secret to lifting the world’s poorest countries out of poverty.

      Re-elected conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has put Liberal Party MP Josh Frydenberg, the former resources minister, in charge of the country’s climate policy.

      Frydenberg replaces MP Greg Hunt who, as environment and climate change minister, was responsible for approving the largest coal mine in Australian history — the giant Adani Carmichael mine in the country’s Galilee Basin.

      The burning of coal is the world’s single biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change.

  • Finance

    • Donald Trump: EU was formed ‘to beat the US at making money’

      Donald Trump has claimed that the European Union was created to “beat the United States when it comes to making money” in an interview with NBC News.

      Speaking to Chuck Todd, whom the Republican nominee has repeatedly berated as “sleepy-eyed”, Trump also said of the EU “the reason that it got together was like a consortium so that it could compete with the United States”.

      The European Union was founded as the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952 in an effort to promote strong cross-border ties in Europe and avoid future wars. It has since evolved to a customs union and eventually to the transnational entity devoted to removing internal trade barriers, building a common market and a fiscal union. Its development and growth has been repeatedly supported by the United States under presidents of both parties.

    • Britain just got its first concrete sign that Brexit will destroy the economy

      Britain just got its first concrete sign that the British exit from the European Union, or Brexit, will crush the nation’s economy after a grim set of PMI data released by Markit on Friday morning showed a “dramatic deterioration” in the economy since the UK voted to leave the EU.

      Markit’s flash PMI readings for the UK’s economy showed that composite output fell to its lowest level since March 2009, during the tail end of the global financial crisis.

      Here is the scoreboard:

      Services PMI — 47.4, down from 52.3 in June and at an 87-month low. The figure was well below the 49.2 forecast.

      Manufacturing PMI — 49.1, a 44-month low, and well below the expected 50 reading.

      Composite PMI — 47.7, a drop from 52.4 in June, and at an 87-month low.

      The PMI, or purchasing managers index, figures from Markit are given as a number between 0 and 100.

    • Tim Kaine Has a Troubling Record on Labor Issues

      Hillary Clinton’s VP pick is a well-regarded senior Democrat, but he has split with labor on the TPP, banking regulation, and even “right-to-work” laws.

    • UK heading for recession post-Brexit, finance minister promises response

      With word that Britain’s economy is shrinking following the Brexit vote, the UK’s finance minister Philip Hammond is promising a “reset” of government policy if the weakness continues.

      Hammond – in China for a meeting of finance ministers from the G20 top economies – tried to counter business surveys indicating Britain is heading for recession.

      He said they show businesses’ confidence had been “dented”, but it is the government’s job to restore confidence by progressing trade talks with the European Union and other countries, including China.

      Also in Beijing, the head of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde repeated her call for Europe to quickly resolve questions over Brexit: “Our first and immediate recommendation is for this uncertainty surrounding the terms of Brexit to be removed as quickly as possible.

    • Bitter Brussels bloc ‘to BAN British students from foreign exchange study after Brexit’

      Ruth Sinclair-Jones said: “We face a sad moment of uncertainty, after 30 years of this enrichment of so many lives.”

      Worryingly, the end to British participation in the scheme could hit the wallets of UK universities.

    • Brexit Blues

      British politics has never seen a purer example of the Overton window than the referendum on membership of the EU. In 1994, the billionaire James Goldsmith founded a political party whose sole purpose was to advocate a referendum. The Referendum Party was a long, long way outside the political mainstream, and a significant number of its members were openly mad. The party’s one moment of – ‘success’ is the wrong word – mainstream attention came when Goldsmith himself stood in the 1997 general election in Putney against David Mellor, the cabinet minister who had been caught having an affair with an actress. Her fuck-and-tell story ran in the tabloids and included the fictional detail that (to quote the front page of the Sun) ‘Mellor Made Love in Chelsea Strip’. In a better-ordered society, making up things like that wins you the Prix Goncourt. Goldsmith did poorly, coming fourth with 1518 votes, but Mellor lost anyway. At the declaration of the result, Goldsmith and his supporters chanted ‘Out! Out! Out!’ while Mellor was making his concession speech, the words sounding a lot like ‘Raus! Raus! Raus!’ and providing one of the 1997 election’s most memorably ugly moments. The Referendum Party contested 547 seats and lost all of them.

    • How Individualist Economics Are Causing Planetary Eco-Collapse

      Lester Thurow, almost alone among mainstream economists as near as I can tell, recognizes this potentially fatal contradiction of capitalism — even though he is no anti-capitalist and wrote the book from which this excerpt is drawn in the hopes of finding a future for capitalism. Until very recently the standard economics textbooks ignored the problem of the environment altogether. Even today, the standard Econ 101 textbooks of Barro, Mankiv and so on, contain almost no mention of environment or ecology and virtually no serious consideration of the problem. This reflects the increasingly rightward drift of the discipline since the seventies. The American economics profession has long-since abandoned the practice of critical scientific thought to seriously dissenting views. Today, a neo-totalitarian “neoliberal” religious dogma rules the discipline. Keynesianism, liberalism, to say nothing of Marxism, are all dismissed as hopelessly antiquated, ecological economics is suspect, and the prudent graduate student would be well advised to steer clear of such interests if he or she wants to find a job. As Francis Fukuyama put it back in the 90s after communism collapsed, history has reached its apogee in free-market capitalism and liberal democracy. The science of economics, Fukuyama pronounced, was “settled” with Adam Smith’s accomplishment. The future would bring no more than “endless technical adjustments” and no further theoretical thought is required or need be solicited.

    • Verizon and Yahoo are set to announce an exclusive $5 billion deal

      Verizon and Yahoo are set to announce that they are striking an acquisition deal, according to sources close to the situation. The news is expected by Monday, although it could come earlier or later.

      But Yahoo told other bidders this afternoon — those interested in buying Yahoo have included private equity firm TPG and a group led by Quicken Loans’ Dan Gilbert — that the telco giant was the winner of the four-month process, said sources.

    • What the Close Decision on Philip Morris Tells Us About ISDS

      Sometimes corporations don’t get what they want. That was the case earlier this month when a World Bank arbitration tribunal ruled against tobacco giant Philip Morris in its suit against Uruguay. In a split decision, a majority of two arbitrators sided with the Latin American sovereign’s right to regulate, while a dissenting arbitrator sided partly with the corporation (which had appointed him to the panel).

      Philip Morris launched the case in 2010, after Uruguay introduced a set of cigarette labeling policies to deter smoking. First, all cigarette packages were required to have graphic warning labels on 80 percent of their surface area. Second, each cigarette brand family could have only one design presentation. (Uruguay argued that tobacco companies used different color and design schemes to suggest certain variants were healthier than others.) These policies were driven by the administration of Tabaré Vázquez, a left-leaning oncologist first elected president in 2005. Although Philip Morris is headquartered in the U.S.—and although the U.S. and Uruguay have a bilateral investment treaty, or BIT—the tobacco company used its Swiss subsidiary and a Switzerland-Uruguay BIT to bring the case, as it is permitted to do.

    • EU Prosecutions and American Ignorance of The Criminal Trangressions of Multi-National Corporations and Bankers

      Perhaps the fact that the people of Europe endured the loss of more than 150 million people in World War II is what causes them to be so suspicious and fearful of oligarchs and super-powerful corporations, banks and entities, that they insist that their governments indeed do something about the multiple transgressions of these multinational companies and organizations whenever they engage in any activity which the people find to be oppressive, repulsive, impinging on their freedoms, or in any other way threatening them with the yoke of financial debt slavery and austerity programs.

      It appears that the same fervor that Americans have for their Second Amendment rights and guns, is emulated and mirrored in their European counterparts in trusting that their government (in this case the European Union, hitherto ‘EC’ or ‘EU’ in this article) will aggressively go after those super-rich entities to bring them down a notch or two, or perhaps three.

      But ironically, Americans, even though they are armed to the teeth, and bray constantly about the constant criminal transgressions of multi-national corporations and banks, are remarkably sedate when it comes to demanding that their federal, state and local governments, in the forms of the 3 branches (legislature, executive, and judicial) go after these international monied scoundrels, choosing instead to complain about it vociferously on FaceBook, Twitter, or other social media outlets, with the practical effect that nothing ever changes.

    • After Brexit, a game plan for the EU: unleash Project Pain

      A prospect far more threatening than Brexit is emerging: a reasonable deal for the UK. Reports from Brussels suggest a compromise is doing the rounds under which it would be given continued access to the single market plus concessions on freedom of movement. This would be a grave mistake. If Britain comes out of this looking anything less than severely diminished it will be devastating for the EU.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Green Party’s Jill Stein Wants To Be ‘Plan B’ For Bernie Sanders Supporters

      Third parties are not new to American politics. The Anti-Masonic Party emerged in the 1820s to campaign against the Freemasons, which its members viewed as a corrupt. The Free Soil Party opposed the expansion of slavery in the years before the Civil War. Others throughout history have emerged to champion various causes, like the Know-Nothings, the Progressives, the Prohibition Party, the Reform Party and many others.

    • Democrats Need to Stop Insisting That Everything Is Going Well

      Among members of the liberal press, the reaction to Donald Trump’s RNC acceptance speech has been almost unanimous. It was, they say, “grim,” “angry,” and “dark.” Trump painted a “Mad Max” picture of the United States, as a nation is crisis, beset by crime, terrorism, unemployment, and despair.

    • Green candidate: Sanders should leave party that ‘betrayed’ him

      Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein once again welcomed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) into her party, suggesting in a series of tweets that he could leave the party that “betrayed” him.

    • DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz under pressure to resign

      Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz will not speak at or preside over the party’s convention this week, a decision reached by party officials Saturday after emails surfaced that raised questions about the committee’s impartiality during the Democratic primary.

      The DNC Rules Committee on Saturday named Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, as permanent chair of the convention, according to a DNC source. She will gavel each session to order and will gavel each session closed.

      “She’s been quarantined,” another top Democrat said of Wasserman Schultz, following a meeting Saturday night.

      Wasserman Schultz faced intense pressure Sunday to resign her post as head of the Democratic National Committee, several party leaders told CNN, urging her to quell a growing controversy threatening to disrupt Hillary Clinton’s nominating convention.

    • Leaked DNC email: Sanders’ attempt to moderate Israel stance “disturbing,” Clinton campaign used it to “marginalize Bernie”

      Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, called the attempt by the Bernie Sanders campaign to moderate the party’s stance on Israel “disturbing.”

      A top DNC official also noted that the Hillary Clinton campaign used Israel “to marginalize Bernie.”

      This is according to an email released by Wikileaks. The whistleblowing journalism organization released approximately 20,000 DNC emails on Friday.

    • Debbie Wasserman Schultz Out As Democratic Convention Chair After Email Leak

      Amid furor over an email leak that revealed a bias against Bernie Sanders inside the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz is out as chair of the convention.

      In an email to NPR, the office of Rep. Marcia Fudge said she “has been named permanent chair of the Democratic National Convention.”

    • Sanders says leaked DNC emails don’t change his support for Clinton

      Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said he will still support Hillary Clinton for president, despite leaked emails that showed Democratic Party leaders privately planned to undermine his presidential campaign.

    • Bernie Sanders called for the resignation of the head of the DNC, and there are signs it’s sort of working

      Bernie Sanders may be out of the running in the race to the White House, but he’s just shown he can still pack a punch when it comes to fighting the establishment.

      Debbie Wassermann Schultz will not speak or preside over daily functions at the Democratic Convention next week, CNN reports. It is a move that comes directly after Sanders called for her to step down as Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. Sanders’ call was a response to a Wikileaks hack late last week that made tens of thousands of DNC emails public and gave weight to his longtime accusation that the party establishment was helping to support Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign while undermining his own.

    • Clinton VP Favorite Just Gave the Left Two More Reasons to Distrust Him

      Over the past two days, the New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press have all reported that Tim Kaine is emerging as a (if not the) favorite to become Hillary Clinton’s running mate. On Wednesday night, the Times reported that Bill Clinton is privately lobbying for the Virginia senator’s selection.

      It’s not hard to see why the Clintons’ might be feeling the Kaine: The former governor of Virginia and current member of the Senate Armed Services Committee boasts both executive and foreign-policy experience, speaks fluent Spanish, has ties to a swing state, and is a known quantity, having been vetted by Democratic nominees in cycles past. In a race where most polls show Clinton with a solid lead, picking a moderate, experienced white man makes some tactical sense.

      [...]

      This week, Kaine provided left Democrats with two fresh reasons to see his selection as a repudiation of their agenda. On Monday, the senator added his name to two letters urging the federal government to scale back regulations on community and regional banks.

      In a letter co-signed by 15 other Senate Democrats — and every Senate Republican — Kaine asked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to exempt community banks and credit unions from many of its regulatory requirements. In justifying these exemptions, the letter suggests that these regulations would make it more difficult for these small banks to continue “spurring economic growth” and that such rules are unnecessary, anyhow, since community banks “were not the primary cause of the financial crisis.”

    • Released Emails Suggest the D.N.C. Derided the Sanders Campaign

      Top officials at the Democratic National Committee criticized and mocked Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont during the primary campaign, even though the organization publicly insisted that it was neutral in the race, according to committee emails made public on Friday by WikiLeaks.

      WikiLeaks posted almost 20,000 emails sent or received by a handful of top committee officials and provided an online tool to search through them. While WikiLeaks did not reveal the source of the leak, the committee said last month that Russian hackers had penetrated its computer system.

      Among the emails released on Friday were several embarrassing messages that suggest the committee’s chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, and other officials favored Hillary Clinton over Mr. Sanders — a claim the senator made repeatedly during the primaries.

    • Jeremy Corbyn has more than double the support of Owen Smith, poll shows

      The online poll finds that among those who say they back Labour, 54% support Corbyn against just 22% who would prefer Smith. Some 20% say they are undecided and 4% say they do not intend to vote.

    • Everyone Creeped Out By Donald Trump Touching His Daughter

      Twitter noticed how Donald Trump patted his daughter Ivanka last night. Not in a good way.

    • From Silent Majority to White-Hot Rage: Observations from Cleveland

      The 2016 Republican National Convention began in the immediate shadow of a highly publicized death spiral involving police and black civilians in Dallas, Falcon Heights, and Baton Rouge. Against this backdrop, the Trump campaign seemed to choose the legacy of Richard Nixon rather than Ronald Reagan as the party’s patron saint. Indeed, 1968 has functioned as myth and symbol throughout the Trump campaign, as they have leaned on racially-charged Nixonian phrases like ‘law and order’, ‘Silent Majority’ and ‘forgotten Americans.’ It might be more accurate to say that Trump has bundled Nixon together with George Wallace, the segregationist Alabama governor whose independent campaign for president that year was more openly racist and confrontational, but who with Nixon defined the Republican Party’s white populist turn.

    • Jeremy Corbyn launches Labour leadership campaign in Salford to rapturous reception

      The last time I saw Jeremy Corbyn address Labour members here was a year ago.

      It was the start of July and he was speaking at a Unison hustings at the Renaissance hotel in Manchester city centre , near the start of the leadership campaign. The audience was, as you would expect, appreciative of his standpoint.

      So he got a warm reception, certainly warmer than Liz Kendall and from recollection warmer than the others too, but there were no fireworks. He ended on a Tony Benn quote.

    • How technology disrupted the truth

      Social media has swallowed the news – threatening the funding of public-interest reporting and ushering in an era when everyone has their own facts. But the consequences go far beyond journalism

    • 1998: Trump Comments On The Lewinsky Scandal
    • WikiLeaks Email Dump Raises Questions About How The DNC Treated Bernie Sanders

      A WikiLeaks release of nearly 20,000 emails from top Democratic National Committee staffers is sparking controversy just days before the Democratic National Convention kicks off in Philadelphia.

    • Set for Convention Floor Fight, Push to End Superdelegates ‘Catching Fire’

      The push to abolish the “antidemocratic superdelegate system” within the Democratic National Committee is at its apex ahead of a DNC Rules Committee meeting on Saturday, at which an amendment to minimize the influence of those party insiders will be considered.

      Superdelegates, which only exist within the Democratic Party, are unpledged elected officials or party elites who may back the candidate of their choosing at the convention, regardless of how their state voted in a presidential primary or caucus. The vast majority lined up behind Hillary Clinton before the 2016 primary race even began.

    • DNC Votes to Keep Superdelegates, But Sets Some Conditions

      The rule-making body of the Democratic National Committee on Saturday defeated an amendment brought by Bernie Sanders delegates to abolish superdelegates — the unelected party elites who make up 15 percent of all delegates and are allowed to cast a vote for the presidential candidate of their choice, unbound by the popular vote. But the rules committee did approve a compromise measure that binds some superdelegates to the results of their state primaries.

    • Establishment Wins Again as DNC Rules Committee Rejects Proposal to Abolish Superdelegates

      After several rounds of voting Saturday afternoon, an effort by progressive Democrats to abolish what they see as the anti-democratic superdelegate process was defeated.

      The amendment, co-sponsored by 52 members of the Democratic Party Rules Committee, was defeated when 108 members voted against and just 58 voted in favor.

      Though a stinging defeat for those who campaigned in favor of the rule change, spearheaded largely by Bernie Sanders delegates and progressive advocacy groups, supporters took solace that because more than one-quarter of the committee voted ‘yes’ they will able to introduce a minority report during the full convention next week and demand a floor vote.

    • Donald Trump’s United States of #MAGA, Beheld Live at Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena, Part One
    • Clinton’s F-You to Progressives: This is How Trump Could Become President

      Before we explore these issues, let’s get some perspective here. Tim Kaine is not a right wing zealot. He’s backed expanding payroll taxes to cover a broader range of income to increase Social Security’s solvency. He’s supported some limited expansion of gun control in a state that loves its guns. He’s got a reasonably good record on LGBT rights (after “evolving” a bit). He’s got a mixed record on climate and energy, banning some but not all fracking when governor of Virginia, and supporting the use of fossil fuels as a “bridge” to clean energy (including support for clean coal); but at least he acknowledges the science on climate change. He’s suggested that waging war against ISIL requires congressional authorization, and he called for withdrawing from Afghanistan as quickly as possible.

    • In Reality, This Was a Media Convention

      More than 15,000 journalists descended on Cleveland to cover the Republican National Convention. But it was an unemployed TV reporter sitting in a Starbucks in Los Angeles, 2,345 miles away, who broke the biggest story of the week.

    • Why Donald Trump Could Be the Next President of the United States

      So as we move on to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, let’s be clear: The great tragedy of the moment is not rooted in the Republican Party’s self-cannibalization. It’s with a Democratic Party that “successfully” suffocated responsible answers to the crises consuming our world. Indeed, as Hillary Clinton’s selection of the milquetoast Tim Kaine as her vice president shows, the Dems have put forward a candidate who embodies an establishment widely recognized as having betrayed the majority of the American public.

    • 5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win

      Let’s face it: Our biggest problem here isn’t Trump – it’s Hillary. She is hugely unpopular — nearly 70% of all voters think she is untrustworthy and dishonest. She represents the old way of politics, not really believing in anything other than what can get you elected. That’s why she fights against gays getting married one moment, and the next she’s officiating a gay marriage. Young women are among her biggest detractors, which has to hurt considering it’s the sacrifices and the battles that Hillary and other women of her generation endured so that this younger generation would never have to be told by the Barbara Bushes of the world that they should just shut up and go bake some cookies. But the kids don’t like her, and not a day goes by that a millennial doesn’t tell me they aren’t voting for her. No Democrat, and certainly no independent, is waking up on November 8th excited to run out and vote for Hillary the way they did the day Obama became president or when Bernie was on the primary ballot. The enthusiasm just isn’t there. And because this election is going to come down to just one thing — who drags the most people out of the house and gets them to the polls — Trump right now is in the catbird seat.

    • Hillary-Kaine: Back to the Center

      By picking Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton has revealed her true preferences and shown that her move to the left on policy issues during the primaries was simply a tactical move to defeat Bernie Sanders. It’s not what you say, it’s what you do. Clinton can talk about caring about the U.S. public, but this choice cuts through the rhetoric.

    • Bernie Revolutionaries, Give Your Love to Jill Stein

      If Bernie Sanders sounded one of the very few authentic notes in recent U.S. politics, it was in his call for political revolution. We need a political revolution not just against Donald Trump but also against the repulsively corrupt likes of Hillary Clinton. Because of the former secretary of state’s veiled but solid-as-granite lackey service to the 1 percent, she is probably just as responsible for sustaining Trump’s thuggish, scapegoating brand of populism as is the real estate mogul himself.

    • Donald Trump’s Strategy for Victory Is Clear, but Are Democrats Able to See It?

      There is an adage, based on Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”: “Know your enemy.” After watching Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, I wonder just how well Democrats really know Trump and his strategy.

      It is easy to paint the businessman-turned-politician as a “racist” and “misogynist.” He is all those things and more. In fact, those descriptors are part of his political strategy. Pointing them out without seeing the larger picture of how he is planning on winning the November election is a recipe for failure.

      I knew that if I watched Trump give his speech, I would be so enraged by his loathsome manner and disgusting rhetoric that it might blind me to his bigger plan. When I read the transcript later, I still felt rage, but the topics appeared to be a confusing mess, with Trump jumping from domestic to foreign policy with no apparent coherence. But then a pattern emerged.

    • What the Roger Ailes’ Drama Says About Sexual Harassment in 2016

      When New York Magazine broke the news two weeks ago that Gretchen Carlson was suing her former boss, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, alleging sexual harassment, Kellie Boyle knew what she had to do. She had to speak up. The Virginia communications consultant called Carlson’s lawyer to share her story of how, in 1989, Ailes had sexually harassed her, then retaliated against her.

      “I just couldn’t not come forward. I knew what kind of abuse Gretchen was going to get,” Boyle said. “I wanted to support her.”

      But then a funny thing happened. Unlike the public trashing that other women have gotten when accusing powerful men in the past—think Anita Hill, called “nutty” and “slutty” in 1991 or the long line of Bill Cosby accusers who, until very recently, were dismissed as gold diggers—Carlson’s claims that Ailes ogled her and forced her out when she rebuffed him were taken seriously, listened to, and investigated.

    • Jon Stewart to Donald Trump and His Supporters in the Media: America Isn’t Yours

      Jon Stewart, former host of “The Daily Show,” briefly took over Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” on Thursday to expose the hypocrisy of conservative pundits who support Donald Trump, a presidential candidate who embodies much of what they claimed to despise about President Obama.

      “Here’s where we are,” Stewart said after reviewing a number of the pundits’ statements. “Either Lumpy [Fox News host Sean Hannity] and his friends are lying about being bothered by thin-skinned, authoritarian, less-than-Christian readers-of-prompter being president, or they don’t care, as long as it’s their thin-skinned, prompter, authoritarian, tyrant narcissist.”

      “You just want that person to give you your country back because you feel that you’re this country’s rightful owners. There’s only one problem with that: This country isn’t yours. You don’t own it. It never was. There is no real American. You don’t own it. You don’t own patriotism. You don’t own Christianity. You sure as hell don’t own respect for the bravery and sacrifice of military, police and firefighters.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Oliver Stone Says Corporate Censorship Led To ‘Snowden’ Movie Rejection

      Director Oliver Stone told fans at Comic-Con that every major movie studio turned down his narrative film about Edward Snowden because of censorship from their corporate leaders.

    • Snowden film ‘almost killed’ by self-censorship

      It was the largest data leak in United States history, fueling a firestorm over the issue of mass surveillance that resonated with Americans and ignited around the world.

      Oliver Stone’s hotly-anticipated “Snowden” tells the story of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in dramatic form for the first time — but the movie almost never made it to theaters.

      “Frankly, it was turned down by every major studio. The script was good, the budget was good, the cast was good. It was definitely… self-censorship,” Stone, 69, told San Diego fan convention Comic-Con International on Thursday.

    • Snowden has been cleared to appear at a theatre near you

      No matter which you believe, the epic story of why he did it, who he left behind, and how he pulled it off makes for one of the most compelling films of the year. He made that accusation at Comic-Con International, the annual four-day celebration of comics and other arts and culture.

      The biographical drama, which was produced by Moritz Borman, Eric Kopeloff and Philip Schulz-Deyle, is set to be released in theaters nationwide on September 16. (“I’m not an actor”, reminded Snowden, who appeared at the sci-fi convention via Google Hangout; Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays him in the film). At the very least, Snowden, who is reportedly hiding out in an undisclosed location in Russian Federation, would prefer not to have his location tracked. Stone met with him a number of times in Moscow, trying to gain his trust and decide whether to take on the project. Written by Stone and Kieran Fitzgerald and based on recent books about the whistleblower Edward Snowden.

    • #DNCLeaks disappears from trending news as WikiLeaks emails released

      Conservative Twitter users erupted on Friday after the social media platform torpedoed #DNCLeaks from its trending-news feed after Wikileaks released 20,000 emails by Democratic National Committee staff members.

      Embarrassing emails sent and received by DNC members had enough momentum to propel the story to Twitter’s top “trending” news feed on Friday afternoon. The #DNCLeaks entry vanished in the evening, but returned 20 minutes later after users cried foul.

      The story had 250,000 tweets at the time it was pulled. The Washington Examiner then aggregated a stream of angry feedback.

    • Twitter accused of shutting down #DNCLeaks of damaging email release by Wikileaks

      Nearly every time someone wants attention from social media they accuse Twitter of shutting down their cause, both left and right, but in this case there seems to be some real evidence that they’re suppressing info from a release by Wikileaks that can damage the Democrats.

    • Will the banning of @nero mark the »Peak Twitter« moment?

      Twitter banning Milo Yiannopolous is a story with interesting dimensions.

      Yiannopolous is very entertaining. He’s got some points. And he often provokes some interesting reactions.

      Yiannopolous also is a loudmouth and a troll. He doesn’t really give a shit. And sometimes his opinions are rather disturbing.

      The banning might very well have marked a »Peak Twitter« moment.

      The party is over. I think this might cause immense damage to Twitters image and trademark. Twitter just isn’t as exciting anymore.

    • Fans furious as Rajinikanth starrer Kabali ‘censored’, climax changed in Malaysia

      The Film Censorship Board of Malaysia said Rajinikanth’s ‘Kabali’ will have a different ending in that country simply to spread this particular message to the wider public: ‘crime does not pay’. The authorities have ordered these words to be superimposed at the very climax. However, for all intents and purposes, original climax scene in Kabali has given way to a final conclusive one that may spoil the storyline for many fans. The censor board had effected several cuts in the film of about five minutes duration, but insisted the storyline was intact.

      [...]

      Malay Mail Online quotes Abdul Halim as saying, “We asked the producer to put in a caption…. This was to send a message that the law cannot be taken into your own hands.” What may have swung the authorities into action so late in the day after the release of the movie is the extreme popularity of the film with thousands of people lining up since early morning to watch it – Rajni mania has gripped Malaysia as much as it did in Tamil Nadu or Kerala.

    • Tamil movie will have Malaysia-only ending thanks to film censors
    • Viewers surprised why Rajinikanth’s ‘Kabali’ given ‘U’ certificate by censor board
    • ‘Kabali’ to have different ending in Malaysia

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Pokémon Go is “new level of invasion,” says stony-faced Oliver Stone

      Pokémon Go heralds a new dystopian age that we should all be fretting about, film director Oliver Stone has warned.

      Speaking at Comic Con on Thursday to promote his new movie about US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, Stone described the data-slurping tactics of the freakishly successful game as “a new level of invasion.”

      The panel—also featuring Snowden stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley, and Zachary Quinto—was asked about the surveillance potential of the game.

      Quinto, of Star Trek and Heroes fame, replied: “I feel as long as you can find a balance in that, and limit your Pokémon Go time, then I’m all for it. Have at it.” He joked that Comic Con was probably “crawling with Pokémon,” but a stony-faced Stone cut in: “It’s not really funny.”

    • NSA construction project expected to impact traffic, environment, historic buildings

      The project, according to the draft statement, calls for the construction of approximately 2.9 million square feet of new operations and headquarters space in five buildings and the demolition of 1.9 million square feet of buildings and infrastructure.

    • Windows 10 collects too much user data, lacks security says watchdog

      Microsoft has been told to reduce the data Windows 10 collects about users and tighten up the OS security or risk facing sanction for breaching data protection rules.

    • Oliver Stone concerned about Pokemon

      Film director Oliver Stone has branded the popular gaming app Pokemon Go a new level of invasion of privacy that could lead to totalitarianism and “robot society”.

      The American reportedly voiced concerns over the game as he promoted his new movie about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden at Comic Con International.

    • Oliver Stone Calls Pokémon Go “Totalitarian”

      And they have invested a huge amount of money into, what surveillance is, data mining. They’re data mining every single person in this room for information as to what you’re buying, what you like, above all, your behavior.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • ‘The Impact That It Had on People Was Not Really Covered’

      Coming amid a number of other high-profile decisions, the Supreme Court’s 4-to-4 deadlock blocking Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration may not have gotten the attention it deserved. The measures would have expanded eligibility for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, as well as the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans program, programs that shield people from deportation, at least temporarily. Who is affected by the ruling, and where does it fit on the bigger road to truly humane immigration policy?

    • Ralph Nader, Omar Barghouti to Receive Gandhi Peace Award in 2017

      Promoting Enduring Peace, founded in 1952 with the goal of promoting world peace and environmental sustainability, announced the recipients of next year’s Gandhi Peace Award on Friday. It will be presented jointly to consumer activist Ralph Nader and to Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian human rights defender.

      The award, given since 1960, “comes with a cash prize and a medallion made of ‘peace bronze,’ metal fashioned from recycled copper from disarmed nuclear missile systems,” according to the organization’s news release.

    • Other erratic nations of our time

      While the US and the Soviet Union were in a proxy war, Americans were also fighting an internal ideological war, believing themselves defenders of liberal American thought in the face of communist evils.

    • Williams: Censorship is not the answer

      A national study found that lesbian, gay and bisexual youth in grades 7-12 were more than twice as likely to have attempted suicide as their heterosexual peers. The numbers for transgender youth are believed to be even higher, with one study finding that out of 55 transgender young people, 25 percent reported suicide attempts.

    • As Courts Strike Down Discriminatory Voter ID Laws, RNC Delegates Cry ‘Voter Fraud’

      As the Republican National Convention unfolded in Cleveland this week with the Republican Party officially calling for measures to make it harder for people to vote, two different courts across the country issued rulings easing those restrictions.

      Federal judges this week ruled against voter identification laws in Wisconsin and then Texas, finding that they disproportionately impact minority voters and violate the Voting Rights Act. Those photo ID laws, which have become more prevalent across the country in the years since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the VRA in 2013, are formally included in the GOP platform.

    • Indiana Drops Murder Charge Against Woman For Her Abortion

      An Indiana appeals court dropped feticide charges Friday against a woman who used abortion medication to induce her own abortion. The court unanimously ruled that Indiana’s feticide law was not intended to apply to abortions, and that 35-year-old Purvi Patel was not an exception to the rule.

      Patel’s case, the first of its kind in the United States, was initially based on contradicting claims.

    • Is Obama’s Recent Ban on Military Gear to Police Already Coming to an End?

      When President Barack Obama last year banned the federal government from selling certain military equipment to police departments, civil liberties advocates cautiously welcomed the move as a positive development in curtailing militarized police forces.

      In announcing the step on May 18, 2015, Obama said, “We’ve seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people the feeling like there’s an occupied force, as opposed to a force that is part of that community it is protecting and serving.”

      But according to two of the law enforcement leaders who met with Obama and Vice President Joe Biden days after a gunman shot dead five Dallas police officers, the welcome may be short-lived, as Obama has “agreed to review each banned item,” Reuters exclusively reported Thursday.

    • RNC Protesters “Wall Off Trump” and Confront Police Violence

      Throughout the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Cleveland, protesters have kept issues of poverty, racism and systemic police violence in the spotlight, even as Republicans attending the convention attempted to swerve the national debate on these issues toward the right.

      On Wednesday, hundreds of immigrants’ rights protesters from across the US erected a wall with several fence- and wall-like banners that stretched for several blocks outside the Quicken Loans Arena, where the RNC is taking place. The “Wall Off Trump” action was an effort to rebuff the Republican nominee’s promise to build a wall along the Mexican border, as well as his many bigoted comments against Mexican immigrants and other marginalized groups. The protesters first demonstrated at Cleveland’s Public Square, and then marched from the square to the inside of the secure perimeter just outside the convention center.

    • The American Dream Moved to Canada

      We’re witnessing accelerating advantages for the affluent and compounding disadvantages for everyone else.

    • A Brief History of the “War on Cops”: The False Allegation That Enables Police Violence

      As part of a global action proclaiming “Freedom Now,” Black Lives Matter groups shut down police operations around the country on July 20. From Oakland to Washington, DC, New York City to Chicago and Detroit, these bold and creative acts of civil disobedience issued a demand to “Fund Black Futures.” Protests in New York shut down the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association while those in DC closed the National Fraternal Order of Police office for the day.

    • Make America Straight Again? A Debate on What Could Be the Most Anti-LGBT Republican Platform Ever

      As the new Republican platform has been described as “the most anti-LGBT platform in the party’s 162-year history,” we get reaction from Charles Moran, board member with the Log Cabin Republicans, which represents LGBT conservatives and allies. He is a delegate to the Republican National Convention from California. We also speak with Alana Jochum, executive director of Equality Ohio, about how the platform opposes same-sex marriage, appears to endorse so-called conversion therapy and criticizes the Department of Education’s recommendation that schools allow transgender students to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity.

    • Trumpism Is a Scam — You’re Actually Voting for Mike Pence

      When he officially accepts the 2016 Republican nomination for president Thursday night, Donald Trump will do so as a different kind of Republican.

      Or so the thinking goes.

      A Trump presidency would be just like every other Republican presidency, arguably even worse.

      We now know this for fact.

      According to a story out today in the New York Times Magazine, when Donald Trump was looking for a running mate, he initially offered the job to one of his former opponents, Ohio Governor John Kasich.

    • Pastor on Tamir Rice Shooting: Ohio is an Open-Carry State Except If You’re an African-American Male

      The Republican National Convention is underway just a few miles from the park where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot dead by police in November of 2014 while he was playing with a toy pellet gun. We speak with Rev. Dr. Jawanza Karriem Colvin, the pastor of the Olivet Institutional Baptist Church, which is one of the largest African-American congregations in Cleveland, about how city officials and activists responded to the killing. He was recently profiled in a Politico report titled “The Preacher Who Took on the Police.”

    • Facing Down Trump’s Demagoguery: Lessons From Weimar Germany

      Donald Trump is not the first authoritarian demagogue who could take power and undermine constitutional government in the US or Europe. Right-wing authoritarian populists have often grabbed power during economic crises, particularly in Western societies suffering national decline and severe racial divisions or culture wars.

      The classic example is Weimar Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s. The Nazis were one of many far-right movements in Weimar — and Hitler was only one of many hyper-nationalist demagogues stoking the flames of economic discontent and promising to restore Aryan racial supremacy and make Germany great again.

    • “I Alone”: Trump’s Megalomania on Cold Display

      How did Trump respond? He became Thor in the wasteland of an imagined apocalypse, vowing to wield his mighty hammer and smash anyone who did not eat at Arby’s or protested police violence. “Law and Order” went the refrain, over and over in a lightning-bright flashback to authoritarian, racially coded Republican campaign tactics of old.

    • Cleveland: a historical perspective

      The rhetoric that surrounds Donald Trump’s convention triumph signals a new phase in the intertwined history of fascism and populism.

    • Abolish Long-Term Solitary Confinement: It’s a Threat to the Public

      For nearly the first three years, I was denied a television or radio. Thus, I spent every waking hour reading, writing, cleaning, or working out in order to try to maintain my sanity. Still, by year five, I was experiencing auditory hallucinations (thinking I heard someone calling my name), extreme anxiety, erratic heart palpitations, and severe bouts of depression. All of these conditions were a direct consequence of long-term solitary confinement, and would become worse as the years wore on.

    • Turkey: Independent monitors must be allowed to access detainees amid torture allegations

      Amnesty International has gathered credible evidence that detainees in Turkey are being subjected to beatings and torture, including rape, in official and unofficial detention centres in the country.

      The organization is calling for independent monitors to be given immediate access to detainees in all facilities in the wake of the coup attempt, which include police headquarters, sports centres and courthouses. More than 10,000 people have been detained since the failed coup.

      Amnesty International has credible reports that Turkish police in Ankara and Istanbul are holding detainees in stress positions for up to 48 hours, denying them food, water and medical treatment, and verbally abusing and threatening them. In the worst cases some have been subjected to severe beatings and torture, including rape.

    • Islam and the Free World: What Should be done as an Imperative Survival (A)

      It is the duty of the Muslims to propagate the only one true faith, Islam, throughout the world. It is the duty of the Muslim to invade, by force, to the lands of the infidels. Should the infidels refuse to embrace Islam, jihad is the means to vanquish them. These are the three main arms of Islam, the Muslims use at will and according to the circumstances.

    • CIA and State Dept Documents on Jack Valenti

      It was announced in April 1966 that Valenti would be leaving his White House position to take up the vacant job as head of the MPAA, so why was he simultaneously being granted a Top Secret security clearance? Valenti began his new job in June so he was a consultant to the State Department in the early months of his new job at the MPAA.

  • DRM

    • Microsoft Edge and Netflix — testing new restrictions by locking out competing browsers?

      Microsoft made the news last week when it announced that its Edge Web browser could deliver a better Netflix streaming experience than the other three most popular browsers. On Windows 10, Edge is the only one that can play Netflix’s video streams — which are encumbered with Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) — in 1080p high definition. A PCWorld article confirmed the claim, but no one writing online has been able to give a clear explanation for the discrepancy. Following the tone of Microsoft’s announcement, most writers seem content to imply that Edge’s “edge” in Netflix playback on Windows derives from technical superiority, and that intelligent Netflix users should switch to Edge.

    • EFF is suing the US government to invalidate the DMCA’s DRM provisions

      The Electronic Frontier Foundation has just filed a lawsuit that challenges the Constitutionality of Section 1201 of the DMCA, the “Digital Rights Management” provision of the law, a notoriously overbroad law that bans activities that bypass or weaken copyright access-control systems, including reconfiguring software-enabled devices (making sure your IoT light-socket will accept third-party lightbulbs; tapping into diagnostic info in your car or tractor to allow an independent party to repair it) and reporting security vulnerabilities in these devices.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • The utter futility of the legal attack on KickassTorrents

        The operator of the torrent site KickassTorrents has been arrested in Poland on an extradition request from Hollywood, and the domains seized. This action, while deplorable, shows that the copyright industry is still some fifty years behind reality in its thinking: there are no central chokepoints you can control on the Internet, and the net reacts to any censorship like this with antifragility – hardening and decentralizing the damaged part.

        The old monopolized copyright industry is thinking in terms of central chokepoints, just like the Catholic Church was 500 years ago when trying to crush the printing press and its users. But just like the printing press, the Internet is decentralized, so it’s easy to circumvent chokepoints – and this has been predictable for a long time.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/07/24/elive-2-7-1-beta/feed/ 0 Links 17/7/2016: Lithuanian Police Switches to GNU/Linux, Blockchain on LinuxONE http://techrights.org/2016/07/17/lithuanian-police-linux/ http://techrights.org/2016/07/17/lithuanian-police-linux/#comments Sun, 17 Jul 2016 10:36:36 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=94435

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • The DIY diabetes kit that’s keeping us alive

    They are using Nightscout, an open source platform developed and run by a global community of type 1 diabetics.

    Open source means it is freely available for anyone to use and modify – in this case at their own risk.

    It’s a combination of a commercial product called a Continuing Glucose Monitor (CGM), which provides constant updates, a DIY transmitter and the freely available Nightscout programming code which enables the CGM data to be shared with a cloud data storage area – where it can then be distributed to other devices.

    So both father and son now receive constant updates on their phones (and George’s smartwatch) and are able to assess George’s needs minute by minute.

    It has given George the gift of freedom – he can now join his friends on sleepovers and enjoy his favourite sports.

    Mr Samuelson acknowledges that it is not without risk.

    “I am using open source software to do calibrations. Open source software is giving me final numbers and it is not an approved algorithm – it’s not going to be exactly the same as the proprietary algorithms,” he says.

  • Preserving the global software heritage

    The Software Heritage initiative is an ambitious new effort to amass an organized, searchable index of all of the software source code available in the world (ultimately, including code released under free-software licenses as well as code that was not). Software Heritage was launched on June 30 with a team of just four employees but with the support of several corporate sponsors. So far, the Software Heritage software archive has imported 2.7 billion files from GitHub, the Debian package archive, and the GNU FTP archives, but that is only the beginning.

    In addition to the information on the Software Heritage site, Nicolas Dandrimont gave a presentation about the project on July 4 at DebConf; video [WebM] is available. In the talk, Dandrimont noted that software is not merely pervasive in the modern world, but it has cultural value as well: it captures human knowledge. Consequently, it is as important to catalog and preserve as are books and other media—arguably more so, because electronic files and repositories are prone to corruption and sudden disappearance.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox will get overhaul in bid to get you interested again

        The next update to Firefox, however, represents the first step in Mozilla’s long-term plan to get you using its web browser once again. It hopes to rekindle the interest and influence it claimed a decade ago by revamping its core, which could make complex websites like Facebook snappier but make it more difficult for attackers to launch attacks over the web.

      • Mozilla Servo arrives in nightly demo form

        The Firefox codebase dates back to 2002, when the browser was unbundled from the Mozilla Application Suite—although much of its architecture predates even that split. Major changes have been rare over the years, but recently several long-running Mozilla efforts have started to see the light of day. The most recent of these is the Servo web-rendering engine, for which the first standalone test builds were released on June 30. Although the Servo builds are not full-blown browsers, they enable users to download and test the engine on live web sites for the first time. Servo is designed with speed and concurrency in mind, and if all goes according to plan, the code may work its way into Firefox in due course.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU ease.js 0.2.8 released

      This is a minor release introducing transparent Error subtyping.

      This release succeeds v0.2.7, which was released 26 October, 2015. There are no backwards-incompatible changes; support continues for ECMAScript 3+.

    • A leadership change for nano

      The nano text editor has a long history as a part of the GNU project, but its lead developer recently decided to sever that relationship and continue the project under its own auspices. As often happens in such cases, the change raised concerns from many in the free-software community, and prompted questions about maintainership and membership in large projects.

  • Public Services/Government

    • FOSSA – Now we need feedback by the real experts

      The goal of the “Free and Open Source Security Audit” (FOSSA) pilot project is to increase security of Free Software used by the European institutions. The FSFE has been following the project since the early beginning in 2014. I am concerned that if the project stays on its current course the European Institutions will spent a large part of the 1 Million Euro budget without positive impact on the security of Free Software; and the result will be a set of consultancy reports nobody will ever read. But if we work together and communicate our concerns to the responsible people in the Parliament and the Commission, there might still be a valuable outcome.

  • Licensing/Legal

    • The Open Source License API

      Around a year ago, I started hacking together a machine readable version of the OSI approved licenses list, and casually picking parts up until it was ready to launch. A few weeks ago, we officially announced the osi license api, which is now live at api.opensource.org.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Notes from the fourth RISC-V workshop

        Many of the lowRISC team (Robert Mullins, Wei Song, and Alex Bradbury) have been in Boston this week for the fourth RISC-V workshop. By any measure, this has been a massive success with over 250 attendees representing 63 companies and 42 Universities. Wei presented our most recent work on integrating trace debug, which you’ll soon be able to read much more about here (it’s worth signing up to our announcement list if you want to be informed of each of our releases).

      • Arduino-powered Lock Automatically Locks The Door When You Open Incognito Mode

        Mike, the CEO of the Useless Duck Company, has created an Arduino-powered door lock which locks the door automatically when you open an incognito window in your web browser. In a YouTube video, Mike shows how this awesome tech works.

  • Programming/Development

    • Wait… usenet is still… alive?!?!

      So, in conclusion, Fortran is a pretty cool language. The syntax is a little different that a curly-brace guy like me is used to, but once you figure it out, it’s pretty easy to use and has a very nice feature set. Again, if you’d like to look at a functional complete example, check out my source repository on GitHub.

      I’m going to do a third post in this series where I actually build a modern web application using Fortran for the middle tier (I’m thinking I need a cool name like LAMP or BCHS so maybe FARM – Fortran, Apache, REST and mySQL?) but that’s for another day. Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed learning it.

    • Coding A Text Editor In Less Than 1000 Lines Of C Programming Language

      A coder has created a text editor in C programming language in less than 1000 lines. He has shared the code on GitHub and allowed the interested programmers to take a look at it and learn.

Leftovers

  • S&P 500′s record highs held back by Apple’s falling stock price

    The S&P 500′s multiple record highs set this week after more than a year-long wait on Wall Street would not have taken so long had Apple Inc (AAPL.O), the index’s largest constituent, not fallen deeply from its own all-time high.

  • Science

    • Welcome to the ‘Ecological Recession’: Global Biodiversity on Unsafe Decline

      A global assessment of ecosystems across the planet shows that “exploitation of terrestrial systems”—in other words, human land use from road-building to industrial agriculture—has pushed biodiversity below “safe” levels.

      The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, finds that for 58 percent of the world’s land surface, which is home to roughly 71 percent of the global population, the level of biodiversity loss is “substantial enough to question the ability of ecosystems to support human societies.”

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Celebrating common sense?

      Last week, there was a bit of good news on the trade front: on July 8, tobacco giant Philip Morris lost its ridiculous case against Uruguay’s cigarette labeling laws. In 2010, the multinational company’s Swiss subsidiary—which owns its operations in Uruguay—sued the country over rules designed to discourage cigarette consumption, especially by young people. As in a similar case against Australia, the company alleged that requiring labels that emphasize the dangers of smoking lowered the value of its intellectual property rights (i.e., its trademarked labels) and therefore, its investments. The case was brought under the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism in a bilateral investment treaty between Switzerland and Uruguay. ISDS empowers companies to sue governments in private tribunals over measures that undermine their expected profits. It has become a lightning rod for controversy in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

    • Avoid ‘miracle’ rice, just eat a carrot!

      Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution, died on September 9, 2009. Alfred G. Gilman died on December 23, 2015. Both were Nobel laureates and now both dead. Gilman was a signatory to a recent letter condemning Greenpeace and its opposition to genetic engineering.

      How many Nobel laureates does it take to write a letter? Easily ascertained — the dead Gilman and 106 others were enlisted in “supporting GMOs and golden rice”. Correct answer — 107, dead or alive.

      The laureates were rounded up by Val Giddings (senior fellow, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation), Jon Entine (author of Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People) and Jay Byrne (former head of corporate communications, Monsanto). Real people don’t have the luxury of getting Nobel laureates to write 1/107th of a letter, “chosen” folk do. Evidently.

      Cornell University is a “chosen” institution — central to genetically modified public relations. The Cornell Alliance of Science is funded by Bill Gates, just like the failed golden rice experiment.

      The Nobel laureates accuse Greenpeace of killing millions by delaying ghost rice — something the biotech industry accuses me of doing, for the same reason. Unlike golden rice — whose failure to launch is the industry’s own failure, the opposition to genetic engineering (and hence golden rice) is very real and successful. As Glenn Stone, a rice scientist at Washington University, states: “The simple fact is that after 24 years of research and breeding, golden rice is still years away from being ready for release.”

    • Don’t Eat the Yellow Rice: the Danger of Deploying Vitamin A Golden Rice

      But such tactics are not new. Long ago, the GMO industry spent well over $50 million to promote “Golden Rice” as the solution to vitamin A deficiency in low income countries. They did so well before the technology was completely worked out, let alone tested. Let alone consumer acceptability tested. Let alone subjecting it to standard phase 2 and 3 trials to see if it could ever solve problems in the real world.

      So why has this apparently straightforward scientific project not reached completion after so many decades?

      Because the purpose of Golden Rice was never to solve vitamin A problems. It never could and never will. Its purpose from the beginning was to be a tool for use in shaming GMO critics and now to convince Nobel Laureates to sign on to something they didn’t understand.

  • Security

    • Notice of security breach on Ubuntu Forums [Ed: this is proprietary software on top of proprietary software. Shame!]

      Deeper investigation revealed that there was a known SQL injection vulnerability in the Forumrunner add-on in the Forums which had not yet been patched.

    • Ubuntu Forums Hacked! Here Is What Hacker Stole?
    • ChaosKey

      The Linux Kernel, starting with version 4.1, includes source for this driver. It should be built by default in your distribution. If your using Linux + KVM to host other Linux instances, read the VirtualMachine page to see how you can configure the guests to share the host entropy source.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • The United Kingdom is sleepwalking into renewing humanity’s deadliest weapons

      On July 18, parliament will vote on renewing the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons system. The British public are tired of simplified, polarising campaign messages, and are fast losing faith in their elected representatives, setting the stage for a renewal of Trident by default.

      The country’s state of internal crisis cannot be an excuse for us to sleepwalk into this decision. This vote is too important and too existential to ignore due to ‘campaign fatigue’. There needs to be a deeply searching debate.

      The lifetime cost of replacing Trident, running into several tens of billions, is of course hugely relevant, as is the nation’s defence, but no less relevant is the thinking behind what it means for a nation to continue to invest in weapons of mass destruction with the capacity to kill millions.

    • France’s Smartphone App Is Criticized for Its Slow Response to Tragedy in Nice

      According to Amar Toor of The Verge, the app is supposed to send out an alert within 15 minutes of the crisis. “It is not yet clear what caused the delay,” Toor wrote, “though experts had warned that the app may struggle if cellular networks are congested following an attack.”

      Additionally, the French journalist Anaëlle Grondin tweeted that one government source cited a “technical problem” as the source of the delay.

      People in the area of the truck attack reportedly relied on Facebook for a safety check-in. Murdock notes that this is “the third time the [Facebook] feature has been used in two months, being activated following recent incidents in Orlando, Florida and Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport.”

    • Trump’s VP Pick, Mike Pence, Doesn’t Know Anything About Israel’s Nuclear Weapons

      Mike Pence, who on Thursday was announced as Donald Trump’s choice for vice president, has a long record of supporting Israel. Like many of his conservative peers, however, he doesn’t always have the best answer when asked directly about Israel’s foreign policy.

      The video below is a compilation of responses from politicians who were asked direct questions about Israel by reporter Sam Husseini. “Though they’ve varied somewhat in their answers, none has actually been straightforward,” Husseini noted.

    • Syrian Troops foil al-Qaeda riposte in Aleppo as France warns al-Qaeda could replace ISIL

      Even as the Syrian army defeated a counter-offensive by al-Qaeda in Syria and its battlefield allies at Aleppo, French President Francois Hollande warned that al-Qaeda should not be allowed to replace the declining Daesh (ISIL, ISIS) in Syria.

      On Saturday and Sunday, al-Qaeda (the Nusra Front) led the fundamentalist Faylaq al-Sham and other rebel groups in an attack on the Syrian troops who have closed the last road into East Aleppo. They apparently did not believe that the Syrian Arab Army had actually come to control Castellano Road into East Aleppo, and so tried to put a military convoy down it. Syrian artillery made mincemeat of the rebel vehicles and inflicted heavy casualties on the militiamen.

    • Turkish Government Cracks Down In The Wake Of Failed Coup Attempt

      At least 265 people died in the clashes and at least another 1,440 were injured, according to published reports. Nearly 3,000 military personnel have been detained while the Interior Ministry suspended some five generals and 29 colonels.

    • Are We in for Another Increase in Military Spending?

      At the present time, an increase in U.S. military spending seems as superfluous as a third leg. The United States, armed with the latest in advanced weaponry, has more military might than any other nation in world history. Moreover, it has begun a $1 trillion program to refurbish its entire nuclear weapons complex. America’s major military rivals, China and Russia, spend only a small fraction of what the United States does on its armed forces―in China’s case about a third and in Russia’s case about a ninth. Furthermore, the economic outlay necessary to maintain this vast U.S. military force constitutes a very significant burden. In fiscal 2015, U.S. military spending ($598.5 billion) accounted for 54 percent of the U.S. government’s discretionary spending.

    • The Long-Hidden Saudi-9/11 Trail

      The U.S. government and mainstream media are playing down the long-hidden 9/11 chapter on official Saudi connections to Al Qaeda’s hijackers, hoping most Americans won’t read it themselves, as 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser observes.

    • Declassified 9/11 pages show ties to former Saudi ambassador

      The 28 pages of newly declassified material from the 9/11 Commission released Friday by Congress show multiple links to associates of Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar, the former longtime ambassador to the United States.

      The details in the newly released documents are a mix of tantalizing, but often unconfirmed, tidbits about the Saudi Arabian ties of some of the 9/11 hijackers. They show possible conduits of money from the Saudi royal family to Saudis living in the United States and two of the hijackers in San Diego. The documents also indicate substantial support to California mosques with a high degree of radical Islamist sentiment.

    • US Declassifies Secret 9/11 Documents Known as the ’28 Pages’

      The U.S. intelligence community has officially lifted the veil on 28 classified pages from the first congressional investigation into the 9/11 terror attacks that some believe, once exposed, could demonstrate a support network inside the United States for two of those al-Qaeda hijackers.

      Today, the Obama administration declassified those documents — closely held secrets for over 13 years — and Congress released them to the public this afternoon. The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies had kept the information secret until now, citing reasons of national security.

      The information in the pages lays out a number of circumstances that suggest it’s possible two of the 9/11 hijackers living in California had been receiving operational support from individuals loyal to Saudi Arabia in the months leading up to the attacks.

      But intelligence officials say the information was preliminary, fragmented and unfinished data that was subsequently investigated along with more complete information in subsequent 9/11 investigations.

    • Congress releases secret ’28 pages’ on alleged Saudi 9/11 ties

      The pages also say that the inquiry obtained information “indicating that Saudi Government officials in the United States may have other ties to al-Qa’ida and other terrorist groups,” but the commission that authored the document acknowledged that much of the info “remains speculative and yet to be independently verified.”

    • 28 Pages Raise ‘Scores of Troubling Questions’ on US-Saudi Ties

      The just-released 28 pages of a 2002 congressional report into Saudi Arabia’s possible ties to the 9/11 hijackers have stirred speculation about the U.S. government’s continued relationship with the Gulf kingdom.

      Amnesty International criticized the White House’s statement that the pages, hidden from public view for 13 years, have not changed the government’s assessment that “there’s no evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi individuals funded al-Qaeda.”

      “We stand with survivors of this crime against humanity: They deserve justice and the whole truth,” the human rights group tweeted.

      As Murtaza Hussein wrote for The Intercept, the 28 pages “redacted in parts, detail circumstantial evidence of ties among Saudi government officials, intelligence agents, and several of the hijackers,” including by providing financial and housing assistance to those living in the U.S.

    • Turkey coup attempt: Erdoğan demands US arrest exiled cleric Gülen – live
    • Stuffing Turkey

      Electricity has been cut to the U.S. Incirlik air force base, where a number of nuclear gravity bombs are kept. The bombs are not an immediate threat (read the thread at that link), but who knows this?

    • Turkey’s Lose-Lose Coup Attempt

      Turkish President Erdogan has abetted jihadist terror and cracked down on political dissent – making him a contributor to Mideast troubles – but a military coup is the wrong way to remove him, says ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller.

