• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Microsoft Watch

• Microsoft to Cut 2,850 More Jobs in Exit From Phone Business [iophk: “and how many permatemps are also getting axed?” Ed: Lots of other layoffs for years now]

  Microsoft Corp. is more that doubling an earlier job cut plan, part of Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella’s move to pare the company’s smartphone ambitions.

  Some 2,850 positions worldwide will be eliminated in fiscal 2017, the company said Thursday in a regulatory filing. That’s in addition to 1,850 job cuts, primarily in the smartphone hardware business and sales, announced in May.

• Cortana removal will not be tolerated in Windows 10 Anniversary Update

  CORTANA IS taking over. The forthcoming Anniversary Update of Windows 10 has shown a new twist in Microsoft’s ‘do as we say’ attitude towards customers.

  It appears that the update, due for release on 2 August, just three days after the end of the free upgrade period for Windows 10, removes the ability to turn personal assistant bot Cortana off, reported PC World (not that one, the IDG one).

  In all fairness, the upshot of this is fairly minimal. Cortana butts into your computing only if it’s told to, and it’s very easy for it not to.

  However, the fact that it’s always on means that it’s always collecting metadata, and that might leave some people feeling a tad uncomfortable.

• Microsoft faces two new lawsuits over aggressive Windows 10 upgrade tactics [Ed: more of the same, still…]

  Microsoft is facing two more lawsuits over the company’s questionable Windows 10 upgrade tactics. Both suits are seeking class-action status.

  The first suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Florida. It alleges that Microsoft’s Windows 10 upgrade prompts “violated laws governing unsolicited electronic advertisements,” as reported by The Seattle Times. The suit also says Microsoft’s tactics are against the Federal Trade Commission’s rules on deceptive and unfair practices.

  The second suit was filed in June in Haifa, Israel alleging that Microsoft installed Windows 10 on users’ computers without consent. Microsoft already paid out a $10,000 award in a previous U.S. suit over similar circumstances.

  Microsoft told the Seattle Times it believes the suits won’t succeed. The Times also reports that Microsoft said Windows 10 upgrades (the Times report called them “updates”) are a “choice, not a requirement.”

  The story behind the story: That’s quite a disingenuous statement considering that Microsoft violated the known behavior of the Windows interface to essentially trick people into upgrading.

• Windows 10 pain: Reg man has 75 per cent upgrade failure rate

  As your humble HPC correspondent for The Register, I should probably be running Linux on the array of systems here at the home office suite. But I don’t. I’ve been a Microsoft guy since I bought my first computer way back in 1984.

  You, dear readers, can rip me for being a MStard, but it works worked well for my business and personal needs.

  I’ve had my ups and downs with the company, but I think I’ve received good value for my money and I’ve managed to solve every problem I’ve had over the years.

  Until yesterday, that is.

  Yesterday was the day that I marked on my calendar as “Upgrade to Windows 10 Day.” We currently have four systems in our arsenal here, two laptops and two desktops.

  The laptops are Lenovo R61 and W510 systems, and the desktops are a garden variety box based on an Asus P7P55D Pro motherboard. The other desktop is my beloved Hydra 2.0 liquid cooled, dual-processor, monster system based on the EVGA Classified SR-2 motherboard. These details turn out to be important in our story.

Server

• MicroBadger and the Awesome Power of Container Labels

  Containers have the power to change infrastructure architecture, making it more secure and more energy efficient. This is because containerized applications can be started, stopped or juggled from machine to machine in seconds — far faster than applications can be moved on VMs or bare metal. That speed opens up the world to intelligent container-aware tools that can control what’s running in a data center in near real time.

  Combined with clever tooling, containers could help make data centers less static and more like an organic body: re-assigning resources or repelling threats as and when required.

  But for this vision to come about, those clever tools of the future need information. They need to know things like: is a particular containerized image mission critical? Does it contain a security flaw? Can it be safely stopped? Who should be paged if it crashes?

• 7 Tips for SysAdmins Considering a Linux Foundation Training Certification

  Open source is the new normal for startups and large enterprises looking to stay competitive in the digital economy. That means that open source is now also a viable long-term career path.