    • Thousands Arrested as Attempted Coup in Turkey Reportedly Fails

      Thousands of people were arrested and at least 161 killed overnight in Turkey as an attempted military coup came to a chaotic end.

      The death toll has been estimated to be as high as 194. A reported 2,389 military officials, including high-ranking officers, were taken into custody after clashing with citizens who had heeded Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan’s call to “stand up” against those he called coup plotters, the BBC reports.

      The Judges and Prosecutors High Council also reportedly dismissed 2,745 judges across the country.

    • The New Cold War’s Frontline in Crimea

      Most Americans don’t have a clue what has happened in a place called Crimea or why it is on the frontlines of what is becoming a new Cold War. In fact, few even know where it is. But Crimea’s location has made it one of the most frequent battlegrounds of empires — and today is no exception.

    • Blair to Bush on 9/12/01: ‘Co-Opt’ Sympathy for War

      “It is now [September 12, 2001] that the world is in a state of shock; now that it feels maximum sympathy for the US; now that it can be co-opted most easily,” Blair wrote.

      “The report should lay to rest allegations of bad faith, lies or deceit.” So said former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a July 6 statement in response to the release of the long-awaited Chilcot Report – a 2.6 million-word examination, based on dozens of interviews and hundreds of classified documents, of the UK’s decision to join the Iraq War.

      “I did not mislead this country. I made the decision in good faith on the information I had at the time,” Blair insisted.

    • After Nice, Don’t Trade Liberty for Security

      Typically, the debate following attacks like these proceeds along two dimensions. There is a proposed domestic response designed to reduce the probability of similar attacks taking place in the future. And there is a proposed foreign response to punish the ones responsible – or more realistically, to punish a lot of random people that have the misfortune of living in the general vicinity of wherever the attacker and his friends are from. But I digress.

    • Conservatives Call For ‘Truck Control’ In Wake Of Terrorist Attack In Nice

      This is not the first time Duncan has tried to shift the conversation away from guns after an attack. On the three-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting, the Congressman made a “knife control” joke. In response to a report about a teacher in Paris who was stabbed by an ISIS sympathizer, Duncan tweeted, “I doubt France will respond by demanding more knife control.”

    • Toppling Lumumba: Canada’s Dark Role in the Congo

      56 years ago today the United Nations launched a peacekeeping force that contributed to one of the worst post-independence imperial crimes in Africa. The Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo (ONUC) delivered a major blow to Congolese aspirations by undermining elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. Canada played a significant role in ONUC and Lumumba’s assassination, which should be studied by progressives demanding Ottawa increase its participation in UN “peacekeeping”.

      After seven decades of brutal rule, Belgium organized a hasty independence in the hopes of maintaining control over the Congo’s vast natural resources. When Lumumba was elected to pursue a genuine de-colonization, Brussels instigated a secessionist movement in the eastern part of country. In response, the Congolese Prime Minister asked the UN for a peacekeeping force to protect the territorial integrity of the newly independent country. Washington, however, saw the UN mission as a way to undermine Lumumba.

      Siding with Washington, Ottawa promoted ONUC and UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold’s controversial anti-Lumumba position. 1,900 Canadian troops participated in the UN mission between 1960 and 1964, making this country’s military one of its more active members. There were almost always more Canadian officers at ONUC headquarters then those of any other nationality and the Canadians were concentrated in militarily important logistical positions including chief operations officer and chief signals officer.

      Canada’s strategic role wasn’t simply by chance. Ottawa pushed to have Canada’s intelligence gathering signals detachments oversee UN intelligence and for Quebec Colonel Jean Berthiaume to remain at UN headquarters to “maintain both Canadian and Western influence.” (A report from the Canadian Directorate of Military Intelligence noted, “Lumumba’s immediate advisers… have referred to Lt. Col. Berthiaume as an ‘imperialist tool’.”)

    • A Mass Murderer Becomes a ‘Terrorist’–Based on Ethnicity, Not Evidence

      Despite the absence of any evidence of a political motivation, or indeed any motive at all—generally considered to be a key part of any definition of terrorism—the Times story still referred to the Nice killings as “the third large-scale act of terrorism in France in a year and a half.” The killings, Higgins wrote, “raised new questions throughout the world about the ability of extremists to sow terror.”

      Why is the Times willing to label the Nice deaths “terrorism”—a label that US media do not apply to all acts of mass violence, even ones that have much clearer political motives (FAIR Media Advisory, 4/15/14)? In part, they seem to be following the lead of French authorities: “French officials labeled the attack terrorism and cast the episode as the latest in a series that have made France a battlefield in the violent clash between Islamic extremists and the West.”

      But quotes from French officials made it clear that such claims were little more than guesswork: The story reported that Prime Minister Manuel Valls “said the attacker in all likelihood had ties to radical Islamist circles,” citing Valls’ statement to French TV: “He is a terrorist probably linked to radical Islam one way or another.”

      [...]

      French Interior Minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, “was more cautious,” the Times reported: “We have an individual who was not at all known by the intelligence services for activities linked to radical Islamism,” Cazeneuve was quoted.

      Why was the Times not similarly cautious about applying the label of “terrorism” to an act whose motives it admitted knowing nothing about? It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the Times believes that when the suspect is an Arab—Lahouaiej Bouhlel was a Tunisian immigrant—then allegations of terrorism require no evidence whatsoever.

    • Coup d’état attempt: Turkey’s Reichstag fire?

      On the evening of July 15, 2016, a friend called around 10:30pm and said that both bridges connecting the Asian and European sides of Istanbul were closed by military barricades. Moreover, military jets were flying over Ankara skies. As someone living on the European side of Istanbul and commuting to the Asian side to my university on a daily basis and spending many hours in traffic in order to do that, I immediately knew that the closure of both bridges was a sign of something very extraordinary taking place.

      To confirm the news about the military jets over Ankara, I called my parents in Ankara. They answered the phone in a panic. I could hear military jets from the other end of the phone. Not surprisingly, my 86-year-old parents had experienced military coups in Turkey before. As I was talking breathlessly with my Dad, my Mum murmured from the other line calmly but firmly: “this seems like a coup d’état.”

      From that point onwards, all hell broke loose especially in Ankara and Istanbul. The death toll in less than 24 hours after the coup attempt in Turkey is over 200. There are thousand of people who are wounded. Twitter and facebook became inaccessible during the early hours. The tv channels started broadcasting live from Ankara and Istanbul: yet, they were not sure what was going on at the outset. Shortly after, the military released a statement saying that the “military has seized all power in Turkey” through the state tv channel TRT. That is when I could not stop my tears, for memories flocked back of the September 12, 1980 coup d’état when a similar announcement was made. I had experienced that coup as a student in one of the most politically active universities in the country, the Middle East Technical University. The memories, as for many people of my generation, were painful.

    • Turkish People-Power Foils Attempted Coup

      The poorly planned junior officers’ coup in Turkey on Friday appears to have failed as I write late Friday night, though rebel military elements still hold positions in some parts of the country, including Ankara, the capital. Their allegiances and motives are still unclear.

      Remarkably, among the reasons for the failure was the determined stance of the Turkish people who stood up for their democracy, even if about half of them deeply dislike President Erdogan.

      Crowds came out into the streets in Istanbul and Ankara. Individuals stood or lay down in front of tanks.

      Some civilians even arrested mutinying troops!

      After the military faction took over state tv, crowds invaded the station and allowed its anchors to come back on line.

    • US-based Turkish cleric facing extradition over botched rebellion claims president orchestrated plot to justify a clampdown on civil rights

      A US-based Turkish cleric accused of plotting a coup to overthrow the Ankara government has claimed President Recep Erdogan staged the rebellion himself to justify a major clampdown on opposition forces.

      Fethullah Gulen, who was a former key ally of Erdogan has been blamed by the politician of using his contacts to develop a ‘parallel structure’ to overthrow the state.

      Erdogan has called on US President Barack Obama to extradite Gulen, who is based in Pennsylvania.

    • Vietnam removes protesters gathered for anti-China rally in Hanoi

      Dozens of Vietnamese who gathered for an anti-China protest in central Hanoi were taken away by authorities on Sunday as they tried to rally support for an international tribunal’s ruling rejecting Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea.

      About two dozen people were bused away from around the landmark Hoan Kiem Lake in the capital even before they began their protest. There was heavy police presence around the lake with cars briefly banned from around it.

      The rally was organised by No-U group in Hanoi, which opposes China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea. It came after the Hague-based permanent court of arbitration last week issued the ruling in a case initiated by the Philippines, which together with Vietnam is one of the claimants in the disputed waters.

    • Nice attack: France calls up 12,000 reservists

      France has called up 12,000 police reservists to help boost security after Thursday’s attack in Nice in which more than 80 people were killed.

      Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve also appealed to “all willing French patriots” to sign up as reservists, to help protect the country’s borders.

      Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove a lorry along the seafront through crowds before police shot him dead.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • US Navy banned from using sonar that harms dolphins and walruses

      A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that the US Navy was wrongly allowed to use sonar in the nation’s oceans that could harm whales and other marine life.

      The ninth circuit court of appeals reversed a lower court decision upholding approval granted in 2012 for the Navy to use low-frequency sonar for training, testing and routine operations.

      The five-year approval covered peacetime operations in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea.

    • Think Animals Don’t Have Emotions? Researchers Have News for You

      How might we discern an elephant’s or a mouse’s sense of the world? Elephants and mice might not tell us what they’re thinking. But their brains can. Brain scans show that core emotions of sadness, happiness, rage, or fear, and motivational feelings of hunger and thirst, are generated in “deep and very ancient circuits of the brain,” says the noted neurologist Jaak Panksepp.

      Researchers in labs can now trigger many emotional responses by direct electrical stimulation of the brain systems of animals. Rage, for example, gets produced in the same parts of the brains of a cat and a human.

    • As Congress Calls Out Fossil Fuel Deception, ExxonMobil Continues to Fund Climate Science Denial

      Last week, ExxonMobil released their much anticipated 2015 Corporate Citizenship and Worldwide Giving reports, which include voluntarily disclosed information about their corporate giving each year. Despite ongoing claims by the company to NOT be funding climate denial, the reports once again reveal that the oil and gas giant has continued to financially support many groups that work to undermine climate science, while labeling such funding as corporate social responsibility.

    • ‘The Dam Builders Could Not Stop My Mother’ So They Killed Her

      In March, my mother Berta Cáceres was murdered in her own home. Her death pains me in a way I cannot describe with words.

      She was killed for defending life, for safeguarding our common goods and those of nature, which are sacred. She was killed for defending the rivers that are sources of our people’s life, ancestral strength and spirituality.

      My mother became a woman of resistance, of struggle, so that our deep connection with nature is not destroyed; so that the life of our peoples—the Lenca Indigenous People of Honduras—is respected. Her killers tried to silence her with bullets, but she is a seed, a seed that is reborn in all men and women. She is a seed that will be reborn in the people that follow her path of resistance.

      To achieve justice for her death, I need your help.

    • Massive Fracking Explosion in New Mexico, 36 Oil Tanks Catch Fire

      This week—as thousands of Americans urge awareness to the destruction caused by oil bomb trains—an oil field in San Juan County, New Mexico erupted in flames Monday night, highlighting the continued and increasing dangers of the fossil fuel industry.

      The fire broke out around 10:15 p.m. Monday at a fracking site owned and operated by WPX Energy, setting off several explosions and temporarily closing the nearby Highway 550. Fifty-five local residents were forced out of their homes.

    • The Unyielding Grip of Fossil Fuels on Global Life

      Here’s the good news: wind power, solar power, and other renewable forms of energy are expanding far more quickly than anyone expected, ensuring that these systems will provide an ever-increasing share of our future energy supply. According to the most recent projections from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy, global consumption of wind, solar, hydropower, and other renewables will double between now and 2040, jumping from 64 to 131 quadrillion British thermal units (BTUs).

      And here’s the bad news: the consumption of oil, coal, and natural gas is also growing, making it likely that, whatever the advances of renewable energy, fossil fuels will continue to dominate the global landscape for decades to come, accelerating the pace of global warming and ensuring the intensification of climate-change catastrophes.

      The rapid growth of renewable energy has given us much to cheer about. Not so long ago, energy analysts were reporting that wind and solar systems were too costly to compete with oil, coal, and natural gas in the global marketplace. Renewables would, it was then assumed, require pricey subsidies that might not always be available. That was then and this is now. Today, remarkably enough, wind and solar are already competitive with fossil fuels for many uses and in many markets.

    • UK could warm by 4°C this century

      Scientific advisers warn that, by 2100, temperatures in Britain could rise by twice as much as the internationally-agreed limit set at the Paris climate conference.

    • Climate Law Champions Are Battling The Fossil Fuel Industry In Court

      In a growing number of climate-related legal actions, concerned citizens are targeting the Carbon Majors, the world’s largest fossil fuel corporations responsible for two thirds of the human-made carbon emissions in the atmosphere today.

      These corporations have made massive profits while outsourcing the true cost of their product upon the poor who are paying with their lives, their homes, and their ability to grow food, as they begin to deal with the impacts that 1˚C of warming is already inflicting on them.

      In a new report, the Climate Justice Programme examines cases across the world and finds that climate litigation will dwarf all other litigation, including tobacco and asbestos, in terms of both the number of plaintiffs and the timeframe over which it can stretch.

    • ‘Shocking,’ ‘Plain Stupid’: Theresa May Shuts Climate Change Office

      Less than a day after becoming the U.K.’s unelected leader, Prime Minister Theresa May closed the government’s climate change office, a move instantly condemned as “shocking” and “plain stupid.”

      May shuttered the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) on Thursday and moved responsibility for the environment to a new Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. The decision comes the same week as the U.K. government’s own advisers warned in a report that the nation was not ready for the inevitable consequences of climate change, including deadly heat waves and food and water shortages.

      “This is shocking news. Less than a day into the job and it appears that the new prime minister has already downgraded action to tackle climate change, one of the biggest threats we face,” said Craig Bennett, CEO of the environmental group Friends of the Earth. “This week the government’s own advisors warned of ever growing risks to our businesses, homes and food if we don’t do more to cut fossil fuel pollution.”

    • The Little-Known Fund at the Heart of the Paris Climate Agreement

      The Green Climate Fund is supposed to finance the world’s shift away from fossil fuels. But fossil fuel-funding banks are eager to get on board.

    • Get Ready, a Potentially Record-Breaking ‘Heat Dome’ is Coming

      Temperatures in the central U.S. and Upper Midwest could reach 10 to 20 degrees above average

    • Pacific Islands Nations Consider ‘Pioneering’ Treaty to Ban Fossil Fuels

      Pacific Island nations are reportedly considering the world’s first treaty to ban fossil fuels, which would require signatories to work toward renewable energy targets and prohibit any expansion of fossil fuel mines.

      The leaders of 14 nations on the front lines of climate change are considering the treaty after an annual summit in the Solomon Islands known as the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF). The treaty would establish a “Pacific framework for renewable energy” and require “universal access” to clean energy by 2030. It would also bind leaders not to approve any new coal or other fossil fuel mines nor provide subsidies for extraction or consumption.

    • Pacific ​​islands nations consider world’s first treaty to ban fossil fuels

      The world’s first international treaty that bans or phases out fossil fuels is being considered by leaders of developing Pacific islands nations after a summit in the Solomon Islands this week.

      The leaders of 14 countries agreed to consider a proposed Pacific climate treaty, which would bind signatories to targets for renewable energy and ban new or the expansion of coalmines, at the annual leaders’ summit of the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF).

    • Cyclones set to get fiercer as world warms

      New analysis of cyclone data and computer climate modelling indicates that global warming is likely to intensify the destructive power of tropical storms.

  • Finance

    • Seafile now accepts bitcoin via BitPay

      We are very happy to announce that it’s now possible to pay for cloud accounts and licenses with bitcoin in our web shops. Bitcoin payments are possible via the very nice people over at BitPay.

    • The Qubes Project announces a decentralized bitcoin fund

      As part of our quest to decentralize and harden the project, we have switched today to a multi-signature wallet for our Qubes bitcoin fund. This means that no longer can a single person, not even myself, sign an outgoing transaction from our new wallet. For this to happen M out of N signatures is required (we selected N = 13, and M = 6, for the time being). The holders of the keys have been invited from among Qubes developers and supporters from all over the world. Some people might have more than one key, but still fewer than M.

    • Nicholas Wilson and the HSBC Blues

      Again, my opinion, I think HSBC USA should have been shut down for the money laundering, sanctions avoiding, and garden variety fraud disclosed in the 2010 Levin report and by the contributions of at least two US whistleblowers.

    • My thoughts on BREXIT: History is written by the victors

      Brexit has revealed a culture war, which the left has been quietly losing.

    • “Free” Trade? Fraud Alert

      It is rare these days to hear the words “market” and “trade” without the word “free” attached—especially on corporate media. I even hear colleagues who are pursuing a more localized economy use these terms without realizing that by so doing they are subtly and unintentionally promoting a political agenda they oppose.

    • Big Headlines for a Tiny Wage Hike

      Lloyd Blankfein, one of America’s most powerful bankers, a few years ago told a reporter that his Goldman Sachs financial colossus was doing “God’s work.”

      That off-hand comment would provoke an instant uproar. An embarrassed Blankfein had to quickly calm the waters. He meant his quip, the Goldman CEO assured us all, only as a joke.

      Earlier this week, one of Blankfein’s high-finance peers, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, made some headlines of his own. In a widely heralded New York Times op-ed, Dimon proudly announced that his bank is making a major move to “create more widely shared prosperity.”

    • The Blood-Dimmed Tide of Neo-Nationalism and Other Scary Simulacra

      The Greater Middle East has been successfully destabilized. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, any country not playing ball with transnational Capitalism has been brought to its knees by a series of invasions, bombings, sanctions, support for insurgencies, corruption, et cetera. Iran is currently negotiating in the hope of avoiding a similar fate. Russia, following its transformation into an autocratic capitalist free-for-all for ex-KGB men and their oligarch cronies — a transformation designed by folks like Jeffrey Sachs, Lawrence Summers, the Harvard Institute for International Development, the IMF, and other shock therapists — has been more or less surrounded by the EU and NATO, and is being pressured to get with the program. China, in spite of its playing grab-ass with the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea, is deep into the global Capitalism thing. Vietnam and Laos have joined the club. Cuba is even opening for business again. South America is a work-in-progress, as ever, what with the recent neoliberal “soft” coup in Brazil, the re-neoliberalization of Argentina, the destabilization of Venezuela, and so on.

      This is just a quick summary of the highlights. The point is, apart from some isolated pockets of resistance — which the corporatists will get to eventually — and the various nightmarish terrorist theme parks operating out in the imperial hinterlands, it’s one big global capitalist world … one Market under Mammon, indivisible, with privatization and austerity for most, and distractionary paranoia for all.

    • Theresa May suggests Brexit delay as she says no Article 50 until Scotland gives go-ahead

      Theresa May has indicated that Brexit could be delayed as she said she will not trigger the formal process for leaving the EU until there is an agreed “UK approach” backed by Scotland.

      The Prime Minister on Friday travelled to Scotland to meet Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister, and discuss plans for Britain’s Brexit negotiation.

      In a sign that the new Prime Minister is committed to keeping the Union intact, she said she will not trigger Article 50 – the formal process for withdrawing from the EU – until all the devolved nations in the country agree.

    • How Globalization Divides Us: Perspectives on Brexit from a Dual Citizen

      When I woke up on June 24th and checked the news, I cried. Along with millions of people around the world. I’m a diehard believer in independence, freedom, democracy, and strong local economies. For some, the Brexit result represented those things. If that had been the reality, I would’ve supported it too. But like every other choice offered in the global economy these days, Brexit was a false one. Getting out of Europe does nothing to address the real problems in UK society—or the world. We’re still headed down the same destructive path together, but now more fractious and divided than ever.

    • Truthdigger of the Week: Jaime Prater, Starbucks Barista Who Got Workers a Raise

      Want a raise?

      Jaime Prater did. A Starbucks barista for nine years, the 40-year-old resident of Montclair, Calif., was paid $10 an hour and given between 22 and 25 hours of work a week—at least 11 hours short of what he needs just to make ends meet. And compared to the standards of living among the professional class, what modest ends they surely are.

      This week, Prater managed to squeeze modest raises for himself and his colleagues out of his employer, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.

      “[E]ffective October 3,” Schultz wrote last Monday in a letter to employees that begins with a reference to the week of racial shootings across the country, “all partners and store managers in U.S. company-operated stores will receive an increase in base pay of 5% or greater.” This raise and an increase in the stock holdings of employees who have been with the company for more than two years “will result in compensation increases between 5% and 15%,” Schultz added.

    • Brexit Takes Root in the Caribbean

      “Brexit” has been defined by many as “a real political earthquake with national and international implications”.

      It seemed a difficult fight for the separatists, because top English leaders –headed by their Prime Minister David Cameron– led the opposition to this demand promoted by the most conservative politicians.

      The British political leadership was defeated and, with them, all of Europe, its allies and even the president of the United States, Barack Obama, who saw his position of remaining within the European Union (EU) his most loyal and powerful ally in all main issues for the US power defeated.

      The result of the referendum on Brexit, which has affected all the world in various ways, has the countries of the Caribbean region in anxious expectation, torn between forecasts and preparations, because of the ties –both historical and current– that link them to the United Kingdom.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Turkish government asked public to resist coup in text message

      As a coup against Turkey’s government took place yesterday, Turkish citizens were sent a text message that urged them to take to the streets to support democracy and resist the coup. The text message appears to have been sent out during the coup from Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).

    • Jill Stein Just Promised To Pardon Snowden, Appoint Him To Cabinet If Elected

      Presumptive Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein promises to grant NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – whom many describe as a true American hero – not just a full pardon, but a promotion to the upper echelons of government should she win the White House.

    • Jill Stein Pledges to Grant Edward Snowden a Full Pardon and Appoint Him to Her Cabinet

      Edward Snowden, America’s #1 fugitive, would not only get a full pardon under a Jill Stein administration, but would get a promotion to one of the highest levels of government.

      “[Snowden] has done an incredible service to our country at great cost to himself for having to live away from his family, his friends, his job, his network, to basically live as an expatriate,” Stein said during a livestreamed town hall with supporters on her Facebook page.

      “I would say not only bring Snowden back, but bring him into my administration as a member of the Cabinet, because we need people who are part of our national security administration who are really, very patriotic,” Stein continued. “If we’re really going to protect American security, we also have to protect our Constitutional rights, and that includes our right to privacy.”

    • Sanders ally Cornel West backs Green candidate

      Activist Cornel West is endorsing Green Party candidate Jill Stein after previously backing Bernie Sanders’s presidential bid.

      “This November, we need change,” he wrote Thursday in an op-ed for The Guardian. “Yet we are tied in a choice between [Donald] Trump, who would be a neo-fascist catastrophe, and [Hillary] Clinton, a neo-liberal disaster.”

    • Sixty mega-donors gave 30 percent of the money raised by Donald Trump and the Republican Party

      Sixty mega-donors gave at least $100,000 each to a joint committee raising funds for Donald Trump and the Republican Party, together pouring in $15.4 million from late May until the end of June, new campaign finance records show.

    • A question of leadership

      The explanation emerges in conversation with anyone under 30 who has an ounce of idealism. Gemma Jamieson Malik, for example, a London PhD student driven by housing costs to live out of London, explains: ‘It’s not that I’m a Jeremy Corby fan. It’s that he’s opened a space for a new politics I and my friends can feel part of. He’s generated a new energy around Labour.’

    • New Poll Shows Hillary Clinton Tied With Donald Trump

      The survey also showed that both are viewed as untrustworthy by over 60 percent of voters.

    • A Citizen’s Guide to the Upcoming Conventions

      It’s also unsettling many other Americans, some of whom will be demonstrating in downtown Cleveland to protest the nomination of a man who has gone out of his way to denigrate Latinos, blacks, Muslims and immigrants.

    • Donald Trump Appeases Extreme Right With Pence Pick

      In appeasing the extreme right by choosing Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate, Donald Trump reveals how he hopes to secure enough votes to win the presidency — and how he may have to govern in order to satisfy the GOP base.

      With his announcement of Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate, Donald Trump almost single-handedly revived a political career that was circling the bowl not long ago. Pence, once considered a contender for the GOP presidential nomination, all but ended his hopes of national office when he signed Indiana’s “religious freedom” law, and bungled his response to a backlash that cost his state millions of dollars.

    • Mike Pence Is a Smooth-Talking Todd Akin

      The guy who led the crusade against Planned Parenthood and signed anti-abortion laws will drive more women to Hillary Clinton.

    • Mike Pence Said Martin Luther King Jr. Was His Hero Growing Up. Here’s Why That Sounds Absurd.

      King stood with President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 1965 Voting Rights Act was signed into law. Yet, when it comes to voting rights, an issue that King fought hard for, you see that Indiana doesn’t make it easy for voters to get to the polls. The state only kept polling places open until 6 p.m. during the May primary, although most states keep their polls open to 8 p.m. or even later. Indiana doesn’t have any laws that require employers to allow workers to leave work to go vote.

      In contrast, King said in his 1957 speech called “Give Us The Ballot,” “So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind. It is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact. I can only submit to the edict of others.”

    • Ralph Nader on Election 2016: ‘Our Country Deserves Better’

      And, of course, Ramos asks him how he will be voting. “I always believe in voting your conscience,” Nader responds. “Not tactical votes, not ‘least worst’ votes.” This leads him to talk about Bernie Sanders’ recent endorsement of Hillary Clinton, calling it a “very astute” move. “He set her up for political betrayal,” Nader notes, adding that the strategy was “brilliant.”

    • After Sanders Endorses Clinton, ‘Political Revolution’ Faces Hard Choices

      On the other hand, despite what progressive commentators, like Joan Walsh, may claim, the Democratic primary was rigged to enable a Clinton win. Hundreds of superdelegates pledged their allegiance to Clinton before votes were cast in Iowa. A limited number of debates were scheduled to ensure voters had the least amount of exposure to Clinton opponents. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign falsely accused the Sanders campaign of “stealing” voter file data. The Hillary Victory Fund funneled millions of dollars through state parties to the DNC in what looked very much like a money laundering scheme. Democratic women supporting Sanders faced forms of retaliation.

    • Elizabeth Warren Absolutely Shreds ‘Terrifying’ Trump/Pence Ticket: ‘Two Small, Insecure, Weak Men’

      Even if Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is not selected to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate, she has definitely secured herself a spot in the campaign as the go-to person for unrestrained and brutally frank criticism of the GOP ticket.

      As Donald Trump prepared to formally announce Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate, Warren launched an all-out assault on the ticket, calling the Republican duo “two small, insecure, weak men.”

      Warren who has been a thorn in Trump’s side for weeks now — and appears to be the one who most effectively gets under his skin based on his weak rejoinders — hammered the two on Twitter for their anti-woman and anti-LGBT rhetoric.

    • How the Right Tears Down America

      So far, so good. A large number of GOP politicians, from Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell on down, have treated Obama since the beginning of his presidency as illegitimate and as an enemy to be maligned and legislatively blackmailed rather than treated as America’s chief executive. This attitude gave us government shutdowns, a near-default on our sovereign credit, and some of the worst congresses in history.

    • ‘He is a Faker’: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Publicly Spars with Donald Trump

      In recent media interviews, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has publicly decried the candidacy of Donald Trump for president, characterizing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee as a “faker” with “no consistency” and “an ego.”

      Her unusually partisan comments earned some condemnation from centrist media commentators as well as Trump himself.

      In an interview with CNN published Tuesday, Ginsburg said: “He is a faker[...] He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. … How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.”

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • This art project uses the Khajuraho art style to comment on censorship

      Modern-day issues of censorship are juxtaposed with erotic drawings from the Khajuraho temples in a pop-up art project by Akshita Chandra, 21, a design student in Bengaluru.

    • BDS Is a War Israel Can’t Win

      Israel’s apologists would call the BDS campaign “immoral”, but the slander is laughably false

    • Turkey’s President Survives Coup Attempt, Thanks in Part to Social Media He So Despises

      The plotters failed, despite following a script that had might have succeeded in the 20th century, in part because Erdogan was able to rally support for democratic rule using 21st century tools: video chat and social media.

      After the officers claimed control of the country in a statement they forced a presenter to read on TRT, the state broadcaster, the country’s internet and phone networks remained out of their control. That allowed Erdogan to improvise an address to the nation in a FaceTime call to CNN Turk, a private broadcaster the military only managed to force off the air later in the night, as the coup unraveled. In his remarks, the president called on people to take to the streets.

    • Kashmir Held to Ransom

      Holding people to ransom; criminalizing political space; causing psychosomatic ills…

    • Starbucks and McDonald’s move to block porn from their Wi-Fi networks

      Anti-pornography groups have succeeded in their efforts to get Starbucks and McDonald’s to block porn on the chains’ Wi-Fi networks.

      Earlier this year McDonald’s (MCD) responded by putting filters in place at most of its U.S. restaurants, a change that was disclosed this week. The company had already had the filtering in place at its U.K. restaurants.

      “McDonald’s is committed to providing a safe environment for our customers,” he said. “We had not heard from our customers that this was an issue, but we saw an opportunity that is consistent with our goal of providing an enjoyable experience for families.”

    • A History of Media Control and Media Blackouts in Coups d’Etat

      With the information disarray coming out of Turkey during the (seemingly failed) military coup, we see the same pattern of attempting to control media as we’ve seen for the past 500 years, in peacetime and wartime. Revolutions come quickly or slowly, violently or peacefully, but they still follow the same pattern of attempting to control and distort the truth – only the technology differs over 500 years.

      The pattern is that the people in power rally to centralized information chokepoints to cut off and control the information flow and deny broadcasting ability to others, whereas the challengers use the power of lots and lots of volunteers to build a decentralized information flow around these chokepoints. When this succeeds, the challengers generally win. This has been repeated in coup d’état situations with the printing press, with pamphlets, with newspapers, and now, with the Internet and with social media. It’s also been used in more-or-less democratic settings where an establishment collectively tried to stonewall a challenger, as early as a century ago.

      Some would argue it’s ironic that Turkish ruler Erdoğan used social media last night to call for people to rally against the coup. On the contrary, this is completely in line with the idea that all media should be strictly controlled by a few people in power. Erdoğan used social media to broadcast his own messages, which doesn’t contradict the previous actions of limiting the same ability for everybody else. It’s perfectly in line with actions of historical autocratic rulers to disable Facebook and Twitter, except for use by the ruler.

    • Kashmir: Media persons protest against govt’s attempt of censorship

      The media fraternity took out a protest march in the Valley against the gag by the state government.

      Newspapers were not allowed to publish in Kashmir and were asked by the state government to suspend their operations for the next 3 days.

    • Florida prisons’ censorship of ‘Militant’ violates free speech rights

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Uber’s investigators admit to lying while digging up dirt on legal foes

      Ergo, the secretive, CIA-linked firm that was paid by Uber to investigate the plaintiff in one of the ride-hail startup’s many lawsuits, has now admitted to lying and illegally recording phone calls during its probe, according to Law360. Lawyers for Ergo owned up to the infractions in oral arguments in court Thursday, drawing a rebuke from the judge overseeing the case.

      Last December, Spencer Meyer filed a proposed class action lawsuit against Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, alleging a scheme to fix prices in violation of antitrust laws. The same day, Uber hired Ergo to investigate Meyer out of concern he posed a security risk to Kalanick. But Ergo also gathered information on Meyer’s lawyer, a move that some critics say went too far. Ergo’s lawyer argued that the firm was unaware the investigation was tied to a lawsuit, even while admitting Ergo’s investigator “dissembled and used false pretenses in his duties,” Law360 said.

    • Minutes from EU Court of Justice on #DataRetention

      On 19th July 2016, Advocate General Øe Saugmandsgaard will present the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) his opinion in the joined cases C-203/15 and C-698/15,Tele2 Sverige and Davis and Others. They concern the validity of national laws in Sweden and the UK for the retention of telecommunications data under EU law and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. This is a very relevant question, since the Court invalidated the EU Data retention directive in 2014.

    • Brexit and Privacy

      It’s as clear as mud, what it means when a country decides to willingly pull out of a trading bloc, a policy coordination mechanism, a relatively democratic network, and a framework for the free flow of people, data, and rights. Meanwhile today the minister in charge of surveillance for the past six years will assume the leadership of the country.

      There is much speculation as to what is next. Here’s our take. Importantly, there’s a lot to be worried about, some to like, much we cannot foresee. The future has rarely been so murky.

      What I am practically certain of is that there will be renewed pushes for surveillance as a result of Brexit. And there is no meaningful political resistance. The Minister in charge of the police has today become the Prime Minister and is claiming to have a mandate of controlling borders. Such uncertain times are often fertile ground for attempts to enhance surveillance powers.

    • Hey Students, Stop Asking Noam Chomsky for Help with Your Homework

      Noam Chomsky is pretty baffled by more than half of Americans; the amount of U.S. residents who will use Facebook this year. Chomsky is in the minority. He doesn’t use social media and detests when users refer to acquaintances they have the most minute exchanges with as “friends.”

      “Adolescents,” Chomsky clarified, “Who think they have 500 friends, ‘cause they have 500 people on their Facebook account, but these are the kind of friends whose relation to you is if you say, ‘I bought a sandwich,’ they say, ‘did it taste good?’ That’s a kind of interaction, but very different from having a real friend.’”

    • Spy or Whistleblower? Should Obama Settle With Snowden?

      Edward Snowden has been living in asylum in Russia for three years. As our country prepares to elect its next president, none of the candidates are likely to have a merciful attitude toward the controversial whistleblower, nor want to begin their administration with a political act on a provocative subject that passionately divides the country.

      But President Obama has an opportunity in his final months in office, when presidents traditionally exercise their pardon and clemency powers, to direct his Attorney General to offer a reasonable settlement to Snowden through his attorneys.

    • U.S. Government Presents Draft Legislation for Cross-Border Data Requests [Ed: in the US (and allies) Microsoft gives the government back door access to all data]

      Another example involves Brazil, where Microsoft has been fined millions of dollars, and its employees threatened with criminal prosecution, for following a U.S. law that makes it a crime to obey a Brazilian court order demanding information about a suspected criminal in Brazil.

    • Feds Monitoring Activists on Facebook Ahead of Republican Convention

      Federal authorities are watching political activists organizing protests ahead of next week’s Republican National Convention, warning that “anarchist extremists” pose a threat to Cleveland.

      A “threat assessment” issued jointly by the FBI, Secret Service, and Department of Homeland Security warns law enforcement to be on the lookout for “potential indicators” of “violent anarchist extremist activity.” The indicators include “pilfering construction sites” for rocks, pipes, or bricks and “movement of newspaper containers and trashcans to create barricades” — but also carrying spray paint, eye drops, or wearing “clothing bearing anarchist symbols.”

    • Anti-Muslim Rep Seizes On Nice Attack To Call For Mass Surveillance Of Muslim Americans

      Mere hours after the horrifying attack in Nice, France on Thursday night, politicians and pundits began speculating about the religion of the attacker and calling for increased scrutiny of the Muslim community. Responding to the attack on Fox News, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) seized the opportunity to push mass surveillance of Muslim Americans, saying that holding back would be a “sign of weakness.”

    • French government rejects crypto backdoors as “the wrong solution”

      Speaking on behalf of the French government, the deputy minister for digital affairs Axelle Lemaire has rejected an amendment to the new “Law for the Digital Republic,” which called for computer companies to provide backdoors to encrypted systems. As reported by the French site Numerama, Lemaire said of the idea: “What you propose is vulnerability by design. It’s inappropriate.” She also referred to the Netherlands’ recent statement in support of encryption, and the discovery of backdoors in Juniper’s products, as reasons not to take that route.

      She pointed out that with backdoors “personal data is no longer completely protected. Even if the intention [of giving the authorities access] is praiseworthy, it opens the door to actors with less praiseworthy intentions, to say nothing of the possible economic harm that loss of credibility will cause companies that implement these flaws.” She concluded: “You are right to add to the debate, but in the government’s view, it’s the wrong solution.”

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • 188 arrest warrants issued for members of Turkey’s supreme courts

      Turkish prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for 140 Constitutional Court members and 48 members of the Council of State in the wake of Friday night’s attempted coup. Ten arrests have already been made, local media reported.

      The ten jurists detained were all members of the Council of State, which is Turkey’s top administrative court, NTV broadcaster reported.

    • Flights To Turkey Cancelled After Coup

      Flights to and from Turkey have been cancelled and Britons in the country have been advised to “stay indoors”.

    • New York nun is reported missing on vacation in Austria

      Images found on her phone suggest she was enjoying herself, taking photos and videos of the scenic Alpine countryside before she disappeared, the website reported

      Christie sent emails letting her nephew on Long Island know where she was but then the emails suddenly stopped July 6.

    • Obama has failed victims of racism and police brutality

      A long and deep legacy of white supremacy has always arrested the development of US democracy. We either hit it head on, or it comes back to haunt us. That’s why a few of us have pressed the president for seven years not to ignore issues of poverty, police abuse and mass unemployment. Barack Obama said it very well, following the shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, that some communities “have been forgotten by all of us”.

      And now – in Dallas, Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights and beyond – this legacy has comes back to haunt the whole country.

      Obama and his cheerleaders should take responsibility for being so reluctant to engage with these issues. It’s not a question of interest group or constituencies. Unfortunately for so much of the Obama administration its been a question of “I’m not the president of black people, I’m the president of everyone.” But this is a question of justice. It’s about being concerned about racism and police brutality.

    • Seattle’s ‘Liberals’ Get Chance to Finally Start Addressing Police Brutality

      This year, Washington has a second chance to address police brutality and in compliance with international human rights laws.

    • ‘Combustible’ GOP Convention: Riot Police Swarm Cleveland as FBI Tells Protesters Not to Show

      Authorities in Cleveland, Ohio, are adding fuel to an already “combustible” atmosphere, some activists say, as the city readies extra jail space and courtrooms and shuts down a local university to house 1,700 riot police and their weapons in preparation for demonstrations at next week’s Republican Party convention.

      Democracy Now! reported Thursday that city officials “say some courts will be kept open almost 24 hours per day in case protesters are arrested en masse. Authorities have also opened up extra jail space to hold protesters.”

    • Cleveland Police Union President: Allowing Guns Near Convention Is ‘Absolute Insanity’

      Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, said he had concerns about the safety of officers at the upcoming Republican National Convention on CNN’s Smerconish on Saturday. In response to a question about guns being allowed near the convention, Loomis said, “That’s absolute insanity to me… My concern is for the uniformed member that is out there. They are going to be out there in the trenches.”

      Guns will not be permitted inside the Quicken Loans Arena and areas monitored by the Secret Service, but protesters coming to Cleveland will be allowed to carry guns due to the state’s open-carry laws. Items such as water guns, knives, canned food, and even tennis balls will not be allowed near the arena, however. As many as 50,000 people are expected to come to the convention area. There will be about 3,000 law enforcement officers at the convention — the same number of officers expected to be at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia later this month.

    • Three Years After Justice Failed Trayvon Martin

      In the three years since George Zimmerman was acquitted in the murder of Trayvon Martin and the Black Live Matter movement was born, so many more have been lost even as so much progress was made.

      Three years ago today, full of despair, I posted my feelings on my Facebook feed.

    • A Man Burned The Flag And Got Arrested for ‘His Own Safety’

      A guy who wasn’t feeling the patriotism decided to burn an American flag and tell the world about it on Facebook — only to get arrested the next day after neighbors complained.

      Bryton Mellott, 22-years-old, of Urbana, Illinois, was taken into custody after police received calls about his Facebook posts, which included a picture of him setting the Stars and Stripes on fire (above) and a message explaining that he was “not proud to be an American. In this moment, being proud of my country is to ignore the atrocities committed against people of color, people living in poverty, people who identify as women, and against my own queer community on a daily basis.”

    • Before They Were Hashtags

      Alton Sterling and Philando Castile lost their lives to police brutality last week. While their deaths fit an all too familiar narrative for black men and women living in America, what we haven’t emphasized enough—especially in the accounts told by media—is the value their lives held.

      Before they were hashtags, these men mattered.

    • Violence, Police Authority and Black Lives Matter

      Trigger happy policing has become something of a modus operandi in the frontier mentality of law enforcement. Bullets come before negotiation; arrests are inconveniences of afterthought. In 2015, 1000 people were slain in police operations, a third of them black.

    • Sorry Conservatives, New Research from Harvard Shows a Profound Amount of Racism by Police…Not Less of It

      Philando Castile was killed by a Minneapolis-area police officer while giving him his identification. Like so many other black men, Levar Jones was also shot by a white police officer while fully complying with his commands. Eric Garner was choked to death while screaming “I can’t breathe.” John Crawford III was killed in a Walmart by police because he was carrying a toy gun that he wanted to purchase. Jonathan Ferrel was killed by a white police officer while seeking help after a car accident. 12-year-old Tamir Rice was street executed by the Cleveland police in less than 3 seconds.

      Stories and personal experiences of police thuggery and violence are so common in the black community that they constitute a type of collective memory and group trauma.

    • Israel: a turning point in anti-corruption efforts?

      War and security have long dominated public discourse in Israel, often overshadowing the country’s other pressing issues. Notable among these is the legal system’s attitude to high-level state corruption, which has played a crucial role in shaping the Israeli political landscape.

    • Pokémon Go is everything that is wrong with late capitalism

      f you were looking to have fun with some friends 50 years ago, you might have gone to a bowling alley. Maybe you would have hung out at a diner or gone to the movies.

      These were all activities that involved spending a certain amount of money in the local economy. That created opportunities for adults in your town to start and run small businesses. It also meant that a teenager who wanted to find a summer job could find one waiting tables or taking tickets at the movie theater.

      You can spend money on Pokémon Go too. But the economics of the game are very different. When you spend money on items in the Pokémon Go world, it doesn’t go into the pocket of a local Pokémon entrepreneur — it goes into the pockets of the huge California- and Japan-based global companies that created Pokémon Go.

    • Israeli Military’s New Chief Rabbi Implied Soldiers Can Rape in War, as Government Lurches to Far-Right

      The man chosen as the Israeli military’s new chief rabbi has previously implied that soldiers would be permitted to rape women in war.

      This comes at a time when the Israeli government lurches further and further to the right, with what has been called “its most hard-right government ever.”

      Rabbi Col. Eyal Karim was nominated for the top religious position in the Israel Defense Forces, of IDF, by the chief of staff on Monday.

      Karim was at the center of a media controversy in Israel in 2012, when it was revealed that, in 2003, he suggested on a religious website that soldiers were permitted to commit acts of rape during wartime.

    • Nice, France, Attack: A Gandhian Response to Serial Killers

      French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve has extended the French state of emergency, which suspends key civil and human rights, in the aftermath of the gruesome truck attack on Bastille Day in Nice, which at this writing has left 80 dead and over a dozen in intensive care.

    • Those who don’t like the referendum result should demand more democracy, not less

      Like many people who passionately want the UK to remain in the European Union, I have struggled with feelings of denial about the referendum vote. I wish it hadn’t turned out the way it did. I wish I could magic it away. But it is important to recognise that what happened, happened. British people were told that they would get a chance to vote on a perfectly clear question: whether Britain should remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union. They were told that the decision would be decided on the basis of a simple majority of the British electorate as a whole, including expatriates, but not including those under the age of eighteen or European Union citizens resident in the UK (who voted in the Scottish referendum). The result was that 52% voted to leave.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • How to set up your own VoIP system at home

      The landline phone may seem an anachronism to many, but if like me you work from home it can still be an essential business tool. Even if you’re not a regular home worker, many people still like to have a phone that’s separate to their mobile. In a family house or shared house, it can sometimes also be useful for different people to have their own number too.

      In the past, your choices were fairly stark—either multiple analogue phone lines, which is what I had when I first moved into my flat, or ISDN. While the latter was very popular in parts of Europe, it never really took off in the UK or US. BT’s pricing was part of the problem, together with a lack of equipment. Nevertheless, for many years, I used a small German ISDN PBX at home. It made it simple to separate business and work calls, and thanks to the 10 number blocks BT issued as standard with ISDN2 lines, my lodger could have a number too.

      Pricing was the killer for ISDN in the home, unless you could claim it as a business expense. Now, however, VoIP services make it much easier to provide the same sort of functionality at a fraction of the cost, and it’s much easier than you might have thought, too. Here’s how I did it.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • BitTorrent Users Present a Goldmine of Marketing Opportunities

        Most file-sharers are aware they’re being watched but that doesn’t always have to be as bad as it sounds. Speaking with TorrentFreak, analytics company Peerlogix says it monitors millions of “well educated and tech-savvy” torrent users and leverages their content consumption habits for marketing purposes.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/07/17/lithuanian-police-linux/feed/ 0 Links 9/7/2016: Skype Hype, Wine 1.9.14 http://techrights.org/2016/07/09/skype-hype/ http://techrights.org/2016/07/09/skype-hype/#comments Sat, 09 Jul 2016 12:38:21 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=94252

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Use Linux or Tor? The NSA might just be tracking you

    But it seems those intent on keeping pesky government agencies out of their online business may well be shooting themselves in the virtual foot.

    As documents related to the XKeyscore snooping program reveal, the US’s National Security Agency has started focusing its snooping efforts on Linux Journal readers, Tails Linux, and Tor users.

  • Desktop

  • Kernel Space

    • Happy Birthday! Linux turns 25

      Sometime in 2016 Linux will be 25 years old. Exactly when is a matter of opinion.

      We could consider Linux’s 25th birthday to be August 25th. That’s because on that date in 1991, Linus Torvalds made his announcement to the minix community to let them know that he was working on a modest new OS. He had started the work in April. By October 5th, he felt that his new OS was usable and ready for the community at large.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Radeon/AMDGPU Updates For The Linux 4.8 Kernel

        Alex Deucher has submitted the main feature pull request for DRM-Next of the Radeon and AMDGPU DRM driver changes for the next kernel cycle, Linux 4.8.

        Some will be sad though, the AMDGPU material for Linux 4.8 doesn’t contain the huge DAL display abstraction layer code that’s needed for bringing the open-source AMDGPU driver display capabilities more on par with the former closed-source driver stack and also necessary for supporting new features like FreeSync/Adaptive-Sync.

      • Wayland Founder Kristian Høgsberg Is The Latest Open-Source Developer Leaving Intel

        Sadly, another blow to report on with regard to Intel’s open-source efforts… Just days after reporting on Intel losing its chief Linux/open-source technologist, Dirk Hohndel, there’s another high profile departure in the open-source world.

      • Mesa 12.0 Released With OpenGL 4.3 Support, Intel Vulkan & Many Other Features

        While it’s coming late, the huge Mesa 12.0 release is now official! Mesa 12.0 is easily one of the biggest updates to this important open-source user-space OpenGL driver stack in quite some time and will offer much better support and features especially for Intel, Radeon, and NVIDIA open-source Linux desktop users/gamers.

      • Mesa 12.0.0 3D Graphics Library Released with Vulkan Driver for Intel Hardware

        Today, July 8, 2016, Collabora’s Emil Velikov has had the honor of announcing the release of the final Mesa 12.0.0 3D Graphics Library for all GNU/Linux operating systems.

      • Initial Open-Source GeForce GTX 1000 “Pascal” Nouveau Driver Support

        While there isn’t yet any 3D/hardware acceleration support, the first milestone of open-source bring-up for the latest-generation NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1000 “Pascal” graphics processors is now available for Nouveau.

        Nouveau DRM maintainer Ben Skeggs has managed to publish initial open-source, reverse-engineered graphics driver support for Pascal (GP100 series) GPUs. Ben Skeggs at Red Hat continues to do this without official documentation from NVIDIA Corp but rather just receiving hardware samples and the hard process of reverse engineering.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions

    • UBOS beta 7 makes running TLS-enabled web apps even easier on EC2, Raspberry Pi 3, others, with more apps
    • Linux Lite 3: The Ideal Platform for Old Hardware and New Users

      One of the greatest aspects of Linux is its flexibility—it can be whatever you need it to be. It can be a massive server for big data, a desktop for rendering video or editing audio. A graphic designer’s studio. An every-day, get things done machine.

      Or something in between.

      For every job, you’ll find a distribution. For every need, you’ll find a tool. For every piece of hardware, you’ll find a version of Linux ready to make it work for you. Whether you’re working working with big iron or a low-end, aging desktop or laptop…there’s a Linux for the job.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • openSUSE Tumbleweed Receives Mesa 12.0.0, LibreOffice 5.2 RC1 and PulseAudio 9.0

        openSUSE developer Dominique Leuenberger today, July 8, 2016, informed the openSUSE Tumbleweed community about the latest GNU/Linux technologies and software components that landed in the repositories.

      • Linux at 25, Windows Alternatives, Tumbleweed Latest

        Today in Linux news Sandra Henry-Stocker looked at how far Linux has come since its humble beginnings 25 years ago. Elsewhere, Lifehacker.com has four alternatives to Windows 10 and Matt Asay wrote that Red Hat is the only profitable Open Source company because they sell piece of mind rather than software. Tumbleweed is poised to accept recently released Plasma 5.7 and Slackware received two security updates this week.

      • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the Week 2016/27

        Summer holiday is here (at least in the northern hemisphere) – and we can see a slightly reduced beat for new snapshots. I can ‘only’ report 3 instead of the usual 4 releases for this week (0701, 0703 and 0705), but the changes were still rather substantial. The slowness seems to be less an issue of package submissions as compared to OBS having trouble getting the stagings completely built. There seem to be a couple PowerPC workers missing.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Debian 8.5 vs. Debian Testing Benchmarks – July 2016

        Here is the latest look at the performance of Debian GNU/Linux 8.5 vs. Debian Testing on the same system for showing how the performance is looking for Debian 9 “Stretch” ahead of its release next year.

        Originally I was planning to do a Debian GNU/Linux vs. GNU/kFreeBSD comparison too, but the Debian Testing GNU/kFreeBSD installer was yielding problems… So for this article is just a fun look at clean installs of Debian 8.5 versus the current Debian GNU/Linux testing on the same hardware and using each OS release out-of-the-box.

      • Debian’s DebConf 16 Ends This Weekend, Watch The Videos Online
      • twenty years of free software — part 11 concurrent-output
      • Managing container and environment state

        I was naively thinking that the way autopkgtest would work is that it would set the current working directory of the schroot call and the ensuing subprocess call would thus take place in that directory inside the schroot. That is not how it works. If you want to change directories inside the virtual server, you have to use cd. The same is true of, at least, environment variables, which have their own specific handling in the adt_testbed.Testbed methods but have to be passed as strings, and umask. I’m assuming this is because the direct methods with qemu images or LXC containers don’t work.

      • The End Of Ian Murdock

        Ian Murdock, the founder of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution of Free/Libre Open Source Software operating system and repository, died by suicide according to a medical examiner’s report.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Fancy an Ubuntu-powered rival to Apple’s Siri?

            If you have ever wanted an application like Apple’s Siri working on open-source software and hardware, you are in luck.

            Mycroft is just that: open-source software that functions exactly the same way as Siri does, but it is housed within its own hardware operating off of a Raspberry Pi 2 and Arduino. The best part, since it’s based on open-source software, is that it runs on Ubuntu’s Snappy Core.

          • Star Cloud PCG03U is a compact Ubuntu PC for $90

            Chinese device maker has been offering tiny Windows and Android computers for a few years, but the company first came to my attention back in 2012 when I learned that the Android-powered Mele A1000 TV box was also able to run Linux.

            This year the company started selling some products with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed, and the latest is the PCG03U, a compact computer/TV box with 2GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, an Intel Atom Bay Trail processor, and Ubuntu 14.04 Linux.

          • BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition Tablet Review: Remarkably Unsatisfying Review

            The only good reason to buy the BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition is if you’ve been dying for an Ubuntu tablet and don’t want to install the operating system yourself. For $312, you’re getting an underpowered tablet with an operating system that you can install on a plethora of other devices for free.

            For $155, you can get the Acer Iconia One 10 running Android and install Ubuntu on it yourself (or, of course, use Android). It uses a similar, underpowered processor, but at least you’re getting a deal. Those who are interested in a viable desktop mode might want to consider the Microsoft Surface 3 while it’s still available. The $386 2-in-1 runs full Windows, works as a tablet and is roughly the same size, at 10.8 inches. You could even install Ubuntu if you’re so inclined.

            All things considered, almost anything is better than the BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition. Between its weak CPU and a suite of apps that lack touch optimization, the company fell woefully short of the mark.

          • The days of 32-bit Linux appear to be numbered

            Should Linux distributions continue to issue 32-bit images any longer or phase them out over a year or two? This question was resurrected recently by Ubuntu developer Dimitri John Ledkov, with a cutoff date of October 2018 proposed.

            At that time, Ubuntu would have been around for 14 years and it is increasingly getting more and more bloated. The same goes for many other distributions.

            So, even if anyone wanted to run Ubuntu on an older machine, it would not be a good idea. Computing would have to be done at a rather glacial speed.

            The idea of dropping the 32-bit build was first raised on the Ubuntu mailing lists in February by Bryan Quigley. Several other distributions like Fedora and openSUSE have already dropped their 32-bit images.

          • Ubuntu Is Now the Preferred OS for Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry
          • Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) reaches End of Life on July 28 2016

            Ubuntu announced its 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) release almost 9 months ago, on October 22, 2015. As a non-LTS release, 15.10 has a 9-month month support cycle and, as such, the support period is now nearing its end and Ubuntu 15.10 will reach end of life on Thursday, July 28th. At that time, Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu 15.10.

          • 4 Best Alternatives For Windows 10 Users

            Ubuntu is world’s most popular free Operating System. It is Linux based and used very widely across the globe. Noticeably, many important government agencies across Europe and Asia use Ubuntu in their offices.

            The fact that Ubuntu gets a free upgrade every year and it comes with familiar apps like Firefox and Thunderbird along with free MS Office alternative called Libre Office makes it a very valuable alternative.

            Additionally, Ubuntu requires very fewer system resources enabling it to run quite well on older systems and are mostly free of viruses and malware.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon Review: They Did it Again!

              Linux Mint is one of the most popular (GNU/Linux) operating systems around, and according to Distrowatch.com‘s popularity ranking factor, for many years now Linux Mint has been on the top 3 most popular distributions (now it’s actually the number one!, surpassing Debian and Ubuntu. By the way, Fedora’s ranking is sinking fast, no surprise there though. Fedora is just a distribution for the coding elite of the GNU/Linux world and not for the average user, there I said it!). And there’s a good and a sensible reason for it (in my opinion anyway).

            • LXLE 16.04 “Eclectica” Distro Will Be Based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Beta Out Now

              It looks like the developers of the lightweight LXLE distribution are working hard on the next major update for the Lubuntu-based computer operating system, and they’ve just released the first Beta in the LXLE 16.04 series.

            • The Linux Setup – Cassidy James Blaede, elementary OS/System76

              Cassidy works for elementary OS AND System76, so he’s what those of us in the business call a double threat. I haven’t spent much time with elementary, so it’s nice to hear about someone using it for so much day-to-day work. It’s also nice to hear how good System76’s hardware is. It’s an important reminder for people looking to have Linux easily installed while also supporting the Linux economy.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • World’s smallest quad-core SBC starts at $8

      FriendlyARM launched an $8 open-spec, 40 x 40mm “NanoPi Neo” SBC that runs Ubuntu Core on a quad-core Allwinner H3. It’s Ethernet-ready, but headless.

      With the NanoPi Neo, FriendlyARM has released what appears to be the world’s smallest quad-core ARM based single-board computer, and one of the smallest ARM SBCs we’ve seen. This open spec, 40 x 40mm sibling to the $11, 69 × 48mm NanoPi M1 has the same 1.2GHz, quad-core, Cortex-A7 Allwinner H3 SoC with 600MHz Mali 400MP2 GPU, and the higher-end, $10 model has the same 512MB of DDR3 RAM. However, in order to slim down, the Neo sacrifices the HDMI port, the camera and CVBS interfaces, DC jack, and Raspberry Pi compatible expansion connector.

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source effort gives indigenous language an official typeface

    Santali, an aboriginal South Asian language, has a brand new freely licensed font and set of cross-platform open source input tools on the way.

    More than 6.2 million people in four South Asian countries (India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan) speak Santali. In India, it is one of the 22 major languages as mentioned in the eighth schedule of the Indian constitution. However, Santali is not the official language in regions where it is largely spoken, nor is it widely taught in schools. A large segment of the native speakers are socially and economically disadvantaged, which doesn’t help either.

  • 6 Tips for Leveraging Open Source Technology

    To understand the impact that open source technology has made on the enterprise, one need only look to the numbers. With over 35 million GitHub repositories, 1,961,460 lines of code on Hadoop and over a thousand Apache Spark contributors, the open source ecosystem is home to some of the world’s most innovative and impressive tech collaborations. With some of the biggest names in tech leading the charge — Apple’s Swift programming language, IBM’s machine learning technology SystemML and Facebook’s Relay JavaScript framework were all made public in the past year — open source technology is set to change the way we process, stream and analyze data.

    In this slideshow, IBM VP of Big Data and Analytics on z, Dinesh Nirmal, and IBM VP of Offerings, Big Data and Analytics, Ritika Gunnar, outline several tips to help enterprises make the most of their open source strategy.

  • Google BigQuery Now Allows to Query All Open-Source Projects on GitHub

    A full snapshot of more than 2.8 million open source project hosted on GitHub is now available in Google’s BigQuery, Google and GitHub announced. This will make it possible to query almost 2 billion source files hosted on GitHub using SQL.

  • How to Easily Load Test With Open Source Tools

    If you’ve been here for the past few years, it would have been hard for you to miss the digital stampede from ticket-based processes to continuous delivery. But somehow, this transition has skipped over load-testing processes. This is probably because performance problems are hard to fix, as they are removed from the code.

  • 8 ways to get started in open source

    During his time recruiting young programmers on college campuses, one of the questions Chris Aniszczyk would hear a lot is, “How do I get involved in open source?”

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Google Is Working To Save Your Chrome Browser From Evil Quantum Computers

        Google has launched a new encryption algorithm in its Chrome web browser to fend off attacks launched by powerful quantum computers. Called the New Hope algorithm, this “post-quantum cryptography” is being tested in Chrome Canary builds to develop a stronger security algorithm within two years. The new encryption adds just 2KB of extra data that is sent in each direction when a new HTTPS connection is made.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • Architectural Considerations for Open-Source PaaS and Container Platforms

      Less than a year ago, Wikibon published a series of research focused on Structured and Unstructured platforms, with a focus on how these platforms were designed to help developers build cloud-native applications. The evolution of PaaS and Container platforms has significantly evolved over the past 9-12 months. While some platforms are still highly Structured, the growing trend has been for the previously Unstructured platforms to become more “composable” or even Structured. Wikibon defines “composable” as a packaged offering that leverages a set of modular open source projects, but is more tightly integrated as a set of services that accelerate developer productivity and application deployments. Composable platforms are becoming more “opinionated” in their architectural choices, but they still allow architects, developers and operators some amount of architectural flexibility that may not be present in Structured platforms.

    • Bridging Tech’s Diversity Gap

      Recently, the OpenStack Foundation conducted a survey to dig deeper into who was actually involved with its community. The results were quite shocking, showing that only 11 percent of the entire OpenStack population identify as women. Team leaders across the industry took notice, with many asking how they could improve diversity not only within their communities but their hiring practices.

    • 3 Cutting-Edge Frameworks on Apache Mesos

  • CMS

    • WordPress Stays Focused on Security, More Open Source CMS News

      WordPress upgraded to version 4.5.3 last month with a security release for all versions of the content management system. But it quickly discovered a number of vulnerabilities.

      A total of 17 bugs were found in the last three releases from this year, many of which allowed attackers to take over websites running on WordPress. And according to the latest estimates from BuiltWith, 48 percent of the top million websites globally run on WordPress. But popularity has a price: It is also one of the most hacked platforms.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • Spanish Ciudad Real to switch to open source

      The city of Ciudad Real is to switch to using free and open source software. A resolution by the city’s Ganemos party to use open source for all of the city’s 400 PC workstations, got a majority of the votes in a meeting on 23 May. The city will begin with an inventory of the potential hurdles, according to press reports.

    • New site to promote proven open source ICT tools

      Adullact, the French organisation for public administrations using free software, has unveiled a new website, Comptoir du Libre.org, which aims to raise the interest of public administrations’ IT decision makers.

    • First iVIS services to launch in September

      iVIS provides an open ICT platform for a fully digital school administration. The software is developed and made available as open source, so anyone is free to use the code, adjust it, and build their own modules, applications and mobile apps on top of it.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

Leftovers

  • Farewell to Microsoft’s Sun Tzu: Thanks for all the cheese, Kevin Turner

    Kevin Turner’s departure as Microsoft’s chief salesman after 11 years marks the final passing of the Redmond old guard.

    Chief operating officer Turner – KT, as he was known – was a chief of the old-school corporate kind; sales, marketing and Microsoft’s stores all reported into Turner.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Liverpool: Mamadou Sakho has doping case dismissed by Uefa

      Liverpool and France defender Mamadou Sakho has had a doping case against him dismissed by Uefa.

      The 26-year-old served a provisional 30-day suspension after testing positive for a ‘fat burner’ in March.

      Sakho admitted taking the substance, but Uefa had to investigate whether it was actually prohibited.

      Its control, ethics and disciplinary body dismissed the case after a hearing including experts from World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited laboratories.

      “I am happy that this is finally over,” Sakho said. “It’s been a difficult time for me but I knew I had done nothing wrong.

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • My son died in vain. But at least the world now sees Blair’s moral guilt

      The Iraq war was a fiasco waged on the basis of scandalous lies. My son Tom, aged 20, died serving his country in this war. If I didn’t already know it before today, I know it now: Tom died in vain. He and his comrades died brutal deaths in a conflict that did not have to take place. Even now, I watch the reports from Iraq: 250 people blown up last weekend on the streets of Baghdad in this war without end. Is this what our soldiers fought for?

    • International Criminal Court Investigates Human Rights Abuses by British Forces in Iraq

      The long anticipated Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War released Wednesday contains stinging indictments of Britain’s role in the U.S.-led invasion, detailing failures starting with the exaggerated threat posed by Saddam Hussein through the disastrous lack of post-invasion planning. An element conspicuously missing from the report, however, are allegations of systemic abuse by British soldiers — accusations that are currently being considered by a domestic investigative body as well as the International Criminal Court (ICC).

      The claims center on alleged violations committed against Iraqis while held in detention by British soldiers between 2003 and 2008. Based on the receipt of a dossier outlining numerous incidents, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in 2014 reopened a preliminary examination into abuse allegations. The same examination, a step below an official investigation that could yield court cases at the Hague, had initially been closed in 2006 for lack of evidence.

      Presented to the court by the British firm Public Interest Lawyers and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human rights, the January communication was followed up by a second batch of cases in September of 2015, submitted by PIL. By November of last year, the ICC reported that it had received 1,268 allegations of ill treatment and unlawful killings committed by British forces. Of 259 alleged killings, 47 were said to have occurred when Iraqis were in UK custody.

    • Take it from a whistleblower: Chilcot’s jigsaw puzzle is missing a few pieces

      Following the damning Chilcot report, much will be said about the decision to go to war in Iraq. But one thing will be missing: the information I leaked in the runup to the war. It won’t get an airing because I was never questioned or asked to participate in the Chilcot inquiry.

      Back in early 2003, Tony Blair was keen to secure UN backing for a resolution that would authorise the use of force against Iraq. I was a linguist and analyst at GCHQ when, on 31 Jan 2003, I, along with dozens of others in GCHQ, received an email from a senior official at the National Security Agency. It said the agency was “mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN security council (UNSC) members”, and that it wanted “the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises”.

      In other words, the US planned to use intercepted communications of the security council delegates. The focus of the “surge” was principally directed at the six swing nations then on the UNSC: Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan. The Chilcot report has eliminated any doubt that the goal of the war was regime change by military means. But that is what many people already suspected in 2003.

    • Iraqis Want You To Know The Names Of Baghdad’s ISIS Victims

      The enormous toll of Saturday’s bombing in Baghdad has stunned even the war-weary residents of the Iraqi capital.

      At the end of a bloody week of attacks in Lebanon, Turkey and Bangladesh, a car bomb ripped through a crowded shopping center in Baghdad, igniting an inferno that raged all weekend.

      After days of sifting through the ashes, Iraq’s health ministry announced Tuesday that 250 people were confirmed killed. It was the deadliest car bomb attack since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

      At first, Sajad Jiyad, an Iraqi analyst living in Baghdad, felt numb after the attack and had “an intense feeling of déjà vu,” he wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. “Relatives, friends or someone I know have been killed or injured in every year since 2003,” Jiyad says.

      On Sunday, Jiyad learned that his friend, Ahmed Dia, was among the burned bodies pulled out of the mall, and his grief over the attack became searingly personal. “He was going to achieve so much, he should not be dead,” Jiyad writes.

      Some Iraqi activists have expressed an intense frustration and dismay that the names and stories of victims like Dia are little known outside of Iraq.

    • The Baghdad Bombings, Islamic State and What America Still Hasn’t Learned

      The suicide bombings in Baghdad by Islamic State, timed for maximum violence, are only the latest reminders that the United States should not downplay the group.

      Since the wave of Islamic State suicide bombings in May – killing 522 people inside Baghdad, and 148 people inside Syria – American officials have downplayed the suicide bombing strategy as defensive. Brett McGurk, the Special Presidential Envoy in the fight against Islamic State, said the group “returned to suicide bombing” as the area under its control shrinks. The American strategy of focusing primarily on the “big picture” recapture of territory seems to push the suicide bombings to the side. “It’s their last card,” stated a compliant Iraqi spokesperson in response to the attacks.

    • A New Fight Over Syria War Strategy

      President Obama has signaled a willingness to join Russia in going after Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front in Syria, but neocons and other hawks are fighting the policy shift, reports Gareth Porter.

    • Are You Planning Your Retirement? Forget About It. You Won’t Survive To Experience It.

      At the recent St. Petersburg International Economic Conference, President Putin excoriated Western Journalists for endlessly repeating Washington’s lies that are driving the world to nuclear war. He asked Washington’s bought-and-paid-for-whores, the scum who comprise the Western news media: “How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction toward nuclear war?”

      Yes, indeed, how is it possible for the Western media to be totally blind? The answer to this question is that Americans live in the system of lies that comprise The Matrix, and media are paid to support the system of lies. The determining questions are: Can Americans escape their captivity in time to save life on earth? Do Americans have what it takes, or are Americans already a proven failed people who cower in ignorance under the threat of implausible “foreign threats”?

    • NATO Marches Toward Destruction

      As the West’s elites growl about “Russian aggression” – as they once did about Iraq’s WMD – NATO leaders meet in Poland to plan a costly and dangerous new Cold War, while shunning the few voices of dissent, John V. Walsh warns.

    • Time to Rethink NATO

      Formed in the early years of the Cold War, 1949, with the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, UK, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France, by 1952 this post-WWII alliance included Greece and Turkey, and had rejected the Soviet Union’s request to join. In 1956, when West Germany was admitted to NATO membership, the USSR formed the Warsaw Pact in response and the Cold War was then on, full-blown. Missiles and nuclear weapons from each side pointed menacingly at each other, with the United States parking nuclear weapons in five NATO countries (Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Turkey), where they remain to this day. NATO doctrine provides that nuclear weapons will be used if necessary, at will, on behalf of all its members.

    • Putin’s manoeuvres make man of peace Trudeau into warmonger against all his inclinations

      Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made no secret his heart is set on taking Canadian soldiers to Africa, with perhaps a sideshow in Colombia.

      It is part of a grand strategy to burnish his reputation as a gentle agent of change, with the ultimate goal of winning Canada a temporary seat on the UN Security Council.

      That may not sound like much of an achievement — permanent members Washington, Beijing, Moscow, London and Paris all wield vetoes and shape global discourse on the council. But the seat in New York would be the crowning glory of Trudeau’s first term in office and proof Canada is back on the world stage — although the truth is Canada has not punched above its weight since a few years after the Second World War.

    • Navy: SEAL Chris Kyle never earned a 2nd Silver Star

      The Navy has concluded there is no evidence that famed Navy SEAL Chris Kyle received two of the valor awards he had claimed in his best-selling memoir, including a second Silver Star.

      In an unusual move, the service has re-issued the DD-214 discharge paperwork to support the medals that the late Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Chris Kyle received during his 10-year Navy career, finding no records for two of six Bronze Stars with combat ‘V’ and the second Silver Star, two of which he had claimed in “American Sniper.” However, the renowned SEAL sniper had earned the Silver Star and four Bronze Stars, the review confirmed.

    • Hillary’s Responsibility for the Libyan Disaster

      I am going to share with you four devastating emails sent and received by Hillary Clinton on the subject of Libya. You can find these posted at Wikileaks. It is clear in reading these exchanges that, in the glow of the fall of Qaddafi, Hillary embraced the call to spike the football and clearly was planning to use Libya as evidence of her leadership and skill that qualified her to become President.

      The attack on our diplomats and CIA officers in Benghazi on 11 September 2012 however, destroyed that dream. The dream became a nightmare and Hillary has scrambled to pretend that she was not the mover and shaker that destabilized Libya and made it a safehaven for ISIS aka radical Islamists.

    • How the Dallas Police Used an Improvised Killer Robot to Take Down the Gunman

      Following the tragic deaths of five police officers in Dallas, Texas, during a rally for Alton Sterling and Philando Castile on Thursday night, the Dallas Police Department deployed a small robot designed to investigate and safely discharge explosives.

      Officers attached a bomb to the robot ad hoc style — detonating it and killing the sniper while keeping the investigators out of harm’s way.

      According to companies who manufacture bomb disposal robots interviewed by The Intercept — none were aware of their bots ever being turned into lethal weapons, though one company acknowledged the robots can be adapted to hold weapons.

    • EXCLUSIVE: ‘Both lights were clearly on’ – Witness rubbishes police claim that black man whose death was streamed on Facebook had busted taillight on his car when he was pulled over

      Video filmed in the aftermath of Philando Castile’s fatal shooting has revealed that his car’s two tail-lights appear to have been working – despite police saying he was stopped because one was busted.

      Gregory Ford, 42, took multiple videos of Castile’s Oldsmobile Aurora after he arrived on the scene in Falcon Heights, Minnesota within the hour of the fatal shooting taking place.

      He had been taking a ride on his motorcycle after finishing work and happened to drive up Larpenteur Avenue.

      He told Daily Mail Online: ‘I got there after they had taken him [Castile] away about 9.50pm. There were roughly five other people there with me.’ Castile, 32, later died of multiple

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • NSA Whistleblower: Clinton Emails Damaged U.S. National Security Much More than Manning, Assange Or Any Other Whistleblower

      FBI director Comey said today that Hillary Clinton running emails containing government information on an unsecured, private server was not as bad as former CIA director Petraeus sharing classified documents with his lover.

      But the highest-level NSA whistleblower in history, William Binney – the NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”) – explains why Comey’s statement is nonsense.

      By way of background, recall that – when the American press reported that U.S. intelligence services tracked Bin Laden through his satellite phone – he stopping using that type of phone … so we could no longer easily track him.

    • Appeals Court Says Government Email Stored On Private Servers Is Still Subject To FOIA Requests

      A recent decision by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals may not directly reference the Hillary Clinton email fiasco, but the conclusion reached set off irony detectors all over as it arrived the same day FBI director James Comey announced that Clinton’s private email server may have been a stupid idea, but not a criminally stupid one.

      There were indications that Clinton’s use of a private email address was an attempt to route around FOIA requests. As her server was being set up, communications from both her staff and the State Department’s noted that an account in her name existed already, but would be subject to FOIA requests.

      This has been a problem elsewhere. Several government officials have conducted an inordinate amount of government business using private email accounts or personal devices in hopes of skirting public records requests. The DC Circuit Court’s case deals with a little-known government agency, but an all-too-familiar dodge by public officials.

  • Finance

    • The two Article 50 legal claims – the current details

      I believe the permanent injunction sought is so as to restrain the UK government from taking (or purporting to take) such a decision under the royal prerogative and/or making the notification under Article 50(2).

      The interim injunction sought is to have an order in place stopping the UK government taking (or purporting to take) a decision under the royal prerogative and/or making the notification under Article 50(2) until the High Court has dealt with the case.

    • Hundreds of Thousands Call on Leader Pelosi to Block the Undemocratic TPP

      EFF has joined with partners including MoveOn, CREDO, Daily Kos, and Demand Progress to call on Democratic Party Leader Nancy Pelosi to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) from going to a vote during the “lame duck” session of Congress following the November election.

      As we explained in a press conference yesterday, the TPP is simply bad for tech users and innovators: it exports the most onerous parts of U.S. copyright law and prevents the U.S. from improving them in the future, while failing to include the balancing provisions that work for users and innovators, such as fair use. Outside of these copyright provisions, it does nothing to safeguard the free and open Internet, by including phony provisions on net neutrality and encryption, trade secrets provisions that carry no exceptions for journalism or whistleblowing, and a simplistic ban on data localization that enabled the USTR to buy off big tech.

    • You thought TTIP was dead? With Brexit we’ll get the same thing, on steroids

      It was a fallacy that withdrawing from the EU would save us from the corporate power grab symbolised by TTIP. This week we’ve discovered that not only might another massive EU trade deal be imposed on us before we Brexit, but our whole trade strategy could be handed over to big finance, egged on by true believers in the free market within the Tory party.

    • After Brexit, Achieving Trade Justice For All

      We can and must build a radically different trade agenda that serves ordinary working people in the UK and the wider world.

    • Supreme Court Eliminates Political Corruption! (By Defining It Out of Existence)

      Three out of four Americans think government corruption is widespread. Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for president in part by claiming he couldn’t be bought. Bernie Sanders almost grabbed the Democratic nomination away from one of the most famous and powerful people on earth by decrying the influence of big money.

      Yet by overturning the bribery conviction of Bob McDonnell, the former governor of Virginia, the Supreme Court this week just extended its incredible run of decisions driven by the concern that America has too many restrictions on money in politics.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Two Days, Two Shootings, Two Sets Of Cops Making Recordings Disappear

      There are cameras everywhere. But when cops start shooting, it’s usually bullets and never footage. The first recordings that ever make their way to the public are those shot by bystanders. Anything else captured during a shooting remains under strict control of law enforcement… even when the recordings don’t belong to law enforcement.

    • Unconstitutional: The One Word That Describes Alabama’s Attempts to Block Abortion Access Statewide

      The ACLU is suing the state of Alabama in an effort to stop two unconstitutional abortion restrictions from taking effect.

      The Supreme Court’s decision last week in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt was a monumental victory for women.

      For years, extremist politicians around the country have done everything in their power to block a woman from obtaining an abortion, passing law after law designed to close down clinics or to shame, humiliate, and put barriers in the way of a woman trying to access reproductive healthcare services — more than 300 abortion restrictions since 2010 alone.

    • EFF Takes on The Eleventh HOPE

      EFF staffers will spread the online freedom message at 2600 Magazine’s biennial Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference from July 22 to July 24. The Eleventh HOPE will take place at the historic Hotel Pennsylvania in New York and host numerous presentations on such diverse topics as automobile software hacking, pervasive surveillance, the blockchain, and fostering community.

    • One Simple Change to the Law Could Make Prosecuting Killer Cops Easier

      Graphic video illustrating gruesome police killings of African-American men in Louisiana and Minnesota has set off promises of a federal investigation, at least in the former case, but many are skeptical that it will lead to any prosecutions.

      Police involved in even these high-profile cases of abuse have rarely faced successful indictments, let alone prosecutions.

      However, at the federal level, a simple change to the law would make it more likely that abusive cops face punishment for their behavior.

      Currently, police abuse is subject largely to one federal statute enacted in 1866: Title 18 U.S. Code, Section 242, which punishes anyone who “willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”

    • Tweeted Photo Exposes Secret Islamophobic Plans of British PM Finalist

      The race to be the next leader of Britain’s ruling Conservative Party, and hence prime minister of the United Kingdom, was whittled down to two candidates on Thursday: Theresa May, the home secretary, and Andrea Leadsom, deputy energy minister.

      As the two lawmakers with the most support from their colleagues, they will now spend the next two months trying to win the votes of the party’s members, a tiny portion of the British electorate thought to number less than 150,000. (In comparison, more than 33.5 million people voted in last month’s referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union.)

      While May has been a high-profile member of the government for the past six years, Leadsom is a relative newcomer, who was first elected to Parliament in 2010 after a career in banking.

      However, some clues about the kind of campaign Leadsom might run appear to have been accidentally made public on Thursday by a supporter who was spotted on the London underground studying what looked like notes laying out her strategy.

    • Piecing Together Witness Accounts of the Dallas Attack

      In the immediate aftermath of the deadly attack on police officers at a protest march in Dallas that left at least five officers dead, social networks were flooded with witness accounts of what happened, in video clips and livestreams, photographs and text updates. The Intercept is assembling pieces of that mosaic here, starting with the accounts below, and will add more as we see them. Input from readers is welcome.

      [...]

      Before he died, according to the police chief: “The suspect said he was upset about Black Lives Matter. He said he was upset about the recent police shootings. The suspect said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”

      The gunman also told officers that he had left improvised explosive devices for them to find. Brown said. “The suspect stated that he was not affiliated with any groups,” the police chief added, “and he stated that he did this alone.”

    • Busted

      Tens of thousands of people every year are sent to jail based on the results of a $2 roadside drug test. Widespread evidence shows that these tests routinely produce false positives. Why are police departments and prosecutors still using them?

    • System Failures

      The Houston cases shed light on a disturbing possibility: that wrongful convictions are most often not isolated acts of misconduct by the authorities but systemic breakdowns — among judges and prosecutors, defense lawyers and crime labs.

    • Should A Court Allow A Case To Disappear Entirely Because The Person Regrets Filing It?

      We write about lots of nutty court cases around here, and semi-frequently, parties engaged in those lawsuits aren’t always happy about our coverage. Not too long ago, we received a series of emails and phone calls and more from an individual who was involved in some lawsuits that we covered. Without providing too many details at all, the individual in question made a pretty straightforward case that he or she absolutely regretted filing the lawsuits, and provided some additional information about why it had happened, while also noting that the Google searches on this person’s name were now linking to the few news stories that covered the lawsuit, including the court documents that we had posted. It was explained that these search results were making life difficult for this person who was trying to get his or her life back on track and believed that Google searches on the name were making it harder to find a job.

      The story was compelling, and we were asked to remove our post as well as the links to the documents, something that we won’t do. However, there was one intriguing bit to the communication, telling us that the court in question had “sealed the case” and asking us to respect that decision. That seemed odd to us. We’ve certainly seen filings sealed. And even some instances where almost all of the details in a docket were done under seal, but the case would still exist. Usually, though, those were cases involving at least a semi-plausible claim of national security. This was a case where someone just regretted filing questionable lawsuits (for a good reason). Even more amazing, after searching through PACER, it appeared that the judge in question did not just seal documents in the case, but made the entire case disappear. This happened for at least three cases. They do not exist in the court’s electronic records system at all. It is as if the cases never happened at all.

    • Governor says Philando Castile wouldn’t have been shot if he was white

      A suburban police officer likely wouldn’t have shot dead a black motorist if he had been white, Minnesota’s governor has said, joining the national debate in the US over how law enforcement treats black people.

    • Andrea Leadsom suggests she would make better PM as she has children

      Andrea Leadsom has suggested that she would be a better prime minister than her Conservative leadership contest rival Theresa May because she has children and May does not.

      In comments that were strongly denounced by some fellow Tories, Leadsom told the Times in an interview that being a mother was an advantage in the election because it showed that she had a “a very real stake” in the future of the country.

      Leadsom, an energy minister who has only emerged within the last week as a serious contender to replace David Cameron, said that she did not want to capitalise on May’s childlessness because to do so would be “really horrible”.

    • Muslims face fines up to £8,000 for wearing burkas in Switzerland

      A controversial Swiss law prohibiting Islamic dress has been used to fine a Muslim convert and a businessman, who protested the ban.

      The rule, which came into effect in Ticino on Friday, was voted in by referendum and outlaws face-covering headgear.

      Nora Illi and Rachid Nekkaz, who are prominent campaigners for the rights of Muslims, walked in the streets of Locarno in full Islamic dress soon after the rule was introduced.

    • Officials confirm Chelsea Manning has been hospitalized, lawyer says

      Lawyers for Chelsea Manning, the US soldier who covertly provided secret diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, are no longer in the dark about their client’s condition after several days of demanding information from military authorities on reports that Manning had been hospitalized.

      Manning, who is six years into a 35-year military prison sentence for revealing state secrets, alarmed her attorneys and outside contacts earlier this week when all contact stopped for at least 36 hours. The total loss of contact came on the heels of unconfirmed media reports that Manning had experienced a health crisis, and lawyers for the soldier railed against the defense department for keeping them in the dark while details of Manning’s medical status apparently leaked.

    • When victims of tragedy go off script, media struggles

      Anyone who’s ever gone to the movies is accustomed to watching characters’ instant reaction to tragedy: Tears. Hysteria. Rage.

      Diamond Reynolds wasn’t in a movie.

      In her Facebook Live posting, viewed by more than 5 million people, she is relatively calm, polite and clearheaded as she speaks into her cellphone seconds after her boyfriend, Philando Castile, had been shot and killed by a Falcon Heights police officer during a traffic stop.

      The lack of immediate emotion — the tears would come 10 minutes later while her 4-year-old daughter comforted her — set off a fiery debate on the media’s role in interpreting such an intimate, and unexpected, testimonial.

    • Philly PD Releases One Document About Its Fake Google Car: The Journalist’s Own Open Records Request Email

      Earlier this year, computer science professor and cryptography expert Matt Blaze happened across a Pennsylvania state-owned vehicle attempting to d/b/a a Google Street View… um, SUV. Taking that info, local reporter Dustin Slaughter dug deeper into the origins of that fake Google Street View vehicle.

    • State Supreme Court Says ‘Smashmouth Journo’ Teri Buhl Must Go To Jail For Posting Teen’s Journal Pages

      Journalist Terri Buhl — who gained a bit of Techdirt infamy by claiming her public tweets couldn’t be republished (which led to wild claims of copyright infringement and defamation) — is still dealing with some legal woes of her own, stemming from the posting of someone else’s actually private information to Facebook.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Comcast Continues To Claim It’s ‘Not Feasible’ To Offer Its Programming To Third-Party Cable Boxes

      We’ve been talking a lot about how the FCC is pushing a new plan that would force cable providers to provide their programming to third-party hardware vendors. The idea is to put an end to the $21 billion in annual rental fees consumers have to pay for often outdated cable boxes and create some competition in the cable box space, resulting in better, cheaper hardware for everyone. Given it’s a hugely profitable monopoly and third-party boxes would be more likely to direct users to competing services, the cable industry has shelled out big bucks for misleading editorials and high test Congressional whining.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/07/09/skype-hype/feed/ 0 Links 18/4/2016: Linux 4.6 RC4, Tomb Raider for GNU/Linux http://techrights.org/2016/04/18/tomb-raider-for-gnu-linux/ http://techrights.org/2016/04/18/tomb-raider-for-gnu-linux/#comments Mon, 18 Apr 2016 13:33:23 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=91873

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Keeping the Blockchain Open in the Shadow of Tech Giants

    You’ll find it parroted most in the open source community, particularly when Microsoft pulls stunts like their recent “partnering” with canonical to implement an Ubuntu-like Posix environment in Windows Ten. The phrase originates from the DOJ’s findings during the United States v. Microsoft Corp. antitrust case in 2003, as an internal standard for their technology development. Examples of Microsoft’s attempts at this methodology are pervasive in their offerings, including ActiveX and DirectX in the web and graphics software ecosystems, and recently, their involvement with the Linux community.

  • MEF, China Unicom, ON.Lab, Huawei Sign Open Source Agreement

    The MEF, China Unicom, ON.Lab, and Huawei are pleased to announce a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to collaborate on using open source solutions to transform Central Offices and accelerate the industry transition to Third Network services. MOU partners will develop Proof of Concept use cases that illustrate how operators can deliver agile, assured, and orchestrated MEF-defined services by using open source software and open specification hardware. These use cases will serve as a stepping stone for deployable Third Network services that yield productivity-enhancing benefits for end customers.

  • Events

    • Mixing Linux and ZFS, LinuxFest NorthWest and More…

      It’s LinuxFest NorthWest time! I’ve never been to LFNW, but I have a soft spot in my heart for it’s hometown of Bellingham, Washington. Back in the day — we’re talking the late 1960s and early 70s — Bellingham was home to a hippie underground newspaper, Northwest Passage, that was known in counterculture circles of the day across the continent. Alas, the Passage has been gone since ’86, but its spirit seems to live on in a high techy, Linuxy sort of way at LFNW. From what I’ve seen, LFNW seems to be the most community driven and for-the–people of the major festivals in the U.S.

    • Reflections on Starting a Local FOSS Group

      Last Wednesday was no less than the third time the local FOSS group in Aalborg met. Today I’m looking back at how it all started so I thought I would share some thoughts that may help others who would like to spread free and open source software in their local area.

    • BrickHack 2016

      Last month at the Rochester Institute of Technology, BrickHack 2016 came to a close. BrickHack is an annual hackathon organized by students at RIT. Close to 300 people attend every year. This year was BrickHack’s second event.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • An introduction to Redox

        Back in March, a young operating system project attracted attention in the open source community. The project is called Redox and its developers are working on a Unix-like operating system written in the Rust language. The Redox operating system features a microkernel design (like MINIX), the permissive MIT license and some interesting design ideas.

        While I read a lot of opinions in March about the developers and their design goals, I encountered very little commentary on what it was like to use the young operating system itself. This lead me to become curious and download the project’s small installation ISO which is just 26MB in size.

      • Firefox 45.0.2 Has Been Released
      • Thunderbird 45.0 Has Been Released, Bringing New Features And Bug-Fixes
      • ‘BLATANTLY ILLEGAL’: 17 newspapers slam ex-Mozilla CEO’s new ad-blocking browser [Ed: means he does it right!]

        A group of the biggest US newspaper publishers — including Dow Jones, The Washington Post, and The New York Times Co. — have cosigned what they are calling a “cease and desist” letter (read it in full below) sent to the former Mozilla CEO’s new browser company.

      • A nail in the coffin for Firefox? Mozilla struggles to redefine browser

        A quiet announcement about a new Mozilla project sounded like a death knell for the Firefox browser.

        It wasn’t. But the project, called Tofino, reveals the technology challenges Mozilla faces more than a decade after Firefox’s debut. Hundreds of millions of people still use the browser, but its star is fading compared with Google’s Chrome.

        Mozilla released details about the Tofino project Friday, saying a six-person team at Mozilla will consider how to radically revamp Web browsers.

  • SaaS/Back End

  • LibreOffice

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Richard Stallman on Free Software: Freedom is Worth the Inconvenience

      Dr. Richard Stallman is an inductee of the internet hall of fame as well as the founder of the “Free Software” movement. In the words of Robert Grüning “Richard Stallman is like the Socrates of software, the money making colleagues are the sophists.” Another member of my audience said that Stallman is like Tron – he fights for the users. Yet Richard himself disliked both characterizations and called them misleading. So I suggest you check out my Singularity 1on1 interview with Richard Stallman, learn about the Free Software movement and judge for yourself.

    • DejaGnu 1.6 released

      DejaGnu 1.6 was released on April 15, 2016. Important changes include decent SSH support, many bug fixes and a much improved manual. Many old and defunct board files have been removed.

    • Libgcrypt 1.7.0 released

  • Project Releases

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Access/Content

      • Free, high-quality education resources from the National Science Digital Library

        The use of open educational resources is growing. Open education involves making learning materials, data, and educational opportunities available to all without the restrictions of copyright and proprietary licensing models. According to U.S. Secretary of Education John King, “Openly licensed educational resources can increase equity by providing all students, regardless of zip code, access to high-quality learning materials that have the most up-to-date and relevant content.”

    • Open Hardware or OS

      • Redox: a Rust-based microkernel

        Creating a new operating system from scratch is a daunting task—witness the slow progress of GNU Hurd, for example. But it would be hard to argue that the existing systems are the be-all and end-all of how we interact with computer hardware. At least some of the deficiencies in today’s offerings can arguably be traced to the language used to implement them; C, for all its power, has some fairly serious flaws that lead to bugs and security holes of various sorts. So it is interesting to see a new entrant that uses the Rust language, which is focused on memory safety. The result is Redox, which is still far from ready for everyday use, but may provide an interesting counterpoint to Linux, the BSDs, OS X, Windows, and others.

      • Announcing Kestrel-4

        Based on the recent and wild success of the Kestrel-3 home-brew computer project, I am happy to announce my next project for the open computing masses. Say hello to the Kestrel-4.

      • An Open-Source Steam Controller Driver is in Development

        What properly holds me back from buying one is the fact I need to use Steam to use the controller, and the few games I do play aren’t available on Steam (e.g, SuperTuxKart, MAME, etc).

      • Open-source 3D printed WireBeings robot allows for voice controlled wifi functionality at a bargain

        When I was a child growing up in the 1980s robots were something found exclusively in the realm of science fiction. As time passed, the 1990s emerged and Honda’s Asimo started making appearances in tech-centric television programming on the Discovery Channel or TLC (this, during an era when those networks still focused on educational content).

  • Programming/Development

    • RFC: EfficiencySanitizer

      We plan to build a suite of compiler-based dynamic instrumentation tools for analyzing targeted performance problems. These tools will all live under a new “EfficiencySanitizer” (or “esan”) sanitizer umbrella, as they will share significant portions of their implementations.

    • Google Is Working On An Efficiency Sanitizer To Improve Performance Problems

      Derek Bruening of Google has announced the company’s interest in creating an “Efficiency Sanitizer” for LLVM/Clang for analyzing targeted performance problems.

      Worked on Google and other compoanies have been Address Sanitizer, Memory Sanitizer, Thread Sanitizer, Leak Sanitizer, Data Flow Sanitizer, and other sanitizers found in LLVM/Clang some of which have also been ported to GCC. These sanitizers have been incredibly helpful for developers in catching various problems within program code-bases, including many security issues. The latest focus being pursued by Google’s compiler engineers is on an Efficiency Sanitizer.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • 10 Inventors Who Died Because Of Their Own Inventions

      These people made contributions to the mankind but they would have never thought that their own creation would be held accountable for their last breath.

    • Actor Wil Wheaton Brings Love of Arts to STEM Festival

      Actor and writer Wil Wheaton wants to “add an A to the STEM acronym and make it STEAM.” He’ll be speaking at the USA Science and Engineering Festival April 16-17 in Washington about why he thinks the arts should be represented in the acronym commonly used when referring to the science, technology, engineering and math fields.

      Wheaton, 43, best known for his role as Wesley Crusher on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” in the 1980s and ’90s and more recently as a fictionalized version of himself on “The Big Bang Theory,” says that he has always been fascinated by science and technology, and has made it a goal of his to ensure that kids get the encouragement they need to pursue those fields.

    • Kettering Cosmos: How school children exposed Soviet secret

      The existence of the Plesetsk site was not admitted by the USSR for a further 17 years.

      It was reported at the time that the schoolboys had “beat the Americans” in discovering the site. Bob Christy, another pupil who participated in the experiment, thinks they probably knew of its existence, but the school’s work made sure the information was made public.

      “It wasn’t about studying the Russian space programme, it was about helping children understand space,” he said.

  • Hardware

    • Intel planning for thousands of job cuts, internal sources say

      Intel is preparing a significant round of job cuts across business units this spring, according to multiple sources inside the company familiar with its plans.

      The cutbacks will reduce employment in some parts of the business by double-digit percentages, according to Intel insiders, amounting to thousands of job cuts across the company by the end of the year. The planned downsizing could begin soon after Intel reports its first-quarter financial results Tuesday, though sources say timing and specifics remain fluid.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Monsanto’s Most Dangerous Product?

      On 13 April, the EU Parliament called on the European Commission to restrict certain permitted uses of the toxic herbicide glyphosate, best known in Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’ formulation.

      Glyphosate was last year determined to be “probably carcinogenic” by the WHO, and the resolution calls for no approval for many uses now considered acceptable, including use in or close to public parks, playgrounds and gardens and use where integrated pest management systems are sufficient for necessary weed control. The resolution falls short of an outright ban called for by many and also calls for the renewal of the licence for glyphosate to be limited to just seven years instead of the 15 proposed by the Commission.

      Nearly 700 MEPs voted on the seven-year licensing of glyphosate and the vote was passed by 374 votes in favor to 225 votes against.

    • This is what a dying NHS looks like

      If you don’t believe the Tories would destroy the NHS it’s time to face reality. It’s happening right now. The NHS is critically unwell, and whether it’s deliberate or not, death’s door is open.

  • Security

    • Backdoor in JBoss Java Platform Puts 3.2 Million Servers at Risk
    • Let’s Encrypt: threat or opportunity to other certificate authorities?

      Let’s Encrypt is a certificate authority (CA) that just left beta stage, that provides domain name-validated (DV) X.509 certificates for free and in an automated way: users just have to run a piece of software on their server to get and install a certificate, resulting in a valid TLS setup.

    • Making it easier to deploy TPMTOTP on non-EFI systems

      On EFI systems you can handle this by sticking the secret in an EFI variable (there’s some special-casing in the code to deal with the additional metadata on the front of things you read out of efivarfs). But that’s not terribly useful if you’re not on an EFI system. Thankfully, there’s a way around this. TPMs have a small quantity of nvram built into them, so we can stick the secret there. If you pass the -n argument to sealdata, that’ll happen. The unseal apps will attempt to pull the secret out of nvram before falling back to looking for a file, so things should just magically work.

    • Badlock Vulnerability Falls Flat Against Its Hype

      Weeks of anxiety and concern over the Badlock vulnerability ended today with an anticlimactic thud.

    • Samba 4.4.2, 4.3.8 and 4.2.11 Security Releases Available for Download
    • The Internet of bricks

      One of the promises of the “Internet of things” is that it gives us greater control over our homes, gadgets, and more. Free software also offers that sort of promise, along with the idea that, if necessary, we can support our own gadgetry when the manufacturer moves on to some new shiny object. The currently unfolding story of the Revolv hub shows that, in many cases, these promises are empty. The devices we depend on and think we own can, in fact, be turned into useless bricks at the manufacturer’s whim.

      The Revolv “M1″ home-automation hub was one of many products designed to bring home control to the Internet. It is able to control lights, heating, and more, all driven by smartphone-based applications. The product was sufficiently successful to catch the eye of the business-development folks at Nest, who acquired the company; Nest was acquired in turn by Google, and is now a separate company under the “Alphabet” umbrella.

    • Underwriters Labs refuses to share new IoT cybersecurity standard

      UL, the 122-year-old safety standards organisation whose various marks (UL, ENEC, etc.) certify minimum safety standards in fields as diverse as electrical wiring, cleaning products, and even dietary supplements, is now tackling the cybersecurity of Internet of Things (IoT) devices with its new UL 2900 certification. But there’s a problem: UL’s refusal to freely share the text of the new standard with security researchers leaves some experts wondering if UL knows what they’re doing.

      When Ars requested a copy of the UL 2900 docs to take a closer look at the standard, UL (formerly known as Underwriters Laboratories) declined, indicating that if we wished to purchase a copy—retail price, around £600/$800 for the full set—we were welcome to do so. Independent security researchers are also, we must assume, welcome to become UL retail customers.

    • Combined malware threat is robbing banks of millions every day

      THE SECURITY attack dogs at IBM have uncovered two normally solo malware threats working together to rob banks in the US and Canada.

      IBM’s X-Force division has dubbed the combined malware Stealma and Louise GozNym by merging the names of the individual, but now friendly, Gozi ISFB and Nymaim.

      “It appears that the operators of Nymaim have recompiled its source code with part of the Gozi ISFB source code, creating a combination that is being actively used in attacks against more than 24 US and Canadian banks, stealing millions of dollars so far,” said IBM in a blog post.

    • Flaw-finding Ruby on Rails bot steams past humans
    • Future of secure systems in the US

      Security and privacy are important to many people. Given the personal and financial importance of data stored in computers (traditional or mobile), users don’t want criminals to get a hold of it. Companies know this, which is why both Apple IOS and Google Android both encrypt their local file systems by default now. If a bill anything like what’s been proposed becomes law, users that care about security are going to go elsewhere. That may end up being non-US companies’ products or US companies may shift operations to localities more friendly to secure design. Either way, the US tech sector loses. A more accurate title would have been Technology Jobs Off-Shoring Act of 2016.

    • Software end of life matters!

      Anytime you work on a software project, the big events are always new releases. We love to get our update and see what sort of new and exciting things have been added. New versions are exciting, they’re the result of months or years of hard work. Who doesn’t love to talk about the new cool things going on?

    • JBOSS Backdoor opens 3 million servers at risk of attacks

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Hillary’s Neocon Problem

      Hillary Clinton has a dark history in foreign policy. Indeed, if the Nuremberg principles were applied evenly, her name would certainly be on the docket, along with her former boss in the White House, who is actually less of a hawk than she. When Donald Trump publicly expressed a willingness to negotiate with Russia over international conflicts, she referred to such an idea as putting “Christmas in the Kremlin.” She’s red-baited Bernie Sanders for his support for the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions back in the 1980s. Clinton basically backs not “political realism,” but the more imperial tradition of neoconservative “American exceptionalism,” a chauvinist mindset by which the US sets the political, economic, and military priorities of the world and the places and times of its interventions, sometimes with allied support, sometimes without, at its own discretion.

    • Is Hillary Clinton Above the Law?

      Secretary of State Clinton was harsh on subordinates who were careless with classified information, but those rules apparently weren’t for her, a troubling double standard, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

    • Young Iraqis Overwhelmingly Consider U.S. Their Enemy, Poll Says

      The poll was conducted by Penn Schoen Berland, a public relations and market research firm co-founded by controversial strategist Mark Penn, and was sponsored by a Dubai-based affiliate of Burson Marsteller, once described as “the PR firm for evil.” Still, the undertaking, as outlined by organizers, sounds ambitious. It included 250 face-to-face interviews in three Iraqi cities, plus another 3,250 interviews in 15 other countries throughout the Arab world, all with men and women ages 18-24 “selected to provide an accurate reflection of each nation’s geographic and socio-economic make-up.” It claims an error rate of plus or minus 1.65 percent.

    • Pope Francis Takes On ‘Just War’ Theory

      The Catholic Church, which over the centuries has blessed many dreadful wars, is shifting to an anti-war position favored by Pope Francis and more in line with Jesus’s teachings, writes ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller.

    • Deadly Myths: Iraq ‘Surge’ General Calls for ‘Surge 2.0’

      There is no question that the neocons in the room, whose lavish sinecures come to them courtesy of the military-industrial complex, were hyperventilating in anticipation of another major US invasion of Iraq (and Syria). War is the greatest DC jobs program and the hits just keep coming.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Lawsuits Charge that 3M Knew About the Dangers of Its Chemicals

      FOR DECADES, 3M was the primary producer of C8, or PFOA, and was the sole producer of a related chemical known as PFOS. But while DuPont was caught up in a massive class-action suit over C8, 3M has largely avoided public scrutiny and serious legal or financial consequences for its role in developing and selling these industrial pollutants.

      In February, however, a state court in Minnesota, where the company is headquartered, allowed a lawsuit against 3M to move forward. And late last year, lawyers filed a class-action suit in Decatur, Alabama, home to one of 3M’s biggest plants. Both lawsuits charge that 3M knew about the health hazards posed by the perfluorinated chemicals it was manufacturing and using to make carpet coating, Scotchgard, firefighting foam, and other products — and that the company knew the chemicals were spreading beyond its sites. With PFCs cropping up in drinking water around the country and all over the world, the two lawsuits raise the possibility that 3M may finally be held accountable in a court of law.

    • WWF: Finland has spent its natural resources for 2016

      The environmental group WWF Finland says that as of today, the country has already used up its share of natural resources for the entire year. Energy production, traffic emissions and food production are the top ills.

    • We Just Crushed The Global Record For Hottest Start Of Any Year

      NASA reports that this was the hottest three-month start (January to March) of any year on record. It beat the previous record — just set in 2015 — by a stunning 0.7°F (0.39°C). Normally, such multi-month records are measured in the hundredths of a degree

      Last month was the hottest February on record by far. It followed the hottest January on record by far, which followed the hottest December by far, which followed the hottest November on record by far, which followed the hottest October on record by far. Some may detect a pattern here.

    • Going out, I found I was really going in: John Muir’s spiritual and political journey

      However, his friends were worried. Muir’s siblings pleaded with him to abandon his “clouds and flowers” for more practical pursuits. “You must be social John,” Jeanne Carr, a transcendentalist friend and spiritual mentor had written him, trying to coax him to leave the mountains and re-enter public life. “I could envy you your solitude, but there may be too much of it.” Carr felt strongly that Muir had a singular gift for carrying the transcendentalist vision of a sacred nature to a wider public, a vision she believed could help to dismantle the industrial consensus that saw nature only as a commercial resource to be exploited.

  • Finance

    • US Corporate Tax Cheats Hiding $1.4 Trillion in Profits in Offshore Accounts

      The biggest tax dodger is technology giant Apple, with $181 billion held offshore. General Electric had the second-largest stash, at $119 billion, enough to repay four times over the $28 billion GE received in federal guarantees during the 2008 Wall Street crash. Microsoft had $108 billion in overseas accounts, with companies like Exxon Mobil, Pfizer, IBM, Cisco Systems, Google, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson rounding out the top ten.

      Overseas tax havens have been the focus of recent revelations about tax scams by wealthy individuals, based on the leak of the “Panama Papers,” documents from a single Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, involving 214,000 offshore shell companies. The firm’s clients included 29 billionaires and 140 top politicians worldwide, among them a dozen heads of government.

    • Paul Krugman Is Proof That To Be Successful Even As An “Objective” Academic You Must Serve The One Percent
    • Bernie Sanders publishes tax returns showing $205,000 earnings following Hillary Clinton’s challenge

      Bernie Sanders has revealed he earns $205,000 dollars (£145,000) a year, after being challenged by Hillary Clinton to publish his tax returns.

      Mr Sanders’ annual income, which is shared with his wife, is less than his multimillionaire rival made for three recent speeches delivered to Goldman Sachs employees.

      The banking giant paid Ms Clinton $675,000 (£475,000) for the appearances. She and her husband have an estimated net worth of $110m (£77m), far surpassing the Sanders, who are worth around $300,000 (£210,000).

    • Hillary’s Bold Plan to Financially Penalize Recidivist Super-Predators

      The other day Hillary promised she would appoint Attorneys General like Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch. “I will appoint an Attorney General who will continue the courageous work of Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.” Given that the comments came at an Al Sharpton event, I assumed the comment meant to invoke Holder and Lynch’s efforts to reform criminal justice and, presumably, their even more laudable support for civil rights.

      Nevertheless, it was a disturbing comment, given that Holder and Lynch have also both coddled the bankers who crashed our economy. Indeed, when Hillary tries to defend her huge donations from bankers, she always points to Obama’s even huger ones, and insists that there’s no evidence he was influenced by them. But the Obama DOJ record on bank crime is itself the counter to Hillary’s claim those donations didn’t influence the President.

    • 99% Party: Sanders Supporters Shower Clinton Motorcade with 1000 $1 Bills

      Actor George Clooney hosted a couple of obscenely expensive fundraising events for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign on Friday and Saturday nights. 1%er couples needed to pony up $353,400 to buy access. Saturday’s event was at Clooney’s home at 7:00 pm.

      At the same time, Howard Gold, a next-door neighbor of Clooney, hosted a $27 per person fundraiser in support of Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s rival for the Democratic nomination, according to The Hill.

      Gold, whose family founded the 99 Cents Only store chain, called his event the “99% Party.” The email invitation to the 99% party read, “Swimming pools, Movie Stars and merriment for all! This is happening right next door to Clooney’s party for Hillary!” according to The Hill.

    • Here’s a Way to Shut Down Panama Papers-Style Tax Havens — If We Wanted To

      IT WOULD HAVE been infuriating at any time of the year to learn about the massive tax evasion by the global 0.01 percent revealed by the Panama Papers leak. But it’s especially maddening for regular American schlubs to hear about it in April, just as we’re doing our own taxes.

      According to estimates by Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman in his book The Hidden Wealth of Nations, rich individuals and big corporations use various machinations to pay at least a third of a trillion dollars less than they owe every year. For everyone else, this translates directly into higher taxes, more national debt, and less government spending.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Facebook denies that it would ever try to influence the election

      Gizmodo published a screenshot Friday of an internal poll that Facebook employees were purportedly using to decide what questions to ask CEO Mark Zuckerberg at a meeting in March.

    • Like it or not, Mark Zuckerberg is now Silicon Valley’s ambassador to the rest of the world

      The company’s main product announcement, its attempt to turn Messenger into a hub little programs for businesses to chat with customers, was greeted by puzzlement from users and skepticism from the developers who were the main audience for the show.

    • To Protect Hillary Clinton, Democrats Wage War on Their Own Core Citizens United Argument

      FOR YEARS, THE Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Citizens United was depicted by Democrats as the root of all political evil. But now, the core argument embraced by the Court’s conservatives to justify their ruling has taken center stage in the Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders — because Clinton supporters, to defend the huge amount of corporate cash on which their candidate is relying, frequently invoke that very same reasoning.

    • Superdelegates have destroyed the will of the people: As a political activist and hopeful millennial, I won’t support a broken system by voting for Hillary

      Four years ago, I attended a College Democrats conference in Chicago. I set foot inside Obama’s campaign headquarters and felt the enthusiasm about his presidency first-hand. For the first time, I called myself a Democrat with confidence. Democracy empowered me. I wanted to share my enthusiasm with the entire world.

      Throughout my college career, I was actively involved with the College Democrats. I served as president. I recruited friends to attend meetings, volunteer for voter registration drives, petition for candidates, canvass in local neighborhoods and spread the word about upcoming presidential debates. I even formed close relationships with fellow Democrats through it. Civic engagement and active citizenship was my life. I wanted to empower everyone around me to exercise their political power.

      [...]

      In a truly democratic system, we’d have more competent, diverse candidates. Voting no longer provides me the indulgence and satisfaction it once did. I feel it does more harm than good with our current political climate. If I vote for Clinton as a rejection of Trump, or vote for Sanders to dodge a Clinton vote, what duty am I actually performing? When I vote for a president I don’t support, I support a flawed political system. I refuse that system.

    • New York Observer Reporter Who Resigned Over Trump Ties And Endorsement: For Me, “A Line Had Been Crossed”
    • Wall Street Journal Slimes Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Forgets About George W. Bush’s Monumental Blunders

      In an article titled “Islam and the Radical West” published in the Wall Street Journal, columnist Bret Stephens raises the important issue of the radicalization of Western Muslims. But as far as responsible and informed journalism goes, the piece’s credibility ends there. Stephens goes on to make a number of stereotypical and weakly supported claims regarding Islam while taking amateurish pot shots at some of America’s most important thinkers, including Noam Chomsky.

    • Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Neocon

      Beyond sharing this neocon “regime change” obsession, former Secretary of State Clinton also talks like a neocon. One of their trademark skills is to use propaganda or “perception management” to demonize their targets and to romanticize their allies, what is called “gluing white hats” on their side and “gluing black hats” on the other.

    • Meet The Protesters Who Crashed Donald Trump’s Private Event

      Maya Randolph and Aru, who declined to give her last name, were two of the few dozen New Yorkers arrested Thursday evening at a massive protest of Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. The young women were part of a group of 10 people who were arrested and charged with criminal trespass after they stormed the hotel where Trump was speaking at a private event.

    • Trump Manager Said Apologizing To Reporter He Allegedly Assaulted Would Be ‘Unrealistic’

      Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, refused to apologize on Sunday for his alleged assault of former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields.

    • The Best Reporting on Bernie Sanders Over the Years

      Bernie Sanders became the first socialist mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and ran successfully as an Independent for the House of Representatives and then the Senate. Now, the Democratic challenger to Hillary Clinton has young voters “feeling the Bern.”

      The political career of Bernie Sanders nearly ended before it began. In the early 1970s, he lost his first four races — two for the Senate and two for governor — running on the ticket of Vermont’s radical Liberty Union Party, while espousing positions such as ending the Vietnam War and abolishing the CIA. But when he ran as an Independent for mayor of Burlington in 1981, the socialist Sanders beat the five-term Democratic incumbent.

    • Barack Obama Never Said Money Wasn’t Corrupting; In Fact, He Said the Opposite

      DURING THURSDAY’S DEMOCRATIC debate in Brooklyn, Bernie Sanders asked this question about Hillary Clinton: “Do we really feel confident about a candidate saying that she’s going to bring change in America when she is so dependent on big money interests?”

      Clinton’s response was to invoke Barack Obama. “Make no mistake about it, this is not just an attack on me, it’s an attack on President Obama,” she said. “President Obama had a Super PAC when he ran. President Obama took tens of millions of dollars from contributors. And President Obama was not at all influenced when he made the decision to pass and sign Dodd-Frank, the toughest regulations on Wall Street in many a year.”

    • Breaking Up the Banks: Why Sanders is Right

      Now Krugman has always been a defender of the banks and always in denial that banks can be crooked. A few years ago, Iceland had a problem. The banks were very crooked. They controlled the government that was about to give enormous amounts of money to the banks. I had gone over and met with the Prime Minister and former Prime Ministers and convinced them not to pay Britain and the sort of crooked depositors. They hired Krugman at a very high fee and gave him the handouts and he said no, the Icelandic banks are not crooked. Iceland should really bankrupt itself and pay for the Icesave and the British bank affiliates that went under, even though these were not bank branches but bank affiliates.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Online censorship on the rise: Why I prefer to save things offline

      It took me some time to trust the cloud. Growing up with digital technologies that were neither resilient nor reliable — a floppy drive could go kaput without you having done anything, a CD once scratched could not be recovered, hard drives malfunctioned and it was a given that once every few months your PC would crash and need a re-install — I have always been paranoid about making backups and storing information. Once I kicked into my professional years, I developed a foolproof, albeit paranoid, system, where I backed up my machines to a common hard drive, made a mirror image of that hard drive, and for absolutely crucial documents, I would put them on to a separate DVD which would have the emergency documents. It was around 2006, when I discovered the cloud.