  “It is important to start thinking about the career road map, and the pathway that you can take and how Linux and open source in general can help you meet your career goals,” said Clyde Seepersad, general manager of training at The Linux Foundation, in a recent webinar.

• 3 Unique Takes on the Linux Terminal at Your Command

  When I first started on my journey with Linux, back in the late 1990s, there was one inevitability: the terminal. You couldn’t escape it. The command line was a part of your daily interaction with the open source platform and that was that. Today’s Linux is a much different beast. New and seasoned users alike can work with the platform and never touch the command line or terminal.

  But, on the off-chance you do want to take advantage of the power that is the command line, it’s good to know there are numerous options available, some of which offer unique takes on the task. Those are the terminals I want to highlight today—the ones that offer more than just the ability to enter a command. If you’re looking for a far more efficient interaction with your terminal and OS, or you’re looking for more flexibility with your terminal, one of these will certainly fit your needs.

• OpsDev Is Coming

  OpsDev means that the dependencies of the various application components must be understood and modeled first before the development process begins.

• One DevOps tool for all clouds: Cloudify

  Who doesn’t want one program to run multiple clouds? I know I do. Cloudify, an open-source orchestration software company, now claims it can support all the top five public clouds and Azure, OpenStack, and VMware, with its latest release, Cloudify 3.4.

• 5 sysadmin horror stories

  The job ain’t easy. There are constantly systems to update, bugs to fix, users to please, and on and on. A sysadmin’s job might even entail fixing the printer (sorry). To celebrate the hard work our sysadmins do for us, keeping our machines up and running, we’ve collected five horror stories that prove just how scary / difficult it can be.

• A guide to scientific computing system administration

  When developing applications for science there are times when you need to move beyond the desktop, but a fast, single node system may also suffice. In my time as a researcher and scientific software developer I have had the opportunity to work on a vast array of different systems, from old systems churning through data to some of the largest supercomputers on the planet.

Kernel Space

• Telco central offices could be in for open source makeover

  The CORD Summit, hosted by the Open Networking Lab (On.Lab) and The Linux Foundation, promotes the use of technologies such as Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), software-defined networking (SDN) and the cloud “to bring datacenter economics and cloud agility to service providers’ Central Office.” CORD is kind of an acronym for Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter, and is designed to benefit enterprise, residential and wireless networks. A mini version of this event was held in March as part of the broader Open Networking Summit.

• Some of The Other Pull Requests Arriving For Linux 4.8 This Week

  I’ve already written more than a dozen various bits of information about the Linux 4.8 kernel this week covering the big pull requests / subsystem updates.

• More Last Minute AMDGPU/Radeon Changes For Linux 4.8

  There already have been the main pull requests for the AMDGPU/Radeon DRM drivers for DRM-Next that in turn will land in Linux 4.8 next week.

• Linux Kernel 3.14.74 LTS Has Updated Drivers, ARM, MIPS and x86 Improvements

  After informing the community about the availability of the Linux 4.6.5 and Linux 4.4.16 LTS kernel versions for GNU/Linux operating systems, Greg Kroah-Hartman published details about the seventy-fourth maintenance update for Linux 3.14 LTS.

• Graphics Stack

  • X.Org Server 1.18.4 Brings over 60 Improvements to GNU/Linux Operating Systems

    A new maintenance update of the X.Org Server 1.18 display server software for GNU/Linux operating systems, version 1.18.4, has arrived with over 60 improvements.

    As usual, Adam Jackson was the one to make the announcement, and it looks like X.Org Server 1.18.4 comes approximately three and a half months after the release of the previous maintenance version, X.Org Server 1.18.3, promising to add lots of backports from the devel branch, primarily in XWayland, Glamor, and Kernel Mode Setting (KMS).

    However, looking at the internal changelog, we can notice that X.Org Server 1.18.4 introduces improvements for several other drivers and components, including, but not limited to, XQuartz, RandR, x86emu, XFree86, KDrive, xf86Crtc, EXA, GLX, DIX/PTraccel, XKB, as well as Xi.