      [...]

      Turkey, recently, demanded that German authorities remove a satirical German video titled Erdowie, Erdowo, Erdogan mocking their President. In response, Germany reminded the Turkish diplomacy of that lovely little thing called freedom of speech, and in the meantime, Extra 3, the group that had released the video on YouTube, added English subtitles to the video. Just for perks. I hope you gave a brownie point to Germany, even as you scrambled to see the video.

    • Decision to hide UAlbany student newspapers ‘inappropriate’

      The decision to hide issues of a student-run newspaper at the University at Albany that called attention to a rise in reported campus sexual assaults — coming during a visit by accepted students — was inappropriate, a top college official said.

    • Silent censorship

      JUST living in Australia for a few months and watching television, makes you see clearly, how the Fiji public is so badly denied by the poverty of Fiji media offerings and silent censorship

      There are wonderful Australian media programs such as Q and A, Insiders, Catalyst, Landline, Insights, Foreign Correspondent, Four Corners, to name just a few, not even mentioning the many specials every week on ABC and SBS.

      Just in the past two months alone, Landline explored how an Australian sugarcane farmer, successfully intercropped rice to pander to his Vietnamese wife. Another intercropped with sunflowers for the seeds and oil, and mung beans (which Fiji farmers have also tried on a very small scale).

    • Soaring Subsidies and Nutritional Censorship Highlight Food Policy Disasters: New at Reason

      Recently, a pair of controversial federal food issues has made the news. The unpredicted increase in USDA farm subsidies and continuing fallout from the new dietary guidelines have captured headlines. They’re worth focusing on together, as they represent some varied and truly awful federal food law and policy.

      Earlier this week, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Michael Conaway (R-Tx.) blasted critics of farm subsidies, claiming we live in a “fantasyland” where such subsidies aren’t needed.

    • IHT Retrospective | 1941: Roosevelt Tells Press He Wants No Censorship
    • UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi Told To Resign After Censorship Of Pepper-Spray Google Results

      UC Davis chancellor Linda Katehi may be forced to resign after documents were released earlier this week which show the school paying $175,000 of university funds to scrub Google results of references to the 2011 pepper-spray incident.

    • Pepper-sprayed students outraged as UC Davis tried to scrub incident from web

      The California university is being accused of censorship after paying a firm to try to hide references to the incident in which police sprayed protesters in 2011

    • On UC Davis and Erasing Things from the Internet

      This week, I and much of the internet learned that UC Davis paid at least $175,000 to a Maryland firm by the name of Nevis & Associates to disassociate the pepper spray incident of 2011 — in which footage of a campus police officer very casually and callously covering student Occupy protesters with pepper spray at close range was caught on video and disseminated — from both the name of the university and its chancellor in Google search results.

    • From draconian censorship to wilful conformity

      A discussion on Pakistan’s media on Sunday found that the industry, while certainly more independent than years past, is also following dangerous patterns of conformity and is no longer a watchdog for public interest.

      New Delhi-based activist Saif Mahmood moderated a session titled “Media: More Independent, Less Responsible’. He began by quoting an IBA-USAID study where Pakistan’s media was given a responsibility score of 5.46, and an independence score of 5.74, and added that these were reasonably good scores in his opinion.

    • Censorship on films meaningless in internet era

      “Censorship on films is futile in India. There are several other media these days which provide inappropriate content to youngsters for free,” said Bollywood director Sudhir Mishra, who is known for directing critically acclaimed films like Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, Dharavi and Chameli.

    • Google refuses to censor search results that identify PJS and YMA

      The British press has played ball, agreeing not to name YMA, his husband PJS and the two others, AB and CD with whom a threesome is supposed to have taken place but it is impossible for law enforcement agencies to control what appears online. Google has been the first port of call for many curious-minded people eager to learn the names of those involved, and the search giant has said that — despite many requests to do so — it will not censor search results that could lead people to the names.

      Spend a little time on Twitter, Facebook, and numerous other websites and it won’t be long before you learn — if you don’t already know — the identities of the four people involved. Web Sheriff is not happy about this, and has requested that Google remove search results in a way that is reminiscent of the Right To Be Forgotten. As noted by Torrent Freak, Web Sheriff is usually associated with copyright-related takedown notices, but now also seeks to remove data that could harmful to reputations.

    • Merkel Vows to Repeal Law, After It Is Used to Prosecute Comic for Insulting Erdogan

      CHANCELLOR ANGELA MERKEL alienated a broad swathe of the German public on Friday by approving a request from Turkey to prosecute Jan Böhmermann, a comedian who insulted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan by reading an obscene poem about him on late-night television.

      In the same statement, however, Merkel said that her government would move to repeal the law Böhmermann appears to have violated, an obscure provision of the German penal code that makes it a crime to insult foreign heads of state. If approved, the change would not take effect until 2018.

      In the meantime, Böhmermann now faces possible prosecution both for breaking that law — an artifact of the ancient prohibition on hurting the feelings of monarchs, known as lèse-majesté — and for ordinary defamation, because Erdogan has also filed a separate defamation complaint with a state prosecutor.

    • Hard to satire: Turkey forcing censorship abroad
    • Angela Merkel is now silencing German satirists to please Erdogan. This is what the EU has wrought
    • Erdogan’s attitude to Europe is looking more and more like Putin’s
    • Great Ashby councillor’s campaign over ‘unjust’ censorship

      Terry Tyler, a member of Great Ashby Community Council, says the communications policy he and other members must adhere to is so restrictive it is preventing him from doing his job.

      The policy, seen by the Comet, says ‘correspondence with the public from individual councillors should be avoided’ and states ‘the clerk should clear all comments to the media with the chair of the council’.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Trade Secrets: who voted what

      As expected, the European Parliament approved the Trade Secrets Protection directive by a large majority (503 in favour vs. 131 against).

    • Why Has The World Forgotten Islamic State’s Female Sex Slaves?

      Twenty months ago the Islamic State (ISIS) abducted thousands of Yezidi women and girls as the extremist group swept through their villages in northern Iraq in the middle of a terrible summer. Many were forced to become sex slaves for the group’s fighters. Hundreds remain enslaved and many of those who have escaped are still reliving the trauma and often not getting the help they desperately need.

    • Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems

      Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you’ll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?

      Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007‑8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had – a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?

    • Confessions of a Former Torturer

      [...] Sleep deprivation, as I’ve said before, can be accomplished in a matter of hours. You can let someone go to sleep in a dark room with no windows, and you can wake them up in 15 or 20 minutes. They have no idea how long they’ve been asleep. And with no windows, they have no idea what time of day it is. You can let them go back to sleep, and you can wake them up in 20 minutes. They still have no idea. And they’ve since—within 45 minutes, they’ve lost all sense of time. Two or three hours later, you can convince this person that he’s been living for four or five days, when it’s really only been an hour.

    • The Telegram Criticising Bush That Got Me Sacked

      As this blog is now read daily by tens of thousands of people who had not heard of me before, some idea of where I come from might be in order. After a diplomatic career of rapid promotion (senior civil service age 36, my first Ambassadorship in Uzbekistan age 42) my opposition to Bush/Blair’s immoral and counter-productive foreign policy got me sacked.

      This telegram (diplomatic communications are called that; cable in the USA) I am with retrospect very proud to have sent. To have made at the time the observation that the Bush/Blair policy of invasion, oppression and torture would not suppress fundamentalism, but would create it, was prescient. I should say I understood very well I would be sacked. Some things are worth being sacked for.

      On provenance, after being kicked out I typed this up from my handwritten draft which I had in my briefcase; hence it does not carry the identifiers it would gain when sent. I assure you it is genuine, and by now I expect it should be obtainable under a Freedom of Information request. If someone makes one I would be grateful – the date on it is the day I wrote it, it might have got sent a day or two later, so give them a range.

    • Green Party proposes prosecuting Northern Irish men under the abortion laws for ‘reckless conception’

      The Deputy Leader of the Green Party for Northern Ireland has suggested making “reckless conception” a criminal offence for men “in the interests of equality”

    • Iraqi Man Removed From Southwest Flight For Speaking Arabic

      While on the plane, he called his uncle to tell him about the dinner and ended the phone call by saying “inshallah” — a common term used in Arabic that translates to “God willing.” But after he hung up, he noticed a female passenger eyeing him suspiciously. The passenger reported Makhzoomi, who was then removed from the flight and searched.

    • Student Thrown Off Flight After Passenger Heard Him Say ‘God Willing’ in Arabic

      So once again people from The World’s Most Frightened Country (C) fully overreacted to nothing. One of the 230 million people worldwide who speak Arabic happened to be on an airplane and happened to use one of the most common expressions in his language.

      [...]

      Makhzoomi explained he was talking on the phone with his uncle and, as he said goodbye, he used the phrase “inshallah,” which translates as “if God is willing.” The student said that after hung up, he noticed a female passenger looking at him who then got up and left her seat.

      Moments later an airport employee made Makhzoomi step off the plane into the arms of security officers. Makhzoomi was told the woman thought he said “Shahid,” meaning martyr. Because in-shal-lah and sha-hid sound the same, at least to a dumb ass who speaks no apparent Arabic and likely learned the term shahid when it was last mispronounced on AM talk radio.

    • Racial Justice Takes Center Stage in New York Primary

      AS IT HAS grown in volume and influence, the movement reaffirming the value of black lives has raised its cry for racial justice from the streets and the internet to the race for the Democratic nomination, especially in the New York primary, where talk of police accountability, mass incarceration, and structural inequality has become an integral part of the candidates’ pitch to voters.

      At the Democratic debate on Thursday night, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders spoke frankly about racism, with Clinton calling on white people to “recognize that there is systemic racism,” and Sanders again criticizing Clinton’s 1996 comments about “super predators,” saying that “it was a racist term and everyone knew it was a racist term.”

      But while competition for the so-called black vote continues to heat up ahead of Tuesday’s primaries, and the generational gap that has defined the primary race persists, members of Black Lives Matter remain determined to keep all candidates in check on matters of race and racism.

    • Are the Economic Pins to the Saudi-US Relationship Still in Place?

      So on the one hand, Obama is making a big show of declassifying the 28 pages. On the other hand, he is lobbying (privately until this NYT report) to ensure that nothing legal will come of the release of those pages.

      It feels kind of like Obama’s treatment of torture, allowing very limited exposure of what happened, all while ensuring there will be no legal accountability (legal accountability, I’d add, that would threaten to expose others higher up in the US executive branch; and note that while the Administration is permitting a lawsuit of James Mitchell and Bruce Jesson, I’m skeptical this well get very far either).

      Against this background, the Saudis are trying to negotiate an oil freeze to bring up prices, but apparently have delayed doing so, ostensibly because of rising animosity with Iran but also, analysts suggest, to hurt US capacity.

    • Bernie Sanders: US “Can’t Be Blackmailed” by Saudi Arabia

      “It’s stunning to think that our government would back the Saudis over its own citizens,” said Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband died in the World Trade Center on September 11.

    • Obama Appeases Saudi Head-Choppers

      Do we have a more unattractive “ally” than the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? In order to find one, we have to go all the way back to World War II, when the US was allied with the Soviet Union while “Uncle” Joe Stalin was murdering millions in the gulag.

    • George Clooney Bemoans Big-Money Politics After Hosting Big-Ticket Fundraisers for Clinton (Video)

      Hollywood star and Democratic Party booster George Clooney pulled off a clever script-flipping trick on Sunday’s edition of “Meet the Press.” When confronted with Bernie Sanders’ recent critique of the cost required to attend the two fundraisers he and his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, hosted over the weekend for Hillary Clinton in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, Clooney completely agreed with it.

    • George Clooney on Hillary Clinton Event: ‘There Is a Difference Between the Koch Brothers and Us’
    • Over 7,800 Prosecutions Questioned After NJ Lab Tech Caught Faking Drug Test Results

      If Shah wasn’t concerned about putting a possibly innocent person behind bars, it’s unlikely his yearly salary of $101,039 would have been much of a motivating factor for better work either. It could be that this was an isolated incident — the one time Shah cut corners to increase throughput. (Which, truth be told, is kind of how our entire criminal justice system operates: throughput is preferable to diligent effort.)

      But odds are that if Shah got caught, it’s something that happened eventually, rather than immediately. Bad habits are easy to develop and tend to spiral out of control until the inevitable happens. There’s no way to tell if this was a one-off. Conversely, there’s no way to positively state this didn’t happen all the time. Hence the thousands of criminal cases now being viewed as questionable.

    • The Bernie Sanders Miracle: American Crowd in Brooklyn Cheers Palestinian Dignity

      The Israeli propaganda line is that the Palestinians are natural, intrinsic terrorists who are always attacking Israelis out of blind hatred for Jews and who casually deploy terrorism on a mass scale and refuse to recognize the inexorability and naturalness of several million European and North African and other Jews living in Palestine.

    • Arab-Americans, including ‘Watan’ Newspaper, Endorse Bernie Sanders

      It notes that Sanders’s demand for even-handedness in US policy toward Israel and Palestine is unusual in the Democratic Party.

    • ‘I have a conscience’: the Wall Streeters fighting for Bernie Sanders in New York

      He may be an investment banker himself, but Ryan prefers Sanders’ pledge to begin breaking up the banks in his first 100 days in the White House over Clinton’s more indirect promises.

      “She has a thousand talking points, but when the lights are turned off and all the glare of the election fades, politics-as-normal will return, the lobbyists will get to work, and nothing at all will happen,” he said.

      Frank, still speaking anonymously, agrees. “Hillary Clinton is paying lip-service to Wall Street changes. Maybe in her heart she means business, but for me income inequality is the civil rights issue of our time, and I feel strongly we need a president who is totally committed to making this happen.”

    • ACLU Sues Bureau of Prisons Over Missing Torture Documents

      The ACLU lawsuit alleges that either the bureau conducted an inadequate search, or is illegally denying the existence of documents.

    • Liberals for Hillary: There is Nothing Stranger

      Meanwhile, since the 1960s, when African Americans secured the right to vote in practice, not just theory, Republicans have been recruiting displaced and alienated white voters into their ranks, taking advantage of racist and nativist animosities, and anything else that they could put to use.

    • I Feel a Political Revolution Coming

      The media often would like us to believe that Sanders’ promises to continue his quest for equality are too lofty and unrealistic, and even impossible. Is it really impossible to treat Black people like humans instead of just votes? Is it really so impossible to make an investment in our students instead of the $17 billion the Clintons invested in police, military grade weapons and prisons? Is it really impossible to invest in the healthcare of the American people instead of the $26 billion wasted training foreign armies under Clinton as Secretary of State? Is it really impossible to demand transparency from our police departments and our criminal justice system in an effort to bring life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to fruition once and for all? Is it really impossible to take the necessary steps to get more teachers and counselors in our schools instead of labeling them super predators and putting them on the school to prison pipeline?

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Working on HTML5.1

      HTML5 was released in 2014 as the result of a concerted effort by the W3C HTML Working Group. The intention was then to begin publishing regular incremental updates to the HTML standard, but a few things meant that didn’t happen as planned. Now the Web Platform Working Group (WP WG) is working towards an HTML5.1 release within the next six months, and a general workflow that means we can release a stable version of HTML as a W3C Recommendation about once per year.

    • Obama Urges Opening Cable TV Boxes To Competition

      President Obama is throwing his weight behind a plan that would lead to competition in the market for set-top cable and satellite TV boxes. Most viewers now rent the boxes from their TV providers. The Federal Communications Commission wants to make it easier for viewers to buy the devices.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/04/18/tomb-raider-for-gnu-linux/feed/ 0 Links 16/4/2016: Wine 1.9.8 Released, Saints Row 2 for GNU/Linux, KDE Neon Upgrade, GNOME 3.20.1, Rust 1.8, OpenEMR 4.2.1 http://techrights.org/2016/04/16/kde-neon-upgrade/ http://techrights.org/2016/04/16/kde-neon-upgrade/#comments Sat, 16 Apr 2016 15:59:26 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=91830

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • DHS: Open Source Software Is Like Giving Mafia a Copy of FBI System Code

    But publishing source code could also let attackers “construct highly targeted attacks against the software,” or “build-in malware directly into the source code, compile, then replace key software components as ‘doppelgangers’ of the original,” DHS’ Office of the Chief Information Officer argued in comments posted on GitHub.

  • Dissecting The Myth That Open Source Software Is Not Commercial

    Writing a myth-debunking piece for such an informed audience poses a certain risk. The readers of the IEEE Software Blog already know what open source software is, and many have probably written some. How can I be sure that anyone reading this even holds the belief about to be debunked?

  • ownCloud 9.0 Enterprise Edition Arrives with Extensive File Control Capabilities

    ownCloud, Inc. has had the great pleasure of announcing the availability of the Enterprise Edition (EE) of its powerful ownCloud 9.0 self-hosting cloud server solution.

    Engineered exclusively for small and medium-sized business, as well as major organizations and enterprises, ownCloud 9.0 Enterprise Edition is now available with extensive file control capabilities and all the cool new features that made the open-source version of the project famous amongst Linux users.

  • Is there a need for open source file sharing?

    Want a solution like Box, Dropbox or Egnyte but one you can deploy everywhere? Feel passionate about open source and want to leverage a community solution? ownCloud might just have something for you.

    ownCloud offers an on-premises enterprise file access platform, but one which is an open source solution. The company firmly pitches its wares with stated differentiation through openness, modular architecture, extensibility and federated sharing abilities. So are they onto something here?

  • The advantages of open source in Internet of Things design

    Another complementary approach to standards development is the release of designs and specifications into the open source community as open hardware and interface standards for others to adopt. Examples include Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and Beaglebone, which enable quick prototyping, as well as the mangOH open hardware reference design, an open source design that is more easily scalable in commercial settings and is built specifically for IoT cellular connectivity.

    Open source platforms like these enable developers that may have limited hardware, wireless or low-level software expertise to start developing IoT applications in days—rather than months. If executed properly, these can significantly reduce the time and effort to get prototypes from paper to production by ensuring that various connectors and sensors work together automatically with no additional coding required. With industrial-grade specifications, these next-generation platforms not only allow quick prototyping, but also rapid industrialization of IoT applications.

  • Apache Storm 1.0 packs a punch

    When big data mavens debate the merits of using Apache Spark versus Apache Storm for streaming data processing, the argument usually sounds like this: Sure, Storm has great scale and speed, but it’s hard to use. Plus, it’s slowly being overtaken by Spark, so why go with old and busted when there’s new and hot?

    That’s why Apache Storm 1.0 hopes to turn the ship around, not only by making it faster but by also easier and more convenient to work with.

  • Apache Storm 1.0 Packs a Speed Punch, is Set to Compete in the Big Data Space

    Are you familiar with Apache Storm? Not everyone is, but it, along with another Apache tool called Flink, is competing with tools like Apache Spark in the Big Data space. These tools focus on streaming data processing, which is emerging as a huge theme in the data analytics world.

  • Apache Wookie Heads to the Attic

    The last time I wrote about Apache Wookie was May 2012, on the occasion of the open-source project’s 0.10.0 release.

  • Coreboot Ported To Run On Lenovo’s ThinkPad T420
  • Broadwell-DE SoC / Xeon D Support Added To Coreboot
  • Open Source MANO Group Targets June for ‘Release 0′

    OSM was formed under the auspices of European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) earlier this year, around the same time as the OPEN-Orchestrator Project (OPEN-O), a Linux Foundation group that is taking a different approach to unified open source-based orchestration efforts.

  • Events

    • Dig into IoT with 41 OpenIoT Summit presentations

      Slide decks from 41 OpenIoT Summit talks are now online, from sessions including AllSeen, Brillo, mBed, Iotivity, Tizen, Weave, Zephyr, and IoT security.

      Last week, we pointed you to 50 slide decks released by the Linux Foundation from the Embedded Linux Conference (ELC), held in San Diego in April 4-6. Now, the non-profit Linux advocacy organization has released 41 more slide presentations, this time from the inaugural OpenIoT Summit track co-located with ELC.

    • Will North Carolina’s HB2 Affect State’s Open Source Conferences?

      At this point, how much effect the continuing economic backlash caused by the North Carolina General Assembly’s passage HB2, otherwise known as the “Bathroom Bill,” will have on the state’s two major open source conferences is anybody’s guess. Certainly, the past three weeks have not been good for operators of event venues in North Carolina, nor have they been good for the state’s bean counters, whose job is to make what the General Assembly spends balance with incoming tax revenue, which is certainly taking a hit in at least some counties.

    • Listen to ASF’s Rich Bowen Interview Speakers Before ApacheCon Next Month

      ApacheCon is just a few weeks away, and I, for one, am really looking forward to it. I think it’s going to be the best yet. I think that every time, and so far, I’ve been right.

      We’ve been doing ApacheCon for more than 15 years now, and it just keeps getting better. This year it will take place May 9-13 in Vancouver, Canada.

    • LinuxFest Northwest 2016 Takes Place April 23-24, in Bellingham, WA, US

      We have some great news for our Linux readers living in the US, as the upcoming LinuxFest Northwest 2016 event is taking place next week, between April 23-24, in Bellingham, WA.

      For those of you not in the known, LinuxFest Northwest is an annual event, targeted at novice, intermediate, and advanced Open Source and Linux enthusiasts, that usually takes place on the last weekend of the month of April, in Bellingham, Washington, United States of America (USA).

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • Announcing Rust 1.8

        The Rust team is happy to announce the latest version of Rust, 1.8. Rust is a systems programming language focused on safety, speed, and concurrency.

        As always, you can install Rust 1.8 from the appropriate page on our website, and check out the detailed release notes for 1.8 on GitHub. About 1400 patches were landed in this release.

      • Rust Programming Language 1.8 Released

        Rust 1.8 has been declared stable by the team working on this increasingly popular programming language focused on safety, speed, and concurrency.

      • Mozilla’s Commitment to Inclusive Internet Access

        Developing the Internet and defending its openness are key to global growth that is equitable, sustainable, and inclusive. The Internet is most powerful when anyone — regardless of gender or geography — can participate equally.

      • Mozilla has asked us to “police” this forum.

        I was contacted by Mozilla with the request to “police” our forum, since we (Pale Moon devs) are in direct control of the things discussed and posted here.

        I’d like to clarify our position on this kind of thing to keep things from becoming unpleasant in both our relationship with you, the community, and our relationship with Mozilla:

        We do not censor your posts, and this will not change in the future — this is an open forum.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • OpenStack Foundation Survey Shows Deployments Fully Underway

      Results from the seventh OpenStack Foundation user survey are out, and they paint a picture of a powerful cloud platform that has squarely moved from the evaluation stage at many enterprises to deployment stage. Sixty-five percent of OpenStack deployments are now in production, 33 percent more than a year ago, according to the findings. And 97 percent of community members said that “standardizing on the same open platform and APIs that power a global network of public and private clouds” was one of their top five considerations in choosing OpenStack.

    • Organizing the OpenStack community locally and globally

      Sharone Zitzman is no stranger to community. As a lead for the Cloudify open source community at GigaSpaces, and an organizer of many local events including OpenStack Israel, DevOps Days Tel Aviv, and the DevOps Israel meetup group, she knows well what it means to be involved with bringing people together for common goals across open source projects.

    • Hortonworks and Pivotal Provide Details on Deepening Partnership

      As reported here earlier this week, the Hortonworks’ Hadoop Summit has been underway in Dublin, Ireland, and one of the biggest pieces of news there was that Pivotal, already a player in the Hadoop distribution arena, will be reselling Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP), which is Hortonworks’ Hadoop platform. A corollary piece of news is that Pivotal is also shifting from focusing on its own distribution to the Hortonworks platform.

    • Hortonworks Ramps Up Hadoop Security

      Hortonworks this week announced a series of enterprise security efforts to bolster performance and data safety with its Hortonworks Data Platform.

      The company announced Tuesday that Pivotal Software will standardize on Hortonworks’ Hadoop distribution. Hortonworks also will resell extract, transform and load tools developed by Syncsort.

      The thrust of the Hortonworks’ product announcements, which were made in conjunction with its Hadoop Summit, concerned updates on applying security policies and maintaining data governance to simplify the provisioning of clusters in hybrid clouds. Those procedures were designed to make it easier for customers to interactively explore data in Hadoop.

    • Cumulus, Dell and Red Hat Partner on Open Source DevOps for OpenStack

      Cumulus Networks, Dell and Red Hat have forged a partnership to bring to DevOps efficiencies to the open source cloud by automating networking and deployment for OpenStack clusters, according to news announced this morning.

    • Cumulus Networks Collaborates with Dell and Red Hat to Simplify 300+ Node OpenStack Pod

      Cumulus Networks, the leading provider of Linux networking operating systems, today announced a collaboration with Dell, the leading provider of open and innovative technologies, and Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, to simplify large-scale OpenStack deployments without the need for any proprietary software-defined networking (SDN) fabric solutions. The resulting solution offers an all-Linux OpenStack pod that is easy to install and maintain, and incorporates the latest networking technologies.

    • TripleO Evolves for OpenStack Deployments

      There are a lot of different ways to deploy an open-source OpenStack cloud, and one of the best ironically is with OpenStack itself, via a project known as OpenStack on OpenStack (OOO), or just simply TripleO.

    • Cumulus, Dell, Red Hat Use Open-Source DevOps for an OpenStack Cluster

      The three vendors were able to use such open DevOps tools as Git and Ansible to install and deploy a 300-plus-node OpenStack cluster in six hours.

    • Open source cloud drives Volkswagen’s DevOps culture transformation

      Volkswagen plumped for an OpenStack-based private cloud to kick-start its new approach and, after a shoot-off between Mirantis and Red Hat, the company opted for the former.

    • OpenStack Survey Highlights Containers and DevOps in Open Source Cloud

      Ubuntu continues to dominate OpenStack deployments, interest in containers is strongly increasing and DevOps remains the top focus of open source clouds. These are among the takeaways from the latest OpenStack user survey, which debuted this week.

  • Databases

    • ActorDB: an alternative view of a distributed database

      My Percona Live Data Performance Conference talk is called ActorDB: an alternative view of a distributed database. ActorDB is an open source database that was developed using a distributed model: it uses an SQL database that speaks the MySQL client/server protocol.

  • Hadoop

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

    • Inside Facebook’s Open Source Machine [Ed: openwashing censorship and surveillance company (proprietary)]
    • Give to get: inside Facebook’s open source operation

      Facebook doesn’t sell software, but it’s arguably the largest open source software company in the world.

      In the last few years, the social network has accelerated its contributions to open source, providing not only code it uses in its own operations, such as its artificial intelligence software Torch, but also designs for servers and entire data centers. At the company’s F8 conference for developers and business partners this week, Facebook’s open source leaders announced continued progress on such projects as React Native, which helps developers use the same code on different operating systems.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GCC 4.9 vs. 5.3 vs. 6.0 Compiler Benchmarks On Debian 8.4

      With GCC 6.1 due out soon with its plethora of new features and improvements, I decided to run some fresh benchmarks this week of GCC 4.9.3 vs. GCC 5.3 vs. GCC 6.0.0 on a Debian stable system.

      From the Xeon E3-1280 v5 system with MSI C236A Workstation, I was using Debian 8.4 x86_64 as the base Linux OS for this benchmarking while building clean compilers of GCC 4.9.3, GCC 5.3.0, and GCC 6.0.0 20160410.

    • Free Software Foundation’s Priorities Reflect Changing Times

      In 2008, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) created its list of high-priority projects that “are important for increasing the adoption and use of free software and free software operating systems.”

      However, the list has been neglected in recent years, to the extent that the page for projects that no longer need to be on the list includes nothing added in the last five years.

      Consequently, the FSF is considering ways to reintroduce the list. In the process, it is revealing its own priorities, and how those have changed over the years — sometimes with unexpected results.

    • GCC 7.0 Now In Development, GCC 6.1 Likely Coming Next Week

      The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) made it today to having no P1 regressions (the highest priority) and thus they’ve now branched the code for the GCC 6 series, GCC 7.0 is now on the master branch, and GCC 6.1 should be released next week.

      For those still confused by the new GCC versioning scheme, GCC 6.1 will be the first stable release in the GCC 6 series. Jakub Jelinek of Red Hat who is managing the release hopes to ship GCC 6.1 by the end of next week or shortly after that point. A GCC 6.1 RC1 candidate is meanwhile imminent.

    • foliot @ Savannah: GNU Foliot version 0.9.6-beta is released.
    • denemo @ Savannah: Version 2.0.6 is out

  • Project Releases

    • OpenEMR 4.2.1 is released

      The OpenEMR community has released version 4.2.1. This new version is 2014 ONC Certified as a Modular EHR. OpenEMR 4.2.1 has numerous new features including 30 language translations and a patient flow board.

  • Public Services/Government

    • New local government digital standard published

      A local government digital service standard has been agreed and published after taking into account the views of council staff in a consultation last month.

      The standard is a common approach for local authorities to deliver good quality, user centred, value for money digital services – and is a local government version of the original Government Digital Service Standard used across central government.

    • NZGOAL Software Extension

      The New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing (NZGOAL) frame work is being extended to incorporate software licensing. The draft below is an initial draft for which we are seeking feedback on. The intention of this extension to NZGOAL is to ensure that publicly funded bespoke software is appropriately licensed to enable reuse by the public as well as government. This should enable more efficient maintenance and improvement, and potentially accelerate innovation going forward.

    • Dutch MP calls for open source resource centre

      The Dutch government should set up a resource centre on free software and open standards, says Member of Parliament Astrid Oosenbrug. “There is a serious lack of understanding of these two topics in the government”, the MP says. The centre should remedy this, and Ms Oosenburg has started studying possibilities and options.

    • Opening Minds As Well As Government With FLOSS
    • Italian parliament hosts debate on open source

      Italy’s parliament on Monday will hold a public debate on possible regulations on free and open source software, open standards, open data and open government. The meeting on Monday 18 April is hosted by Mirella Liuzzi, of the Five Star Movement.

    • White House Source Code Policy a Big Win for Open Government

      The U.S. White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is considering a new policy for sharing source code for software created by or for government projects. There’s a lot to love about the proposed policy: it would make it easier for people to find and reuse government software, and explicitly encourages government agencies to prioritize free and open source software options in their procurement decisions.

      EFF submitted a comment on the policy through the White House’s GitHub repository (you can also download our comment as a PDF). The OMB is encouraging people to send comments through GitHub, reply to and +1 each other’s comments, and even offer direct edits to the policy via pull requests.

    • U.S. Federal Source Code Policy: FSF supports, and urges improvements – comment by April 18!

      You can submit your own comments regarding this proposal, supporting the FSF’s suggestions and adding your own ideas for improvement, through 11:59pm EDT on Monday, April 18, 2016.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Programming/Development

    • How Node.js created a model open source community

      The creation of programming languages and platforms is rarely without challenges. A case in point is in the experiences of the community around the Node.js platform. Node.js allows the creation of backend services using JavaScript and a collection of “modules” that handle various core functionality and other core functions. Node.js’ modules use an API designed to reduce the complexity of writing server applications. Node.js’ package ecosystem, npm, is the largest ecosystem of open source libraries in the world.

    • Git work flows in the upcoming 2.7 release

      Easy to program in. No need to recompile, you can hack in as you would in shell. Fun.

    • Bug bounty blitzers open-source sick subdomain-spotter

      The tools, AltDNS and Assetnote, help hackers to automatically identify subdomains and hosts, then generate mobile phone push notifications the minute new possibly-vulnerable domains are published.

Leftovers

  • Monica Lewinsky: ‘The shame sticks to you like tar’

    Nearly 20 years ago, Monica Lewinsky found herself at the heart of a political storm. Now she’s turned that dark time into a force for good

  • 3 projects to enhance the experience of reading or writing poems

    April is National Poetry Month in the United States and Canada. During April, individuals and institutions take part by reading, sharing, and writing poetry. You can find National Poetry Month events at your local library, your local bookstore, and at many other places. To give National Poetry Month an open source spin, in this article I’ll share three open source projects for reading or writing poetry. From reading classical Greek and Roman poetry, to exploring the corpus of Persian poetry, to crafting poems of your own with a handy Android application, these projects take advantage of the creativity of open source to enhance the experience of reading or writing poems.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • 9 Ways Global Warming Is Making Us Sick

      The Obama administration has released a major new report on how manmade global warming is making Americans sicker—and it’s only going to get worse.

      Developed over three years and involving approximately 100 climate and public health experts, the 332-page report was based on more than 1,800 published scientific studies and new federal research, and was reviewed by the National Academies of Sciences.

  • Security

    • Security updates for Thursday
    • Badlock: Samba Vulns & Patching your machines

      Unless you are living in a black hole aka SCIF, or otherwise totally disconnected from various news outlets, you have likely heard about the numerous vulns that dropped as a series of CVEs better known as ‘badlock’ Tuesday. Well, there is good news for those on Redhat based distros! Patches are already in the default repos for Fedora / RHEL / CentOS.

    • Gone In Six Characters: Short URLs Considered Harmful for Cloud Services

      TL;DR: short URLs produced by bit.ly, goo.gl, and similar services are so short that they can be scanned by brute force. Our scan discovered a large number of Microsoft OneDrive accounts with private documents. Many of these accounts are unlocked and allow anyone to inject malware that will be automatically downloaded to users’ devices. We also discovered many driving directions that reveal sensitive information for identifiable individuals, including their visits to specialized medical facilities, prisons, and adult establishments.

    • URL shorteners could offer shortcut to malware infection, study claims
    • Guess what? URL shorteners short-circuit cloud security

      Two security researchers have published research exposing the potential privacy problems connected to using Web address shortening services. When used to share data protected by credentials included in the Web address associated with the content, these services could allow an attacker to gain access to data simply by searching through the entire address space for a URL-shortening service in search of content, because of how predictable and short those addresses are.

    • Defining “Gray Hat”

      Black Hats are the bad guys: cybercriminals (like Russian cybercrime gangs), cyberspies (like the Chinese state-sponsored hackers that broke into OPM), or cyberterrorists (ISIS hackers who want to crash the power grid). They may or may not include cybervandals (like some Anonymous activity) that simply defaces websites. Black Hats are those who want to cause damage or profit at the expense of others.

      [...]

      The biggest recent debate is “0day sales to the NSA”, which blew up after Stuxnet, and in particular, after Snowden. This is when experts look for bugs/vulnerabilities, but instead of reporting them to the vendor to be fixed (as White Hats typically do), they sell the bugs to the NSA, so the vulnerabilities (call “0days” in this context) can be used to hack computers in intelligence and military operations. Partisans who don’t like the NSA use “Grey Hat” to refer to those who sell 0days to the NSA.

      WIRED’s definition is this partisan definition. Kim Zetter has done more to report on Stuxnet than any other journalist, which is why her definition is so narrow.

    • WordPress Turns On Free Encryption
    • Badlock Flaw Disclosed as Microsoft Issues 13 Security Advisories
    • How Badlock Was Discovered and Fixed

      Severity analysis of vulnerabilities by experts from the information security industry is rarely based on real code review. In the ‘Badlock’ case, most read our CVE descriptions and built up a score representing a risk this CVE poses to a user. There is nothing wrong with this approach if it is done correctly. CVEs are analyzed in isolation; as if no other issue exists. In the case of a ‘Badlock‘ there were eight CVEs. The difference is the fact that one of them was in a foundational component used by most of the code affected by the remaining seven CVEs. That very specific CVE was marked CVE-2015-5370.

    • Linux Ransomware Could Soon Be Affecting Everyone [Ed: This is a truly garbage ‘article’ from a plagiarism Web site. One actually needs to install malware to be affected]

      Windows operating system has been plagued by ransomware since years, and the attackers have generated millions in revenue. The ransomware is expanding to Mac, Android, and Linux now. It is being said that this year is a critical one in terms of ransomware, and all major operating systems are predicted to get affected. Also, the attackers are constantly working on improving the ransomware, making it harder to deal with.

    • Experts crack Petya ransomware, enable hard drive decryption for free
    • Libgcrypt 1.7 Adds New Algorithms, Performance Improvements

      Werner Koch announced the release today of libgcrypt 1.7, a major update to this general cryptographic library.

      Libgcrypt 1.7 adds a nnumber of new hash algorithms, ChaCha20 stream cipher support, various other new algorithms/modes and also some new curves for ECC.

    • Friday’s security advisories

  • Defence/Aggression

    • James Henry on Panama Papers, Sanho Tree on Hiroshima

      Also on the show: “No US apology for Hiroshima” was many media’s thumbnail of Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent visit to one of the Japanese cities—along with, of course, Nagasaki—where the US killed more than 200,000 people with atomic bombs dropped in 1945. The dominant Hiroshima “narrative”—lamentable but necessary, ultimately saved more than it killed—has remained remarkably unchanged, in good part because of US media’s defense and preservation of it. We discussed that narrative years ago with military and diplomatic historian Sanho Tree, now director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

    • Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister has said $681 million banked into the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s bank accounts was a “genuine donation.”

      Saudi Arabia has for the first time publicly confirmed Malaysia’s claim that $681 million in Prime Minister Najib Razak’s bank accounts was a donation from the Saudi royal family, countering accusations that the money was siphoned from heavily indebted state investment fund 1MDB.

      Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir called the money a “genuine donation” in comments Thursday to Malaysian reporters in Istanbul after a meeting with Najib. On Friday, Malaysia’s foreign ministry provided a video clip of Al-Jubeir’s comments, which Najib’s office said vindicate the prime minister, who has faced months of pressure to resign from critics including former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

    • A New Nuclear Arms Race Feared as U.S. & Others Aim to Build Smaller, “More Usable” Nukes

      Part 2 of our conversation with Marylia Kelley. Her group, the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, just published a report titled “Trillion Dollar Trainwreck: Out-of-control U.S. nuclear weapons programs accelerate spending, proliferation, health and safety risks.”

    • Learning to Love the Bomb — Again

      Perhaps the height of Official Washington’s madness is the casual decision to invest $1 trillion in a new generation of nukes, including a downsized, easy-to-use variety, with almost no debate, a danger that Michael Brenner addresses.

    • Obama’s Trillion-Dollar Nuclear-Arms Train Wreck
    • The CIA Doesn’t Want You To Know that ISI Supports Terror, But DIA Does

      The National Security Archive just got a number of documents on the funding of the Haqqani network, showing it gets (or got) funding from Gulf donations, the Taliban in the tribal lands, and Pakistan’s ISI. A particularly interesting DIA cable describes how a guy named Qabool Khan, on orders of the Haqqani, got a job — thanks to Hamid Karzai’s brother Mahmoud’s influence — running security for the US Salerno and Chapman bases. Along with intelligence about Americans on the base, of the $800 he made for each guard at the base, Khan sent $300 back to the Haqqanis.

    • America’s Imperial Overstretch

      This week, SU-24 fighter-bombers buzzed a U.S. destroyer in the Baltic Sea. The Russian planes carried no missiles or bombs.

      Message: What are you Americans doing here?

      In the South China Sea, U.S. planes overfly, and U.S. warships sail inside, the territorial limits of islets claimed by Beijing.

      In South Korea, U.S. forces conduct annual military exercises as warnings to a North Korea that is testing nuclear warheads and long-range missiles that can reach the United States.

    • U.S. Report on Saudi Arabia Downplays Civilian Casualties in Yemen

      IN ITS ANNUAL human rights report on Saudi Arabia, the State Department ignored thousands of civilian casualties from the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen and overlooked the widespread use of illegal cluster munitions by the bombing coalition.

      Saudi Arabia launched an air campaign in Yemen last March after Houthi rebels in Yemen threatened the rule of the Saudi-backed president. The Saudi military has been widely criticized for targeting civilians, destroying homes, schools, and hospitals, and using internationally banned cluster munitions.

      The Obama administration has supported the Saudi-led campaign throughout, providing the coalition with intelligence and selling them at least $20 billion in weapons since the campaign began in March.

    • Hillary Clinton’s Gender Argument

      Hillary Clinton calls on women to support her to be the first female President, but all Americans should look carefully at her record advocating bloody, neocon “regime change” wars, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Does Over-Classification Matter With the Hillary Emails?

      Rules are for fools, and in this case the fools in question are you, me and what’s left of the American democratic system. Obama, in an interview, basically made it clear nobody is going to indict Hillary Clinton for exposing classified material via her unclassified email server, even if it requires made-up rules to let her get away with it.

      The president’s comments in an interview last Sunday that “there’s classified and then there’s classified” made clear he imagines national security law allows for ample, self-determined fudge room when exposing classified material.

    • New EU trade secrets law could jail whistleblowers, block drug trial data access

      EU parliament has adopted new rules on the protection of trade secrets, shortly after passing those on data protection, reported by Ars earlier today.

      A European Parliament press release explains: “The rules will introduce an EU-wide definition of trade secrets and oblige member states to ensure that victims of the misuse of trade secrets will be able to defend their rights in court and seek compensation. The agreed text also lays down rules on the protection of confidential information during litigation.” According to the agreed rules, “trade secret” means information which is “secret, has commercial value because it is secret, and has been subject to reasonable steps to keep it secret.”

      A controversial issue is the impact the new trade secrets rules will have on whistleblowers and journalists: “MEPs stressed the need to ensure that the legislation does not curb media freedom and pluralism or restrict the work of journalists, in particular with regard to their investigations and the protection of their sources.”

      However, the Pirate Party MEP, Julia Reda, believes the new rules will harm journalism, writing that they have “created major uncertainties about the role of whistleblowers and investigative journalists. All information, including information about malpractice, can be protected as a trade secret. As a result, the burden of proof that the public interest outweighs the business interest will now always lie with the whistleblower.”

      One area where whistleblowing is crucially important concerns drug safety. Health Action International (HAI), a non-governmental organisation dedicated to strengthening medicines policy to improve public health, said it was was “deeply disappointed with today’s adoption of the European Union Trade Secrets Directive.”

    • Trade Secrets Directive Clears European Parliament Despite Concerns

      Rejecting calls for a vote to be delayed until the European Commission proposes tougher whistle-blower protections, the European Parliament on 14 April approved by 503-131 new rules giving companies redress for theft or misuse of trade secrets. Debate on the trade secrets directive showed sharp divisions among lawmakers, heightened by the recent “Panama Papers” and other leaks, over whether the legislation will help businesses safeguard their innovative ideas or lead to increased corporate secrecy.

    • BREAKING: Safe passage through Panama – EU Trade Secrets Directive approved, but not without protest

      In the end, the voices in favour prevailed, with 503 votes for and only 131 against. The strength of this majority is also fair reflection of the concerns, which were at times overstated. For a start, contrary to the suggestion from the Ecologist, the Directive has no impact on criminal law (this remains entirely a matter for national legislators). Recital 12a also makes clear that national judicial authorities have ample scope for taking account of national sensitivities. I suspect national approaches to whistleblowing and public interest will remain largely unchanged as a result of the Directive, although the impact of the Panama Papers is perhaps harder to predict.”

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • ‘Days of Revolt’: Corporate Influence and the Pitfalls of a Two-Party System (Video)

      Dr. Margaret Flowers is an environmental activist running for the U.S. Senate in Maryland as a member of the Green Party. In this episode of teleSUR’s “Days of Revolt,” she discusses political stagnation and revolution with Truthdig contributor Chris Hedges.

      The two discuss the “corporate stranglehold” on American elections and the oppressive nature of two-party systems. Although she emphasizes the importance of grass-roots movements to incite political change, Flowers also notes that it’s “important to have people inside of the system.”

    • Why World Leaders Are Terrified of Water Shortages

      Secret conversations between American diplomats show how a growing water crisis in the Middle East destabilized the region, helping spark civil wars in Syria and Yemen, and how those water shortages are spreading to the United States.

      Classified US cables reviewed by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting show a mounting concern by global political and business leaders that water shortages could spark unrest across the world, with dire consequences.

      [...]

      The classified diplomatic cables, made public years ago by WikiLeaks, now are providing fresh perspective on how water shortages have helped push Syria and Yemen into civil war, and prompted the king of neighboring Saudi Arabia to direct his country’s food companies to scour the globe for farmland. Since then, concerns about the world’s freshwater supplies have only accelerated.

      It’s not just government officials who are worried. In 2009, US Embassy officers visited Nestlé’s headquarters in Switzerland, where company executives, who run the world’s largest food company and are dependent on freshwater to grow ingredients, provided a grim outlook of the coming years. An embassy official cabled Washington with the subject line, “Tour D’Horizon with Nestle: Forget the Global Financial Crisis, the World Is Running Out of Fresh Water.”

    • Greenland ice melts ‘disturbingly’ early

      Meteorologists on Greenland have recorded a 10 percent melt of the island’s sheet ice, beating the record for the earliest date for this level of melting by ‘nearly a month.’

  • Finance

    • Ted Cruz Uses Discredited Talking Points To Make Case Against Minimum Wage Hike

      Research, however, shows no significant connection between increasing the minimum wage and jobs. A 2009 analysis of 64 United States minimum-wage studies found “little or no evidence of a negative association between minimum wages and employment.” Likewise, a 2013 Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report found that “Research over the past two decades has shown that, despite skeptics’ claims, modest increases in the minimum wage have little to no negative impact on jobs. In fact, under current labor market conditions, where tepid consumer demand is a major factor holding businesses back from expanding their payrolls, raising the minimum wage can provide a catalyst for new hiring.”

    • US corporations have $1.4tn hidden in tax havens, claims Oxfam report

      US corporate giants such as Apple, Walmart and General Electric have stashed $1.4tn (£980bn) in tax havens, despite receiving trillions of dollars in taxpayer support, according to a report by anti-poverty charity Oxfam.

    • Jeremy Corbyn suggests EU-wide minimum wage to give British workers a ‘level playing field’

      The European Union should consider introducing an EU-wide minimum wage to reduce the incentive for people to immigrate to Britain, Jeremy Corbyn has suggested.

      The Labour leader today made his first speech of the EU referendum campaign, arguing that there was a “strong socialist case” for staying in the bloc.

      But Mr Corbyn accepted that there were concerns about the impact of migration on the UK – and said changes to wage laws could help reduce perceived pressures.

    • Dutch voters now demanding referendum on TTIP

      Some 100,000 Dutch citizens have already signed a petition demanding a referendum on TTIP. 300,000 names are needed to trigger a non-binding vote on the issue, as was the case with the Ukraine plebiscite.

      The Socialist Party (Socialistische Partij) is pushing for the referendum. Founded in 1977 as the ‘Communist Party of the Netherlands/Marxist–Leninist’, it won 15 out of 150 seats (10%) in the Dutch Parliament elections in 2012, equivalent to just under 910,000 individual votes.

      Spokesman Jasper Van Dijk told EurActiv that the EU-Ukraine referendum had given the campaign, which has lasted a matter of months, added impetus.

      NGOs against TTIP were part of the drive, he said, which had excited popular imagination.

    • Elizabeth Warren Introduces Bill To Make Tax Season Return-Free

      Yay, it’s tax season again! As our American readers will know, this is the wonderful time of year when we scramble to get all of our taxes and deductions paperwork in order, take them to some storefront that looks like a military recruitment center, push all of those papers in front of someone that looks like they just graduated from college, and scream, “You figure it out!” For our foreign readers, I should explain that we do this because our tax code is more complicated than the plot of Game of Thrones, our tax authorities are every bit as ruthless as that same series, and we’ve collectively allowed our citizens’ payment of due obligations to become a for-profit industry. But seriously, though, come to America. It’s great. I swear.

    • City Council Passes Law Limiting Homeless People’s Belongings to What Can Fit in Trash Bin

      Like every American city in the Age of the 99 Percent, Los Angeles has a significant homeless problem. Full-on shantytowns are now a feature of LA’s urban landscape, with colonies of desperate men and women setting up camps, and building shelters out of tarps, wherever they can find safe space to do so.

    • CETA, TTIP and ISDS: Lessons from Canada

      A new video is set to spark debate on CETA (the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) with the deal on the verge of a vote this year in the European Parliament, where opponents hope it will be defeated.

      Today, the Council of Canadians, in partnership with the European Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP and CETA, is launching CETA: Lessons from Canada, a five-minute animation. Using a technique known as “handimation”, the short video gives a comprehensive background on the controversial deal, known to many as TTIP 1.0.

    • Saudi Arabia Warns of Economic Fallout if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill

      Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

      The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from both parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.

      Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s message personally last month during a trip to Washington, telling lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • We Must Speak Up—Capitalism is Eating Democracy

      Yanis Varoufakis, previous finance minister for Greece, offers insights as an economic insider about the current workings of global finance. He suggests the key challenge of our time is a lack of democracy to balance today’s unchecked capitalism. Capitalism without democratic oversight can become a very uncivilized system—brutish and destructive. This current imbalance threatens the global economy, our environment, and the future of civil society.

    • Media Asking Wrong Questions on North Carolina’s ‘Bathroom Law’

      But while media are busy working through anti-LGBT talking points, they aren’t asking Republican politicians to explain how they’ll enforce laws that would require people to prove their “biological sex” at the bathroom door. The law says people must use facilities that corresponding to the sex “stated on a person’s birth certificate.” So people should carry their birth certificates with them at all times?

    • Protests Against Money in Politics Hold Little Interest for Beltway’s ‘Political Junkies’

      More than 400 people were arrested in a non-violent sit-in on Capitol Hill April 11, many having marched 150 miles from the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. The protest, called Democracy Spring, is about ending the influence of big money in politics and ensuring free, fair elections through things like restoring the Voting Rights Act. The next day, another 85 mostly elderly people were arrested, many chanting, “Democracy is not for sale, [we’re] not too old to go to jail.”

    • How Does That Plastic Taste?

      As of March 2016, a review of recent corporate news coverage indicates that many of the themes in Jamail’s article have not been covered in the corporate press, including especially the extent to which the seafood we eat contains plastic, as well as a number of the solutions to this problem, as discussed by Dr. Wallace Nichols and other researchers.

    • Release of Clinton’s Wall Street Speeches Could End Her Candidacy for President

      The reason you and I will never see the transcripts of Hillary Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street fat-cats — and the reason she’s established a nonsensical condition for their release, that being an agreement by members of another party, involved in a separate primary, to do the same — is that if she were ever to release those transcripts, it could end her candidacy for president.

      Please don’t take my word for it, though.

      Nor even that of the many neutral observers in the media who are deeply troubled by Clinton’s lack of transparency as to these well-compensated closed-door events — a lack of transparency that has actually been a hallmark of her career in politics.

      Nor do we even need to take Clinton’s word for it — as we could certainly argue that her insistence that none of these transcripts ever be seen by the public is itself a confession that her words would cause significant trauma to her presidential bid.

    • The Brooklyn Dodgers: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders Give Non-Answers at Debate

      WHEN A CANDIDATE for high office can’t respond to a simple question with an honest answer, attention should be paid. More often than not these days, that kind of behavior is just greeted with a shrug by the members of the elite media, but specific acts of evasion are worth studying. Because if something’s important enough for a candidate that they concoct a ludicrous non-response, there’s probably a sore point under there somewhere.

    • Hillary Clinton’s Favorability Rating Among Democrats Hit a New Low (Video)

      Hillary Clinton may be the Democratic frontrunner, but her appeal is waning. According to the HuffPost Pollster average, 55 percent of the electorate now views Clinton unfavorably—and 40.2 percent of people view her favorably, according to the same average.

    • Bernie Sanders earned $205,000 in 2014

      Earlier today I noted that someone who earns $200,000 pays an average federal income tax rate of 15 percent. Well, it turns out that Bernie Sanders is really, really average. He released his 2014 tax return tonight, and it reports that he had an adjusted gross income of $205,617 and total taxes due of $27,653. That’s 13 percent of his income.

    • What exactly do pro-Brexiters mean when they say they want to make Britain great again?

      The United Kingdom could ‘better face the future outside the European Union’. That was the opinion of 43% of respondents in the European Union Public Opinion survey, the Eurobarometer, in May 2015. It’s hardly surprising that such a large proportion of the population has such a bleak view of the benefits the EU brings to the UK, considering that scrutiny of Brussels has intensified over recent years. And in the run-up to the referendum, the spotlight is well and truly fixed on the issue.

    • A Note on Hillary Clinton, the Queen of Chaos

      In fact, this primary campaign has produced a couple of surprises, more earthly than divine. Both surprises reveal widespread grassroots discontent with both Hillary Clinton and the whole American political establishment. However, this discontent so far fails to focus on the point of my book: the need to combat the ideology and practice of U.S. war policy personified by Hillary Clinton. Where is the effective alternative to the War Party?

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Texas Prison System Unveils New Censorship Policy

      The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is getting in the digital censorship game with a new policy that would punish an offender for having a social media presence, even when someone on the outside is posting updates on their behalf.

    • GreatFire activist urges western firms to help end Chinese censorship

      Western companies need to end their hypocrisy over free speech in China, and start helping to end censorship in the country, a leading anti-censorship activist has told the Guardian.

      One of the three co-founders of GreatFire, an organisation dedicated to fighting the so-called Great Firewall of China, the technological heart of state censorship in the country, said it hurts to see companies such as Apple citing Chinese censorship in their battles with western governments, while co-operating with authoritarian state in order to earn money from its burgeoning middle classes and take advantage of its enormous manufacturing base.

      Speaking in London shortly before winning a Freedom of Expression award from campaign group Index on Censorship, the activist, who goes by the pseudonym Charlie Smith due to the threat to his safety if the Chinese government discovers his identity, listed Apple and LinkedIn amongst his personal villains.

    • It’s Official: Washington Thinks Chinese Internet Censorship Is a ‘Trade Barrier’

      In its annual report on the challenges U.S. exporters face in foreign markets, released in April, the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) listed Chinese Internet censorship as a trade barrier for the first time. The move is likely to please U.S. businesses that operate in China or that are considering doing so. But previous U.S. attempts to encourage China to dismantle the so-called Great Firewall of Censorship, which keeps out certain foreign content Chinese authorities deem harmful, have had little effect. Will describing censorship as a trade barrier make a difference? In this ChinaFile conversation, experts discuss the implications of the new report, and how might China react to this pressure from Washington.

    • Leaked Documents Confirm Ecuador’s Internet Censorship Machine

      According to a leaked internal memo of the multinational ISP Telefónica in Ecuador, the Association of Internet Providers of Ecuador (AEPROVI) collaborated with the Ecuadorian government to block their users’ access to websites. The memo was obtained and published by the Associated Whistleblowing Press and the Ecuadorian whistleblowing platform, Ecuador Transparente.

      The memo describes how on March 28, 2014, between 7:20 pm and 7:53 pm, a technician received reports of users unable to access Google and YouTube. It explains that Telefónica staff verified the accessibility issues and reported them to Telefónica’s Network Operations Center (NOC). The NOC then confirmed that these websites were inaccessible due to AEPROVI “blocking access to certain Internet websites by request of the National Government.” The leaked document explains that many clients were affected, prompting AEPROVI to roll back its website blocking in order to remedy the situation.

    • Ecuador Briefly Censored Google and YouTube, Leaked Document Shows

      On Thursday, March 27, 2014, someone hacked the official Twitter account of Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa. The next day, hackers posted personal emails from the country’s spy chief Rommy Vallejo on a Google-hosted blog, which contained a classic Anonymous-like YouTube video.

      Hours later, some internet users in Ecuador reported not being able to access Google and YouTube. As it turned out, the outage wasn’t caused by a technical glitch, but a government censorship order, according to a leaked document from telephone giant Telefonica.

      “The issues with accessing internet pages such as Google and YouTube was due to the fact that personnel at [Ecuador’s internet providers’ association] AEPROVI blocked access to certain internet pages by request of the national government,” reads part of the document, which appears to be an internal Telefonica support ticket.

    • Erdogan Tries to Extend Turkish Censorship to Germany

      Jan Böhmermann, host of the late-night “Neo Magazin Royale,” in Hamburg, Germany, on August 21, 2012. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has filed a complaint against the comedian who recited a satirical and sexually crude poem about him on German television, complicating Berlin’s attempts to get Turkey’s help in dealing with Europe’s migrant crisis.

    • Merkel, Accused of Betraying Core Values, Faces a Balancing Act With Turkey
    • Journalists want ‘slanderous’ poem republished

      Colleagues of satirist Jan Böhmermann at public broadcaster ZDF are campaigning to have his ‘slanderous’ poem about Turkey’s leader reinstated online – even as legal action looms against the comedian.

    • Let’s All Talk About The Stuff That UC Davis Spent $175k Trying To Keep Off These Internets

      Those funds, spent by a public university, mind you, were spent in the wake of the pepper spraying incident specifically to reformulate the image of UC Davis by obfuscating search results, web mentions of the incident, and by crafting a deluge of other UC Davis content that was decidedly more brand-friendly. But, hey, are you still confused as to what incident we’re talking about here? Maybe this video of the incident will help jog your memory.

      What should be readily apparent to you by now is that trying to bury factual if unfortunate history by hiring so-called brand reputation groups works about as well as trying to cover up your inability to cook a decent meal by dumping chocolate icing on everything you make. Sure, icing is good, but you still burnt that bone-in ribeye, you fool.

      More importantly, in true Streisand Effect fashion, the attempted coverup of the incident now has us all discussing it again. And not only discussing the incident, but multiplying information about the incident, and footage of it, throughout the internet.

    • Texas prisons’ new rules aim to force social media to close inmate accounts

      This month the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) updated its offender handbook (PDF) to stipulate that inmates are not allowed to have social media accounts. While blog posts are still permitted, a spokesperson for the TDCJ told Ars that the rule was developed to get social media platforms to comply with the corrections department’s takedown requests more readily.

    • ABC rejects criticism its Chinese web portal bows to Beijing censorship

      The ABC has strongly rejected criticism its Chinese web portal, AustraliaPlus.cn, helps Beijing to silence critical voices in the region.

      An opinion piece in the Australian Financial Review by Prof John Fitzgerald, director of the Asia Pacific program in social investment and philanthropy at Swinburne University of Technology accused the ABC of selling out its news values in order to get a foothold in China.

      “The ABC has not, and never has, entered into an agreement with China or any country in regards to censorship of its content,” the ABC said in a strongly-worded statement.

    • 6 May: Tehran Book Fair, Uncensored

      Taking place on 6-7 May 2016 at London’s Free Word Centre, the book fair coincides with the Tehran Book Fair, but unlike the Iranian counterpart, it’s free from censorship, and will feature censored books from independent Iranian publishers.

      Most of the event will be in Farsi, but there will be an English-language session too on Friday 6 May from 4.30pm to 5.30pm – in association with Index on Censorship and Small Media.

    • Student journalists battling censorship on campuses nationwide

      Freedom of the press on campus has garnered plenty of attention with incidents at the University of Missouri and Wesleyan University. Yet the two incidents “are hardly the only examples,” warns Observer.

      At Mizzou, a student photographer was pushed away from covering student protesters by former professor Melissa Click, who has since been fired and charged with assault. The Wesleyan Argus faced controversy and defunding threats after publishing a critical article about Black Lives Matter.

    • Jodie Ginsberg: “Free expression needs defenders”
    • In the Erdogan vs. Böhmermann crisis, the real comedians are the politicians themselves
    • UC Davis Spent $175,000 To Bury This Story Of Police Brutality. We’re Writing About It So They Fail.
    • UC Davis Wondered If $175,000 Would Make The Internet Go Away. Conclusion: No.
    • UC Davis spent $175,000 to bury search results after cops pepper-sprayed protestors
    • University of California in Davis Spent $175k on SEO and “Reputation Management”
    • U. of Delaware Students Drew a Penis on a Free Speech Ball. Cops Made Them Censor It.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Mexican Supreme Court Should Reject Mass Surveillance
    • Two hidden recording devices are discovered at Harvard Law School
    • How Technology Helps Creditors Control Debtors

      From software that records your every keystroke, to GPS tracking, to ignition kill switches—lenders have more power over their customers than ever.

    • Facebook Employees Asked Mark Zuckerberg If They Should Try to Stop a Donald Trump Presidency

      This week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared to publicly denounce the political positions of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign during the keynote speech of the company’s annual F8 developer conference.

      “I hear fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing people they label as ‘others,’” Zuckerberg said, never referring to Trump by name. “I hear them calling for blocking free expression, for slowing immigration, for reducing trade, and in some cases, even for cutting access to the internet.”

      [...]

      “Facebook can promote or block any material that it wants,” UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh told Gizmodo. “Facebook has the same First Amendment right as the New York Times. They can completely block Trump if they want. They block him or promote him.” But the New York Times isn’t hosting pages like Donald Trump for President or Donald Trump for President 2016, the way Facebook is.

      [...]

      Facebook has toyed with skewing news in the past. During the 2012 presidential election, Facebook secretly tampered with 1.9 million user’s news feeds. The company also tampered with news feeds in 2010 during a 61-million-person experiment to see how Facebook could impact the real-world voting behavior of millions of people. An academic paper was published about the secret experiment, claiming that Facebook increased voter turnout by more than 340,000 people. In 2012, Facebook also deliberately experimented on its users’ emotions. The company, again, secretly tampered with the news feeds of 700,000 people and concluded that Facebook can basically make you feel whatever it wants you to.

    • Canadian police had access to BlackBerry Messenger pretty much like everyone else

      POLICE IN CANADA took advantage of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) security’s “Achilles’ heel” by compelling the company to hand over its universal decryption key, and using access to mobile operators’ infrastructure to read more than a million messages.

      Declassified documents arising from a Royal Canadian Mounted Police criminal investigation between 2010 and 2012 indicate that the police force kept a dedicated server at its headquarters in Ottawa to intercept messages. The server was connected to the network of Canadian mobile operator Rogers, which also cooperated with investigators.

    • Canadian Law Enforcement Can Intercept, Decrypt Blackberry Messages

      Blackberry’s CEO, John Chen, didn’t care for the fact that Apple was “locking” law enforcement out of its devices by providing customers with default encryption. As he saw it, Apple was placing profits ahead of Mom, Apple pie and American-made motorcars.

    • Report Exposes Flaws In Link Shorteners That Reveal Sensitive Info About Users And Track Their Offline Movements

      The Freedom to Tinker Foundation has just released a study it compiled over the last 18 months — one in which it scanned thousands of shortened URLs and discovered what they unintentionally revealed. Microsoft’s OneDrive — which uses link-shortening — could be made to reveal documents uploaders never intended to share with the public. Worse, Freedom to Tinker discovered a small percentage of brute-forced URLs linked to documents with “write” privileges enabled.

    • How Short URLs Could Reveal Your Home Address and Get You Hacked

      Two researchers devised a method to automatically guess, or scan by brute force, millions of Microsoft OneDrive (1drv.ms) and Google Maps (goo.gl/maps) short links. This way, they found thousands of open OneDrive folders with potentially sensitive information, as well as Google Maps links that could be used to identify the people who created them, as well as their identity.

      In other words, short URLs with five, six, or seven-character tokens that users might think as private, are not that private.

      “When you are sharing something using a short URL, you are not sharing with just the intended recipient…you are sharing with the entire world.” Vitaly Shmatikov, a professor at Cornell Tech, and one of the researchers who worked on the study, told Motherboard in an email.

    • How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell

      But instead of being a place of respite, the people who live on Joyce Taylor’s land find themselves in a technological horror story.

    • How Bad Are Geolocation Tools? Really, Really Bad

      Geolocation is one of those tools that the less technically minded like to use to feel smart. At its core it’s a database, showing locations for IP addresses, but like most database-based tools, the old maxim of GIGO [Garbage In, Garbage Out] applies. Over the weekend Fusion’s Kashmir Hill wrote a great story about how one geolocation company has sent hundreds of people to one farm in Kansas for no reason other than laziness. And yes, it’s exactly as bad as it sounds.

    • Sixth Circuit Says Cell Site Location Data Just A Business Record; No Warrants Required

      To date, four appeals courts have entered opinions on whether cell site location info is covered by the Fourth Amendment. So far, only the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has found this to be worthy of a warrant. All others find CSLI to be covered under the Third Party Doctrine. These cases all deal with historical cell site location info, usually obtained in bulk with subpoenas. Near real-time tracking using tower pings is another issue entirely — one that’s rarer because a) obtaining rolling CSLI from a provider is a pain and b) everyone’s using Stingrays now.

    • FBI Has Been Not Counting Encryption’s Impact on Investigations for Over a Decade

      During the first of a series of hearings in the last year in which Jim Comey (at this particular hearing, backed by Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates) pushed for back doors, they were forced to admit they didn’t actually have numbers proving encryption was a big problem for their investigations because they simply weren’t tracking that number.

    • Documents Show FBI Deployed Software Exploits To Break Encryption Back In 2003

      Documents FOIA’ed by Ryan Shapiro and shared with the New York Times shed some new light on previous FBI efforts to break encryption. Back in 2003, the FBI was investigating an animal rights group for possibly sabotaging companies that used animals for testing. The FBI’s Department of Cutesy Investigation Names dubbed this “Operation Trail Mix,” which I’m sure endeared it to the agents on the case. At the center of the investigation were emails the FBI couldn’t read. But it found a way.

    • The FBI’s Asinine Attempt to Retroactively Justify Cracking Farook’s Phone

      That’s the logic the FBI is now peddling to reporters who are copping onto what was clear from the start: that there was never going to be anything of interest on Farook’s phone. After all, they’re suggesting geolocation data on the phone (some of which would be available from Verizon) might explain the 18 minutes of the day of the attack the FBI has yet to piece together.

    • FAQ: Apple, the FBI, and Zero Days
    • Massive EU data protection overhaul finally approved

      The European Parliament today voted in favour of major reforms to data protection in the EU, first put forward in January 2012 as a replacement for the current rules, which were drawn up in 1995. The new law is done and dusted and will come into action in April 2018.

      There are two components to the new law: the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is designed to give EU citizens better control of their personal data, and the Data Protection Directive, which covers how personal data is used by police in the EU.

    • Apple Responds To DOJ’s Attempt To Get Into Drug Dealer’s Phone: Why You So Dishonest?

      As we’ve discussed at length, there are multiple cases going on right now in which the US Justice Department is looking to compel Apple to help access encrypted information on iPhones. There was lots of attention paid to the one in San Bernardino, around Syed Farook’s work iPhone, but that case is now over. The one getting almost but not quite as much attention is the one happening across the country in NY, where magistrate judge James Orenstein ruled against the DOJ a little over a month ago, with a very detailed explanation for why the All Writs Act clearly did not apply. The DOJ, not surprisingly, appealed that ruling (technically made a “renewed application” rather than an appeal) to an Article III judge and the case was assigned to judge Margo Brodie.

    • Special forces troops ‘using new GCHQ system’ on anti-terror patrols? [Ed: propaganda rag uses the “support the troops” card to ‘sell’ GCHQ to us]
    • GCHQ director acknowledges historic mistreatment of LGBT people at Stonewall conference
    • UK spy chief apologises for GCHQ’s historic ban on gay staff
    • Spy agency chief: I apologize to gay staff unfairly dismissed in the past
    • GCHQ chief apologises for ‘horrifying’ treatment of Alan Turing [Ed: intolerance, new charm offensive]
    • Head of GCHQ apologises for historic ban on homosexuals
    • GCHQ apology for Turing and homosexuals treatment
    • GCHQ boss publicly apologises for the organisation’s historic ban on gay staff
    • Edward Snowden Forms Improbable Partnership With Jean-Michel Jarre
    • Edward Snowden made a song with electronic musician Jean-Michel Jarre
    • Edward Snowden Is Releasing A Song Called ‘Exit’. No, It’s Not A Joke.
    • Edward Snowden is now dabbling in techno music
    • Edward Snowden releasing techno track with Jean Michel Jarre
    • Edward Snowden has been messaging teenagers about the news and making electronic music
    • US anti-encryption law is so ‘braindead’ it will outlaw file compression

      The proposed bill put forward by Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to force US companies to build backdoors into their encryption systems has quickly run into trouble.

      Less than 24 hours after the draft Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016 was released, more than 43,000 signatures have been added to a petition calling for the bill to be withdrawn. The petition, organized by CREDO Action, calls for Congress to block the proposed law as a matter of urgency.

    • Microsoft Sues Government Over Its ECPA-Enabled Gag Orders

      The lawsuit claims these gag orders violate multiple rights of multiple parties. Those whose data is being requested are having their Fourth Amendment rights violated by the undisclosed searches. Microsoft’s First Amendment rights are being violated by the accompanying gag orders.

    • Adoption of three texts on personal data: teach yourself how to be safe!

      Today, the European Parliament adopted three texts on personal data: the regulation framework for personal data processing by private companies, the Directive on judicial and police processing of personal data, and the PNR (Passenger Name Record) that aims at the creation of national records gathering large amounts of data of persons travelling from or to the European Union, including internal flights. These texts feature numerous loopholes that threaten the right to privacy. Given the inability of the institutions to come up with regulations that actually protect Internet users, it is up to each and every one of us to learn how to protect themselves, their personal data and their privacy on the Internet.

    • Coast Guard Academy competes against other service academies, NSA in cyber security exercise [Ed: New NSA puff piece wrapped up in prose]
    • Facebook Hired a Former DARPA Head To Lead An Ambitious New Research Lab [Ed: imperialism and mass surveillance symbiotic]

      She was a key Google executive, too

      If you need another sign that Facebook’s world-dominating ambitions are just getting started, here’s one: the Menlo Park, Calif. company has hired a former DARPA chief to lead its new research lab.

    • Mobile By Reach: Digging Deeper into Pew Numbers from February, with Projections to 2016 [Ed: so who needs RFID? People let themselves be tracked at all time]

      With Pew’s survey we found using my company analysis that the world has 5.0 Billion unique mobile phone owners (owning one or more mobile phones, which can be smart or dumb phones). Out of the 5.0B, the number of unique smartphone owners was 2.3 Billion last year (46%) and as we’ve measured out of the sales numbers the total installed base of all smartphones at 2.5 Billion so 200 million of the total smartphones in use worldwide are by those of us who have 2 phones in their pockets (or 9% of all smartphone unique owners have 2 smartphones). I published this breakdown of the world mobile phone unique ownership and smartphone vs dumbphone vs no-phone owners in February, based on Pew numbers:

    • US court agrees with feds: Warrants aren’t needed for cell-site location data

      Another federal appeals court is siding with the Obama administration’s position that court warrants are not required to track a suspect’s cell-site location. The Wednesday decision (PDF) by the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals adds to the growing number of federal appeals court rulings siding with the government, likely meaning the US Supreme Court won’t weigh into the legal thicket any time soon. Only one federal circuit has sided against the government, but that ruling was set aside, (PDF) and a new decision is pending after the court accepted the government’s petition to rehear the dispute.

    • Subway photographer connects random photos to people’s social media profiles

      Егор Цветков (Egor Tsvetkov), a photographer in Russia, has taken photos of random people on the subway and connected them to social media portraits and complete profiles using face matching technology. This is a game changer.

      It used to be that technology was good enough to say whether two photos appeared to be of the same person. We’ve now reached an inflection point where one input photo can (mostly) be used to find the matching person among tens of millions of people, and where the processing power used is low enough for that service to be free. This is a complete game changer.

      The gravity of this doesn’t really hit you until you see the examples, where the photos are taken under radically different lighting and angles than the portrait photos, and sometimes with different facial hair, too. What’s more, this photographer used a freely available photo matching service – FindFace.ru – which has already imported a vast amount of (all?) photos on vKontakte, which is Russia’s equivalent of Facebook, and let a neural network study all of those photos.

    • Harry Potter Publisher Goes on a Bizarre Anti-Piracy Rampage

      The publishing platform responsible for marketing J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has gone on a bizarre anti-piracy rampage. Pottermore and its anti-piracy partners told Google that J.K. Rowling’s Wikipedia page was infringing, but sadly that’s just the tip of a ridiculous DMCA notice iceberg.

    • So GCHQ is already spying on behalf of the copyright industry. Why isn’t there an outcry over this change of mission?

      It was a little-noticed story in the Entertainment and Oddities section: The GCHQ is using its spying network to help the copyright industry prevent “unauthorized distribution of creative works” – meaning ordinary people sharing interesting things with each other. Yes, that spying network which was supposed to prevent horrible terror attacks, and only to prevent horrible terror attacks, to safeguard our very lives as a last line of defense, is now in the service of the copyright industry.

    • Burr-Feinstein encryption bill is officially here in all its scary glory

      Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein released the official version of their anti-encryption bill today after a draft appeared online last week. The bill, titled the Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016, would require tech firms to decrypt customers’ data at a court’s request.

      The Burr-Feinstein proposal has already faced heavy criticism from the tech and legislative communities and is not expected to get anywhere in the Senate. President Obama has also indicated that he will not support the bill, Reuters reports.

    • Impeachment or NSA-Led Coup? Alarming Efforts to Oust Brazil’s Rousseff

      Over 60% of Brazilians do not believe that President Dilma Rousseff should be subject to impeachment proceedings, but a cadre of corrupt far right politicians armed with NSA surveillance documents continue to push for her ouster.

      On Monday, a 65-member congressional committee in Brazil voted to advance impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff, in relation to the “carwash” corruption investigation. Although President Rousseff is not herself implicated in illegal or corrupt activity, the impeachment is proceeding on the grounds of “a crime of responsibility,” suggesting that she should have taken action to prevent corruption.

    • NSA, other feds using innovation to improve security [Ed: this site has just reaffirmed status as useless, shallow stenography for Feds and spies]
    • US Attorney Suggests Solution To Open Source Encryption: Ban Importation Of Open Source Encryption

      If you can’t read that, she said: “I think it would be reasonable to ban the import of open-source encryption software.” This is idiotic on any number of levels, and that an actual representative of law enforcement would make such a claim is immensely troubling and raises serious questions about the competency of the US Attorney’s Office in Eastern Michigan.

      First off, the Open Technology Institute released a paper late last year showing that there was a ton of both open source and foreign encryption products that weren’t subject to US regulations. Another paper, released earlier this year by the Berkman Center and written by Bruce Schneier (along with Kathleen Seidel and Saranya Vijayakumar), found that there were 865 encryption products from 55 different countries on the market when they wrote the paper (it could be more by now), with 546 of those from outside the US. In other words, there are a lot of these kinds of products. So, at the very least, they’d be used by people outside of the US.

      But, more to the point, a ban on importing them? We already had that legal fight, though back then it was on the question of exporting encryption. In Bernstein v. the US Department of Justice, the government sought to block Daniel Bernstein from publishing his algorithm for his Snuffle encryption system, saying it violated export laws related to exporting weapons. Eventually, the 9th Circuit ruled that software source code was speech protected by the First Amendment and any regulations preventing publication would be unconstitutional.

    • Apparently Hacking Syed Farook’s iPhone Accomplished Nothing (Other Than Making Everyone Less Safe)

      Remember, this was the same iPhone that the DOJ and the FBI said was critical in their investigation. This is the same iPhone that the San Bernardino District Attorney, Michael Ramos, insisted could be hiding evidence of a “dormant cyber pathogen” destined to destroy San Bernardino County’s computer network.

    • How the NSA’s CryptoKids Stole My FOIA Innocence

      The CryptoKids, if you’re not aware, was a mid-2000s attempt by the NSA to appeal to the youth of today by creating a crazy cartoon cadre of codebreakers that’s one pair of rollerblades away from a cease and desist from Burger King. It was generally considered a terrible idea, and then after news broke about the whole “spying on citizens” thing, an absolutely terrible idea.

    • Brussels Terrorist Laptop Included Details Of Planned Attack In Unencrypted Folder Titled ‘Target’

      As the push to backdoor or ban encryption heats up, kneejerk politicians have rushed to embrace each and every recent attack and to immediately point fingers at encryption. Right after the Paris attacks, politicians started blaming encryption, even though evidence suggested they communicated by unencrypted SMS. Even months later, the press was ridiculously using the total lack of evidence of any encryption… as evidence of encryption. Then with the Brussels attacks from a few weeks ago politicians like Rep. Adam Schiff immediately tried to blame encryption insisting that “we can be sure that terrorists will continue to use what they perceive to be the most secure means to plot their attacks.”

    • The CIA Is Investing in Firms That Mine Your Tweets and Instagram Photos

      SOFT ROBOTS THAT can grasp delicate objects, computer algorithms designed to spot an “insider threat,” and artificial intelligence that will sift through large data sets — these are just a few of the technologies being pursued by companies with investment from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm, according to a document obtained by The Intercept.

      Yet among the 38 previously undisclosed companies receiving In-Q-Tel funding, the research focus that stands out is social media mining and surveillance; the portfolio document lists several tech companies pursuing work in this area, including Dataminr, Geofeedia, PATHAR, and TransVoyant.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Matthew Keys Gets 2 Years In Jail For 40 Minute Web Defacement He Didn’t Even Commit

      The latest in the Matthe Keys case is that Keys has been sentenced to two years in federal prison for his involvement in a minor incomprehensible web defacement of an LA Times story that lasted for all of about 40 minutes. The prosecution was asking for 5 years, while Keys’ lawyers asked for nothing more than probation. As we noted, the whole thing seems fairly crazy. It is entirely possible that Keys acted like an immature jackass regarding his former employer, but the actual case revolved around a single action: the claimed sharing of login credentials for the content management system of the Tribune Company, which another person (who is apparently known to law enforcement, but has never been charged with anything) used to do a minor defacement of a single story to have the headline read: Pressure builds in House to elect CHIPPY 1337.

      This minor defacement was up for about 40 minutes before being taken down. When the government tried to add up the damages, the Tribune Company at first admitted that there were basically none. After being pushed, they “found” more damages and somehow it turned into nearly a million dollars, by making emails that “cost” $225 and talking about something totally unrelated to this hack — some alleged harassment Key did by emailing people in a database from his former employer. If he actually did this (he denies it), it was a really shitty thing to do, but it also was not what he was on trial for.

    • Journalist gets two-year sentence for helping Anonymous hack LA Times

      Matthew Keys was convicted of giving login credentials to the hacking group, in a decision civil liberties group calls ‘prosecutorial discretion run amok’

    • Swedish prosecutors argue for upholding Assange arrest warrant

      Swedish prosecutors still believe an arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be upheld, they said on Thursday in reply to the Stockholm District Court that will decide whether to lift the warrant.

    • Indonesia’s Aceh province canes non-Muslim for selling booze

      An elderly Christian woman has been caned in a conservative Indonesian province for selling alcohol, the first time someone from outside the Islamic faith has been punished there under strict religious laws.

      The 60-year-old was whipped nearly 30 times with a rattan cane before a crowd of hundreds in Aceh province Tuesday (Apr 12), an official said, along with a couple who were subjected to 100 lashes for committing adultery.

      Aceh is the only province in the predominantly Muslim country that applies sharia law, and public canings for breaches of Islamic code happen on a regular basis and often attract huge crowds.

      Those caught engaging in adultery, same-sex relationships, drinking and even associating with unmarried members of the opposite sex can end up facing the cane.

    • The Government’s Unprecedented Position in CIA Torture Lawsuit Is Very Good News

      Those responsible for the CIA torture program have never had to face their victims’ claims in a U.S. court because the government has always shielded the perpetrators. Until now.

    • Two Election Scandals That CNN Won’t Touch

      In 1968, Richard Nixon’s operatives derailed President Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam peace talks which could have brought that bloody conflict to an end that year – rather than four years later and saved millions of lives – but peace might have meant Nixon’s defeat. A sordid tale described in declassified U.S. government records.

      In 1980, it was Ronald Reagan’s operatives who went behind President Jimmy Carter’s back to disrupt his negotiations to free 52 American hostages held by Iranian radicals and thus doom Carter’s reelection chances, a story described by more than two dozen sources from a range of different perspectives.

      But these two well-documented cases apparently touch too raw a nerve, so they are not on CNN’s roster. Still, you can learn about them at Consortiumnews.com by clicking on the “October Surprise Series” tab and reading the stories there.

    • How the Clarence Thomas Confirmation Hearings Changed How America Talks About Sexual Harassment

      On Saturday, HBO will premiere the film “Confirmation” starring Kerry Washington as Anita Hill and Wendell Pierce as then-judge, now–Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The movie recreates the three days of Supreme Court confirmation hearings that riveted the country in October 1991, launching a national conversation about sexual harassment in the workplace and helping to lead to a watershed year for women in elected office. Twenty-five years later, these hearings still resonate as one of the greatest political, sexual, and racial dramas in modern history. Slate senior legal correspondent Dahlia Lithwick recently spoke with Gillian Thomas, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project and author of Because of Sex, about Confirmation. (The two writers were also college roommates, graduating in 1990.)

    • Black Lives Don’t Matter, Black Votes Do: the Racial Hypocrisy of Hillary and Bill Clinton

      The Clintons have always cultivated a warm affection for African-Americans. One iconic image shows Bill riffing on his saxophone for Arsenio Hall. Another pictures Hillary hugging parishioners in black churches. Similar beguiling images appear daily in the media as her presidential campaign progresses.

    • The Single Most Important Thing That Hillary Clinton Did Not Say Last Night

      Hillary Clinton doesn’t want you to know who she would name to the Supreme Court.

    • EU rulings on whistleblowers and right-to-be-forgotten laws puts press freedom at risk

      European journalists were reminded today that their freedom to report is not only determined by national laws, but increasingly by European institutions. Today, after years of political battle, the European Parliament adopted the Passenger Name Record directive, the Data Protection Package, and the Trade Secrets Protection Act. The stakes were immense and the debates long and heated, leading to dissent and divisions within many political groups-and campaigns about the potential impact from journalists.

    • Sit-Ins, Arrests, and Escalation: Student Divestment Movement Springs into Action

      The fossil fuel divestment movement continued its momentum this week as students across the U.S. highlighted the need for their institutions to dump “support of global climate disaster, exploitation, and human suffering.”

      On Tuesday, for example, four members of Divest Harvard were arrested after staging a sit-in at the Federal Reserve Bank building, where the Harvard Management Company, which manages that university’s endowment, is located.

      That company “is the entity that actually does the day-to-day work investing in fossil fuel companies, so we thought it would be appropriate to take our message to this other important actor,” Harvard Law School student and Divest Harvard student Kelsey Skaggs, told the Crimson.

    • Anonymous hacktivist Matt DeHart gets credit from U.S. authorities for time served in Canadian prison

      An Anonymous hacktivist and former U.S. airman, who sought asylum in Canada claiming torture by American officials over his access to secret government documents, has unexpectedly had two years he spent in prison in Canada deducted from his sentence.

      After his deportation from Canada last year when his refugee claim was rejected, Matt DeHart entered a plea bargain with U.S. prosecutors, admitting to possession of sexually explicit photos of two underaged teenagers and avoiding court by fleeing across the border.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Wireless Industry Survey: Everybody Really Loves Zero Rating

      With the FCC glacially pondering whether or not zero rating (exempting some content from usage caps) is a bad idea, the wireless industry has decided to try and settle the argument. According to a new study by the wireless industry, 94% of Millennials are more likely to try a new online service if it’s part of a free data offering, 98% are more likely to stay with a carrier that offers such services, and 94% of Millennials are likely to use more data if it doesn’t count against their data plan. As intended, the survey resulted in a lot of varied news headlines insisting that “consumers actually like ISPs to play favorites on mobile data caps.”

    • White House Threatens To Veto Bill Attempting To Gut Net Neutrality, Defang FCC

      As we just noted, the House has been pushing yet another bill that attempts to punish the FCC for its uncharacteristic new habit of actually standing up to giant ISPs. The “No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act” (pdf) professes to be a bill focused on curtailing government run amok; with a particular eye on preventing the FCC from being able to regulate broadband rates (not-coincidentally just as ISPs begin heavily pursuing usage caps). But the bill uses a unique definition of “rate regulation” to, in reality, ban the FCC from doing, well, pretty much anything.

    • The Untold Story of the Teen Hackers Who Transformed the Early Internet

      On October 12th, 1983, Bill Landreth called his friend Chris in Detroit to chat. Chris frantically explained that the FBI had raided his house. “Don’t call me anymore,” Chris said in what would be a very short conversation. Bill didn’t know exactly what was happening, but he did know this: If the FBI had come for Chris, then he might be next.

      The next day, around a dozen FBI agents stormed Bill’s parent’s house just outside of San Diego, amassing piles of evidence including a computer that Bill, then 18, had hidden under his sister’s bed. Bill and Chris, who was 14 at the time, were the leaders of a coalition of teen hackers known as The Inner Circle. In a single day, the FBI conducted coordinated raids of group members across nine states, taking computers, modems, and copious handwritten notes detailing ways to access various networks on what was then a rudimentary version of the internet.

    • House Passes Bill to Sabotage Net Neutrality

      In a disappointing turn of events, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 241 to 173 to pass H.R. 2666, the No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act, a bill that would undermine the FCC’s ability to enforce key net neutrality protections.

      As we’ve mentioned previously, the bill’s ostensible purpose is to bar the FCC from regulating the rates of broadband Internet providers, thus locking into law a promise that the agency made when it introduced its new net neutrality rules last year. On its face, that’s not necessarily a bad idea.

      The problem is that the bill is worded in such a way that it could be used to keep the FCC from enforcing many important protections of users’ rights. At best, H.R. 2666 is a poorly written bill that brings a host of unintended consequences. At worst, it’s a calculated attempt to undermine the net neutrality principles we’ve all been fighting for.

      As the bill moves to the Senate this session, it’s crucial that senators reject it. Fortunately, President Obama has said that he will veto the bill if it reaches his desk.

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Analysis: WTO Amendment On Access To Medicines Faces EU Conundrum

      After waiting for over a decade, the World Trade Organization is finally close to achieving the first ever amendment to its rule-book, with only a handful of members still needing to formally accept new intellectual property provisions dealing with one aspect of access to medicines.

    • WIPO Members Flirt With Agreement On WIPO Technical Assistance

      South Africa commended WIPO on the interventions provided on successful technology licensing, intellectual property marketing, and IP valuation, in the document. South Africa suggested, as the way forward after the project, that WIPO set up a programme with the objective of advancing the skill set of individuals within offices of technology transfer in institutions, small and medium sized enterprises, and innovators.

    • Trademarks

      • Bernie Sanders’ Campaign Joins Too Many Other Presidential Campaigns In Abusing Trademark Law

        I shouldn’t have to start this post this way, but after someone flipped out in my last post about the treatment of Hillary Clinton and her emails, accusing me of being nothing more than a “BernieBro,” I’ll just make this explicit: I don’t currently support any of the current Presidential candidates, and am pretty sure I’ve mocked all of them for ignorance around issues that concern those of us at Techdirt. Either way, I wonder how the guy insisting I was just a secret Bernie supporter will respond to this article…

        Yes, because now Bernie Sanders’ campaign is the latest in a long list of presidential candidates to abuse trademark law to try to stifle criticism. His campaign joins those of Hillary Clinton, Ben Carson, Ron Paul and more as presidential candidates, past and present, abusing trademark law.

      • Delhi High Court steps into India trade mark row

        The Delhi High Court has come to the rescue of trade mark applicants, who are aggrieved that the Indian Trade Marks Registry has abandoned nearly 200,000 pending applications

      • Own name defence narrowed in Europe

        The recently introduced EU trade mark reforms limit the scope of the own name defence. James Whymark and Rachel Boakes explain why the change was introduced, and ask if it is really necessary

      • UK Trademark Battle Over The Number 3

        Anyone reading this site will know by now that the alcohol business has a trademark problem. As a quick refresher, what used to be an industry largely dominated by massive macro-companies has since evolved into one of small players, with craft breweries and distilleries exploding in popularity. With the increased amount of brands and inventory on the market, so too has the practice of creatively named brands come into vogue. And with that has come the trademark squabbles. Examples of the trademark disputes centered around these creative names for brands will include a beer called ‘Strikes Bock’, a brew entitled ‘Mus Knuckle’, and a brewery called ‘Innovation Brewing’.

      • Interview: Om Prakash Gupta on India’s trade mark troubles

        The Controller General of India’s Patent and Trade Mark Registry responded to Managing IP’s questions by email regarding the concerns over nearly 200,000 abandoned trade mark applications

    • Copyrights

      • You Wouldn’t Steal a Carouselambra (other Led Zeppelin songs are available)

        The essence of the recent ruling was not an investigation of stealing, but a finding that there is sufficiently substantial similarity between the pieces of music for a further trial. So why do so many news sources that should know better continue to frame the issues into a theft narrative?

      • MPAA Wants ISPs to Disconnect Persistent Pirates

        The MPAA wants Internet providers and services to take stronger actions against persistent copyright infringers. Ideally, the most egregious pirates should lose their accounts permanently, the group says. To accomplish this ISPs should be required to track the number of notices they receive for each account.

      • Can Lawyers ‘Overcome’ The Bogus Copyright On ‘We Shall Overcome’ And Free It To The Public Domain?

        Earlier this year, after a bit of a roller coaster ride of a legal fight over the copyright status of the song “Happy Birthday,” the two key parties finally reached a settlement that declared the song in the public domain. While many news reports had earlier claimed that the judge in the case had done the same, that wasn’t really true. The judge simply declared that Warner Chappell did not hold the copyright, leaving it an open question as to whether or not anyone else did — and some quickly raised their hands to claim the copyright.

        Either way, the legal team that helped achieve this eventual victory has apparently decided to go for it again. Representing a group calling itself the We Shall Overcome Foundation (WSOF), they are claiming that The Richmond Organization (TRO Inc.) and Ludlow Music are falsely claiming copyright over the famous civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome,” because that song is in the public domain. The case has tremendous similarities to the Happy Birthday case. As in that case, the plaintiffs say they’re making a documentary about the song. In this case, they sought a license for the song and were denied without explanation. TRO-Ludlow had first told WSOF that the song was “very difficult” to clear and they had to approve any use. WSOF recorded someone singing just one short verse, and then TRO-Ludlow flat out refused, but would not give any further explanation.

      • Judge Tosses Rick Ross’ Copyright Suit Over LMFAO’s Use Of Derivative Three-Word Phrase

        It’s been less than a year since we discussed LMFAO, the band, and its attempt to bully a brewery into renaming its beer called LMFAO with intellectual property threats. Well, the bro-rock duo is back in the IP spotlight again, but this time with a win. Rick Ross had long ago sued LMFAO over its hit song Party Rock Anthem for including a line, “Everyday I’m shufflin’.” Ross had his own hit song called Hustlin, which famously contained the line “Everyday I’m hustlin’,” and Ross argued for copyright infringement, claiming LMFAO’s lyric was an unauthorized derivative work.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/04/16/kde-neon-upgrade/feed/ 0 Links 20/3/2016: Clair 1.0, UbuntuBSD http://techrights.org/2016/03/20/ubuntubsd/ http://techrights.org/2016/03/20/ubuntubsd/#comments Sun, 20 Mar 2016 10:07:32 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=90742

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Developers, Open Source Software Changing the Face of Networking

    It’s been five years since Marc Andreessen wrote an essay published in the Wall Street Journal that proclaimed “software is eating the world.” By now, we can consider networking just about chewed and swallowed.

    We are beginning to realize how much software-defined networking is changing everything. As ON.Lab Executive Director Guru Parulkar puts it, the “softwarization” of networking is not only changing how users manage networks, but everything the network touches.

  • Digital Video and Dwango “Create” OpenToonz
  • The animation software behind Futurama and Studio Ghibli’s films is going open source
  • Animation Production Software “OpenToonz” To Be Released on March 26
  • Toonz Software Used by Studio Ghibli and ‘Futurama’ Being Made Free and Open Source

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Memory Usage of Firefox with e10s Enabled
      • A WebAssembly Milestone: Experimental Support in Multiple Browsers

        WebAssembly is an emerging standard whose goal is to define a safe, portable, size- and load-time efficient binary compiler target which offers near-native performance—a virtual CPU for the Web. WebAssembly is being developed in a W3C Community Group (CG) whose members include Mozilla, Microsoft, Google and Apple.

      • Advantages of WebExtensions for Developers

        Presently, Firefox supports two main kinds of add-ons. First were XUL or XPCOM add-ons, which interface directly with the browser’s internals. They are fabulously powerful, as powerful as the browser itself. However, with that power comes security risk and the likelihood that extensions will break as the browser changes.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • OpenStack Mitaka RC 1 Milestones Debut

      The first out of the gate is the Glance image project, which released its Mitaka RC1 milestone on March 16. Glance was quickly followed the same day by Heat, Neutron and Nova.

  • Databases

    • Oracle’s letter to Russian IT companies

      It says that Oracle Corp. sent a special Postgres-related letter to at least several big Russian IT companies. In the letter Oracle is suggesting the ways to protect Oracle DBMS from migration to Postgres in government organizations and big Russian companies where many years Oracle was the default DBMS choice.

    • Firebird project repository was migrated to GitHub

      SVN repository is still accessible, but new contributions are expected to be provided as pull requests at GitHub.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LTO’ing LibreOffice With GCC 6

      Upstream GCC developer Jan Hubička has written about his experience compiling LibreOffice with GCC6 — while also making use of Link-Time Optimizations (LTO) — and comparing various criteria against that of other GCC and LLVM/Clang compiler versions.

  • BSD

    • Dutch BSD Desktop Dev Beer Day

      There’s a handful of BSD-oriented, desktop-oriented, developers in the Netherlands that I know of. Koos. Raphael. Perhaps some remnants of KDE-NL, or a wandering GNOME developer. Or other desktop systems. Anyway, I’m launching the idea to have some kind of get-together around mid-april (when the weather is nice) somewhere central(-ish) like Zwolle or Amersfoort. The Dutch BSD Desktop Dev Beer Day, or (DBD)2. The plan would be to occupy a cafe somewhere and talk about BSD on the desktop, and in particular porting and keeping the desktop stack up-to-date on all fronts.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • [GRUB] F2FS support
    • GNU Hurd/ news/ 2016-03-18-gsoc

      The Google Summer of Code 2016 is on! If you’re a student, consider applying for a GNU Hurd project — details to be found on our GSoC and project ideas pages.

    • What you need to know for LibrePlanet 2016, wherever you are

      This year’s program is bursting with something for everyone in the free software movement, from inquisitive newcomers to hardcore developers.

      Keynotes talks will include NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in conversation with the ACLU’s Daniel Kahn Gillmor; Open Source Initiative board president Allison Randal; Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman; and Software Freedom Conservancy executive director Karen Sandler.

    • Guix at LibrePlanet 2016

      GNU hackers Christopher Allan Webber (whom you may know from the GNU MediaGoblin project) and David Thompson will be co-presenting “Solving the Deployment Crisis with Guix” at LibrePlanet 2016 this Saturday, March 19th. Chris and David will be focusing on the hardships and obstacles that users face when trying to exercise their software freedom by self-hosting web applications, offering Guix as a solution. The presentation will be held from 10:55 AM to 11:40 AM in room 32-141 of the MIT Stata Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    • 10 Years of Conservancy!

      This April marks the 10 year anniversary of Software Freedom Conservancy’s formation. Formed in New York in 2006, Conservancy’s initial Member Projects included BusyBox, SurveyOS, uClibc and Wine. To celebrate this milestone and thank our Supporters, we will be hosting an exclusive cocktail hour in Cambridge, MA during LibrePlanet on Saturday March 19, 2016. Supporters must rsvp to rsvp-10-years@sfconservancy.org.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Europe is going to kill free software! Have you contacted your state’s rep?

      These rules are bad and already hindering user freedom. The FCC has pulled a fast one and we need to fight back. This is a major security and privacy threat which will lead to even buggier and more insecure wireless hardware. A legal campaign to end this nonsense will require significantly more funding and criticism. Unfortunately the major players on fighting this are burning out. Christopher Waid, of ThinkPenguin, Dave Taht, of BufferBloat, Eric Schultz, Josh Gay of the FSF, and others just don’t have the time or resources to keep fighting this. Don’t let this be the end.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • New open source load balancer, US source code policy draft published, and more news

    • Open Access/Content

      • The Sci-Hubbub

        Sci-Hub is a free, online repository of 48 million academic papers. It was launched by Kazakhstani graduate student Alexandra Elbakyan. Unlike most graduate students, Elbakyan is not pondering Foucauldian discourse and beer prices, but hiding out in Russia. According to a recent New York Times article, Elbakyan’s struggles to access research papers inspired her to set up the site so that other students and researchers would have the same access to knowledge as researchers at well-funded universities. The repository is generated by downloading papers from publisher’s paywalled websites using anonymous ‘donated’ subscription credentials.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Ideas For Change To Global Health And IP System Proliferate

      Public health advocates, academics, patients, governments and others this week presented further ideas to the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines on ways to break the longstanding pattern of expensive medical products around the world as a way to pay for research and development.

      The second public dialogue of the High-Level Panel took place in Johannesburg, South Africa on 17 March, a day after closed-door meetings with a range of experts who submitted written comments to the panel. A first public dialogue was held in London last week (IPW, Public Health, 11 March 2016).

    • This is what the public thinks about genome editing

      At a time when genome-editing technology is still in its infancy, and its uses are yet to be determined, the voices of patients and patients’ carers, and those with disabilities, need to be heard.

    • We Are All Flint

      How America’s moms are leading the battle for clean drinking water

    • Rick Snyder Testified Before Congress On The Flint Crisis. It Didn’t Go So Well.

      Keri Webber got on a plane to fly from her home city of Flint, Michigan to Washington, DC this week in the hopes of finally being able to meet with her governor. “We’ve tried to meet with him in Lansing, we tried to meet with him in Flint,” she said of Rick Snyder. “We came to DC [to] meet on neutral ground. We never got a response.”

      Webber’s family has been through a lot over the last year and a half. One daughter showed lead lines in her bones last July, a sign of lead poisoning, while the other has Legionnaires disease. Her husband has lost half the vision in one eye after an artery exploded, causing permanent damage, and he also has extremely high blood pressure, both of which Webber attributes to the water contamination. He’s had to have a battery of tests and is now taking eight pills a day; his medical costs alone come to $8,000, yet the both of them rely on meager Social Security disability checks to get by. “We are going bankrupt over his medical bills, period,” she said.

  • Security

    • Leopard Flower firewall – Protect your bytes

      Several months ago, I decided to explore a somewhat obscure topic of outbound per-application firewall control in Linux. A concept that Windows users are well familiar with, it’s been around for ages, providing Windows folks with a heightened sense of – if not practical factual – protection against rogues residing in their system and trying to phone home.

      In Linux, things are a little different, but with the growing flux of Windows converts arriving at the sandy shores of open-source, the notion of need for outbound control of applications has also risen, giving birth to software designed to allay fears if not resolve problems. My first attempt to play with Leopard Flower and Douane was somewhat frustrating. Now, I’m going to revisit the test, focusing only on the former.

      [...]

      Leopard Flower firewall is an interesting concept. Misplaced, though, for most parts. It caters to a Windows need that does not exist on Linux, and to be frank, has no place in the Microsoft world either. Then, it also tries to resolve a problem of control and knowledge by requiring the user to exercise the necessary control and knowledge. But if they had those to begin with, they wouldn’t need to dabble in per-application firewalls. Furthermore, the software is still fairly immature. There are at least half a dozen little things and changes that can be implemented to make lpfw more elegant, starting with installation and followed by service and GUI model, prompts, robustness, and a few others.

    • Critical bug in libotr could open users of ChatSecure, Adium, Pidgin to compromise

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Sheldon Adelson’s Israeli Newspaper Has a Crush on Donald Trump

      While Sheldon Adelson has yet to endorse a candidate for president, and refused to let reporters peek at his ballot at last month’s caucus in Nevada, it’s starting to look like the conservative rebellion against Donald Trump will not be bankrolled by the casino operator and Republican donor known for his far-right views.

    • Scott Shane on “Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone”

      In this web exclusive interview, New York Times reporter Scott Shane discusses his new book, “Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone.” It just won the 2016 Lionel Gelber Prize. The book tells the story of the first American deliberately killed in a drone strike, Anwar al-Awlaki, and examines why U.S. counterterrorism efforts since 9/11 seem to have backfired.

    • Drone Warfare’s Ethical Dilemmas Are Focus of Film “Eye in the Sky”

      EYE IN THE SKY is a drone war primer in the form of a thriller. I’m not spoiling anything by laying out the premise, which is quickly established at the start of the film: The British have identified known members of al Shabaab, among them British and American citizens, in the act of preparing a suicide attack from a house in a mostly Somali neighborhood in Nairobi. Taking out the house with a Hellfire missile should be simple enough, but it risks the lives of civilians, including a young girl in the house next door. Then there are the political ramifications: In a war room back in London, an official asks, “Has there ever been a British-led drone attack in a city in a friendly country that is not at war?”

      What follows are two hours of legal, tactical, and political wrangling around the decision to pull the trigger. The film, which is currently in theaters, shifts rapidly between the Nairobi streets; a bunker commanded by a hawkish British colonel (Helen Mirren); a London situation room where politicians, military officers (among them the late Alan Rickman), and lawyers ask ever-higher authorities to approve the strike; and a U.S. drone base in Nevada, where a young pilot and sensor operator gear up for their first kill operation.

    • To Cuba with Hate

      The CIA’s motto might well be: “Proudly overthrowing the Cuban government since 1959.” Now what? Did you think that the United States had finally grown up and come to the realization that they could in fact share the same hemisphere as the people of Cuba, accepting Cuban society as unquestioningly as they do that of Canada?

    • The Murder That Exposed Hillary Clinton’s Grim Legacy in Honduras

      Who murdered Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres?

      While the identities of the killers remain unknown, activists, media observers, and members of the Cáceres family are blaming the increasingly reactionary and violent Honduran government.

      The authorities had frequently clashed with Cáceres over her high-profile campaign to stop land grabbing and mining while defending the rights of indigenous peoples.

    • Hillary’s Link to Honduran Violence

      Little mentioned in the Democratic campaign is Hillary Clinton’s role in supporting a 2009 coup in Honduras that contributed to a human rights crisis, including the recent murder of a renowned environmental activist, writes Marjorie Cohn.

    • My Terrorist, Your Terrorist

      So is Hezbollah a terrorist organization?

      Of course not.

      So why has the Arab League decided that they are?

      Because most of the league’s member states are Sunni Muslims, while Hezbollah is a Shiite organization supporting Shiite Iran and Alawite (quasi-Shiite) Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

      So were Israel’s Arab parties right when they condemned the league’s resolution?

      Right, yes. Wise, no.

      Let’s start with Hezbollah. Surprisingly enough, it is in a way an Israeli creation.

      [...]

      Originally, terrorism just meant a strategy of striking fear to achieve a political end. In this sense, every war is terrorism. But the term is more precisely applied to individual acts of violence, the aim of which is to strike terror into the hearts of the enemy population.

    • One Year On, No Justice for Italian Hostage Killed in U.S. Drone Strike

      This week, the Lo Porto family’s lawyers filed briefs with the Italian state prosecutor investigating Giovanni’s kidnapping and death, arguing that strikes like the one that killed him are illegal under international law, and requesting that the prosecutor ask the U.S. government to hand over information about the operation.

    • The Crazy GOP Establishment

      The Republican establishment likes to pretend that it is the responsible alternative to Donald Trump, but that self-image doesn’t match reality, as Bill Moyers and Michael Winship describe.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Americans’ Concern About Climate Change Is Growing

      If you are concerned about global warming, you are part of a growing majority that hadn’t been this large since 2008, a new Gallup poll has found.

      In fact, 64 percent of adults say they are worried a “great deal” or “fair amount” about global warming, up from 55 percent at this time last year. According to the poll, concerns about global warming have increased among all party groups since 2015, though concerns remain much higher among Democrats than Republicans and Independents.

  • Finance

    • Brazil Is Engulfed by Ruling Class Corruption — and a Dangerous Subversion of Democracy

      THE MULTIPLE, REMARKABLE crises subsuming Brazil are now garnering substantial Western media attention. That’s understandable given that Brazil is the world’s fifth most populous country and eighth-largest economy; its second-largest city, Rio de Janeiro, is the host of this year’s Summer Olympics. But much of this Western media coverage mimics the propaganda coming from Brazil’s homogenized, oligarch-owned, anti-democracy media outlets and, as such, is misleading, inaccurate, and incomplete, particularly when coming from those with little familiarity with the country (there are numerous Brazil-based Western reporters doing outstanding work).

    • Who’s Funding Super PACs This Election Season? Good Question

      Campaign finance reform advocates have rallied against super PACs’ ability to influence elections since their creation in 2010, and new reporting by the Washington Post puts a spotlight on how “ghost corporations” are pumping money into these committees, with their big money contributors hiding behind a veil of secrecy.

      As the Center for Responsive Politics explains: “super PACs may raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations and individuals, then spend unlimited sums to overtly advocate for or against political candidates,” though they “are prohibited from donating money directly to political candidates.” They report their donors to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) monthly during an election year.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Sanders Must Build a Progressive Movement All the Way to the Convention and Beyond

      According to mainstream Democrats and pundits, Sanders’ demise is imminent. His downfall and Clinton’s triumph is now an inevitability. It is a matter of if not when. Sanders has called these political obituaries “absurd” and has vowed to keep fighting all the way to the convention.

    • Bernie Sanders’ Wife Wants to Help Native American Voices Be Heard if She’s First Lady (Video)

      Jane Sanders is the wife of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, and her influence on his campaign is increasing. This week in Arizona, she visited a number of Native American communities, supporting Apache protests against mining interests and engaging with the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Tribe, the Indian Country Today Media Network reports. She also sat down for a discussion with Simon Moya-Smith, a journalist from Indian County Today Media Network.

    • CBS Chief Executive Les Moonves Finds New Way to Cheer for Donald Trump

      CBS chief Les Moonves famously cheered “Go Donald!” during an investor call in December, and in February said Donald Trump’s campaign “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”

      Now he’s found a new way to celebrate the Trump run.

      Countering concerns in the media industry that Trump may not spend as much campaign money on TV commercials as a traditional major-party nominee, Moonves is pointing with delight to all the money down-ballot Republicans will spend to distance themselves from their party’s standard-bearer.

    • Noam Chomsky: What Bernie Sanders Should Do Next (VIDEO)

      Noam Chomsky sees a lot more in the Bernie Sanders campaign than just a presidential run. “Bernie Sanders is doing courageous things and organizing a lot of people,” Chomsky told Abby Martin on Telesur’s “The Empire Files.”

      “That campaign ought to be directed to sustaining a popular movement which will use the election as an incentive,” said Chomsky. “And unfortunately, it’s not. When the election’s over, the movements will die. The only thing that’ll ever bring about meaningful change is ongoing, dedicated popular movements which don’t pay attention to the election cycle. It’s an extravaganza every four years but then we go on.”

    • Sanders Stands Alone as Only Candidate Skipping AIPAC

      Announcement follows campaign that urged Sanders to not attend meeting by group that promotes ‘racist, militaristic, and anti-democratic policies’

    • AIPAC Rejects Sanders Offer to Speak via Video, as Romney and Gingrich Did in 2012

      Bernie Sanders confirmed on Friday that he will not attend the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington next week, and his campaign revealed that the candidate’s offer to address the gathering by video link was turned down by the organizers.

      In a letter to Robert Cohen, the group’s president, released on Friday afternoon, Sanders wrote that while he “would very much have enjoyed speaking at the AIPAC conference,” like all of the remaining presidential candidates, his campaign schedule made it impossible for him to attend in person.

      [...]

      Although Sanders promised to send AIPAC a copy of the speech he would have made, it seems possible the group did not really want to hear from him, given that he promised recently to seek a “level playing field” in his approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict if elected president.

    • Donald Trump Welcomed at #AIPAC2016, but Many Journalists and Activists Denied Access

      Donald Trump will be giving an address at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference in the nation’s capital on Monday, a move that has set off promises of protests and boycotts targeting the real estate mogul. But while AIPAC has rolled out the red carpet for the GOP frontrunner, it has moved to block activists from attending the conference and shut down planned protests.

      Immediately following the decision to host Trump, a group of expected AIPAC attendees started a Facebook group called “Come Together Against Hate” to plan protests against his speech. On March 14, a number of the planned attendees involved in organizing the protests received an email from an AIPAC staffer warning them about the ramifications of engaging in a protest against Trump. Among other consequences, the staffer said they’d be barred from the organization’s future events.

    • Will We Miss President Obama?

      President Obama doesn’t take on Official Washington’s powerful neocons head-on, but he does drag his heels on some of their crazy schemes, which is better than America can expect from Hillary Clinton, writes Robert Parry.

    • Could Hillary Clinton be Worse Than Trump?

      Or maybe the explanation is just that corporate media’s malign neglect of the Bernie Sanders campaign is paying off for Hillary. FAIR and other organizations that monitor the press have established beyond a reasonable doubt that The Washington Post and The New York Times might as well be Team Hillary’s Ministry of Propaganda. And, as anyone who can bear to watch MSNBC and CNN can attest, “liberal” cable news outlets are no better. National Public Radio may be the worst of all. Remember that at pledge time!

    • Critics of Israel Boycott Warn of Harm to U.S. Corporate Interests

      Lawmakers this week hosted business groups in a briefing that sought to reframe the movement to boycott Israeli-owned companies as a threat to the American economy.

      At Tuesday’s briefing, organized by the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus, Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado opened the event by saying that since the U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement was signed in 1985 trade between the countries has “multiplied tenfold to over $40 billion annually.”

      The boycott movement would not only impact the Israeli economy, but also the U.S. economy and “should be confronted by all means,” he said.

      The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is a global campaign calling on Israel to end its occupation of internationally recognized Palestinian territory and restore full equality to its Arab and Palestinian citizens.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Internet privacy rules: What you need to know

      The Federal Communications Commission will vote in less than two weeks on whether to consider proposed new privacy rules for broadband providers like Comcast or Time Warner Cable.

      The unveiling of the proposal earlier this month marked the start of an unofficial media tour by Chairman Tom Wheeler to sell the draft rules to the public. Meanwhile, industry groups are doing everything they can to keep harsh regulations at bay.

      If the rules come to fruition, they would create a massive change in the way privacy is policed at broadband providers.

      Here’s what you need to know about the proposal that could, within a year, be coming to an Internet service provider near you.

    • Redaction error reveals FBI did target Lavabit to spy on Edward Snowden

      A redaction oversight by the US government has finally confirmed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s targeting of secure email service Lavabit was used specifically to spy on Edward Snowden.

      Ladar Levison, creator of the email service, which was founded on a basis of private communications secured by encryption and had 410,000 users, was served a sealed order in 2013 forcing him to aid the FBI in its surveillance of Snowden.

      Levison was ordered to install a surveillance package on his company’s servers and later to turn over Lavabit’s encryption keys so that it would give the FBI the ability to read the most secure messages that the company offered. He was also ordered not to disclose the fact to third-parties.

      After 38 days of legal fighting, a court appearance, subpoena, appeals and being found in contempt of court, Levison abruptly shuttered Lavabit citing government interference and stating that he would not become “complicit in crimes against the American people”.

    • It’s official: Lavabit fell on its sword protecting Edward Snowden

      IT’S BEEN a mystery akin to the plot of The Prisoner. Who was it that the feds were after when they served Lavabit with notice that it wanted access to its servers? Information. We want information.

      We know that whoever it was, Lavabit decided it would sooner fall on its own sword than give up the encryption key, very similarly to Apple’s stance on the matter, and folded.

      We all knew it was Edward Snowden. It was fairly obviously Edward Snowden, and now, tickle our snickers, it turns out it was Edward Snowden.

      Even though a gagging order has prevented Ladar Levison who owned Lavabit, or any of his team from spilling, it now appears that the Feds have done it themselves.

      Some recently released federal papers which had been redacted showed that the marker pen had failed to redact a single email address.

    • The FBI Wants Teachers To Go Stasi On American Kids

      While Apple and the federal government duke it out over the encrypted phone of a dead terrorist, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is keeping things old school by advocating that educators start paying close attention to any radical leanings among their students.

      In January, the FBI’s Office of Partner Engagement – a liaison between the FBI, other feds, and local and school law enforcement – released an unclassified paper detailing a plan to keep an eye on any latent anti-American activity in high school youths.

    • SilverPush ‘Redefining TV advertising’ is simply spying on users – FTC.

      SilverPush is called a ‘cross-mapping’ platform that unifies data points from the billions of digital devices around the globe. In the company’s words, “Redefining TV Advertising.”

      Why is the US Federal Trade Commission so worried that is it sending letters to some Android developers?

    • Edward Snowden: Privacy can’t depend on corporations standing up to the government

      NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden opened the Free Software Foundation’s LibrePlanet 2016 conference on Saturday with a discussion of free software, privacy and security, speaking via video conference from Russia.

      Snowden credited free software for his ability to help disclose the U.S. government’s far-reaching surveillance projects – drawing one of several enthusiastic rounds of applause from the crowd in an MIT lecture hall.

    • The Man J. Edgar Hoover Blamed for Pearl Harbor

      Even after National Security Agency (NSA) warrantless spying was revealed publicly in 2005, and even after Edward Snowden exposed massive governmental surveillance programs in 2013, the instructive example of Fly’s battles with Hoover never registered in public debate. The consensus history skips almost directly from the Supreme Court’s 1928 Olmstead decision legalizing warrantless wiretapping to the FBI’s abuses in the 1960s and the Supreme Court’s 1967 Katz decision, which reversed Olmstead by establishing that wiretapping violated a “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard. Paul Starr’s widely lauded 2004 book The Creation of the Media: The Political Origins of Modern Communications, published shortly before the NSA wiretapping story broke, reads back American legal guarantees of private communication to the Post Office Act of 1792. “Lack of popular trust in the privacy of communications,” Starr argues, is a hallmark of “closed or restricted regimes” that should be contrasted with America’s more restrained and successful libertarian model.

    • No, you backoff on backdoors or else

      No, Mr. President, it works the other way around. You’d better backoff on your encryption demands, or else the tech community will revolt, That’s what’s already happen with Apple’s encryption efforts, as well as app developers like Signal and Wickr. Every time you turn the screws, we techies increase the encryption.

      It’s not a battle you can win without going full police-state. Sure, you can force Apple to backdoor its stuff, but then what about the encrypted apps? You’d have to lock them down as well. But what about encrypted apps developed in foreign countries? What about software I write myself? You aren’t going to solve the “going dark” problem until you control all crypto.

      If you succeed in achieving your nightmare Orwellian scenario, I promise you this: I’ll emigrate to an extradition-free country, to continue the fight against the American government.

    • That One Privacy VPN Comparison Chart

      VPN comparison tables can be a great way to find out information about VPNs in a more efficient manner. We’ve created this to be “that one privacy VPN comparison chart” you rely on–a HUGE list of the most important information that you will need.

    • This Massive VPN Comparison Spreadsheet Helps You Choose the Best for You
    • NSA chief: Foreign governments use criminals to hack U.S. systems [Ed: NSA shows its sheer hypocrisy as it does the same thing]
    • Foreign governments use criminals to hack U.S. systems
    • China’s Xi breaks word, continues cyber attacks against U.S. networks
    • CYBERCOM Head: Working More With Private Sector Goal for Command [Ed: destroying trust in US technology firm by saying they should serve the military]
    • Getting Cybercom ready
    • Cybercom Commander: Other Nations’ Cyberspace Ops Intensified
    • Rogers: CYBERCOM staffing more than 90% on track
    • Investments in Cyber Command reflect evolving nature of threats
    • DOD seeks to strengthen cybersecurity
    • Growth in cyber threats reflected in budget
    • YouTube shows Adblock Plus users an error message instead of ads
    • Once Again, Arguments Supporting Warrantless Surveillance Wither When Exposed to Sunlight

  • Civil Rights

    • Student Busted for Saying ‘ISIS’ During Pledge of Allegiance

      Ho, ho, another brainiac goes down as stupidity is mistaken for a real threat, apparently our national pastime.

    • City Employee Fired After Posting ‘Tamir Rice Should Have Been Shot’ On Facebook

      A Cleveland city employee has been fired after posting inflammatory comments about the death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice on his Facebook page, lamenting that he didn’t kill the “little criminal” himself.

      “Tamir Rice should have been shot and I am glad he is dead,” wrote Jamie Marquardt, a supervisor for Cleveland’s Emergency Medical Service, according to Cleveland’s Fox 8 TV station. “I am upset I did not get the chance to kill the little criminal.”

      A spokesperson for the city denounced the post and called Marquadt’s comments “egregious.”

    • US Secretly Acting Like China Does in Public

      Contrary to popular belief, the FISA Court does not operate in complete isolation from traditional courts. On several known issues — notably, the access to location data and the collection of Post Cut Through Direct Dial numbers — FISC has taken notice of public magistrate’s opinions and used that to inform, though not necessary dictate, FISC practice. As I have noted, at least until 2014, the FISC used the highest common denominator from criminal case law with respect to location data, meaning it requires the equivalent of a probable cause warrant for prospective (though not historic) data. And FISC first seemed to start tracking such orders during the magistrate’s revolt of 2005-6. That’s an area where FISC seems to have followed criminal case law. By contrast, FISC permits the government to collect, then minimize, PCTDD, though it appears to have revisited whether the government’s current minimization procedures meet the law, the most recent known moment of which was 2009.

    • Hillary’s Double-Standard on Protests

      The protester, Ray McGovern, a retired Army officer and CIA analyst, was wearing a black “Veterans for Peace” T-shirt, when he was set upon within sight of Secretary of State Clinton, who ironically was delivering a speech about the importance of foreign leaders respecting dissent. The assault on McGovern left him bruised and bloodied but it didn’t cause Clinton to pause as she coolly continued on, not missing a beat.

    • Where Is Bassel? Four Years On, We Still Need to Know.

      Bassel Khartabil, open source developer, Wikipedian, and free culture advocate, was taken from his friends and family he loves four years ago this week. On March 15, 2012, Bassel was kidnapped from the streets of Damascus by Syrian military intelligence. Since then, we know that he has suffered torture, solitary confinement, arbitrary detention, dangerously overcrowded prison conditions, and even the bombing of his prison’s neighbourhood by Syrian opposition forces.

      What we don’t know right now is his current location, the state of his health, or even whether he is still alive. Bassel was taken from his civilian prison cell in Adra jail four months ago and was swallowed up by the country’s military field courts. No news of him has emerged since then, though rumors of a death sentence have caused anguish for his many supporters.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Ban Rate Regulation or Attack On Net Neutrality Protections? Congress Seems Confused

      The House Energy and Commerce Committee recently approved H.R. 2666, the No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act. The legislation attempts to codify Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Wheeler’s pledge not to use the Open Internet Order to regulate broadband rates. This seems like a straightforward task and technically it is a straightforward task. However, some members of Congress want to use this bill to fundamentally undermine the central purpose of the Order itself.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/03/20/ubuntubsd/feed/ 0 Links 7/3/2016: New Linux RC, Firefox in Devices http://techrights.org/2016/03/07/firefox-in-devices/ http://techrights.org/2016/03/07/firefox-in-devices/#comments Tue, 08 Mar 2016 01:22:30 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=90182

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Maybe we could tone down the JavaScript

    I’m having a really weird browser issue, where scripts on some pages just won’t run until about 20 seconds have passed.

    Whatever you’re about to suggest, yes, I’ve thought of it, and no, it’s not the problem. I mention this not in the hope that someone will help me debug it, but because it’s made me acutely aware of a few… quirks… of frontend Web development.

    (No, really, do not try to diagnose this problem from one sentence, I have heard and tried almost everything you could imagine.)

  • Science

    • Remains of Anglo-Saxon island discovered in Lincolnshire village

      The remains of an Anglo-Saxon island have been uncovered in Lincolnshire in a significant find that has yielded an unusually wide array of artefacts.

      The island, once home to a Middle Saxon settlement, was found at Little Carlton near Louth, Lincolnshire, by archaeologists from the University of Sheffield after a discovery by a metal detectorist.

    • E-mail inventor Ray Tomlinson, who popularized @ symbol, dies at 74

      If you’ve ever sent an e-mail, you can thank Raymond Samuel Tomlinson for putting the @ symbol there.

      On Friday, Tomlinson died of suspected heart failure. He was 74.

      Tomlinson was born in Amsterdam, New York in 1941, and he earned a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1967, he joined Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), a company that played a key role in the development of the ARPANET, a precursor to the modern Internet.

      In 1971, according to the Internet Hall of Fame, he wrote the first ARPANET mail client, combining the existing SNDMSG and CPYNET programs. Tomlinson himself came up with the idea of using the @ symbol as a way to separate local e-mails from those that could be sent to external networks through the user@host syntax.

    • The Founder of Email, Ray Tomlinson, Dies

      Ray Tomlinson, the man credited with founding email, has passed away at the age of 74, according to a report from the Sydney Morning Herald. According to the report, Tomlinson died of a heart attack.

    • Email inventor Ray Tomlinson dies at 74

      Internet pioneer Ray Tomlinson, who is credited with the invention of email, has died at the age of 74.

      The US computer programmer came up with the idea of electronic messages that could be sent from one network to another in 1971.

      His invention included the ground-breaking use of the @ symbol in email addresses, which is now standard.

  • Hardware

    • An AMD ARM 64-bit Dev Board Is Launching For $299 USD

      Since last year we have been waiting for AMD to launch their “HuskyBoard” ARM development board built around their Opteron A1100 ARM 64-bit SoC. That board was originally supposed to ship in Q4’15 while now available for pre-order is a new A1100 development board that looks like it may be taking its place.

      AMD had been teasing their ARM development board for nearly one year and talked of it being a low-cost ARM development board that would be in compliance with the 96Boards’ Enterprise Edition specification.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Post-Flint, Half Of Americans Are Worried About Their Tap Water Too

      Ahead of the Democratic debate in lead-poisoned Flint, Michigan on Sunday, a new poll shows that many Americans don’t trust the public water system.

      Only half the country is “very confident” that tap water is safe to drink. A third of respondents said they were “moderately confident,” while nearly one in five said they aren’t confident at all.

      More than half the respondents said that the water crisis in Flint — in which city water was contaminated with lead for 18 months, potentially causing longterm damage to thousands of children — was a sign of a widespread infrastructure problem in America.

    • ‘Raise The Wage, Clean Our Water’: Flint Residents Demand $15 Minimum Wage

      Tyrone Stitt has worked as a maintenance technician at Taco Bell for 18 years. He started at $3.25 an hour when he was 25 years old and today, despite the skyrocketing cost of living in Flint, he makes just $8.50 an hour. He says that amount is not enough to support himself and his family, let alone afford bottled water.

      “I’m breaking out in rashes and paying for water,” he told ThinkProgress as he marched across the University of Michigan campus in Flint among a group of protesters. “Increasing the minimum wage would help tremendously. It would make a tremendous difference in my life because I’d be able to pay my bills and provide for my family.”

    • Five Years After Fukushima, ‘No End in Sight’ to Ecological Fallout

      And U.S. nuclear regulatory agency comes under fire for ‘half-baked’ reforms that fail to improve public safety

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Killing Someone Else’s Beloved

      Yet Trump’s pledge to murder the civilian relatives of terrorists could be considered quite modest — and, in its bluntness, refreshingly candid — when compared to President Obama’s ongoing policy of loosing drones and U.S. Special Operations forces in the Greater Middle East. Those policies, the assassinations that go with them, and the “collateral damage” they regularly cause are based on one premise when it comes to the American public: that we will permanently suspend our capacity for grief and empathy when it comes to the dead (and the living) in distant countries.

    • ‘Obama could have stopped Syria’s suffering. And he didn’t do it’

      Michael Hayden, a former head of both the CIA and the NSA, tells Toby Harnden about righteous violence in the war on terror and the deep moral scar left by the president’s inaction over Assad

    • Bill Clinton neglect left NSA ‘brain dead’ as al Qaeda plotted 9/11 attacks

      Retired Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the NSA director at the time, describes the decline in a memoir, writing an insider’s view of an agency that the government at one time refused to acknowledge even existed.

    • You Will Obey Me — Trump to Military

      General Michael Hayden, former Central Intelligence Agency director, NSA director, and other experts have said that when you asked the US military to carry out some of your campaign promises, specifically targeting terrorists’ families, and also the use of interrogation methods more extreme than waterboarding, the military will refuse, because they’ve been trained to turn down and refuse illegal orders.

    • High-tech ‘bazooka’ fires a net to take down drones

      Could this bazooka-style device become a crucial weapon in law enforcement’s battle with drones?

      The brainchild of U.K.-based OpenWorks Engineering, SkyWall 100 uses a compressed air launcher to fire smart projectiles at targeted drones.

    • Syria: Phantom “Rebels” Return from the Dead

      The French colonial green, white, and black banner of Syria adapted by the West’s proxy “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) had long been forgotten in the sea of black banners held aloft by Washington and Riyadh’s more extreme ploy to gain leverage upon and more direct access to the battlefield.

      However, as Syrian forces backed by its regional allies and Russian airpower overwhelm these forces while building alliances with other factions, including the Kurds, the West’s entire regime change enterprise faces ignominious collapse.

      It appears that – having exhausted all other options – the West has decided to change as many of those black banners back to the “rebel” green, white, and black as possible, before the conflict draws to a close, giving the West the most favorable position achievable ahead of “peace talks.”

    • State Dept Staffs Syria Ceasefire Violations Hotline — With Non-Arabic Speakers

      telephone

      Is there a better way to ensure no troublesome violations of John Kerry’s signature ceasefire in Syria get reported than by staffing the hotline where violations are to be reported by Syrians with non-Arabic speakers?

      Gotta love those clever gals and guys over at the State Department. The Department is all a twitter, high-fiving each other and sending congratulatory emails to Secretary of State John Kerry over his negotiating a ceasefire in Syria. And, in order to monitor compliance with the terms of the ceasefire, State set up a hotline. Ordinary Syrians, out there on the ground, could call in to report violations.

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Meet Lucy Gavaghan, The Teen Who’s Trying To Make Tesco Stop Selling Eggs From Caged Hens

      A 14-year-old who is campaigning to stop Tesco from selling eggs from caged hens has rallied more than 88,000 people to support the cause, yet the supermarket giant has failed to change their policy.

      Lucy Gavaghan, from Sheffield, started a Change.org petition after writing letters to stores was not successful.

      “I thought that a petition may be able to create the impact needed to make a company like Tesco change their ways,” she told HuffPost UK. “I think that animal welfare and commercial treatment is a really important issue and I know that many others share this view.”

  • Finance

    • Another Phony Jobs Report

      The monthly payroll jobs reports have become a bad joke.
      No growth in real retail sales, but 55,000 retail trade new jobs in February.
      No growth in real consumer income, but 40,000 more waitresses and bartenders.
      86,000 new jobs in Education, health services, and social assistance. February is a strange month to be hiring new teachers. If February brought a quarter million new jobs, how come a big hike in social assistance jobs? Manufacturing lost 16,000 jobs.

    • The seven sins of the EU investment court

      European trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem and Canadian minister for trade Chrystia Freeland have confirmed that the EU-Canada CETA agreement will include far-reaching investor privileges.

      The investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) clause in the deal is set to be based on EU proposals for an Investment Court System (ICS) that were announced last autumn following unprecedented public outcry. However, ICS is no new departure. Indeed, it is the same special rights for foreign investors come back from the dead.

      Plans for ISDS were among the most contentious parts of the proposed TTIP deal between the EU and US. Debate has been focused on the rights that corporations will acquire to challenge democratic decisions when they consider them a threat to their profits.

    • How Hillary Turned Her Support for Welfare for Banks into an Auto Bailout Attack

      For a campaign that has spent days insisting Bernie Sanders should not launch attacks against her, the Hillary Clinton campaign sure engaged in some dishonest hackery last night.

      During the debate in Flint, Hillary attacked Bernie for “vot[ing] against the money that ended up saving the auto industry.” She was talking about a January 15, 2009 attempt to withhold the second $350 billion of TARP funding that failed (here’s the resolution); Bernie voted not to release those funds. But the vote was not directly about auto bailout funding. It was about bailing out the banks and funding what turned out to be completely ineffective efforts to forestall foreclosures.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Explaining Donald Trump’s Dick

      Why did Donald Trump inexplicably defend the size of his penis in Thursday’s debate? Because he’s unnaturally sensitive about it? Because, as Jeet Heer suggests, it’s part of a venerable history of monarchs and presidents? Because Hillary Clinton would be the first penis-free president, so it’s a good way of contrasting himself?

    • Michael Bloomberg Will Not Enter Presidential Race

      Michael R. Bloomberg, who for months quietly laid the groundwork to run for president as an independent, will not enter the 2016 campaign, he said Monday, citing his fear that a three-way race could lead to the election of a candidate he thinks would endanger the country: Donald J. Trump.

      In a forceful condemnation of his fellow New Yorker, Mr. Bloomberg said Mr. Trump has run “the most divisive and demagogic presidential campaign I can remember, preying on people’s prejudices and fears.” He said he was alarmed by Mr. Trump’s threats to bar Muslim immigrants from entering the country and to initiate trade wars against China and Japan, and he was disturbed by Mr. Trump’s “feigning ignorance of white supremacists,” alluding to Mr. Trump’s initial refusal to disavow an endorsement from David Duke.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • EFF Urges Sixth Circuit to Revisit Case Finding No Warrant Needed for Ten Weeks of Covert 24/7 Video Surveillance

      EFF joined NYU Law School’s Brennan Center for Justice, ACLU, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Libertarian National Committee, and former Congressman Bob Barr in urging the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to revisit a recent opinion finding no reasonable expectation of privacy in 10 weeks of continuous, surreptitious video surveillance. The opinion sets a dangerous precedent that law enforcement officers in Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, and Tennessee don’t need a warrant to film your every move in front of your house.

    • They Are Watching. Are You?

      Encouraged by millions of dollars in federal grants, local law enforcement agencies across the country are acquiring surveillance technologies at an alarmingly rapid rate. As more and more invasive technologies are created for the military and intelligence agencies, they trickle down to our increasingly militarized police forces. Often, local lawmakers and the public are not familiar with these systems and their dangers to civil liberties, and so public policy in response to surveillance lags behind.

    • French Parents Face Fines, Lawsuits And Prison For Posting Pictures Of Their Own Children Online

      As Techdirt reported recently, the controversial “right to be forgotten” — actually more of a right to be de-linked in search engines — is starting to spread around the world. But its spiritual home is definitely in Europe, where privacy concerns tend to outweigh other considerations, like freedom of speech, that are regarded as paramount elsewhere — in the US, for example. Leading the charge in the EU is France, which has been pushing Google to de-link items even more widely.

    • Verizon Strikes $1.35 Million Settlement With FCC Over Its Use Of Stealth ‘Zombie Cookies’

      Last year you’ll recall Verizon Wireless found itself in hot water after being caught modifying user packets to insert stealth tracking technology. By embedding each packet with a unique identifier traffic header, or X-UIDH. Verizon and its marketing partners were not only able to ignore user browser preferences and track their behavior around the Internet, they were then able to use this technology to build detailed user profiles. Verizon Wireless launched and operated the technology for two years before security researchers even noticed the program, and it required another six months of public pressure for Verizon to even offer an opt-out option.

      According to the FCC’s full press announcement (pdf), the fairly measly $1.35 million settlement doesn’t stop the program, which likely won’t please many privacy advocates. Verizon Wireless will however need to transparently notify users of the system and get their explicit opt-in (a rare dinosaur in online tracking rules) consent before sharing any of this data with third parties. The FCC is quick to highlight how Verizon previously proclaimed the technology couldn’t be abused by third parties to build detailed profiles of users — right before it was.

    • French Parliament Votes For Law That Would Put Tech Execs In Jail If They Don’t Decrypt Data

      Of course, this comes at the same time that basically the entire tech industry is rallying in support of Apple’s stance of refusing to hack into its own systems to remove security features and make it easier to decrypt data. And it’s coming right as the world was ridiculing Brazil for arresting (and then releasing) a Facebook exec for refusing to hand over data from subsidiary Whatsapp.

      This kind of move is so stupid on so many levels that it defies any kind of logic. It’s bad for security, because weak encryption puts us all at much greater risk than the threat of terrorists or criminals using encryption (in part, because this kind of thing won’t stop them from using secure encryption, and in part because those threats are very low probability risks). It’s also bad for the economy, because you’ve just given a ton of important tech companies every reason in the world to no longer operate in France due to such a ridiculous law that may put execs in jail. It’s bad for the public in that it will mean less secure services and devices that put them at risk, while also potentially cutting off more innovative and useful products and services.

      This is the kind of kneejerk reaction from people who are too ignorant and too scared to understand the actual technology and the actual issues at stake. Why do citizens in these countries continue to allow ignorant scared people to make such blatantly bad rules?

    • Book ‘Dark Territory’ chronicles how NSA hacked DoD command-control systems in four days

      In what was the first-ever high-level exercise testing the U.S. military’s ability to defend itself against a cyberattack, the NSA in 1997 hacked into the DoD’s entire network in just four days, using nothing but commercially available equipment and soft­ware, according to a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Fred Kaplan.

    • GHCQ head calls for cooler heads amid Apple and FBI encryption feud
    • GCHQ boss calls for new relationship with tech firms over encryption
    • GCHQ boss: Tech firms should co-operate over encryption
    • GCHQ chief offers olive branch to technology firms in online privacy row
    • GCHQ losing cyberwar despite £860mn extra funding – spy chief

      Despite being handed hundreds of millions in taxpayers’ cash, British spooks are losing the cyberwar, a top GCHQ director has acknowledged.

      Alex Dewdney, who is head of the Communications Electronics Security Group (CESG) branch of GCHQ, told an audience in the US that UK intelligence is lagging behind.

    • GCHQ admits £1bn spend on cyber security ‘hasn’t worked’

      GCHQ is losing the cyber security war, according to director of cyber security at CESG (Communications-Electronics Security Group) Alex Dewedney, who admitted that, despite a £1bn spend over the past five years, “the bottom line is it hasn’t worked”.

      Speaking at the RSA security conference in San Francisco late last week, Dewedney also suggested a “more interventionist policy” may now be needed.

    • The Privacy Shield is Riddled with Surveillance Holes

      The European Commission and the U.S. Department of Commerce have finally announced the details of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, an agreement designed to ensure that personal data can flow between Europe and the U.S. for commercial purposes while maintaining the privacy rights Europeans have come to love and expect. Lawmakers in the U.S. and abroad were under intense pressure to produce some sort of agreement after the European Court of Justice (CJEU) dissolved the safe harbor agreement related to transatlantic data flows last October, leaving countless international tech firms in a lurch about how to handle data. The court decision and subsequent negotiation could have been a powerful motivator for the U.S. to clean up its surveillance policies. Instead, the patchwork of concessions in the Privacy Shield leaves the door open for the digital surveillance of hundreds of millions of Europeans.

      It’s unclear what, if anything, the new Privacy Shield is supposed to be shielding people from— except perhaps shielding U.S. companies from the inevitable consequences of their country’s mass surveillance program.

    • EFF and 46 Technology Experts Ask Court To Throw Out Unconstitutional Apple Order

      The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and 46 technology industry experts, including inventors of modern cryptography, told a federal court today that forcing Apple to write and sign computer code disabling crucial iPhone security features that protect millions of users violates the company’s free speech rights.

      The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) should not be allowed to, in effect, stand over the shoulders of Apple programmers and force them to create and sign off on code that would decimate the iPhone’s security, EFF said. The signed code would send a clear message that it’s OK to undermine encryption that users rely on—a view the government endorses but Apple fiercely opposes. EFF made its arguments in a friend-of-the-court brief filed today in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The brief was signed by 46 technologists, security researchers, and cryptographers, including digital signature pioneers Martin Hellman and Ronald Rivest.

    • Inside “Eligible Receiver” [Ed: previous headline was "The NSA Hacked Into the U.S. Military by Digging Through Its Trash"]

      The task turned out to be appallingly easy. Many defense computers, it turned out, weren’t protected by passwords. Others were protected by the lamest passwords, like “password” or “ABCDE” or “12345.” In some cases, the Red Team snipped all of an office’s links except for a fax line, then flooded that line with call after call after call, shutting it down. In a few instances, NSA attachés—one inside the Pentagon, the other at a Pacific Com­mand facility in Hawaii—went dumpster diving, riffling through trash cans and dumpsters, looking for passwords. This trick, too, bore fruit.

    • IoT subscriber growth surpasses smartphone users’ in January

      The number of users subscribing to Internet-of-Things (IoT) services grew at a faster pace than those subscribing to smartphones in Korea on-month in January, data showed Sunday, on the back of the rising sales of wearable smart devices.

      According to data compiled by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, the number of Koreans subscribing to IoT-related services shot up 83,577 in January from a month earlier, compared to the 70,097 new smartphone subscribers over the cited period.

    • Amazon Flip-Flop Lands Fire OS Back in Encryption Camp
    • After Backlash, Amazon Promises To Bring Back Encryption On Fire OS

      Just to close the loop on this one: just after the firestorm last week when Amazon was called out for removing device encryption from Fire OS 5 (at the very same time as its CTO was saying encryption is “mandatory” and the company signed on to a brief supporting Apple in the encryption fight, the company has admitted that it will restore encryption to Fire OS 5 “sometime in the spring.”

    • Amazon douses flames, vows to restore Fire OS fondleslab encryption

      Amazon has U-turned on its decision to remove filesystem encryption from Fire OS, which powers its Fire and Kindle slabs.

      We’ve been told that a version due out within the next month or two will return support for encrypting documents stored on the devices. This decision to restore the feature comes just days after it emerged that Amazon had axed the encryption from the latest build of its tablet operating system: Fire OS 5.

      Removing the crypto sparked outcry from furious Fire and Kindle owners as well as the wider tech world. Amazon appears to have taken notice.

    • How the FBI will lose its iPhone fight, thanks to ‘West Coast Law’

      The vast majority of it has centered on the rights and the wrongs, about the loss of privacy, and of the precedent that breaking one iPhone would create.

    • US to renegotiate rules on exporting “intrusion software”

      After nearly a year of protests from the information security industry, security researchers, and others, US officials have announced that they plan to re-negotiate regulations on the trade of tools related to “intrusion software.” While it’s potentially good news for information security, just how good the news is will depend largely on how much the Obama administration is willing to push back on the other 41 countries that are part of the agreement—especially after the US was key in getting regulations on intrusion software onto the table in the first place.

      The rules were negotiated through the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies, an agreement governing the trade of weapons and technology that could be used for military purposes. Originally intended to prevent proliferation and build-up of weapons, the US and other Western nations pushed for operating system, software, and network exploits to be included in the Wassenaar protocol to prevent the use of commercial malware and hacking tools by repressive regimes against their own people for surveillance.

    • GCHQ: Spy chief admits UK agency losing cyberwar despite £860m funding boost

      A top director at UK spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has admitted he was fighting a losing battle when it comes to cybersecurity – despite an £860m boost in government funding over the past five years.

      Alex Dewdney, director of cybersecurity at CESG which is the information security arm of GCHQ, was speaking during the recent RSA conference in San Francisco where he outlined some major problems encountered by cyber-experts tasked with protecting the UK from attack.

    • Eric Schmidt gets a job at the Pentagon

      Secretary of Defense Ashton Carton on Wednesday appointed Schmidt the head of a new Defense Innovation Advisory Board, which will help the Pentagon keep up with the latest Silicon Valley ideas and apply them at the Department of Defense.

    • Military hits snag in Silicon Valley recruitment

      The fight between the FBI and Apple over a locked iPhone is threatening to undermine the Pentagon’s attempt to recruit talent from Silicon Valley.

      Defense Secretary Ash Carter spent this week out West, meeting with tech executives and launching new cybersecurity initiatives that will rely on help from the Bay Area.

      But under the looming shadow of the FBI’s request that Apple help bypass the iPhone’s security measures, Carter also made a noticeable effort to send a signal to techies: We get you.

    • Ronald Reagan’s Viewing of 80’s Movie Classic ‘Wargames’ Set Basis for NSA Spying

      When Ronald Reagan saw it in a Joint Chiefs meeting, he asked chairman John Vessey to investigate whether it was Hollywood magic, or if American military systems could really be compromised by an industrious kid or a Soviet initiative. Vessey relayed his findings to President Reagan a week later: Not only was it possible, it was, in fact, becoming increasingly probable.

    • Please Write To MPs To Call For More Time To Debate Investigatory Powers Bill

      Last week, the UK government published a revised Investigatory Powers Bill, aka the Snooper’s Charter. Surprisingly, it took no notice of the the serious criticisms made by no less than three Parliamentary committees; indeed, in some respects, it has made the Bill even worse.

  • Civil Rights

    • Stop the global crackdown on academic freedom! Act now!

      A call for the global community of teachers and students to protest against this most dangerous trend by signing, translating and circulating this statement, and organising protest meetings in all universities.

    • The Fight to Keep Abortion Safe & Legal: A Special Report from Outside the U.S. Supreme Court

      The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in the most significant abortion case in a generation. Abortion providers in Texas, led by Whole Woman’s Health, have challenged provisions of a sweeping anti-choice law passed by the Texas state Legislature in 2013 despite a people’s filibuster and an 11-hour stand by Texas state Senator Wendy Davis. The provisions at stake force abortion clinics to meet the standards of hospital-style surgery centers and require providers to obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital—a task many can’t achieve, in part due to anti-choice sentiment. Similar restrictions have been passed in multiple states. As the case was being argued inside the court, a few thousand people rallied outside in support of Whole Woman’s Health, including fellow abortion providers and women who have had abortions. Democracy Now!’s Amy Littlefield was at the rally and also spoke with the anti-choice protesters, who held a competing demonstration.

    • Don’t Say ‘Opposing Gay Rights’ When You Mean Discriminating Against Gays

      What you aren’t allowed to do—in some situations—is discriminate against LGBT people, and these bills are an effort to make it OK to do so. Discrimination has not generally been seen as a First Amendment–protected activity; if it had been, the civil rights movement would have been effectively stymied. But the organized homophobia movement is trying to rebrand discrimination as a kind of speech—hence the marketing of these pro-discrimination bills as “First Amendment Defense Acts.”

    • The Genesis of #HateHurts

      It is seemingly everywhere nowadays. It’s at the center of the conversation during this perpetual election season. It’s a focal point of the anti-refugee sentiment that is stretching across the Western world. It hangs over the interactions of everyday people, those Muslim and those perceived to be Muslim.

    • Louis C.K. Compares Donald Trump to Hitler: ‘He’s an Insane Bigot’

      Louis C.K. is the latest public figure to criticize Donald Trump, calling him an “insane bigot” and comparing him to Adolf Hitler.

      In a Saturday morning email blast announcing the sixth episode of his web series “Horace and Pete,” C.K. included a lengthy postscript urging readers not to vote for Trump.

      “Please stop it with voting for Trump,” C.K. writes. “It was funny for a little while. But the guy is Hitler. And by that I mean that we are being Germany in the ’30s. Do you think they saw the sh-t coming? Hitler was just some hilarious and refreshing dude with a weird comb over who would say anything at all.”

    • Abuse Of Power: Laws Should Be Designed As If The People We Distrust The Most Are In Power

      There have been a few stories lately that have all combined to make a few key points crystallize in my mind, concerning various legal powers and the way that some people view them. It starts with an excellent article from Trevor Timm in which the title lays out the issue: Imagine Obama’s national security policies in Trump’s hands. After all, this is the guy who hasn’t been shy in promising to settle scores if he’s elected.

    • New Film Delves Into FBI Arrests of Youths for Terrorism Crimes They Might Commit

      IN AN EARLY SCENE from the HBO documentary Homegrown, an FBI agent describes his angst while tracking a teenager’s engagement in the online jihadi world. “You almost want to pick up the phone and say, ‘Son, don’t do this,’” the agent reflects. The teenager in question was Shifa Sadequee, a 19-year-old who was arrested on terrorism charges in 2006. Following a 2009 trial in which Sadequee represented himself, he was sentenced to 17 years in prison plus an additional 30 years of supervision.

      The ethical issues involved in preventive counterterrorism cases like Sadequee’s are the theme behind much of Homegrown. Following 9/11, law enforcement agencies were given a mandate to halt terrorist acts before they occurred, rather than investigate crimes after the fact. This directive inevitably gave rise to some disturbing ethical questions. When is it acceptable to arrest someone for a crime they haven’t actually committed, but you think they might commit in the future? At what point do a teenager’s online postings turn into a terrorism offense?

    • Donald Trump, America’s Own Silvio Berlusconi

      AS A WRITER who has covered Silvio Berlusconi since he became Italy’s prime minister in 1994, it has been difficult not to be overcome with a powerful sense of déjà vu all over again watching the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

    • Texas’ Annual Roundup of the Working Poor

      The Great Texas Warrant Roundup is an annual statewide collaboration of courts and law enforcement agencies. Their goal is to collect payment of overdue fines and fees from Texans who have outstanding warrants for unpaid traffic tickets and to arrest and jail those who can’t pay. What little press is dedicated to the Roundup focuses on praising cities for the so-called “amnesty” period that precedes it.

  • DRM

    • DRM Is Evil, Part 8,492: Nook Pulls Out Of UK, Exploring Options To Let People Retain Access To At Least Some Books

      Yet another story of how badly DRM screws over legitimate buyers, with no actual benefit for copyright holders. This time, it’s about the total failure of Barnes & Noble’s Nook ebook reader, which is struggling globally, and shutting down entirely in the UK. Nate Hoffelder has a great article explaining why the Nook has been such an abject failure, but a key point highlighted by the Register is that the company is still working to see if there are ways that legitimate buyers can keep access to at least some of the books they purchased.

    • Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Apple’s Appeal In eBook Price Fixing Case

      This isn’t a huge surprise, but this morning the Supreme Court refused to hear Apple’s appeal of its loss in the case brought by the Justice Department for engaging in price fixing on ebooks with the big book publishers. During the course of the case and appeals, Apple worked out a settlement, agreeing to pay $450 million — but only after the appeals process was exhausted. And, that’s now happened. As with basically all appeals rejected by the Supreme Court, the court gave no reason. It just denied cert.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Findings of EU Project On Conservation Of Genetic Resources Due Out In June

      The findings, conclusions and preliminary recommendations of a European Commission initiative on the conservation and sustainable use of genetic diversity are to be presented in June, the Commission has announced.

      The “Preparatory action on EU [European Union] plant and animal genetic resources in agriculture” followed an initiative tabled by the European Parliament, and was launched in July 2014 for a period of two years, according to the commission.

      The EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 [pdf] includes an action to conserve Europe’s agricultural genetic diversity. The preparatory action is meant to support the EU “in recognizing the potentials for added value in the field of conservation and sustainable use of agricultural genetic resources,” according to the preparatory action webpage.

    • Copyrights

      • The Donald Sends Cease And Desist Threat To Band Over The Use Of His Name In Music And Video

        So, the political season is really starting to ramp up now, which means the insanity ramps up along with it. This particular go around in presidential politics has been particularly absurd, causing even those of us that try to view it all through the prism of entertainment to be more than a little frightened. Still, there can be no doubt that there has been an uptick in the engagement level of the American people, including from musical artists looking to provide commentary on American politics. Take this song and video released by music duo Fight Clvb, for instance. It’s called Donald Trump and it is massively NSFW.

      • Foreign Copyright Holders Could More Actively Protect IP In Russia

        Russia is continuing to strengthen its national legislation in the field of intellectual property, through the provision of means for foreign copyright holders to more actively protect their intellectual property in Russia and the elimination of bureaucratic hurdles, according to official sources.

        This is taking place as part of the ongoing reform of the national IP policy.

        On 15 February, the scope of the Russian anti-piracy law was significantly expanded, through the inclusion of all copyrighted works (music, books, inventions) and related rights in the subject of protection. This provided an opportunity to foreign rights holders to better protect their IP in Russia.

      • “Kanye Bay” — Kanye West Now Gets His Own Pirate Bay Proxy

        Responding to the latest screenshot that suggested that Kanye West was pirating some music software, the Pirate Bay offered him a dedicated “Kanye Bay” proxy.

      • Apple is Running BitTorrent Trackers in Cupertino

        Apple is not known for being friendly towards BitTorrent software in its App Store but it appears the technology giant isn’t averse to using the technology itself. In fact, according to data provided by “Internet of things” search engine Shodan, Apple is running BitTorrent trackers from dozens of IP addresses in Cupertino.

      • BitTorrent Hater Apple Is Running BitTorrent Trackers At Its Headquarters

        Shodan, the IoT Search engine, has come up with proof that Apple was running BitTorrent trackers in their Cupertino office.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/03/07/firefox-in-devices/feed/ 0 Links 1/3/2016: Firefox OS in Panasonic Ultra HD TVs, Raspberry Pi 3 http://techrights.org/2016/03/01/raspberry-pi-3/ http://techrights.org/2016/03/01/raspberry-pi-3/#comments Tue, 01 Mar 2016 16:42:36 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=89874

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • How to choose the right brand architecture for your open source project

    Most people who start an open source software project aren’t sitting around waiting for someone to discuss brand architecture models with them, but many of them do have long term goals for their project that include eventually seeing it becoming a paid product or even the basis of a company built around servicing and supporting the project code.

  • Open Source Evolution: From Making Better Code to Making Better Business

    Today, open-source software is thriving in the Cloud, with a whole new generation of projects – such as Docker, Heroku, Open Stack and others. Cumulatively, GNU is still the leading license, but MIT, Apache and other licenses are among the top licenses used in open-source projects.

  • Top Open Source Creativity Apps

    There is a common belief among non-Linux users that there aren’t any good creative applications from the open source camp. In truth, this is absolutely false. The key is knowing which applications are needed to complete a specific task. In this article, I’ll share my recommendations for the top open source creativity apps.

  • 6 essential non-coding careers in open source

    When I started working in open source software in 1999, it was a small part of what I did. My company, SGI, wanted to start shipping Linux-based servers, and my task was to create a process for commercializing Linux. Today we’ve reached a point where open source software is in almost every area of technology. And while we often still think of it as code and developers, a whole ecosystem has evolved around open source—one that includes many full-time careers. These roles are much needed as open source matures, and they allow more of us who believe in the power of collaborative development to get involved.

    To help those looking to get involved in open source professionally, here’s a look at some of the most popular and emerging roles.

  • OPNFV Delivers Second Release of Open Source Network Functions Virtualization Platform
  • OPNFV puts out second release of open source NFV platform, Brahmaputra
  • Alluxio: Open Source Tech Making Baidu’s Data Centers Faster

    Running a successful internet business without using the data you accumulate to your advantage is clearly impossible in this day and age. Until about one year ago, Baidu, the web company behind the largest Chinese-language search engine and the country’s answer to Google, had a major technology problem on its hands.

    The queries Baidu product managers ran against its databases took hours to complete because of the huge amount of data stored in the company’s data centers. Baidu needed a solution, and its engineers were given the goal of creating an ad-hoc query engine that would manage petabytes of data and finish queries in 30 seconds or less.

  • 6 more must-have open source apps for Windows, Mac, and Linux

    In this follow up article, here are some more of the best open source and free apps I’ve found for my heterogeneous environment.

  • Hortonworks seeks salvation in proprietary software

    Three years ago Hortonworks led a chorus of open source Kumbaya as it sought to differentiate itself in the rapidly growing Hadoop market. Today, Hortonworks has significantly changed its tune, embracing proprietary software as a way to improve its financials.

  • Documentation should be concise, consistent, and simple

    “Words mean things” is one of my favorite expressions. I often use it in jest, but it’s an important consideration when writing documentation. I’m normally one to sling words around with great artistic flair, but when it comes to writing technical documentation, I’ve become more deliberate in my wording.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • native gtk3 menubar in libreoffice

      For comparison here’s the (not utterly awful) emulated look prior to this. You can compare the spacing of elements in the menubar, menu separator rendering, distance of checkmarks to the following text, the display of the short cuts in different font attributes with different positioning, and menu entry line spacing.

    • LibreOffice Now Has GTK3-Native Menus

      There’s even more progress now to report on with LibreOffice’s GTK3 tool-kit support.

      LibreOffice has been making lots of progress with their GTK3 tool-kit support to better integrate the open-source office suite on modern Linux desktops and is also needed for running LibreOffice on Wayland. A few days ago we reported on GTK3 native context menus for LibreOffice while the latest to mention now are native menu bars.

    • LibreOffice Is Getting GTK3 Native Menus

  • CMS

    • Acquia adapting to future needs as web trends change

      The Boston-based open source firm Acquia is dabbling in several technologies to ensure that, down the road, it stays as big a player in the market as it is now.

      Acquia uses the Drupal content management system to build websites for companies around the world and has produced and powered roughly 12 per cent of all Drupal implementations, according to Chris Stone, the head of engineering and chief product officer.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Funding

  • BSD

    • Video: 30 Years of Minix
    • Haiku in 2016

      About once a year I like to put aside Linux distributions, and the various flavours of BSD, to look at Haiku. As the Haiku website tells us, “Haiku is an open source operating system that specifically targets personal computing. Inspired by the BeOS, Haiku is fast, simple to use, easy to learn and yet very powerful.”

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • UK open source drive ‘encourages citizens participation’

      The push by the UK government to use more free and open source software for its eGovernment services is helping to get citizens more involved, says Bernard Tyers, a user experience researcher working for the UK’s Home Office. “Everyone can see how the design and research process works, and users are helping to test our prototypes.”

    • Consultations launched for local authority common digital standard

      The views of council staff and other stakeholders are being sought for a draft Local Government Digital Service Standard devised to encourage use of common services and data registers between different authorities based on a similar approach used in Whitehall.

      With support from the Government Digital Service (GDS), a group of councils working as part of the LocalGov Digital network has been working to finalise guidelines for a common approach to service transformation and design.

    • Digital service standard set to mandate data reuse

      Last week, PublicTechnology reported that the new Local Government Digital Service Standard emerged from discussions held earlier this month at the offices of the Government Digital Service.

      Publication of the draft standard covering transactional services has been coordinated by digital practitioner network LocalGov Digital, and based on the existing central government standard could be adapted for councils.

    • Councils urged to use agile, open source and platforms

      LocalGovDigital publishes draft version of Digital Service Standard for local government

  • Licensing

    • Is SFLC Shooting Open Source in the Foot?

      The academic article by SFLC about ZFS is troubling and may unintentionally shoot free software licensing in the foot.

      When I was at Sun (as part of the team that released the Java Programming Language by starting the OpenJDK project) I often heard community concerns about the CDDL license. At the time the big complaint was about the “Choice of Venue” clause.

      I got involved because Sun had developed many essential Java libraries and distributed them under CDDL. The community requested a more permissive license and I was able to convince internal project leaders (and Sun’s lawyers) to make a licensing change for a handful of these projects. And there was much rejoicing.

      Based on my experience in helping Java to become open source I came to appreciate the legal hacks on copyright which make open source possible. It’s the free software license which uses copyright to enable sharing (vs. the default of disabling sharing).

    • The VMware Hearing and the Long Road Ahead

      On last Thursday, Christoph Hellwig and his legal counsel attended a hearing in Hellwig’s VMware case that Conservancy currently funds. Harald Welte, world famous for his GPL enforcement work in the early 2000s, also attended as an observer and wrote an excellent summary. I’d like to highlight a few parts of his summary, in the context of Conservancy’s past litigation experience regarding the GPL.

      First of all, in great contrast to the cases here in the USA, the Court acknowledged fully the level of public interest and importance of the case. Judges who have presided over Conservancy’s GPL enforcement cases USA federal court take all matters before them quite seriously. However, in our hearings, the federal judges preferred to ignore entirely the public policy implications regarding copyleft; they focused only on the copyright infringement and claims related to it. Usually, appeals courts in the USA are the first to broadly consider larger policy questions. There are definitely some advantages to the first Court showing interest in the public policy concerns.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • BrewDog’s open-source revolution is at the vanguard of postcapitalism

      Fast forward to now, and a very interesting thing just happened. BrewDog, the Scottish-based brewery whose beer outlets are spreading rapidly across the globe, just open-sourced its recipe collection. In a cheeky press release, its founders quipped: “Oh, and if you are from one of the global beer mega corporations and you are reading this, your computer will spontaneously combust, James Bond style, any second now.”

    • ‘Platform car’ is driving open-source design
    • The innovators: Skeleton car that is driving open-source design

      The OSVehicle units consist of parts that can be easily swapped without throwing away other working parts, which expands the vehicle’s lifespan, said Yuki. Its core unit contains the most complex parts of a vehicle, which means it is stable and ready to use, she added. Loddo compares it to the Android operating system for mobile phones, where developers can freely access the software as a base on which to build apps.

    • Open Hardware

      • Open Source Hardware is an opportunity for Synthetic Biology research – the DocuBricks approach by Tobias Wenzel

        There is a lesson to be learned from the incompleteness of commercial assembly-set documentations: Open Source Hardware is more than an assembly instruction. It is also about documenting design files and decisions along its functionality and in a modular fashion, complete with testing and calibration instructions. A good documentation enables the project to grow and improve without the doing of the inventor. Only in this way most projects can enfold their benefit well to society and technology companies. To be sure, documenting a hardware project is not easy and requires time. For this reason a handful scientists at the University of Cambridge (including the author), all with a background in technology and biology, recently started the DocuBricks initiative. DocuBricks is an open source and free software that makes documenting hardware and usage procedures easier. The name is a reference to modularity in the same way as Lego or BioBricks. As the name suggests, the editor part of the software guides the user through a modular documentation structure with relevant fields in a standardised, yet general format. The user can create a hierarchy of documentation bricks, explaining their function, implementation and assembly while referring to a parts library. The result is a XML document and a folder with construction and media files that is displayed with the viewer part of the software (a style sheet and script to enable interactivity).

      • Kicad hacking – Intra-sheet links and ERC

        I spent time looking at gEDA and Eagle when I wanted to get back into hardware hacking for my own ends; but neither did I really click with. On the other hand, a mere 10 minutes with Kicad and I knew I had found the tool I wanted to work with long-term.

      • Open-Source System 3D Prints from Custom Powders

        An open-source laser sintering printer has been used to print intricate 3D objects from powdered plastics and biomaterials. The system costs a fraction of equivalent commercial systems and could give researchers a DIY technique for working with their own specialized materials.

  • Programming

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • GitHubber wants to revive the first Unix in a PDP-7 emulator

    An IT lecturer from the Australian state of Queensland wants to revive the very first Unix – the version written by Ken Thompson on a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-7.

    While the PDP-11 is probably the most famous of the series – a genuine watershed in computer history, and a successful system that sold 600,000 units in its 20-year life on the market – the PDP-7 has its own place in history.

    Its most enduring contribution to the life of the sysadmin: it was the machine that then Bell Labs engineer Ken Thompson wrote the first Unix on, in assembly language, in 1969. As the Linux Information Project notes, it was also DEC’s first system to use a mass-storage-based operating system.

    That’s what Warren Toomey is working to re-create in this project.

  • Science

    • Footage of possible meteor in Scotland

      Footage has been recorded of what appears to be a meteor in the sky over Scotland.

      Police received a large number of calls after a big, bright flash was seen.

      People took to social media to report seeing a blue, white or green light, with some saying they also heard a rumbling sound.

      Driving instructor Bill Addison, from Buckie in Moray, recorded what appeared to be a meteor shooting across the sky on his dashboard camera.

      Mike Fleming captured similar footage on the road between Dunecht and Castle Fraser in Aberdeenshire.

      The “flash” was also caught on a security camera at Woodend, Lumphanan, Aberdeenshire, which was sent in by Craig Lindsay.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Thousands of NHS nursing and doctor posts lie vacant
    • The Rising Threat of Religious Hospitals Denying Women Medical Care

      Imagine you are 20 weeks pregnant, only halfway through your pregnancy, when you start to miscarry. It’s the middle of the night; you call an ambulance and are rushed to the hospital. The hospital admits you and consults with a specialist who concludes that the only option is to induce labor and complete the miscarriage — either way, the fetus will not survive. But without induction of labor you could die too.

      But instead of acting quickly to save your life, the hospital admits you and watches you get sicker and sicker. For 10 hours, the hospital will do nothing to complete the miscarriage, even though the hospital knows that every moment the miscarriage drags on increases your risk of contracting a life-threatening infection, which you ultimately do.

    • Calls Grow for Wendy’s to Join Fair Food Program as Coalition Plans Major Protest of Fast-Food Giant

      It ensures farmworkers access to shade and water, increased pay, as well as freedom from sexual harassment and forced labor. Although fast-food giants like McDonald’s and Subway have signed Fair Food Agreements, Wendy’s has refused—instead opting for their own “Supplier Code of Conduct,” which activists say is less stringent and has no enforcement mechanisms.

  • Security

    • Security updates for Monday
    • Peer-Seeking Webcam Reveals the Security Dangers of Internet Things

      Last week security blogger Brian Krebs revealed that a popular internet-enabled security camera “secretly and constantly connects into a vast peer-to-peer network run by the Chinese manufacturer of the hardware.”

    • Joomla Sites Join WordPress As TeslaCrypt Ransomware Target

      Exploit kits infecting thousands of WordPress websites are setting their sights on the open-source content management system Joomla in a new campaign spotted by a researcher at the SANS Institute’s Internet Storm Center.

      “The group behind the WordPress ‘admedia’ campaign is now apparently targeting Joomla sites,” said Brad Duncan, security researcher at Rackspace. “We are starting to see the same traffic characteristics in infections that are associated with Joomla sites – as we did with the WordPress campaign,” Duncan said.

    • Most software already has a “golden key” backdoor: the system update

      In 2014 when The Washington Post Editorial Board wrote “with all their wizardry, perhaps Apple and Google could invent a kind of secure golden key they would retain and use only when a court has approved a search warrant,” the Internet ridiculed them. Many people painstakingly explained that even if there were somehow wide agreement about who would be the “right” people and governments to hold such an all-powerful capability, it would ultimately be impossible to ensure that such power wouldn’t fall in to the “wrong” hands.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Texas Academics Told to Avoid ‘Sensitive Topics’ to Prevent Angering Armed Students

      Here’s another swanky benefit of our out-of-control gun culture: university professors should be aware that their students might shoot them.

    • Kerry Phones Serbian PM Over Diplomats Killed in U.S. Libya Strike

      So, those American airstrikes recently in Libya, the ones for freedom and to defeat ISIS and banish Ant Man to hell? Yeah, darn it, they also killed two Serbian diplomats. But don’t worry, America’s own secretary of state John Kerry personally called the Serbian prime minister to say “Sorry, our bad, dude.”

    • Saudis lobby MEPs before arms embargo vote over Yemen

      Riyadh engaged in concerted effort to persuade European parliament not to pass amendment calling for EU sanctions because of bombing campaign

    • The Dulles Brothers and Their Legacy of Perpetual War

      I was intrigued by the 2015 release of David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government. But it also reminded me of a 2014 book I had been wanting to read titled The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War by Stephen Kinzer. Since the earlier book covered both important brothers — the younger Allen who was Director of Central Intelligence and the elder John Foster who was Secretary of State — I decided to go with Kinzer.

      As it turned out, I was so fascinated by Kinzer’s discussion of the Dulleses that after finishing The Brothers, I dove right into Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard. I am so glad that I did. While there is some unavoidable overlap, reading the two books in quick succession is not at all redundant. In fact, they are such splendid complements of each other, that one almost wonders if the two authors coordinated.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Freedom Of Information Act To Remain: Here Are Eight Things We Wouldn’t Have Known Without It

      A decision not to charge for Freedom of Information (FoI) requests has been hailed as a “victory for journalism”.

      The government revealed on Tuesday that there will be no legal changes to the FoI Act after a review of the legislation found it was “working well”.

    • Freedom of Information charges ruled out after review

      Freedom of Information requests – used by campaigners and journalists to ask questions of public bodies – are to remain free of charge, a minister says.

      Following a review of the law, Cabinet Office minister Matt Hancock said the FoI Act was “working well”.

      The FoI Commission was asked to examine it amid concerns within government that “sensitive information” was being inadequately protected.

      Its report said FoI had helped “change the culture of the public sector”.

      Mr Hancock said there would be no wholesale changes to the FoI Act.

    • Spain updates compendium of eGovernment rules

      The Spanish government has published an update of its Law on Electronic Administration. Two chapters have been added, on “Transparency and Access to POublic Information” and on “Electronic Judicial Administration”.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Coral bleaching in Qld is the ‘worst in 15 years’

      The worst coral bleaching in more than 15 years has hit Lizard Island off far north Queensland, scientists say, prompting fears about other northern parts of the Great Barrier Reef.

      Lyle Vail, who runs the Lizard Island Research Station north of Cairns, said the majority of the reef flat surrounding the island was showing signs of bleaching.

      “We do notice a bit of minor bleaching most summers but this year is exceptional – it’s the worst since 2002 – that year was quite bad,” he said.

  • Finance

    • CETA Legal Review Completed, Now Off To Parliaments And Governments For Approval

      The European Union and Canada have jointly announced the finalisation of the legal review for Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).

      The agreement, which originally was signed by the negotiators in 2014, was re-negotiated to address strong concerns with regard to the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) procedures.

    • Restaurants Demand State Freeze Servers’ Wage

      As an example, New York state’s hourly minimum wage for tipped workers rose from $5.00 to $7.50 on January 1 (standard, non-tipped, minimum wage is $9.00 an hour in the state), much to the dismay of the New York State Restaurant Association. The restaurant owners lobbying group sent a letter to NY Governor Andrew Cuomo demanding that he freeze the tipped wage for five years. This letter comes just weeks after the National Restaurant Association filed an appeal with the state Supreme Court, claiming that Cuomo’s plan to raise the minimum wage further by 2018 is part of a longstanding pattern of discrimination “against the hard working men and women that own New York’s restaurants.”

    • WaPo Factcheck Adds Confusion, Not Clarity, on Social Security

      In short, President Bush’s proposal for replacing a portion of the traditional Social Security system did offer a substantial bonanza for Wall Street in a way that was not true of President Clinton’s proposal for investing the trust fund. Secretary Clinton was not wrong to make this distinction, even if some of her comments were not entirely accurate, as Kessler points out.

    • EU referendum: Peter Mandelson breaks silence to warn over effects of Brexit

      British exporters would face trade tariffs of up to 20 per cent on goods such as cars, whisky, pharmaceuticals and fashion sold around the world if the UK pulled out of the European Union, the former Trade Commissioner Lord Mandelson will warn on Tuesday.

      In his first intervention in the referendum debate, the Labour peer will claim that the UK could not only lose access to the single European market but could also lose the EU’s preferential trading status in foreign markets.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • This terrifying Rupert Murdoch quote is possibly the best reason to stay in the EU yet

      Are you on the fence about Brexit? Do you feel akin to Boris (pre-blatant leadership bid) dithering and mulling your decision over, considering what suits your personal circumstance?

      We think we may have something that’ll sway it for you.

      As you are no doubt aware, although media mogul Rupert Murdoch hasn’t declared which side he stands on in the referendum, there have been a few subtle hints as to his position.

    • Scalia Dined at the Great Trough of Corruption

      Antonin Scalia was the longest-tenured justice on the current Supreme Court, and a great friend to conservatives in his opinions. It turns out he also ate his share at the great trough of American corruption.

    • Antonin Scalia: The Billion-Dollar Supreme Court Justice

      Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was worth billions of dollars to corporate America, if a Dow Chemical settlement made public Friday is any indication.

      Dow was in the midst of appealing a $1.06 billion class-action antitrust ruling, after a jury found that it had conspired with other chemical companies to fix prices for urethane, a material used in furniture and appliances.

      But because of Scalia’s death and the sudden unlikelihood of finding five votes on the Supreme Court to overturn the case, Dow decided to settle for $835 million, the bulk of the original award.

    • Donald Trump’s Appeal to White Nationalism

      AFTER TWO DECADES of studying the inner workings of extremist groups in the United States, Brian Levin, a professor at California State University in San Bernardino, has developed a routine for attending Ku Klux Klan rallies. He’ll tape an interview or two, collect whatever literature is available, see if he can spot any notable figures, and make a count of the demographics on hand. The aim, Levin says, is to maintain a degree of anonymity. That was the plan Saturday afternoon when he showed up to Pearson Park in Anaheim, California, for a demonstration by the local chapter of a Klan faction known as the Loyal White Knights.

    • Will it be Trump or Goldman Sachs?

      It’s largely a choice of style, not substance, dirty business as usual continuing no matter who succeeds Obama. Still, Snowden has a point.

      Hillary Clinton, like husband Bill, got super-rich through speechmaking, lucrative book deals and other Big Money handouts.

      Lots came from Wall Street and other corporate supporters – a rogue’s gallery of crony capitalist interests buying influence.

      Her public financial disclosures show she earned $2,935,000 from 12 speeches to Wall Street banks alone from 2013 – 2015, five for $225,000 (her usual fee).

    • Why Did It Take an Activist to Bring ‘Superpredators’ Into the Campaign?

      The fact that it took Black Lives Matter activist Ashley Williams to bring “superpredators” into 2016 presidential campaign coverage (AlterNet, 2/24/16) truly demonstrates the malfeasance of the corporate press.

    • Hillary Clinton Still Haunted by Discredited Rhetoric on “Superpredators”

      Hillary Clinton is relying on support from black voters to help her carry South Carolina in the Democratic primary on Saturday, but at a fundraiser in Charleston on Wednesday night, she found herself confronted by a young black activist demanding an apology.

      As video of the protest shows, the activist, Ashley Williams, interrupted Clinton’s remarks about criminal justice at the private event by unfurling a banner with the phrase “we have to bring them to heel.” Those words — language that has been taken as an offensive and racist characterization of young black teens as unruly animals — were used by the former first lady at a campaign rally for Bill Clinton in New Hampshire in January 1996.

  • Censorship

    • Fighting the phrase “Polish death camps” with education, not censorship

      However, where a line has to be drawn is when governments threaten to infringe upon the freedom of academic historians. And this appears to be the direction in which Poland’s government is heading, following two announcements made over the last week. Either one on its own would be worrying enough, but taken together they raise the spectre of concerted government interference in historical research.

    • Ridiculous Censorship

      Self-censorship during the final night of Putri Indonesia pageant show in a private TV station last week is really out of the proportion.

      During the show, the TV station decided to completely blur the torsos of contestants who donned the body-hugging Javanese kebaya dress.

    • China silences property mogul on social media after criticism of president

      The Chinese government has deleted the popular social media accounts of property mogul Ren Zhiqiang after he publicly criticized President Xi Jinping.

      On Sunday, the Cyberspace Administration of China ordered Chinese technology companies Sina and Tencent to shut down Ren’s microblog accounts on their platforms.

    • China’s Censorship Clampdown Stirs a Pushback

      A high-profile clash between China’s censors and an influential businessman with a huge social-media following marks a further tightening of a clampdown on public discourse under President Xi Jinping—one that is starting to generate unexpected pushback.

    • Chinese internet watchdog bans former tycoon Ren Ziqiang’s microblog
    • China’s ‘Donald Trump’ is latest victim of government crackdown
    • South Korea Embraces Ridiculous Right To Be Forgotten As Well

      I’m still in a position where I don’t understand this at all. If the information is somehow false or “illegal” I can understand the desire to remove it. But I have a lot more trouble understanding the ability to remove truthful and legal information just because someone doesn’t like it. This kind of system will always be abused to just censor perfectly reasonable and often useful information, just because it exposes something someone doesn’t like. It’s disappointing that South Korea appears to be embracing such a head in the sand approach to information.

    • White House Asked Google & Facebook To Change Their Algorithms To Fight ISIS; Both Said No

      Earlier this year, we wrote about how ridiculous the federal government’s view of Silicon Valley seemed to be, in that they had this weird belief that by nerding a little harder, we could somehow “disrupt” ISIS. The thinking seemed confused, and somewhat typical of people who don’t understand technology or how Silicon Valley works. It’s “magic wand” thinking. People who don’t understand technology tend to view technology as a sort of magic — and thus, they assume it can do anything. And, right now, a bunch of those people in the White House want that magic wand to make ISIS disappear from the Internet.

      Buzzfeed’s Sheera Frenkel has a great detailed report looking “inside” the administration’s attempt to have Silicon Valley help in the fight against ISIS. The main focus of a (not very secret) meeting held on Wednesday seemed to be entirely about fighting ISIS propaganda with American propaganda. As if that ever works. And, from the sound of it, the meeting was equally clueless about why ISIS propaganda is effective, while American propaganda flops.

    • Inside The Obama Administration’s Attempt To Bring Tech Companies Into The Fight Against ISIS

      They flew in from New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles to hole up in a windowless D.C. conference room for nearly five hours on Wednesday — representatives of the country’s top tech and entertainment companies brainstorming with U.S. counterterrorism officials to tackle one tough question: how to stop the spread of ISIS online.

    • Obama Administration Asked Facebook And Google To Change Their Algorithms To Fight ISIS

      On 24th February, White House invited the biggest names in the tech world to discuss the plans to defeat ISIS online. However, the meeting only reflected the flawed approach of Obama administration that went on to ask Facebook and Google to change their algorithms to hide pro-ISIS stuff.

    • Chinese censors clamp down on popular online videos

      China’s dour censors have long maintained a lengthy naughty list, and used it to keep the country’s television sets unsullied by anything deemed to “lack positive thoughts and meaning.”

      Now, the Chinese Communist Party under President Xi Jinping has vowed to apply the same rules online, slamming shut an era of looser rules for Internet video, amid a sweeping campaign to reassert strict new controls over the country’s cultural life – a campaign motivated in part by fears that speech must be controlled lest a slowing economy sow dangerous unhappiness.

    • I Resign: The Writing Center’s Mission is to Teach Writing, Not Ideology

      I wish I could continue to work at the Writing Center because I feel that it’s important for all students, whether black or white, on financial aid or not, conservative or liberal, to have a place to review and strengthen their writing. Unfortunately, the Writing Center no longer seems to be that place. Until the Writing Center can return to its apolitical mission and forsake its acceptance and appeasement of political harassment, I regret that I must resign my position as a Writing Fellow.

    • Debate is good, but can it be imposed?

      The rise of campus censorship has helped reinvigorate a discussion about free speech across society.

    • The Latest Hillary Clinton Conspiracy Theory Doesn’t Make Sense
    • Is Twitter Censoring Hashtags Critical of Hillary Clinton?
    • Nintendo urged to FIRE feminist employee at centre of furious child pornography censorship row

      In her long essay, Rapp described people who possess child pornography as “simple possessors” or “mere possessors”, even though this is a serious crime.

      Her thesis jumps between discussing child pornography featuring “real children” and fictionalised depictions of sickening acts, meaning it often appears unclear what she is actually discussing.

      However, the content of the essay has provoked a furious response among many of the people who have read it.

      Rapp wrote: “Criminalising the the possession of a type of media – whether violent video games… controversial political or religious texts, or child pornography – is tantamount to criminalising thought, and should be above countries like the U.S. and Japan who have such strong freedom of speech protections.”

  • Privacy

    • Snooper’s charter to extend police access to hack phones and access internet data

      Latest version of investigatory powers bill will allow police to hack people’s computers and view browsing history

    • Sensing Public Support Waning, UK Fast Tracks Snooper’s Charter

      For some time now, we’ve been covering the UK’s plan — led by Home Secretary Theresa May — to pass a new Snooper’s Charter that would increase surveillance powers greatly in the UK. There’s been a growing amount of criticism of the plan in the UK, so rather than respond to it, May has simply moved to fast track the bill, officially called the Investigatory Powers Bill. The bill will officially be “published” today on March 1, and then will likely be voted on before the end of April.

    • The New EU-US Data Sharing Pact Still Allows Mass Surveillance

      A controversial, over decade-old arrangement used to transfer data of European citizens to US companies such as Facebook appears soon to be replaced: The draft text of the EU-US Privacy Shield, the data regulation pact rushed through to substitute the contentious Safe Harbour agreement, was published on Monday.

      Safe Harbour has faced renewed scrutiny since the 2013 Snowden revelations, and a new agreement has been anticipated for months. But surveillance law experts, as well as Max Schrems, who brought on challenges against Safe Harbour in the first place, say that the EU-US Privacy Shield doesn’t solve key privacy problems, and that it still facilitates mass surveillance.

    • GCHQ spy back at work after Plenty of Fish date rape claim

      Two women claim police did not believe that a spy working at the UK eavesdropping headquarters GCHQ raped them. The first woman claims the 28-year-old man – who they allege still works for the secretive agency – raped her in 2010 after they struck up a relationship on the matchmaking website Plenty of Fish.

      The second claimant, who also worked for GCHQ, which is in Gloucestershire, said the same man attacked her in 2012. In both cases, the man – who cannot be named for legal reasons – was given a harassment warning.

    • Encryption still a low priority for too many cloud users

      The vast majority of organisations plan to store confidential or sensitive data in the cloud by 2018, but despite that being just two years away, only a third have already set out an encryption plan which can be described as consistently applied across the entirety of the enterprise.

      According to the 2016 Global Encryption and Key Management Trends Study, more than half of global organisations are already transferring sensitive or confidential information to the cloud, with 56 percent of respondents stating that this already forms part of their data storage strategy, whether or not that data is encrypted or made unreadable via some other mechanism.

    • Next moves for the IPB: Split, Delay or Publish?

      Last week we heard three parliamentary committees’ criticisms of the Investigatory Powers Bill (IPB). All in all they had 123 recommendations about changes that need to be made to the Bill. So what’s next for this huge surveillance Bill?

    • The push-me-pull-yous of public policy: surveillance and freedom of information

      Surveillance and freedom of information are the push-me-pull-yous of public policy.

    • Declassified letter from 2002 defends warrantless taps

      A previously classified letter defending President George W. Bush’s controversial warrantless wiretap program deployed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks sought to justify the strategy as “the most effective method’’ to defend the country from additional assaults.

    • 2002 Letter Lays Out Bush’s Legal Authority For Conducting Surveillance After 9/11
    • Revealed: How The Bush Administration Argued Legal Loopholes for NSA Snooping
    • Classified 2002 Letter on NSA Eavesdropping Is Made Public
    • Apple Wins Big: Court Rejects FBI’s Argument For Hacking Drug Dealer’s iPhone
    • Former CIA Agent Barry Eisler Turned Writer on Imagining/Predicting Gov’t Surveillance
    • Apple to Court: FBI’s Failure Should Not Force Apple to Undermine Global Security
    • Voter Privacy: What You Need to Know About Your Digital Trail During the 2016 Election
    • Judge In Different Apple Case Says That All Writs Act Doesn’t Mean Apple Needs To Help Feds Break Into Phone
    • Spy continues to work at GCHQ despite rape allegations

      A GCHQ spy accused of rape by two women is still working at the secretive security agency because the police “did not properly investigate” the women’s claims, one of the alleged victims has said.

      The first alleged victim, who met the 28-year-old security officer through the dating website Plenty of Fish in 2010, said police ignored her claims twice, even after a second victim, a woman who worked with him at the GCHQ offices in Gloucestershire, came forward in 2013, the Mirror reports.

    • ACLU Sounds Alarm As Obama Administration Plans Quiet NSA Expansion

      Civil liberties advocates slammed reports on Friday that the Obama administration is poised to authorize the National Security Agency (NSA) to share more of its private intercepted communications with other U.S. intelligence agencies without expanding privacy protections.

      “Before we allow them to spread that information further in the government, we need to have a serious conversation about how to protect Americans’ information,” Alex Abdo, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, told the New YorkTimes.

      The change would loosen restrictions on access to the communications that are collected in mass data sweeps, including emails and phone calls, the Times reported, citing “officials familiar with the deliberations.”

    • Apple Wins Major Court Victory Against FBI in a Case Similar to San Bernardino

      Apple scored a major legal victory in its ongoing battle against the FBI on Monday when a federal magistrate judge in New York rejected the U.S. government’s request as part of a drug case to force the company to help it extract data from a locked iPhone. The ruling from U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein was issued as part of the criminal case against Jun Feng, who pleaded guilty in October to drug charges. It is a significant boost to Apple’s well-publicized campaign to resist the FBI’s similar efforts in the case of the San Bernardino killers.

    • Want To Report A Dangerous Drug Dealer? Just Enter Your Personal Info Into The DEA’s Unsecured Webform

      Chris Soghoian, the ACLU’s chief technologist, has decided to troll the DEA. His complaint is valid, though. The problem is, how do you troll the DEA when it’s almost impossible to find the contact info of the person you want to speak to? Just like the FBI has more options at its disposal than simply demanding Apple help it beat down an iPhone’s front door, Soghoian was able to route around the DEA’s unforthcoming attitude.

    • FBI Claims It Has No Record Of Why It Deleted Its Recommendation To Encrypt Phones

      Then, last year, I noticed that the page had been deleted. Seemed curious, so I sent in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the FBI to better understand why that page had magically been deleted, just at the time it seemed to contradict the FBI Director’s statements about encryption.

    • Courts, DOJ: Using Tor Doesn’t Give You A Greater Expectation Of Privacy

      In this month alone, we’ve had two federal judges and the DOJ state that there’s no expectation of privacy in IP addresses. This would normally be something covered by the Third Party Doctrine — where an IP address is part of the records retained by ISPs, and therefore, can be accessed with subpoenas rather than warrants.

      The twist, though, is that all of these statements were made in reference to people who made an active effort to obscure their IP addresses by using Tor.

    • Privacy Advocates Blast Plan to Expand NSA Data Sharing

      The Obama administration plans to increase the amount of private communications the National Security Agency can share with other government agencies without first adding privacy protections, according to a report published last week in The New York Times.

      The plan would ease restrictions on the amount of intercepted email and telephone intelligence the NSA gathers, including bulk collection of satellite communications, phone data between foreigners, and messages from overseas that U.S. allies provide, according to the report, which cited unnamed officials familiar with the deliberations.

      The move represents a major expansion of surveillance and data sharing authority and has been a longstanding concern of privacy groups, according to Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

      “There are significant privacy implications that EPIC will examine in detail,” he told the E-Commerce Times.

    • CIA And NSA Directors Blame The Media For Terrorists Using Encryption

      When it comes to the conversation that’s going on about the use of encryption, CIA director John Brennan and NSA Deputy Director Rick Ledgett have acquitted themselves rather poorly on a regular basis. It’s been an ongoing source of frustration to see the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks in particular devolve into a discussion on encryption, despite all evidence suggesting that those attacks weren’t planned using any kind of encryption at all. That didn’t keep Brennan from claiming that the CIA was unable to keep attacks from occurring due to encryption, nor has it stopped the calls from intelligence officials for even more data collection, despite the fact that those same officials have proven to be soft targets for hackers themselves. Ledgett, meanwhile, has proven to be an adversary of the free press, cheering on the destruction of computers from The Guardian.

    • European Pact Legalizes Facebook, Google, Amazon Data Transfers

      Privacy advocates railed Monday after the European Union unveiled a 128-page framework for trans-Atlantic data transfers that, the advocates said, amounts to little more than “10 layers of lipstick on a pig.” The document outlines the specifics of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, which replaces the 15-year-old Safe Harbor agreement struck down in October in a case that pitted Austrian grad student Max Schrems against Facebook[ticker symb=FB]. Schrems alleged Facebook misused Europeans’ data in cooperation with a National Security Agency program. Facebook has denied the allegation. U.S. spying tactics fell under scrutiny in 2013 after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden released thousands of classified documents allegedly detailing mass surveillance by the government.

    • ‘Privacy shield’ – the new deal governing how Europe’s user data is sent to the US
    • Privacy Shield doomed from get-go? NSA bulk surveillance waved through

      The European Commission has published details of its transatlantic “Privacy Shield” agreement, which is designed to ensure that personal information of citizens is protected to EU standards when it is sent to the US—even though it would appear that the NSA will continue to carry out bulk collection of data under the new pact.

      The new deal replaces the earlier Safe Harbour framework, which was struck down by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) following a complaint by privacy activist Max Schrems.

      An accompanying Privacy Shield FAQ released by Brussels’ officials explained that there are four main elements. According to the commission, the new agreement will “contain effective supervision mechanisms to ensure that companies respect their obligations, including sanctions or exclusion if they do not comply.”

    • System Updates: Governments Can Hack Most Software Using This “Golden Key” Backdoor

      When you read the headlines like “FBI is forcing Apple to create a backdoor in their products”, what you are really reading is that the FBI is forcing iPhone-maker to use the “pre-existing software update backdoor” present in iPhones. Surprisingly, a backdoor already exists in most software in the form of system updates and the US government is looking to exploit the same.

    • Leaked! Details Of The New Congressional Commission To Take On The Encryption Issue

      Back in December, we wrote about plans by Rep. Mike McCaul and Senator Mark Warner to put together a “commission” to figure out what to do about the encryption “issue.” In his speech, McCaul did at least say that “providing a backdoor into everybody’s iPhone was not going to be a very good strategy” since it would open things up to hackers, but at the very same time, he kept saying that we had to somehow stop bad people (terrorists, criminals, child predators) from using encryption. He also keeps insisting that the Paris attackers used encryption, despite lots of evidence to the contrary. So it’s not entirely clear what the point of this Commission is, other than to chase down some mythical solution that doesn’t exist.

      The basic problem is this: to have real security you need strong encryption. And if you have strong encryption, people who are both good and bad can use it. So either you undermine strong encryption for everyone — harming the vast majority of good people out there — or you allow strong encryption, meaning that some bad people can use it. The only way to have strong encryption but not allow the bad guys to use it is to have a technology distinguish who is “bad” from who is “good.” I’m pretty sure that’s impossible because there’s no universal standard for what makes a “bad” or “good” person, and definitely not one that can be implemented in device hardware or software. So a commission seems like a waste of time.

    • NSA Spying, Privacy and the Fourth Amendment: The Views of U.S. Presidential Candidates

      Sanders, who voted against the Patriot Act and the U.S.A. Freedom Act, stated in a Time article last year: “Do we really want to live in a country where the NSA gathers data on virtually every single phone call in the United States – including as many as 5 billion cellphone records per day? I don’t.”

      Arguing against the U.S.A. Freedom Act in 2015, Sanders wrote: “Do we really want our government to collect our emails, see our text messages, know everyone’s Internet browsing history, monitor bank and credit card transactions, keep tabs on people’s social networks? I don’t.”

      “The Intercept” (theintercept.com) funded by billionaire Pierre Omidyar teamed with Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and former Nation writer Jeremy Scahill, has become the custodian of Snowden’s immense archive of classified documents, which it continues to mine for stories.

      Edward Snowden is living in asylum in Russia and currently in negotiations with the U.S. Justice Department. In February, he told a libertarian forum he will return home if he is guaranteed a “fair trial” and “can make a public interest defense of why this was done and allow a jury to decide.”

    • The Most Important Passages From Apple’s Challenge to the FBI

      GovtOS. That’s what Apple Inc. calls the newest product in its pipeline. It’s not the brainchild of the gadget masters in Cupertino but rather an iPhone operating system conceived by some buttoned-down folks in Washington, D.C. Unlike the latest iPhone or iPad, it wasn’t revealed on a stage before thousands of the faithful. Instead, it was unveiled in a stark response to the Obama administration’s attempt to force the computer maker to assist in a terrorism probe. And, Apple has warned, it may someday lead to every American being made an unwilling assistant to law enforcement.

    • ‘I’d move heaven and Earth’ to access Lavrov’s emails – former head of NSA and CIA

      Privacy seems less and less attainable these days, as foreign spy agencies target top political figures. The former director of both the NSA and CIA told US Today that he’d “move heaven and Earth” to access Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s email.

      Retired four-star general Michael Hayden, the only person who has ever served as both the director of the NSA and CIA, made the comments while criticizing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server for emails.

    • Spy who used Plenty of Fish dating site is accused of rape by two women but is still working for GCHQ because ‘police did not take their claims seriously’

      A spy accused of rape by two women, including one he met on dating website Plenty of Fish, is still working at GCHQ amid allegations police did ‘not take their claims seriously’.

      Both alleged victims say police ignored their claims about the national security expert, who is still working at the top secret intelligence headquarters in Gloucestershire.

      Details of the case emerged in a civil court hearing in which it was revealed that the worker had once been dismissed by GCHQ managers after child porn was discovered on his computer.

    • Spy accused of rape still working for GCHQ because ‘police did not properly investigate’ claims, alleged victim says

      A secret service official accused of rape by two different women he has had relationships with is described him as ‘untouchable’

  • Civil Rights

    • Panel: Poland’s constitutional crisis endangers democracy

      An international human rights commission says a crisis affecting the functioning of Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal has endangered the rule of law, democracy and human rights.

    • Council of Europe criticises Poland’s court changes – report

      The Council of Europe’s advisory body has said reforms of Poland’s constitutional court pose a danger to the rule of law in the European Union member state, dealing another blow to the eurosceptic Warsaw government’s legal changes.

      Poland asked the Council’s Venice Commission to comment on the legal changes after parliament overruled appointments made to the tribunal by the previous government, causing uncertainty over its proceedings.

    • Police Shoot 17-Year-Old Teenager For Refusing To Drop Broomstick

      On Saturday night, two Salt Lake City officers shot a black teenager in his torso because he refused orders to drop his weapon — a broomstick. The shooting, which left the teen in critical condition, led to clashes between protesters and police.

      The Salt Lake City Police Department says the shooting occurred when two officers saw two men, including 17-year-old Abdi Mohamed, attacking another man with metal objects. In the officers’ version of events, Mohamed refused to drop his weapon and moved to attack the victim, prompting the officers to open fire.

    • Virginia Senate Committee Approves Bill to Withhold Public Employee Information

      The legislation was passed by the General Laws and Technology Committee whose rationale was to protect the private information of public employees from possible hackers.

    • Virginia Senate Votes To Exempt Police Officers’ Information From FOIA Responses

      Way to go, Virginia. In a time when police accountability is (finally!) a mainstream media topic, the Virginia state legislature is having none of it.

    • Federal Judge Says Third Party Doctrine A Perfectly ‘Good Law;’ No Warrants Needed To Obtain Cell Location Records

      Back in December, a Connecticut state court ruled that tracking people in near-real time with cell site location info required the use of a warrant. Three months later, a Connecticut federal court has ruled law enforcement can obtain CSLI without a warrant, in bulk and for extended periods of time. While the opinion doesn’t address the use of subpoenas and CSLI as a makeshift Stingray (for real-time tracking), it does come down firmly on the side of the government’s interpretation of the Third Party Doctrine.

    • Freed from Detention in Bahrain, U.S. Journalist Describes Interrogation & Ongoing Crackdown

      We continue our exclusive interview with one of four U.S. journalists who were detained in the Gulf state of Bahrain and released Sunday after an international outcry. Anna Therese Day and her camera crew were in Bahrain during protests marking the anniversary of the kingdom’s February 2011 uprising. She describes their interrogation and the ongoing crackdown on journalists and human rights advocates in Bahrain.

    • Only In America: An Indiscreet Selfie Can Put A Kid In Prison

      Did you know that if you are an American under 18 years old and you use your cell phone to send a nude “selfie” of yourself to a friend, you can be convicted of manufacturing and distributing “child pornography” and sent to prison? In case you are too old to be in the loop, a “selfie” is a photo that one makes of oneself.

      This is how expansively prosecutors, whose main purpose in life is to ruin as many people as possible, interpret laws passed to protect children from sexual exploitation.

    • When Immigration Detention Becomes a Death Sentence

      New report shows ICE is not holding immigration detention facilities accountable for medical neglect.

      On an April morning in 2012, at about 5:24 a.m., a guard inside the Denver Contract Detention Facility initiated a Code Blue emergency because he saw a detainee in medical distress. Minutes later, nursing staff arrived and found 46-year-old Evalin-Ali Mandza lying on the bed in his cell, holding his chest, and complaining of severe chest pain. He was having a heart attack.

      Denver Contract Detention Facility (DCDF) is one of approximately 250 detention facilities around the country that hold immigrants with pending deportation proceedings. It is operated by GEO Group, Inc. — a private prison company with annual revenues of nearly $1.7 billion — under a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency responsible for detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants.

      After moving Mr. Mandza out of his cell, a nurse attempted to take an electrocardiogram. However, she was unable to get a reading because she had not been trained on the EKG machine and did not know how to use it. She then performed the wrong test. Once the nurse performed the correct test, she was unable to interpret the results because she had not been trained on this either.

    • Victory! State Department Will Try to Fix Wassenaar Arrangement

      Regular readers of this blog will likely be familiar with the Wassenaar Arrangement, a 41-nation agreement intended to regulate the export of certain “dual-use” technologies, such as guns and fissile material. In December 2013, the list of controlled technologies was amended to include surveillance systems for the first time and the participating countries have slowly been rolling out their implementations ever since. Today, news outlets in Washington DC are reporting that the State Department has finally agreed to try to renegotiate the language of the Wassenaar Arrangement to eliminate the 2013 changes.

  • DRM

    • Digital Rights Management Faces “Big Data,” Multiple-Rightsholder Challenges

      Managing copyright in digital musical works can be difficult because there are multiple rights holders and no standards for exchanging the massive amounts of data involved. Digital rights management services LyricFind and Rumblefish are among organisations working to streamline access to online content, company chiefs say.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • UNITAID Report On Delinking R&D Costs From Medicines Prices

      Delinkage of research and development costs from medicines prices could “vastly expand” access to medicines by drastically dropping costs of the knowledge component of health products, innovative medicines R&D facility UNITAID says in a new report.

      The report, entitled: “An economic perspective on delinking the cost of R&D from the price of medicines,” [pdf] was published on 26 February. The report summary from UNITAID is available here.

    • Re:Route – A Ready Reckoner Of Alternative R&D Models For Health

      The student-driven project, funded by Open Society Foundations, is a qualitative review of the alternative R&D initiatives around the world, in time for the United Nations High Level Panel on Access to Medicines dialogue next month.

    • Copyrights

      • Microsoft Sues Pirating Comcast Subscriber

        Microsoft has filed a complaint at a federal court in Washington accusing a Comcast subscriber of activating various pirated copies of its software. The account was identified by Microsoft’s in-house cyberforensics team which logs suspicious “activation patterns.”

      • Pirate radio playlist

        One of the UK’s most interesting historical legacies in music does not involve the actual bands that made up the British Invasion, but rather the people who played these band’s records illegally.

      • FBI Busts Movie Industry Insider for DVD Screener Leaks

        A 31-year old man from Lancaster has been arrested following an FBI investigation into several leaked DVD-screeners. The man, who worked in the entertainment industry, pleaded guilty to uploading screener copies of The Revenant and The Peanuts Movie to the private BitTorrent tracker Pass The Popcorn.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/03/01/raspberry-pi-3/feed/ 0 Links 31/1/2016: OpenELEC 6.0.1, Linux Lite 2.8 http://techrights.org/2016/01/31/linux-lite-2-8/ http://techrights.org/2016/01/31/linux-lite-2-8/#comments Sun, 31 Jan 2016 18:13:17 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=88833

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Get your own copy of Torrent search engine as Strike search engine goes open source

    Now everyone can have their own torrent search engine as Strike torrent search goes open source

    Somebody’s loss is always somebody’s gain. The same happened in the case of the popular torrent search engine Strike which has just gone open source. Now, torrent lovers and film fans can build their own custom torrent search engine based on Strike code.

  • Strike Torrent Search Goes Open Source, After RIAA Debacle

    The popular torrent search engine Strike has shut down permanently. Following a lawsuit from the RIAA, developer Andrew Sampson decided to stay away from torrent released projects. To mark the end of a turbulent period, he has now released the search engine’s source code to the public.

  • TiddlyWiki: A free, open source wiki revisited

    TiddlyWiki has become a very polished piece of free, open source software engineering and I was delighted to find that the latest version could even import my ancient version’s content. My old TiddlyWiki was a fairly large collection of recipes and other than some minor formatting issues (the latest version supports a type of markdown called WikiText so my old version’s content wasn’t correctly formatted) everything was easily imported and upgraded.

  • Snowden Leak Proves That NSA And GCHQ Spied On Israeli Drones Using Open Source Tools

    GCHQ used open source software like AntiSky to break down commercial satellite encryption. AntiSky was developed by Dr. Markus Kuhn, Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. The software allows anyone to peep through the satellite signals and then use his expertise to come up with some meaningful outcome. However, digital video signals used by some drones might pose difficulty for the analysts appointed by the security agencies.

  • Events

    • OpenStack Summit Austin: Call for Speakers

      The next OpenStack Summit will take place in Austin, TX, US from April 25-29, 2016. The Call for Speaker period is still open and will close on February 1st , 2016, 11:59 PM PDT (February 2nd, 08:59 CEST). You can submit your presentations here.

  • BSD

    • Exploiting The Full Potential Of ZFS On BSD Systems

      With ZFS file-system support continuing to spread via OpenZFS, you may be one of the many out there still wondering about the benefits of ZFS.

      Allan Jude, a FreeBSD server administrator, is presenting at FOSDEM this weekend about “interesting things you can do with ZFS.” His presentation covers ZFS features like data integrity checking, multi-level cache, copy-on-write behavior, snapshots, quotas, transparent compression, incremental replication, and more.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

Leftovers

  • The End of Twitter

    It wasn’t that long ago that I—and many other people I know—would have argued that Twitter was more than just another social network. I would have told you that Twitter was more like a utility, a service so fundamental that I could imagine a scenario in which it was literally underwritten. Twitter needed to exist. A stream of those hundred-and-forty-character tweets was how you found the most crucial, critical, and thought-provoking stories of the moment.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • OpenSSL patches a severe but not widespread problem

      The OpenSSL project has patched a problem in the cryptographic library but one that likely does not affect many popular applications.

      OpenSSL enables SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or TLS (Transport Layer Security) encryption. Most websites use it, which is indicated in Web browsers with a padlock symbol.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • What’s In A Name? Iraqis Change Names to Avoid Being Targeted by Militias

      Fear of those Shiite Muslim militias is driving many locals in Diyala Province, where the population is mixed, to change their names to more neutral formulations.

      The reason is simple survival. “Just over the past two months our department has received between 150 and 200 applications for a name change,” said an official working for Diyala’s Directorate of Nationality. “Most of the applications are being submitted by people whose names reveal their sect or the areas from where their family or tribe comes.”

    • Bombs Damage Pipelines in Iraq as 41 Are Killed

      A pair of bombs near Kirkuk damaged a pipeline that delivers gas used for electricity production in Kurdistan and caused power outages.

    • The Grim Fight Against War

      Every candidate running for president accepts war as a necessity.

    • ISIS Kidnap 30 Children; 139 Killed in Iraq
    • Saudi Arabia funding 24,000 Pak madrassas, says American senator

      About 24,000 madrassas in Pakistan are funded by Saudi Arabia which has unleashed a “tsunami of money” to “export intolerance”, a top American senator has said, adding that the US needs to end its effective acquiescence to the Saudi sponsorship of radical Islamism.

      Senator Chris Murphy said Pakistan is the best example of where money coming from Saudi Arabia is funnelled to religious schools that nurture hatred and terrorism.

    • Airmen get computer ‘weapon system’ just in time for Colorado Springs symposium

      Air Force Space Command has declared its first cyber “weapons system” operational as a conference of computer warfare experts gets ready to kick off in Colorado Springs.

      The weapon, deemed fully operational this month, is basically a big firewall designed to protect the Air Force’s internal 1 million-user network from hackers. It will be a hot topic at the Rocky Mountain Cyber Symposium, which is expected to draw hundreds of computer experts to The Broadmoor for a four-day confab starting Monday.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • The Leak Hypocrisy of the Hillary Shadow Cabinet

      Now, as I have said before, one thing that is going on here is that CIA is acting just like CIA always does when it declares publicly known things, including torture and drones, to be highly secret. It appears likely that these Top Secret emails are yet another set of emails about the worst kept secret in the history of covert programs, CIA’s drone killing in Pakistan. And so I am sympathetic, in principle, to Hillary’s campaign claims that this is much ado about nothing.

    • 22 Clinton Emails Deemed ‘Top Secret’ by State Department (VIDEO)

      Confirming that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private computer server held highly classified material, the U.S. government Friday censored 22 emails.

      The seven email chains from the Democratic presidential front-runner will be withheld from the public because information in them has been deemed “top secret,” announced John Kirby, State Department spokesman. However, “These documents were not marked classified at the time that they were sent,” he said, having been upgraded at the request of intelligence agencies.

    • Hey, Have You Heard About the Top Secret US Drone Program?

      Hmmm. A news article? Here’s a Politico piece from a couple of weeks ago, when we heard that the inspector general’s office was concerned about some of Clinton’s emails.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Cloud blanket warms up melting icecap

      Researchers have identified another piece in the climate machinery that is accelerating the melting of the Greenland ice cap. The icy hills are responding to the influence of a higher command system: the clouds.

      An international research team led by scientists from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium report in Nature Communications journal that cloud cover above the northern hemisphere’s largest single volume of permanent ice is raising temperatures by between 2° and 3°C and accounting for 20-30% of the melting.

    • Here is the weather forecast for the next five years: even hotter

      Global temperatures will continue to soar over the next 12 months as rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions and El Niño combine to bring more record-breaking warmth to the planet.

      According to the Met Office’s forecast for the next five years, 2016 is likely to be the warmest since records began. Then in 2017 there will be a dip as the effects of El Niño dissipate and there is some planet-wide cooling.

      But after that, and for the remaining three years of the decade, the world will continue to experience even more warming. The forecast, which will be released this week, is the first such report that the Met Office has issued since it overhauled its near-term climate prediction system last year.

  • Finance

    • Same as the old boss: Justin Trudeau ready to sign Harper’s EU free trade deal

      CETA is a Canada/EU “free trade agreement,” negotiated in secret and containing the notorious “Investor-State Dispute Settlement” (ISDS) clause, which lets corporations sue governments in confidential tribunals in order to force them to repeal their environmental, safety and labour laws.

      If that sounds familiar, it should: CETA was negotiated in the same corrupt, secretive process that the old Harper government deployed for the Trans Pacific Partnership and the Canada/China deal.

    • The Perils of Privatization

      Make no mistake: The purpose of privatization is to make a profit. The promise of privatization is efficiency. But in its pursuit of both profits and efficiency, privatization creates perverse incentives. It encourages privately managed charter schools to avoid or get rid of “expensive” students” (unless the reimbursement formula makes them profitable to keep); it encourages for-profit hospitals to over diagnose patients and perform unnecessary surgeries; it encourages private preschool providers of special education to misdiagnose children as in need of services to produce profits.

    • Hillary’s Corporate Democrats Taking Down Bernie Sanders

      Before announcing for President in the Democratic Primaries, Bernie Sanders told the people he would not run as an Independent and be like Nader—invoking the politically-bigoted words “being a spoiler.” Well, the spoiled corporate Democrats in Congress and their consultants are mounting a “stop Bernie campaign.” They believe he’ll “spoil” their election prospects.

    • Some Things Change With Time … While the Gender Wage Gap Remains Relatively the Same

      Despite the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009, the equal pay needle hasn’t moved much at all.

      It’s hard to believe it’s been seven years since President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first piece of legislation to become law during his presidency. Back in 2009, we celebrated the law’s potential for turning the rallying cry of “equal pay for equal work” into a reality.

      But sadly – as President Obama’s announcement today to hold companies accountable for paying women and people of color less makes evident – the momentum created by Ledbetter’s namesake legislation hasn’t moved the equal pay needle all that much.

      Who was Lilly Ledbetter? In 2007, the Supreme Court threw out a jury’s verdict that she suffered pay discrimination during her nearly 20 years as one of the only female managers at an Alabama Goodyear Tire plant. In a 5-4 opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito, the court found that Ledbetter waited too long to sue, even though she didn’t know about the disparity between her pay and that of her male peers until she was close to retirement.

    • The West Is Reduced To Looting Itself

      Accountable government in the West is history. Nothing but failure and collapse awaits Western civilization.

    • New York Times Gets it Wrong: Bernie Sanders Not “Top Beneficiary of Outside Money”

      The New York Times caused a stir by publishing a classic man-bites-dog style campaign finance story in its Friday editions titled “Bernie Sanders Is Top Beneficiary of Outside Money.” The article charges that despite his fiery campaign rhetoric against Super PACs and big money in politics, Sanders has gained much more from Super PAC spending than his Democratic opponents.

      “In fact,” the Times reports, “more super PAC money has been spent so far in express support of Mr. Sanders than for either of his Democratic rivals, including Hillary Clinton, according to Federal Election Commission records.”

    • How the Homeless Population Is Changing — and Becoming Much More Vulnerable

      On any given night in the United States, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, over half a million people are without a home. That number may have decreased nationwide in the past few years, but California remains on the forefront of the problem, accounting for 20 percent of the country’s homeless in 2014.

      [...]

      The common perception of homelessness is that it is a problem that afflicts only those with mental health and substance use problems. But this description doesn’t describe the experience of older adults, particularly those who first experienced homelessness late in life.

    • The ugliest Bernie smear yet: Washington Post shows its corporate colors with new Sanders hit piece

      The Washington Post has been on something of an anti-Sanders kick lately. Its latest editorial, Bernie Sanders’s fiction-filled campaign, is somehow worse than its last one, which derided his single-payer plan in tabloid-like terms. It’s entirely predictable that an establishment gatekeeper publication like The Post would not approve of Sanders’ relatively radical policy proposals, but the degree to which it keeps offering up hysterical, and often times totally disingenuous critiques, is surprising even by its standards.

    • Cheap cab ride? You must have missed Uber’s true cost

      To understand why we see so few genuine alternatives to US technology giants, it’s instructive to compare the fate of a company like Uber – valued at more than $62.5bn (£44bn) – and that of Kutsuplus, an innovative Finnish startup forced to shut down late last year.

      Kutsuplus’s aspiration was to be the Uber of public transport: it operated a network of minibuses that would pick up and drop passengers anywhere in Helsinki, with smartphones, algorithms and the cloud deployed to maximise efficiency, cut costs and provide a slick public service. Being a spinoff of a local university that operated on a shoestring budget, Kutsuplus did not have rich venture capitalists behind it. This, perhaps, is what contributed to its demise: the local transport authority found it too expensive, despite impressive year-on-year growth of 60%.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Is Bernie Sanders the American Jeremy Corbyn?

      He is the veteran socialist that no one gave a prayer to – but now Bernie Sanders is starting to be seen as a serious contender to be the Democrats’ presidential candidate. Does that remind you of anyone?

    • Hillary, Bernie and Jill

      Lest anyone begin to believe that this writer is indicating support for Mr. Sanders, please disabuse yourself of any such notion. The fact that Mrs. Clinton is an unabashed corporate shill, and Mr. Sanders, perhaps, isn’t, or is less so, doesn’t cause this writer to reject the one and embrace the other. He agrees that Mr. Sanders is probably the lesser of the two Democratic evils, but there are alternatives.

    • Trump and the Conservative Establishment Deserve Each Other

      The bankrupt political establishment has given us Trump as surely as Victor Frankenstein gave his community the monster. I’m all for revolting against the establishment, but we will regret making the authoritarian and boorish Trump the standard bearer of that revolt.

    • INFOGRAPHIC: The Conservative Civil War Over Donald Trump

      Conservative pundits are bickering over Donald Trump’s campaign, especially after National Review’s “Against Trump” issue and the backlash it engendered. On one side are pundits who want to stop Trump’s candidacy in its tracks.

    • Can the new Charter protect the BBC’s independence

      Let’s be frank: the status quo does not offer sufficient safeguards for BBC independence.

  • Censorship

    • Rowena Kincaid: Cancer patient attacks Facebook over ‘censorship’

      A terminally ill woman has hit out at Facebook after a “potentially life-saving” photograph showing one of her nipples was removed from her page.

      Rowena Kincaid, who has secondary stage-four breast cancer, said the decision to remove the image could prevent thousands people from learning about the symptoms of the disease.

    • Facebook Cracks Down On Private Gun Sales

      Still, this marks another step by the company to limit the sale of firearms on its service. As the Verge reported in 2014, Facebook previously limited posts about gun sales to people over the age of 18.

    • Elite students receive a lesson in self-censorship

      Teeraporn Suwanvidhu had a tough decision to make five years ago as president of the Thai Student Association in the UK: remove an article, or lose all support from the Thai Embassy next year.

    • Reformers to demand censorship from Facebook, Line

      Executives of the giant social media outlets Facebook and Line have been called to a meeting by the national reform assembly over monitoring and removing content considered a security threat to Thailand.

      The meeting called by the assembly’s media reform committee follows a similar one with Google executives on Jan 22 in which they were asked to remove content without a court order.

    • Thai junta wants online content removed without order

      A report claims that a Thai junta-appointed committee is to ask Facebook and online communication device Line to immediately remove content deemed threatening to national security or the monarchy, if it wants to continue operating in the Kingdom.

      The removal would be carried out without the need for a Computer Crime Act court order — previously needed before any action is taken against anyone posting “threatening” content online.

      The Bangkok Post reported Sunday that a document claimed to have been leaked and obtained by Thai cyber activists reveals details of the February plans.

    • Confirmed: 1984-style censorship in Sweden

      Here is a screenshot of a story in the Daily Mail, titled EXCLUSIVE – Swedish social worker was stabbed in the back and thigh as she tried to break up a fight between two teenage migrants: Police officer reveals shocking new details of the killing. Note how it appears just fine through my regular Internet service:

    • Bill Gates sold rights to the Tiananmen 1989 pictures to a Chinese company

      The photos went as part of the deal that sold Corbis Entertainment’s licensing arm to Visual China Group.

      Few subjects are more heavily censored in China than mention the 1989 Tiananmen uprising and massacre.

    • Bill Gates has sold a set of iconic images to a Beijing firm—including of Tiananmen in 1989

      The sale of politically sensitive pictures to a Chinese company raises the question of whether they will become harder to access. The answer depends partly on your location. Within mainland China the issue of who owns sensitive images is a somewhat academic matter. Censorship—both government-led and self-imposed—means that images such as “Tank Man” rarely see the light of day anyway.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • James Ridgeway’s Solitary Reporting

      Each week, Ridgeway leaves his home in Washington, D.C., walks to his local post office, and returns with about fifty letters from men and women locked in solitary-confinement units in prisons around the country. The letters began arriving in 2010, soon after Ridgeway launched a Web site, called Solitary Watch, with an editor named Jean Casella. “When we started, there was nobody writing about this,” she said. Ridgeway was then seventy-three years old. He dug into his retirement fund to help cover startup costs, and now, when he goes to the post office each week, he pushes a walker.

    • Watch An Atheist Voter Confront Ben Carson About Separation Of Church And State

      Asked by an atheist voter about how his Christian faith would play a role in his presidency, Republican candidate Ben Carson said he believes there is inherently “no conflict” between God’s law and the laws of America.

      “Fortunately, our Constitution, the supreme law of the land, was designed by men of faith, and it has a Judeo-Christian foundation,” the retired neurosurgeon told a packed room of potential caucusgoers in Iowa City on Friday afternoon. “Therefore, there is no conflict there. So it is not a problem.”

    • Discriminatory New Visa Law Keeps German-Iranian Professor Out of U.S.

      ON JANUARY 29, Dr. Amin Shokrollahi was planning to do something he had done many times before: take a flight from his home in Switzerland to the United States. Shokrollahi, a dual German-Iranian citizen, is a renowned mathematician, computer scientist, and a professor at the prestigious École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne. Once in the U.S., he was to deliver an address at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSC) in San Francisco.

    • State Rep. Praises KKK, Wants New Holiday To Honor Confederacy

      The Ku Klux Klan has gotten a bad rap, according to one Georgia lawmaker. He says the terror group “was not so much a racist thing but a vigilante thing to keep law and order” that “made a lot of people straighten up.”

      That leader is now hellbent on stopping the “cultural cleansing” of the South’s heritage. So far this year, State Rep. Tommy Benton (R) has co-sponsored two bills to preserve the Confederate’s legacy.

    • Cops Caught on Camera in Cowardly Gang-Style Beating of an Unarmed Man Lying Face Down

      In August of 2014, multiple deputies with the Marion County Sheriff’s office conducted a drug bust. During the bust, Derrick Price ran from deputies Jesse Terrell, Trevor Fitzgerald, James Amideo, Cody Hoppel and Adam Crawford. However, once he realized he could not outrun the pickup truck, he quickly stopped, put his hands up, and laid face down on the ground — completely surrendering.

      Upon reaching the unarmed, nonviolent, completely compliant, and prostrate man, the deputies proceeded to unleash a furious beating composed of kicks to the head, knees to the body, and countless blows from fists.

    • Father Arrested For Theft After Taking Daughter’s Phone Vindicated

      Arrested on a theft charge for disciplining his daughter by taking her cell phone away, a North Texas father said “justice” was finally served.

      Ronald Jackson was arrested by Grand Prairie police after investigators attempted to retrieve the phone, but were never successful in their efforts.

      A judge at the Dallas County Courthouse found Jackson not guilty on Tuesday, citing a lack of evidence to move forward with the case.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Pirate Party Risks Future to Protect Hyperlinks

        Earlier this week it was revealed that the Czech Pirate Party is being prosecuted for running a pirate TV show site. The party faces 200,000 euros in damages and could even be dissolved as a legal entity, but according to the chief of the party’s International Department, defending Internet hyperlinking is worth the risk.

      • Welcome to the divergence

        And it is a huge trend — vinyl sales are at a 26-year high in the US, and they represent more revenue to the music industry than streaming right now.

      • The Commerce Department Has Good Recommendations For Fixing Copyright Law – But More is Needed

        This paper grew out of a series of hearings in 2013 and 2014 in which EFF and other public interest organizations and academics gave evidence, along with people from the media and publishing industries. The Commerce Department panel deserves praise for inviting many different viewpoint. It covers three issues: remixes, the ability to re-sell and lend digital goods (called “first sale” rights), and copyright’s civil penalties (called “statutory damages”). The paper makes some recommendations to Congress that will help promote innovation and free speech, and will hopefully help begin a conversation about other needed fixes. And the Commerce Department panel did a good job of inviting and hearing many different viewpoints. Still, their recommendations in these three areas don’t go far enough to fix the problems they identify.

      • Could you be a Local Pirate?

        In 2014 we stood in the North-West Region for the European Elections. At last year’s General Election we had candidates in Manchester, Sheffield, South Wales and London. This year we want to consolidate in those areas, and branch out to new ones as well. This means that even if you are the only Pirate in your area it’s still worth standing as a candidate as a way of putting the Pirate name and brand out there – hopefully it will lead to kick-starting a branch in your area if people come forward and are interested.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/01/31/linux-lite-2-8/feed/ 0 Links 27/1/2016: Tails 2.0, GPUOpen http://techrights.org/2016/01/27/tails-2-0-gpuopen/ http://techrights.org/2016/01/27/tails-2-0-gpuopen/#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2016 13:24:35 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=88670

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux and open source are the future

    To me, open source is the future of computing and of jobs. Programming, especially on the web, is in high demand. So, we must make sure that our youth are on the path to intersect with these jobs. Several years ago, Brazil adopted open source for use with their 50 million K-12 students, and I sometimes wonder if the United States will be playing catch-up to get students into open source.

    One of my dreams is to help unite open source enthusiasts in the Washington D.C. area. There’s so much we can learn from each other, and the time to start is now.

  • Linux through a journalist’s eyes

    How does a self-proclaimed “English and history guy” make a career writing about Linux? In this video, veteran technology journalist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols tells us precisely how.

    Vaughan-Nichols takes listeners on a journey through his storied career, highlighting his early days translating programming languages for non-technical users. He still remembers the day he stumbled on Linux. “I discovered that Linux was actually neat—that this little Finnish graduate student with the funny name on the Minix newsgroup was on to something,” he says. And for nearly 25 years, Vaughan-Nichols says, that special “something” has propelled his career.

  • Desktop

    • The U.S. Government and Open Standards: A Tale of Personal Woe

      That was a little annoying for me because I didn’t have Acrobat — which Adobe no longer offers for Linux — on my Ubuntu Linux computer. Fortunately, I was able to download an older version of Acrobat and install it on Ubuntu easily enough. With that in place, I could fill out the document.

    • Free

      It’s been an interesting few months, getting used to this whole advertising-among-the-stories thing. But in the end, I have come to realize that everything being free might be good, but there are times when all of that free stuff can bring an end to things we’ve come to count on. It was mentioned to me just a day ago, that if a news website like FOSS Force goes under, then there are a lot more to fill that space. I asked him what sites he was speaking of and he pointed out two of the biggest, those being LXer and LinuxToday.com. I then asked him just where he thought those two website got their news. He’s probably standing just where I left him. The same deer-in-the-headlights look. Like I had explained quantum mechanics to him.

    • Why Linux is still better than Windows 10

      Microsoft’s release of Windows 10 has added a new wrinkle to the eternal “Windows versus Linux” discussions online. And recently a Linux redditor took the time to install Windows 10 and do some exploring. While he found Windows 10 to be a prettier version of Windows, it wasn’t long before he realized that Linux still beats Windows as a desktop operating system.

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

    • Architecting Next-Gen Linux Car Systems: AGL’s Michael Fabry

      The Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) project is one of many independently funded software projects hosted by the Linux Foundation. For these Collaborative Projects, as they’re called, the Linux Foundation provides the essential framework so that participants can focus on innovation and results.

      To learn more, we are talking with key contributors about what they do and how they became involved. For this feature, we spoke with Michael Fabry, Project Manager Engineering at Microchip, about his work with the AGL, which is dedicated to creating open source software solutions for automotive applications and which recently added automakers Subaru, Mitsubishi, Mazda, and Ford to its list of members.

    • The Linux Test Project has been released for January 2016

      Good news everyone,

      the Linux Test Project test suite stable release for *January 2016*
      has been released.

      Since the last release 191 patches by 29 authors were merged.

      Notable changes are:

      * Rewritten and new cgroup tests for cpuacct and pids controllers

      * Rewritten basic cgroup functional and stress tests

      * New userns07 test for user namespaces

      * New syscall tests for:
      - renameat2()
      - sched_getattr()
      - sched_setattr()
      - kcmp()
      - fcntl(fd, F_SETLEASE)
      - preadv()
      - pwritev()

    • Has the Linux Foundation Sold out to VMware? Probably Not

      Has the Linux Foundation, the most powerful nonprofit organization in the open source world, sold out to corporate interests? And how committed is it to defending the GPL free software license? Those are questions some critics are asking in the wake of recent changes to the Linux Foundation’s by-laws.

    • Digital Asset Holdings Discloses New Details About Its Hyperledger Platform

      Digital Asset is excited to announce that Hyperledger has become one of the most highly requested project participants in the Linux Foundation’s history.

    • Digital Asset Announces Progress Made In Hyperledger Project

      Digital Asset has recently announced the progress made in the Hyperledger project. The company describes it as an enterprise-ready blockchain server with a client API, which has a modular architecture and configurable protocol properties.

    • Digital Asset Holdings says Linux Foundation partnership boosts critical Hyperledger development

      Fresh from the completion of a major funding round, Digital Asset Holdings said its announcement last month that it was moving its Hyperledger platform to the Linux Foundation has been critical to further developing the platform. In just one month since the Linux Foundation announced a collaborative effort to advance blockchain technology, the project has become one of the efforts with the most participation requests in Linux Foundation history, according to a Digital Asset announcement.

    • Linux Kernel 3.10.95 LTS Updates USB Drivers, Improves the Networking Stack

      Renowned kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the ninty-fifth maintenance build for the long-term supported Linux 3.10 kernel series, urging all users to update as soon as possible.

      The announcement for Linux kernel 3.10.95 LTS comes right after Mr. Greg Kroah-Hartman informed us about the general availability of the Linux kernel 4.3.4, Linux kernel 4.1.16 LTS, and Linux kernel 3.14.59 LTS versions, and just by looking at the appended shortlog we can notice that it’s a small update with only 46 files changed consisting of 336 insertions and 92 deletions.

    • Voice of the Masses: Should the Linux Foundation have community representation?

      According to their own website: “The Linux Foundation protects and promotes the ideals of freedom and generous collaboration established through the development of Linux, and shares these ideals to power any endeavor aiming to make the future a better place in which to live.” This is indeed a noble goal, and to assist it in this endeavor, many of the world’s largest technology companies pay tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars. All this money is first stored in a Scrooge McDuck style silo before being used to pay the salaries of some kernel developers, passed on to projects improving security in open source, and used to promote Linux in a wide variety of ways.

    • Graphics Stack

      • It’s Time to Open up the GPU

        The second is a commitment to open source software. The game and graphics development community is an active hub of enthusiastic individuals who believe in the value of sharing knowledge. Full and flexible access to the source of tools, libraries and effects is a key pillar of the GPUOpen philosophy. Only through open source access are developers able to modify, optimize, fix, port and learn from software. The goal? Encouraging innovation and the development of amazing graphics techniques and optimizations in PC games.

      • AMD emits fresh open-source GPU tools for HPC, game devs

        AMD has fleshed out its notion of an openly defined GPU architecture, GPUOpen, with the launch of a bunch of open-source tools on GitHub plus a shiny new website.

        The move has been welcomed by the gaming press, but GPUOpen is not all about blasting people in 3D death matches – AMD also has the high performance computing (HPC) community in mind. The “Professional Compute” side of the initiative brings together tools like.

      • Trying To Run The AMDGPU Driver With A Hawaii GPU On Linux 4.5

        After installing that 4.5-rc1 kernel spin and then blacklisting the Radeon DRM driver (since it will still try to auto-load by default as it matches the hardware PCI ID), I booted with AMDGPU. However, I quickly realized things weren’t working right when the R9 290 didn’t mode-set to 4K.

      • OpenGL 3.1 Core Support Lands In X.Org Server’s GLAMOR

        A number of GLAMOR commits landed today within the X.Org Server Git repository.

        Most noticeable to the GLAMOR work that landed today is the OpenGL core profile support from the patches originally posted earlier this month and since revised. With the patches, there is core profile support with GLAMOR for EGL/ephyr/XWayland. There’s also VBO support for GLAMOR X-Video vertex array objects usage, and more as part of this work.

      • RTG Announces Radeon Open Compute Platform

        Their latest post reads, “Today the Radeon Technology Group is releasing a preview version of the Radeon Open Compute Kernel driver (ROCK) and Radeon Open Compute runtime ROCR, allowing the exploration of what is possible with the open GPU computing foundation. The objective of this release is to start a dialog with the commercial and academic HPC communities that will shape the future direction of the Boltzmann Initiative, both for the coming year and beyond. We are excited to present to you our first public release of the Boltzmann driver and runtime with HCC and HIP.”

      • AMD launches GPUOpen website
      • AMD Launches GPUOpen – Refines Philosophy Into Two Tiers: CGI and Gaming and Professional Compute
      • AMD wants to open up PC graphics chips
      • AMD opens up the GPU

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Plasma 5.5.4 Has Fixes For Multi-Screen Users

        KDE Plasma 5.5.4 was released today as a bug-fix update to Plasma 5.5 as released in December. With this new point release there are fixes primarily for multi-screen users receiving notifications.

        The lone prominent change listed by today’s 5.5.4 release announcement is “Many improvements and refactoring to notification positioning making them appear in the right place for multi-screen use.”

      • How to integrate OpenGL code with Qt Quick 2 applications (part 2)
      • Integrating OpenGL With Qt Quick 2 Apps

        The post today covers hooking in with the Qt Quick 2 renderer, OpenGL underlays/overlays, and the other steps for integrating this OpenGL code with Qt Quick 2 applications. HOwever, at this time there is no support with the Qt Quick renderer for modifying the OpenGL state.

      • Kdenlive: Café, Sprint and More

        And for the pleasure, here is a screenshot of Kdenlive’s clip monitor where you can see several of the new features that are currently being worked on for the 16.04 release. The monitor looks a bit cluttered like this but it’s just for the demo – everything is configurable.

      • Creating a Qt 5 port to Apple tvOS

        Back in November, Apple released the latest generation of it’s Apple TV product. Besides the slightly improved hardware, the true new feature is the OS which is now officially based on iOS and comes with the dedicated SDK and App Store! So we started investigating what it would take to port Qt to tvOS and start writing some apps for the big screen.

      • App Review of GCompris: Kids’ Happiness

        If you have children, you know how hard it is to make a child happy and interested in something for a long time. But there is an easy way to do that: show them GCompris. It is a really great game set for children 2-10 years old and they surely will like it. You may ask, if GCompris is really so good, and I would answer you “Yes”. And that is not a joke. Here are some proofs of that. But, you know, nothing is ideal, so I will also mention its bad sides (unfortunately, they are present too).

      • KDE Ships Plasma 5.5.4, bugfix Release for January
      • KDE Plasma 5.5.4 Lands with Notification Improvements for Multi-Monitor Setups

        Today, January 26, 2016, KDE proudly announced that the fourth maintenance release for the Plasma 5 desktop environment is now available for GNU/Linux distribution vendors to compile and push to their default repositories for users to update.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Yosembiance A Smooth and Sleek Theme Based On Ambiance

        Do you like Ambiance theme but also like flat themes? Yosembiance is smoothed and slightly flattened version of Ubuntu default theme Ambiance and it is modified by Brain Sundman, he tried to make this theme more beautiful and he succeeded, the Ubuntu’s default theme Ambiance is also beautiful there is no doubt about it. The initial release of this theme was in 2014 and with the passage of time Brain also made this theme available for newer Ubuntu versions. There is blue version too, if you don’t want to stick with orange one then you can choose blue for your desktop. I added this theme to PPA for Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial/15.10 Wily/15.04 Vivid/14.04 Trusty, and this theme is not tested on Linux Mint but hopefully it will work just fine, you can give it a shot and let us know in the comment below. You can use Unity Tweak Tool, Gnome-tweak-tool or Ubuntu-Tweak to change themes/icons.

  • Distributions

    • Which Linux Is Secure? The Analysis Of Top Popular Distributions

      So, can I be sure that web site of my lovely Linux Distribution is real and hackers doesn’t replace it with infected software? Can I get a backdoor in my operating system from installed updates? No, but only with these conditions:

    • Linux Top 3: Kali Rolls, Gparted partions and Android x86 Mobilizes Linux

      As always there is no shortage of activity in the Linux distribution space and this week is no exception as multiple types of Linux distributions are out with updates.

    • Reviews

      • Fast Times With Nelum OS

        Nelum OS is a light and fast live-installable Linux distribution family offering three separate releases.

        “Nelum” means “lotus” in Sinhalese, the language of Sri Lanka, according to developer Ostro Leka.

        The distro is a brand-new entry to the land of Linux, with its initial release posted earlier this month. It is an unusual twist on what you usually see with a Linux release.

    • New Releases

      • Lakka Is A Linux OS That Converts Any Computer Into A Gaming Console

        It’s time to go to your basement, clean your dusty old PC and make it ready for something fun. Using the lightweight Linux distro Lakka, you can turn that old pal into a retro gaming machine. This ready-to-install system is derived from OpenELEC, a version of Kodi home theater software. The OS also acts as a DIY retro emulation console based upon the RetroArch emulator software.

        The strength of Lakka lies in the wide range of hardware it supports and useful feature like Braid-like rewinding, video streaming, and joypad hotplug. Once installed on your SD card, it is easy to set up and runs all your favorite vintage games.

      • BackBox Linux 4.5 Security-Oriented OS Comes Preinstalled with New Hacking Tools

        The developers of the BackBox Linux operating system have announced the release and immediate availability for download of the BackBox Linux 4.5 release, which promises to bring a new kernel and lots of updated packages.

        According to the release notes, BackBox Linux 4.5 comes preinstalled with Linux kernel 4.2 and adds various new and special tools, such as Automotive Analysis and OpenVAS, which promise to make a big difference when talking about the overall performance of the system.

      • BOSS – Barath Operating System Solutions

        Our meetings with BOSS developers have been very pleasant. Even those working at the top of cloud or big data stacks – furthest away from our mindset of tightly “locking down” all parts as packages – were patient with us.

        Thanks in particular to Prema S and Prathibha B, working on packaging of BOSS for the past 5+ years, and both likely to enter the Debian New Maintainer Queue before long :-)

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • Arch Family

    • Ballnux/SUSE

      • All About Folder Sharing on OpenSUSE 42.1

        This is not the Brazilian dance guys. Samba is a free software licensed under the GNU General Public License and a re-implementation of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol which was originally developed by Andrew Tridgell. Samba is used for sharing files & folders between UNIX & Linux like system towards a Windows OS driven PC. Samba allows a non-Windows server to communicate with the same networking protocol as the Windows products and that’s the interesting part of it. Samba was originally developed for UNIX but now a days it can run on Linux, FreeBSD and other UNIX variants.The name Samba comes from SMB (Server Message Block). Samba works on the majority of modern operating systems available today.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • OpenAMP heterogeneous multicore standard targets Linux

      The MCA announced its Open Asymmetric Multi Processing Framework (OpenAMP) for Linux multicore development, with support from Mentor Graphics and Xilinx.

      The Multicore Association (MCA) formally unveiled its open source “Open Asymmetric Multi Processing Framework” (OpenAMP), and announced a working group to establish standardization of the multicore development framework. The working group will expand and document the specification for Linux, and collaborate with the OpenAMP open source community.

    • ARM-based “Colibri” COMs hatch a hardware ecosystem

      Toradex launched a partner program aimed at supporting its Linux-ready, ARM based “Colibri” COMs with carrier boards, displays, enclosures, and more.

      Toradex has structured a new third party hardware partner ecosystem for its Linux-ready Colibri family of ARM-based computer-on-modules. The Swiss embedded vendor is also actively recruiting partners to make third-party, general purpose and application specific carrier boards for Colibri COMs.

    • Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

      We chatted for a while and it became apparent that they had been holding themselves back from actually making something because they were afraid the result would be wrong. I went to my box and retrieved the failures from my most recent case design for a Raspberry Pi model B to put alongside the successful end product to try and encourage them.

    • A Cheap WiFi Memory Card Reader Hacked To Run OpenWRT

      The ZSun WiFi Memory Card Reader isn’t intended for running OpenWRT, but has been modified to do so. There is this detailed Wiki page explaining how to adapt this cheap WiFI SD card reader into running OpenWRT for WiFi networking purposes, possible use-cases around IoT, play around with mesh networking, or really any other interesting scenarios along those lines. The Zsun device is powered by an AR9331 SoC with 64MB of RAM and 16MB of flash storage.

    • Raspberry Pi Zero Cluster Packs a Punch

      If you could actually buy 16 Raspberry Pi Zeros, you might be able to build your very own Raspberry Pi Cluster for only $80! Well… minus the cost of the board to tie them all together…

    • Enea AB: Enea Linux 5 is CGL 5.0 registered for leading telecom companies to rely on when building their NFV applications, equipment, and networks
    • The Pine A64 is about to become the cheapest ARM 64-bit platform to run Docker

      Last Saturday one of the more promising Kickstarter campaigns that piqued our curiosity ended after 44 days and was able to raise 1.7 million dollars. It was a campaign to fund the cheapest 64-bit ARM board that can currently be bought for money.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Even Microsoft’s Windows Phone chief is using an iPhone

          Funny things happen when you’re no longer championing the least popular phone platform out there: you stop using it.

          Joe Belfiore is technically the Corporate Vice President, Operating Systems Group at Microsoft, but he took a year off starting in October 2015 for a worldwide trip.

        • Smartphone Wars 2015: Now Apple. iPhone sold 231.4 million units for roughly 15% market share

          Apple announced its Q4 (Christmas quarter) results and reports it sold 74.8 million iPhones. which is a preliminary market share of 15.4% for the quarter. The unit sales is up 56% compared to Q3 but as our readers remember, Apple cannot be analyzed on quarter-to-quarter unit sales because of the once-per-year new model launch cycle, so that is not comparable to the other companies and performance vs last quarter. Nor should one quarter of Apple be compared to the same quarter last year (which would suggest the growth rate of under one half of one percent, also totally not true). The way to compare Apple is to see growth in the past 12 month moving average. And conveniently, now at the end of the year, we have that number so its easy to do. Apple sold 231.4 million iPhones which is up 20% compared to 2014 when they sold 192.7 million iPhones. Thats the real growth rate for Apple’s iPhone. Now what is Apple’s market share for the year? I have been using the 1.55 Billion total smartphone shipment estimate, at which level Apple’s smartphone market share would be 14.9% ie flat compared to 2014 when it was also 14.9%. With this number, however, I would warn that several signs suggest a slow-down of year-end smartphone sales globally, if the year ends up less than 1.55B then the market share(s for all brands) will be a bit better than my preliminary estimates. So in rough terms if you round it up to even percentages, iPhones is at about 15%, same as last year. Apple is certain to finish 2015 again as second largest smartphone maker behind Samsung and ahead of Huawei.

      • Android

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source Tech Dominates Top Paying Skills

    Beyond that, though, the top 10 list is chock full of open source technologies, ranging from OpenStack and CloudStack in the “Cloud” category to a bevy of Big Data-related skills, such as MapReduce, Pig, Cassandra and Cloudera.

  • Show us the code! You should be able to peek inside the gadgets you buy – FTC commish

    FTC Commissioner Terrell McSweeny supports the idea of giving people access to the source code to stuff to ensure better security and privacy in the era of the internet of things.

    The idea is that obvious bad bugs and poor security mechanisms can be quickly spotted and either fixed or the item stays on the store shelf.

    Speaking at the State of the Net conference in Washington DC on Monday, McSweeny noted that US consumer watchdog the FTC was looking closely at the proliferation of connected devices that gather and store highly personal information.

  • Recent Discussion on Unfairness in FLOSS

    I include above some pieces that, on the surface, are adjacent to this conversation rather than in it: on open data, on emotional burnout, on GitHub’s tooling, on license compliance, on setting expectations about unmaintained projects. But I see these frustrations as — like the injustice driving volunteer maintainers to step away — coming from a fundamental perception of unfairness. Free and open source software makers will notice if there is no measure of reciprocity in an environment that pays lip service to gift culture.

  • Project Calico Now Fully Supports Kubernetes

    On Friday, Project Calico, an open source virtual networking stack, released its 1.0 version plugin for Kubernetes – a signal that the plugin been well-tested and ready for production, according to Andy Randall, the project’s lead evangelist.

  • Events

    • Vault linux storage and filesystems CFP is open

      The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and advances Linux by marshalling the resources of its members and the open source development community to ensure Linux remains free and technically advanced.

    • Kohei Yoshida: LibreOffice mini-Conference 2016 in Osaka

      First off, let me just say that it was such an honor and pleasure to have had the opportunity to present a keynote at the LibreOffice mini-Conference in Osaka. It was a bit surreal to be given such an opportunity almost one year after my involvement with LibreOffice as a paid full-time engineer ended, but I’m grateful that I can still give some tales that some people find interesting. I must admit that I haven’t been that active since I left Collabora in terms of the number of git commits to the LibreOffice core repository, but that doesn’t mean that my passion for that project has faded. In reality it is far from it.

    • LinuxFest NorthWest

      Fedora will have a presence at LinuxFest NorthWest, April 23-24 in Bellingham, Washington, and can use your help. If you would like to help out with a few hours in the booth or at the Friday game night, add your name to the list on the Fedora Wiki page. You can earn a LFNW shirt or lunch for a few hours of service.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox v44 Rolling out to Android with Improved Tabs Screen

        On Tuesday, Mozilla rolled out a new update to their Firefox web browser that’s available on Android. Effectively bringing it to version 44. The update has a few new features, as well as fixing some other bugs and such. The update is available in the Google Play Store now, for those of you that don’t use Chrome. Included in the update is an improved tab screen. The reasoning behind this improved tab screen, Mozilla says is for uniformity with tablets using the same browser. The company also says that the thumbnails shown on the tab screen should also be a bit more accurate this time around.

      • Firefox 44 released

        Firefox 44.0 has been released.

      • Perfect storm: GTK+3.x behaviour under KDE and Firefox’s move to GTK+3.x

        At Mageia, various people suddenly started complaining about the scrollbar behaviour of GTK+3.x. Not always in the most constructive manner.

        [...]

        Loads of people use Firefox. These people don’t like their Firefox behaving different from what they’re used to and expect.

      • Firefox Can Now Get Push Notifications From Your Favorite Sites

        Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux now lets you choose to receive push notifications from websites if you give them permission. This is similar to Web notifications, except now you can receive notifications for websites even when they’re not loaded in a tab. This is super useful for websites like email, weather, social networks and shopping, which you might check frequently for updates.

      • Mozilla Now Has Push Notifications for Websites That Are Not Loaded Yet

        Mozilla is trying to inform users on their new “Push Notification” feature that makes it easier for websites to send notifications even when the tab is not loaded.

      • Mozilla “Push”es Firefox 44, Most Secure Linux Projects

        Firefox 44 was released today with Mozilla touting new Push technology. Push allows websites to push content to users without their having to visit the site directly. Elsewhere, The Linux Homefront Project researched which Linux distributions take user security seriously and some of the results are surprising. Jack M. Germain reviewed Nelum OS and Neil Rickert shared his multi-boot techniques.

      • Web Push Arrives in Firefox 44
      • Firefox 44 Debuts With Improved Security

        Mozilla adds push notification support and provides 11 security advisories with its latest open-source browser release.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

    • EnterpriseDB talks up shift to open source databases as it unveils Postgres Advanced Server 9.5

      Database firm EnterpriseDB has delivered the latest version of Postgres Advanced Server, the firm’s commercially supported distribution based on the open source PostgreSQL code, claiming that it is increasingly finding favour among Fortune 500 firms for its scalability and cost-effectiveness.

      Available now, Postgres Advanced Server 9.5 is based on PostgreSQL 9.5, which was released by its developer community earlier this month. EnterpriseDB provides this to organisations under a Postgres Enterprise subscription along with the Postgres Enterprise Manager tool and other value-add enhancements.

      Like the community release, Postgres Advanced Server 9.5 features enhancements to increase performance and scalability when operating business-critical workloads, including a claimed 96 percent performance boost when handling 64 concurrent connections, compared with the previous release of the platform.

  • CMS

    • Lean WordPress: A guide to optimizing your CMS

      The first thing to do with plugins on an existing WordPress site is to deactivate any that aren’t being used. Active plugins load resources (and make HTTP requests), adding overhead to every page that loads. If a plugin is not being used, shut it down.

  • Healthcare

    • Open source healthcare system adds 3 more hospitals

      OpenMaxims, an electronic patient record system developed in the United Kingdom and made available as open source software, is now used by three more UK hospitals. The software solution is implemented for the Blackpool Victoria Hospital, Clifton Hospital and Fleetwood Hospital, all three in England’s northwest coast.

    • Open-source laser fabrication lowers costs for cancer research

      In a move that slashes 90 percent of the cost of mass-producing metastatic microtumors and therapeutic microtissues for screening and research, Rice University bioengineers have adapted techniques from the “maker” movement to reprogram a commercial laser cutter to etch up to 50,000 tiny “microwells” per hour into sheets of silicone.

      The fabrication technique, which was developed with open-source software and hardware, is described in a new study published in the journal RSC Advances.

    • Laser cut microwells could lower the cost of cancer research

      The fabrication technique, which was developed with open-source software and hardware, could slash 90% of the cost of mass-producing metastatic microtumours and therapeutic microtissues for screening and research.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • Changes Start Heading Into AMDGPU For LLVM 3.9

      A number of AMDGPU LLVM back-end changes have been hitting the mainline LLVM SVN/Git code-base in recent days.

      However, all of this activity won’t be found in next month’s LLVM 3.8 release since it’s already branched but rather is new work going into LLVM 3.9. This latest LLVM 3.9 code drops compatibility for the Mesa 11.0 series, adds some new intrinsics, some new tests were added, and more.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Key charities that advance software freedom are worthy of your urgent support

      Conservancy and the FSF show in concrete terms that two charities can work together to increase their impact. Last year, our organizations collaborated on many projects, such as the proposed FCC rule changes for wireless devices, jointly handled a GPL enforcement action against Canonical, Ltd., published the principles of community-oriented GPL enforcement, and continued our collaboration on copyleft.org. We’re already discussing lots of ways that the two organizations can work together in 2016!

  • Public Services/Government

    • Oviedo reuses Madrids citizens participation tool

      The city of Oviedo, capital of Spain’s Principality of Asturias, in December unveiled Oviedoparticipa.es. This citizen participation and open government platform is based on Madrid’s decide.madrid.es platform, which is available as open source software.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • Stop Driving Laser Cutters with 3D Printer Software!

        Laser cutters are fantastic pieces of equipment, and thanks to open-source improvements in recent years, are getting even cheaper to make. It can be as simple as throwing a high-powered laser diode onto the head of your 3D printer! With so many home-brew designs out there, wouldn’t it be nice if there was some all-encompassing open-source, laser-cutter controller software? Well, as it turns out — there is, and it’s called LaserWeb.

  • Programming

    • 5 keys to project success on GitHub

      Open source is more than a license and software development model; it’s also largely about the people. Encourage both users and maintainers to collaborate to promote a surge in new ideas. You’ll find that most prominent projects incorporate a community of contributors with a mailing list, GitHub project, and/or IRC/Slack channel.

    • LLVM Drops Its Autoconf Build System

      LLVM/Clang is the latest high-profile project to abandon its Autoconf build system.

      As of today in the latest LLVM development code it removes the Autoconf build system for LLVM and Clang.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • The caste system has left its mark on Indians’ genomes

      A group of researchers has identified exactly when Indians stopped intermarrying.

    • Chess endgame tablebases

      A very short post: This link contains an interesting exposition of the 50-move rule in chess, and what it means for various endings. You can probably stop halfway, though; most of it is only interest for people deeply into endgame theory.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Paul Krugman: The Flint Water Disaster Was No Accident

      The poisoning of Flint, Michigan’s water and the irreversible harm to the city’s children, was no accident, Paul Krugman argues in his Monday column. The nightmare stems from a disturbing trend in which hardline right-wingers are rejecting their most basic responsibilities to safeguard public health and safety, particularly where the public is low-income and majority African American.

    • Flint water crisis: AG hopes to avoid conflict of interest with ‘conflict wall’

      Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette announced Monday he is appointing an ex-prosecutor and Detroit’s former FBI chief to join the investigation into Flint’s water crisis, creating a “conflict wall” between the state’s probe and the lawsuits targeting the state.

      The previously announced investigation will determine “whether any Michigan laws were violated in the process that created a major public health crisis for Flint residents.”

    • Flint, Michigan’s water crisis has still left the city with fewer poisoned children than Detroit

      The Flint water crisis has captured national attention, but, paradoxically, one benefit of city services failing as egregiously as they have in Flint is that many families have been able to largely avoid the toxic water that was pumping into the city’s homes. Urban soil lead, by contrast, is a problem that slips past people unnoticed. So unnoticed, in fact, that there is actually a higher incidence of lead-poisoned children in nearby Detroit, where the water is fine, than there is in Flint.

    • It’s not just a Flint problem: Other U.S. cities are suffering from toxic water

      In the wake of the Flint, Michigan water crisis, residents in other U.S. cities are following suit by turning to social media to condemn government inaction on toxic drinking water and call for federal help.

      A photo of what appears to be polluted water surfaced on Twitter over the weekend showing brown-colored running water coming from a tap in Lousiana. The caption reads “If you think the #flintwatercrisis was an isolated event, you’d better think again. This is water from St. Joseph, Louisisana.”

    • Flint is part of a pattern: 7 toxic assaults on communities of color

      From Pennsylvania to California and across the South, black families are most vulnerable to environmental disaster

    • A Toxic Timeline of Flint’s Water Fiasco

      New twists emerge almost daily in the story of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, where residents were left to drink, cook, and bathe in lead-contaminated water for 17 months as city and state officials insisted the water was safe. Here’s a timeline of how things unfolded, which we’ll update as significant new details come to light.

    • Governor Snyder: You Were Not Hired to Be Jerry Lewis

      First of all, Rick Snyder is worth something like $200 million, and while he returns his gubernatorial salary, he brings in around $1.9 million a year. So this is a guy making making $36,500 a week asking people who (using the Michigan average household, not individual, income) $48,500 a year to donate to help Flint. Your average Michigan household is doing almost twice as well as your average Flint household (average $25,000 a year) — so it is certainly within their charitable ability to help their fellow Michigander. But clearly the kinds of donations that Rick Snyder could afford would go much further to helping Flint than the kind of donations most Michiganders could afford.

    • Livestock Diversity Is Crucial For Future Food Security On A Harsher Planet

      Our livestock is increasingly being raised indoors and fed on concentrate feed that is often imported. Intensive production of chickens, pigs and dairy cows is based on a few breeds worldwide. These developments are risky, as we and future generations are losing the potential to adapt livestock production systems to increasingly harsh conditions such as those associated with higher temperatures and shortages of nutritious feeds.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Uncle Sam’s Suicide Squads

      For years now, the U.S. has been employing extremist jihadi assets, brothers in arms with Al Qaeda, to destabilize and attempt to overthrow the Syrian government. Al Qaeda allies played a similar role in the U.S.-backed overthrow of the Libyan government. And Al Qaeda itself is an outgrowth of the CIA’s Mujahideen assets that the U.S. unleashed against the Soviets in the Afghan Jihad of the 80s as part of Operation Cyclone.

    • Freedom! 19,000 Iraqi Civilians Killed in Less Than Two Years

      It is also an estimate, given that many areas of the country are not readily accessible, and because the death toll from the siege of Ramadi is not accounted for in the figures. More than 3.2 million Iraqis are internally displaced and/or homeless.

    • Failed States and States of Failure

      “We Destroyed the Cities to Save Them” and Other Future Headlines

      [...]

      Let’s start with an event that occurred in Iraq as 2015 ended and generated headlines that included “victory,” a word Americans haven’t often seen in the twenty-first century — except, of course, in Trumpian patter. (“We’re going to win so much — win after win after win — that you’re going to be begging me: ‘Please, Mr. President, let us lose once or twice. We can’t stand it any more.’ And I’m going to say: ‘No way. We’re going to keep winning. We’re never going to lose. We’re never, ever going to lose.’”) I’m talking about the “victory” achieved at Ramadi, a city in al-Anbar Province that Islamic State (IS or ISIL) militants seized from the Iraqi army in May 2015. With the backing of the U.S. Air Force — there were more than 600 American air strikes in and around Ramadi in the months leading up to that victory — and with U.S.-trained and U.S.-financed local special ops units leading the way, the Iraqi military did indeed largely take back that intricately booby-trapped and mined city from heavily entrenched IS militants in late December. The news was clearly a relief for the Obama administration and those headlines followed.

    • Egypt Is Covering Up A Police Brutality Crisis With Talk Of Terrorism

      Police brutality in Egypt is still rampant even five years after protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square toppled the brutal Mubarak regime, according to Amnesty International.

      “Five years since the uprising that ousted Mubarak, Egypt is once more a police state,” Nicholas Piachaud, Egypt Researcher at Amnesty International, wrote.

      “We are in a worse off position than we were in Mubarak years,” human rights lawyer Ragia Omran told CNN.

    • The Republican myth of Ronald Reagan and the Iran hostages, debunked

      Some stories are too good to check, and some myths are too perfect to bust. We’ve seen that dynamic in action all month, as GOP presidential candidates trot out their favorite foreign policy anecdote: the Parable of the Hostages.

      The story goes that on the day of his inauguration, in January 1981, President Reagan convinced the Iranian regime to free the American Embassy hostages more or less just by glaring harshly in the direction of Tehran, which quailed in the face of his unyielding toughness and released the Americans immediately.

    • Lara Marlowe: France has a fatal attraction to the Middle East

      The French writer and statesman André Malraux allegedly predicted that “the 21st century will be a century of religion or it will not be at all.”

    • Documentary Featuring Jihadists Confronts Censorship in France

      Speaking on French radio yesterday, filmmakers François Margolin and Lemine Ould Salem defended their documentary. Margolin said, “We are not advocating terrorism, we are just showing a discourse that exists.”

    • Top 5 Ways Putin has won big in Syria and why Europe is embracing him

      Russia is so far winning big in Syria, and making Moscow’s projection of force in the Middle East a reality that the other great powers have to recognize. As Russia has emerged as a major combatant against Syrian al-Qaeda and against Daesh (ISIS, ISIL), it is being accepted back into a Europe traumatized by two major attacks on Paris. France is signalling that it hopes to end sanctions on Russia over Ukraine by this summer. While the Minsk peace process is going all right, the motivation here is to ally more closely with Moscow against Muslim radicals in the wake of Russia’s successes against them in Syria.

    • Saudi Arabia Is Killing Civilians With US Bombs

      Saudi Arabia has engaged in war crimes, and the United States is aiding and abetting them by providing the Saudis with military assistance. In September 2015, Saudi aircraft killed 135 wedding celebrants in Yemen. The air strikes have killed 2,800 civilians, including 500 children. Human Rights Watch charges that these bombings “have indiscriminately killed and injured civilians.”

    • The Iraq War’s Known Unknowns

      There is a lot more than meets the eye in the newly revealed Joint Chiefs of Staff intelligence briefing of Sept. 5, 2002, which showed there was a lack of evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) – just as President George W. Bush’s administration was launching its sales job for the Iraq War.

      The briefing report and its quick demise amount to an indictment not only of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld but also of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Richard Myers, who is exposed once again as a Rumsfeld patsy who put politics ahead of his responsibility to American soldiers and to the nation as a whole.

      In a Jan. 24 report at Politico entitled “What Donald Rumsfeld Knew We Didn’t Know About Iraq,” journalist John Walcott presents a wealth of detail about the JCS intelligence report of Sept. 5, 2002, offering additional corroboration that the Bush administration lied to the American people about the evidence of WMD in Iraq.

      [...]

      On Sept. 8, 2002, a New York Times front-pager – headlined “US Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts” by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon – got the juggernaut rolling downhill to war. Their piece featured some aluminum tubes that they mistakenly thought could be used only for nuclear centrifuges (when they were actually for conventional artillery). Iraq’s provocative behavior, wrote the Times, has “brought Iraq and the United States to the brink of war.”

    • Iran Is Guilty of ‘Contempt of Empire,’ Nothing More

      Case in point: Iran, a relatively modern country (far more tolerant than Saudi Arabia, considering the number of synagogues within its border) that has never attacked the United States and has in no way threatened the US, is nevertheless the target of a never-ending campaign of threats, warmongering, and acts of war by those with decision-making power over US foreign policy (I really hate saying “we” when discussing the actions of the political elite). The Iranians, while never having threatened the US with attack, have nevertheless committed the unforgivable sin of refusing to bend to the will of DC, a severe crime as seen from the warped capitol of the papier-mâché Empire, a crime that many within the political class are bristling to watch Iran burn under the “false sun” of nuclear fire.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • The Case of the Missing Comma: Why Congress Must Fix FOIA’s Law Enforcement Exemption

      As Congress considers big changes to the Freedom of Information Act, a court’s decision on Monday underscores how some of the best ways to fix the ailing transparency statute are really small—like adding a comma.

      Last fall in Naji Hamdan v. U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit read the lack of a comma in FOIA’s law enforcement exemption to limit public access to investigatory techniques and procedures.

      EFF thought that decision was wrong, both because it misread FOIA’s text and legislative history and because it emphasized technical form over the statute’s goal of ensuring robust access to government records. We filed a brief asking the court to reconsider its decision, but the court denied the effort in a summary opinion on Monday.

      For Mr. Hamdan, the denial means that an American citizen may never learn the extent to which law enforcement and national security agencies knew about or were otherwise complicit in his detention and torture abroad. For the broader public, however, the decision could result in greater secrecy surrounding law enforcement’s use of controversial investigatory techniques and procedures.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Can’t Hide From Reality: Florida Mayors Request Climate Change Meeting With Senator Marco Rubio

      Fifteen South Florida mayors released a letter Tuesday that was sent to Senator Marco Rubio requesting a meeting with the presidential candidate to talk about the climate change risk facing the state’s communities. The mayors underscore the economic burden of climate change in South Florida, urging Rubio to “acknowledge the reality and urgency of climate change and to address the crisis it presents our communities.”

      “Anyone who thinks that the topic of climate change is a partisan issue is not focused on the reality which we as public officials and citizens are dealing with. This is a crisis that grows day by day,” said Tomas Regalado, mayor of Miami, asking Rubio to “help us face and tackle this urgent issue — and the risks associated with it — so we may deal with it head-on.”

    • Noam Chomsky: Why the Republican Party Is a Threat to Human Survival

      Speaking with The Huffington Post on Monday, Chomsky cited the Republican Party’s refusal to tackle—or even acknowledge—the “looming environmental catastrophe” of climate change, thereby “dooming our grandchildren.”

  • Finance

    • Doha may be dead. Long live free trade

      This weekend, trade ministers from some 30 countries will meet in Davos for their first discussion since the World Trade Organization’s Nairobi ministerial conference in December. Given the importance of trade for achieving growth and development, the continuing uncertainty in the global economy and the fact that protectionist measures have been on the rise — as the 2015 Global Trade Alert report showed — ministers should use the meeting to reflect on how to revitalize negotiations in the WTO.

    • Techdirt Podcast Episode 58: Just How Bad Is The TPP?
    • America’s dangerous “self-made” mythology: Why our ideas about upward mobility are seriously misinformed

      Inequality, President Obama has claimed, “is the defining challenge of our time.” And yet, though many of his reforms are positive, he has done far too little to actually alleviate inequality. But that’s not entirely his fault; presidents, like all other humans, are confined by their circumstances, both material and ideological. Although there are a number of factors that prevent action on inequality (including racial resentment and political information), one is ideological: our society’s commitment to the mythology of upward mobility. To see how ideology functions to halt legislative action on inequality, we should examine how a bipartisan commitment to upward mobility has obfuscated the true debate.

    • Part 2: Oxfam Says Privatization, Tax Havens Drive Global Inequality to Staggering Levels

      Extended web-only interview with Raymond Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America. The group just issued the report, “An Economy for the 1%: How Privilege and Power in the Economy Drive Extreme Inequality and How This Can Be Stopped.”

    • Slouching Toward Hillary?

      Will 2016 be the year when a new representative of elite wealth assumes the mantle of power, reading to fulfill the Davos claim that seven million jobs will soon be replaced by wageless robots? Or will a political insurgency—be it left or right—finally unseat the standard neoliberal program? Will a faux socialist or a bombastic billionaire be swept into office by the popular tide? If recent history is any guide, Hillary is a lock. If the Great Depression is the better barometer, beware the man who would save capitalism from itself by mitigating its indifference to surplus humanity (i.e., FDR-styled Bernie Sanders). In any event, the new president will encounter a dire state of affairs on entering the Oval Office. As a kind of parting gesture, Wall Street’s “black mascot” Barack Obama recently treated the soporific millionaires of Congress—as well the lumpen proletariat—to one last textbook example of elite deceit about nearly everything that matters. Obama, a superb crafter of bold fictions, has been “polishing the brass on the Titanic” for some time now. Breathtakingly oblivious to the gash in the hull of the ship of state and to the icebergs in its immediate path, Obama used his final State of the Union (SOTU) address to fine-tune the rhetorical constructs he will soon slip into the brisk and heartfelt memoir of another purblind one-percenter. False optimism never sounded so good.

    • As Sanders Slams Wall Street Elite, Clinton Ditches Iowa To Fetch Their Checks

      Seemingly undeterred by the consistent critique that her close ties to the financial industry are hurting her campaign, The Intercept on Tuesday reports that with less than a week until the Iowa caucus, Hillary Clinton will soon leave the hotly-contested state to attend a pair of Wall Street-sponsored fundraising events.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Wonks and Trump

      The elite pundits are still operating — on the election itself, but also on health care and economic policy — on the assumption that no one will or is holding them responsible for their undelivered promises.

    • Trump Touts Endorsement From ‘Reverend Jerry Fallwell Jr.,’ Who Is Not A Reverend

      While Falwell is certainly a prominent figure in the evangelical community, he is not actually a reverend, a title specific to members of the clergy who have completed religious training.

    • Sanders to Press: Stop Trying to Get Me to Attack Clinton

      Sen. Bernie Sanders is sick of the media’s attempts to get him to attack Hillary Clinton. “I’m not going to be engaged in personal attacks on Secretary Clinton, or anybody else,” he said after repeated questioning from reporters outside an event Tuesday morning in Des Moines. But whatever distaste he has for going negative doesn’t seem to be enough to keep him from getting in a few digs at his leading Democratic opponent in the caucuses that will take place here in Iowa in less than a week.

    • Chicago Tribune Warns Voters Away From ‘Socialism’ Cliff

      The idea that you can’t be president if you believe in socialism—which Sanders defines as “a government that works for the many, not the few”—rests heavily on that Gallup poll, which found that 50 percent of respondents said they would not vote for “a socialist.”

      It also found that 38 percent said they would not vote for a Muslim—though clearly the Tribune would not be bringing that up as the sole reason a Muslim politician should not be running for president. Nor does it mention that 40 percent said they wouldn’t vote for an atheist, even though Sanders is widely (though apparently wrongly) believed to be an atheist. How come? Because corporate media in general treat religious prejudice as a shameful thing, whereas capitalist institutions like giant media conglomerates tend to see an aversion to socialism as normal and healthy.

    • Howard Dean Says He’s Not a Lobbyist But He Sure Acts Like One

      Last week, we reported that Howard Dean, former presidential candidate and current supporter of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, had attacked Bernie Sanders for supporting a single-payer health plan, claiming that having the government pay for everyone’s health care would “undo people’s health care” and result in “chaos.” In our story, we noted that Dean, once a proponent of single-payer, now works for the lobbying practice of Dentons, a law firm retained to lobby on behalf of a number of pharmaceutical and for-profit health care interests.

    • Bernie Sanders Gets Group Endorsements When Members Decide; Hillary Clinton When Leaders Decide

      In the war for endorsements in the Democratic presidential primary, there is a clear trend.

      Every major union or progressive organization that let its members have a vote endorsed Bernie Sanders.

      Meanwhile, all of Hillary Clinton’s major group endorsements come from organizations where the leaders decide. And several of those endorsements were accompanied by criticisms from members about the lack of a democratic process.

      It’s perhaps the clearest example yet of Clinton’s powerful appeal to the Democratic Party’s elite, even as support for Sanders explodes among the rank and file.

    • Holding a ‘Go Donald!’ Media Accountable for ‘Normalizing Extremism’

      Great Britain won’t actually ban Donald Trump from the country but Parliament did spend time taking seriously what was called Trump’s “poisonous, corrosive” effect on public discourse. At the same time, actors, writers and others, including Harry Belafonte, Eve Ensler and Noam Chomsky, launched a Stop Hate Dump Trump campaign, that included serving notice to media that they “are accountable for normalizing Trump’s extremism by treating it as entertainment, by giving it inordinate and unequal air time and by refusing to investigate, interrogate or condemn it appropriately.”

    • The Seven Stages of Establishment Backlash: Corbyn/Sanders Edition

      The British political and media establishment incrementally lost its collective mind over the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the country’s Labour Party, and its unraveling and implosion show no signs of receding yet. Bernie Sanders is nowhere near as radical as Corbyn; they are not even in the same universe. But, especially on economic issues, Sanders is a more fundamental, systemic critic than the oligarchical power centers are willing to tolerate, and his rejection of corporate dominance over politics, and corporate support for his campaigns, is particularly menacing. He is thus regarded as America’s version of a far-left extremist, threatening establishment power.

    • Donald Trump will skip Fox News’s debate because of Megyn Kelly

      Donald Trump reignited his feud with Fox News over Thursday’s scheduled debate by threatening to pull the ultimate trump card: not show up.

      In a telephone interview with Good Morning America, he said he was considering this move because of the scheduled moderators: Megyn Kelly, longtime Fox News anchor and Kelly File host, who has rankled Trump in the past.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Nest Thermostat Goes From ‘Internet Of Things’ Darling To Cautionary Tale

      Again, that’s the poster child of the so-called “smart” device revolution failing utterly to complete a task thermostats have been successfully accomplishing for a generation. Other tech reporters like Stacey Higginbotham reported the exact opposite. As in, her Nest device began trying to cook her family in the middle of the night, something Nest first tried to blame on her smart garage door opener, then tried to blame on her Jawbone fitness tracker (Nest never did seem to pinpoint the cause).

      [...]

      And fast-forward to last week, when researchers putting various internet of thing devices through tests found that the Nest thermostat was one of many IOT devices happily leaking subscriber location data in cleartext (with Nest, it’s only the zip code, something the company quickly fixed in a patch). Granted Nest’s not alone in being an inadvertent advertisement for a product’s “dumb” alternatives. In 2016, smart tea kettles, refrigerators, televisions and automobiles are all busy leaking your private information and exposing you to malicious intrusion (or worse).

    • FinFisher spyware: Indonesian government ‘using Sydney server for surveillance program’

      A proxy server inside the Global Switch data centre in Ultimo, Sydney is being used to obscure the real user of the spyware, in this case an Indonesian government agency, according to a group of technology researchers.

    • Canadian Supreme Court Tightens Up Rules On Law Enforcement’s Use Of Cell Tower Dumps

      Matthew Braga at Motherboard reports the Canadian Supreme Court has laid down some guidelines for law enforcement’s access to “tower dumps” — call records containing every phone that accessed towers during a specified period of time. While it doesn’t direct law enforcement to seek warrants, it does at least provide more restrictive guidance for collection of these data dumps, which the court originally found to be so broad as to be unconstitutional.

    • Ethics charges filed against DOJ lawyer who exposed Bush-era surveillance

      A former Justice Department lawyer is facing legal ethics charges for exposing the President George W. Bush-era surveillance tactics—a leak that earned The New York Times a Pulitzer and opened the debate about warrantless surveillance that continues today.

      The lawyer, Thomas Tamm, now a Maryland state public defender, is accused of breaching Washington ethics rules for going to The New York Times instead of his superiors about his concerns about what was described as “the program.”

      Tamm was a member of the Justice Department’s Office of Intelligence Policy and Review and, among other things, was charged with requesting electronic surveillance warrants from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

      The District of Columbia Court of Appeals Board of Professional Responsibility said Tamm became aware in 2004 that certain applications to the FISA Court for national security surveillance authority “were given special treatment.”

    • “No Cost” License Plate Readers Are Turning Texas Police into Mobile Debt Collectors and Data Miners

      Vigilant Solutions, one of the country’s largest brokers of vehicle surveillance technology, is offering a hell of a deal to law enforcement agencies in Texas: a whole suite of automated license plate reader (ALPR) equipment and access to the company’s massive databases and analytical tools—and it won’t cost the agency a dime.

      Even though the technology is marketed as budget neutral, that doesn’t mean no one has to pay. Instead, Texas police fund it by gouging people who have outstanding court fines and handing Vigilant all of the data they gather on drivers for nearly unlimited commercial use.

    • So What About those Phone Records Now? EFF Writes to FISA Court

      Now that the mass collection of telephone records by the NSA under Section 215 of the Patriot Act has ended due to the passage of USA Freedom, the question has arisen: what should the NSA do with the big mass of records that it already has? The secret FISA Court recently asked the government what it thinks should happen, and EFF sent a letter to the FISA Court (by way of the Department of Justice, asking that it be conveyed to the Court) giving our perspective.

      EFF, and our clients, are in the thick of these questions because of our two pending cases, Jewel v. NSA and First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA. In both cases, we sought not only the end of the mass telephone records program, but also a remedy for the past 14 years that the records were illegally collected. In both cases, we have orders from the court requiring the government to preserve relevant evidence, including our clients’ call records.

      We sued to stop the government from collecting the records in the first place, so we would obviously like to see those records destroyed as soon as possible, even as our lawsuits continue.

    • If You Use An Adblocker You Hate Free Speech, Says Internet Ads Guy

      Mother of God. You may recall that we recently discussed the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) unfortunate decision to refuse Adblock Plus’ registration for its annual conference. At a time when adblocking software is seeing its greatest use, it seemed to us that the IAB and its members might have a great deal to learn from Adblock Plus and that, rather than walling off its conference to them, the IAB could instead try to learn why so many people are using that software and software like it. That is because I had thought at the time that the IAB’s refusal had mostly to do with it seeing such software as a threat to its members’ business. Well, the conference has begun and in the keynote speech delivered by IAB chief, Randall Rothenberg, we learn that barring Adblock Plus from the conference wasn’t about ad revenue at all. It was about freedom of speech, an appreciation of diversity, pushing back on racist Republican presidential candidates, and good old apple pie America.

    • AT&T CEO Thinks You’re A Forgetful Idiot, Hilariously Gives Apple Encryption Advice

      You really can’t find a pair of cozier bosom buddies than AT&T and the NSA. Long before Snowden, whistleblowers like 22-year AT&T employee Mark Klein highlighted (pdf) how AT&T was duplicating fiber streams, effectively providing the NSA with its own mirror copy of every shred of data that touched the AT&T network. More recent documents have also highlighted AT&T’s “extreme willingness” to help, whether that involves having its employees act as intelligence analysts themselves, or giving advice to the government on the best ways to skirt, dance around, or smash directly through privacy and surveillance law.

    • NSA Water, Electricity Supply Safe as ‘Off Now’ Push Ends in Failure

      An effort in state legislatures across the country to pull the plug – literally – on the National Security Agency has ended in failure, with mass surveillance opponents lamenting over spineless colleagues and the national group behind the push looking to support more bite-size reforms.

      The almost completely abandoned effort aimed to deny water and electricity to the spy agency following Edward Snowden’s 2013 disclosures about the NSA’s bulk collection of U.S. phone records and Internet surveillance programs.

      Through legislation, state politicians sought to ban state and local governments from providing “material support” to the NSA, including services from public utilities. Bills in Maryland, home to the agency’s Fort Meade headquarters, and Utah, location of a massive NSA data storage facility, threatened water deals with local governments that are essential to agency operations.

      The ambitious legislative campaign attracted wide media coverage, but failed to achieve victory.

    • GCHQ looking for a CISO, chief data scientist and deputy CTO

      GCHQ, the UK’s intelligence agency, is on the hunt for several new IT leaders to join its senior technology leadership team.

  • Civil Rights

    • Missouri Court To Chuck Johnson: WTF Are You Doing In A Missouri Court?!? Go Away

      Back in June, we had a post about an absolutely ridiculous lawsuit filed by noted internet news troll Chuck C. Johnson against Gawker, basically because they said some mean things about him, and mocked Johnson’s own style of publishing bullshit articles that attempt to imply something awful about someone by asking a question about them. In this case, Gawker, mockingly seized upon some joking claims about Johnson supposedly shitting on the floor of a dormroom, which no one believed, but which Gawker used to mock Johnson. Johnson, for months and months and months, used to threaten libel lawsuits against basically anyone who mocked him, so it was interesting to see one actually get filed. But that was about the extent of the interest. Because the lawsuit was nuts. Almost nothing in it made even the slightest bit of sense,

    • Daniel Holtzclaw Sentenced to 263 Consecutive Years in Prison for Raping Black Women

      In December, an all-white jury convicted Holtzclaw of rape and other crimes against eight of the 13 women who accused him. All 13 victims testified during the trial, each with similar stories of rape, sexual assault, and threats if they did not comply with Holtzclaw’s demands. Holtzclaw targeted them during traffic stops and interrogations, forcing them into sexual acts in his police car or in their homes. Prosecutors say Holtzclaw deliberately preyed on vulnerable black women from low-income neighborhoods. He was reportedly under investigation by the Oklahoma City police sex crimes unit six weeks before his final crime. That means Holtzclaw assaulted half of the women he was convicted of attacking while under investigation.

    • Breaking: Daniel Holtzclaw Sentenced to 263 Consecutive Years in Prison for Raping Black Women

      Former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw has just been sentenced to 263 consecutive years in prison for the serial rapes of African-American women. Judge Timothy Henderson also denied his request for a new trial.

    • John Pilger on the Indigenous struggle: ‘There is no alternative now’

      Why are we here? Why are we doing this every 26th January – year after year? Of course, we know why – Indigenous people are saying to Australia: ‘Look, we are still here. We have survived the massacres and the cynicism. We have survived.’

      But is that enough, I wonder? Is survival without action ever enough?

      The sources of power in Australia – especially political and media power — draw both comfort and delusion from the very idea of Survival Day.

    • Daniel Holtzclaw and the Limits of “Community Policing”

      AT THE SENTENCING last week of Daniel Holtzclaw — the 29-year-old former Oklahoma City police officer convicted on 18 counts of rape and sexual assault of African-American women in the neighborhood he was assigned to patrol — District Attorney David Prater told the media: “I think people need to realize that this is not a law enforcement officer that committed these crimes. This is a rapist who masqueraded as a law enforcement officer. If he was a true law enforcement officer, he would have upheld his duty to protect these citizens rather than victimize them.”

      Holtzclaw was sentenced to 263 years in prison for his crimes. From December 2013 to June 2014, while working the night shift in a low-income neighborhood on Oklahoma City’s northeast side, Holtzclaw developed a modus operandi: By design, he targeted black women, and among them, women who had a history of drug abuse or an existing criminal record. By framing his unsolicited sexual advances as an exchange for reprieve from warrants or jail time, he used his badge to leverage the women’s backgrounds as blackmail.

    • What role can civil disobedience play in the stuggle for social change?

      What role can civil disobedience play in the stuggle for social change? Peter explores this question with two guests: first, environmental organizer Tim DeChristopher recounts his experience interfering with a federal oil and gas lease auction, and how the legal doctrine of “necessity” can be used in environmental campaigns. Then Sunsara Taylor discusses the right-wing effort to supress womens’ option of abortion, and the countercampaign to protect reproductive choice.

    • Pursuing critics, China reaches across borders. And nobody is stopping it.

      Amid extraordinary moves to rein in criticism at home, Chinese security personnel are reaching confidently across borders, targeting Chinese and foreign citizens who dare to challenge the Communist Party line, in what one Western diplomat has called the “worst crackdown since Tiananmen Square.”

      A string of incidents, including abductions from Thailand and Hong Kong, forced repatriations and the televised “confessions” of two Swedish citizens, has crossed a new red line, according to diplomats in Beijing. Yet many foreign governments seem unwilling or unable to intervene, their public response limited to mild protests.

    • Ex-Disney IT workers sue after being asked to train their own H-1B replacements

      Two former IT workers at Disney have sued, saying that Disney broke the law when it hired cheaper foreign replacements, then fired its current IT department. Disney IT employees were told they would be kept on for 90 days in order to train their replacements, who were H-1B visa holders, according to the complaints. The workers were told “if they did not stay and train they would not get a bonus and severance, which most employees reluctantly accepted.”

      Both lawsuits are proposed class-actions, filed in federal court in Florida. The suit filed by Dena Moore (PDF) names Disney and labor contractor Cognizant Technology Solutions, while a complaint filed by Leo Perrero (PDF) names Disney and HCL, another labor contractor.

      They make a novel claim, saying that Disney violated the anti-racketeering RICO statute by engaging in a “conspiracy to displace US workers.” The plaintiffs allege that Disney and the contractors weren’t truthful when they filled out immigration documents, thus violating a section of the RICO law that bars “fraud and misuse of visas, passports, and other documents.”

    • Russian border guard to STT: Russian security service behind northeast asylum traffic

      Finnish news agency STT reports a Russian border guard’s confession that the transport of asylum seekers to Finland’s two northeast border crossings is being orchestrated by the Russian Federation’s Federal Security Service, the FSB. Families with children are given priority, the source said. Finnish authorities have suspected for some time that the transfer of asylum seekers from Russia to Finland has been part of a carefully organised operation.

    • Crimea’s bright future

      In the 15 months since Crimea was annexed by Russia, Ukraine’s former resort-cum-military base has undergone severe changes. Extremism investigations, kidnapping, intimidation and harassment are all features of working in politically sensitive professions in Crimea. The central bureaucracy and government has been mired in scandal over indecision and incompetence.

    • Documents confirm rendition flight used Copenhagen Airport for mission to capture Edward Snowden

      The online media source Denfri.dk reports that, after gaining access to documents from the Justice Ministry, it has confirmed that in June 2013 Copenhagen Airport was used to hold an American rendition plane that was sent to capture Edward Snowden from Moscow Airport and return him to the USA.

      Snowden, who shot into the international limelight after making extensive revelations about the USA’s intelligence activities at home and abroad, was confined to the airport in Russia before he was offered asylum in the country.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • WHO To Study Effect Of Nagoya Protocol On Sharing Of Genetic Materials

      The implementation of a protocol ensuring access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable benefit-sharing of commercial benefits might affect the sharing of pathogens samples between countries, said the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, who asked the World Health Organization to study possible implications of the protocol’s implementation.

    • Copyrights

      • No One Owns The Law. Everyone Owns The Law.

        Last week, as part of EFF’s annual Copyright Week, we wrote about the need for transparency in creating copyright restrictions in the international arena. As a current legal battle shows, however, it is equally important that copyright restrictions not interfere with transparency and open access to the law itself.

        In a democracy, no one owns the law—or to put it another way, everyone owns the law. If a judge claimed that she should be paid a toll every time someone copied a passage from one of her decisions, we would find it absurd. If the lobbyist who wrote sections of your city’s business code announced he could decide, at any time, to sharply limit public access to those sections, he would be run out of town. The right to read the law—and just as important, the right to copy, discuss, and share the law—is essential to the rule of law itself.

        But six huge industry associations are trying to undermine that principle, insisting that it doesn’t apply to a growing category of law: laws that began as private standards but are later incorporated into federal and state regulations. Insisting that they own a copyright in these laws, they’ve joined forces to stop a tiny non-profit, Public.Resource.Org, from posting them online.

      • Copyright Troll Malibu Media’s ‘Expert’ Witness Appears To Be Totally And Completely Clueless

        It’s from those guys that I first caught wind of Malibu Media v. Jesse Raleigh based initially on a bizarre lashing out by Malibu Media’s lawyer Jessica Fernandez (who works for Keith Lipscomb, the lawyer who appears to be the “John Steele” of the Malibu Media trolling operation) in the form of a Motion for Sanctions against Raleigh. The motion was oddly aggressive in arguing that Raleigh had misled Malibu Media in discovery and failed to produce certain items. The thing that caught my eye was specifically Malibu Media claiming that Raleigh had lied to them about not owning an “all-in-one computer.” While searching through his Dropbox account photos they found some photos that they insisted proved that Raleigh did own an “all in one computer” that he had failed to produce during discovery…

      • “My Little Pony” Sued For Using a Pirated Font

        Typeface company Font Brothers has filed a lawsuit against Hasbro claiming that My Little Pony uses one of its fonts without permission. According to the complaint, Harbro refuses to pay the required licenses while it continues to use the font in its My Little Pony merchandise and products.

      • Guitar Hero YouTuber Sings Acapella Version To Get Around ContentID Takedowns… Probably Is Still Violating Copyright Law

        So, Vice’s Motherboard has an amusing article about how the misleadingly named GuitarHeroFailure (misleading, because the guy’s actually good at the game) tried to get around YouTube ContentID takedowns on one of his Guitar Hero videos (of Ozzy Osbourne’s “Bark at the Moon”) by singing an acapella version of the song over it. The overall effect is really quite amazing. Watch the video (and don’t miss his, um, “variation” at the very end) below:

      • NY Times Files Ridiculous Copyright Lawsuit Over Book That Mocks NYT For Glamorizing War

        Well, this is disappointing in the extreme. The NY Times is a famous defender of free speech, and has been a key player in many important free speech battles. And now it’s filed a ridiculously petty lawsuit claiming copyright infringement over some thumbnail images of NYT’s covers in a book (ht Rebecca Tushnet for blogging about this). The book in question is War Is Beautiful: The New York Times Pictorial Guide to the Glamour of Armed Conflict*. The asterisk then reads *(in which the author explains why he no longer reads The New York Times).

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