  • Igalia’s Work On The Intel Mesa Driver The Past Year

  • DRM Text Mode Proposed As Alternative To FBDEV/FBCON

    There’s long been talk on killing FBDEV and getting rid of CONFIG_VT with a modern replacement making more use of DRM/KMS drivers, but so far none of those efforts have fully panned out.

Applications

• Git-Series Helps You Track Changes To Patches Over Time

  Kernel developer Josh Triplett has announced the work he’s been doing recently on developing git-series, a way to track changes to a patch series over time…

• remctl 3.12

  This release adds a new, experimental server implementation: remctl-shell. As its name implies, this is designed to be run as a shell of a dedicated user rather than as a server. It does not use the remctl protocol, instead relying on ssh to pass in the command and user information (via special authorized_keys configuration). But it supports the same configuration as the normal remctl server. It can be useful for allowing remctl-style simple RPC in environments that only use ssh public key authentication.

• RcppGetconf 0.0.1

• Instagraph — An Unofficial Instagram App for Ubuntu Phone

  An all-new, native Instagram app is coming to Ubuntu Phone. Say hello to Instagraph.

• Ring – A free, open source and secure alternative to Skype messenger

  In this fast paced modern world, almost all of us are using smartphones and computers to connect with our Family, Friends, and Colleagues from anywhere in the world. All we need is just an Internet enabled device, like a Computer or Smartphone, so that we could easily send text messages, make audio/video calls whenever we want to our beloved ones at any time from anywhere instantly. There are numerous communication applications, both free and paid versions, are available on the market. One of the popular and most widely used application is Skype messenger. Some of you might aware that Microsoft had closely worked with NSA, and helped them to intercept the users Skype video calls. So, Skype lost its integrity, and users started to look for some other alternatives. There are so many alternatives over time. The one we are going to discuss in the tutorial is Ring.

• Proprietary

  • Skype for Linux Alpha 1.3 released with few improvements and bug fixes

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How to setup HTTP2 in cPanel/WHM Linux VPS using EasyApache3

  • Pushed Fedora Graphical upgrade via Gnome software utility

  • OpenSCAP XSLT performance improvements for faster SSG builds

  • ControllerExtraConfig and Tripleo Quickstart

  • Best Computer Diagnostic Tools For Windows And Ubuntu

  • Rebasing on the way

  • Install Bludit on Ubuntu 16.04

  • 4 new guides for OpenStack developers and administrators

  • Timing your movie…

• Games

  • IndieDB is having another 24 hour giveaway with Linux support, the indie platformer ‘Prison Run and Gun’

    In case you’re interested, you have to enter this link and follow the instructions. Be quick, since it’s a 24 hour giveaway. Once the time is up, winners will be announced.

  • Overlord II Now Available For Linux Gamers

    One week after Overlord was released for Linux (anc macOS), Virtual Programming has released Overlord II for Linux.

    Overlord II is available for purchase from Virtual Programming. Under Linux they state the graphics requirements as “Graphics: nVidia/AMD OpenGL 3.2 compatible.”

Desktop Environments/WMs

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Rygel/Shotwell/GUADEC

Distributions

• Enlightenment

  • Bodhi 4.0.0 Distro Enters Development, Alpha Out Now Based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

    Bodhi Linux developer Jeff Hoogland was proud to announce recently the release and general availability of the first Alpha milestone towards the Bodhi 4.0.0 operating system.

    Bodhi 4.0.0 Alpha is right on schedule, according to Mr. Hoogland, and it marks the start of the development cycle of the upcoming GNU/Linux distribution built around the lightweight and modern Moksha desktop environment, a continuation of the Enlightenment 17 window manager.

  • Bodhi Linux 4.0.0 Alpha released

  • Enlightenment 0.20.10 Is the Last in the Series, Users Urged to Upgrade to 0.21

    A new stable version of the Enlightenment 0.20 lightweight and modern desktop environment/window manager has arrived, Enlightenment 0.20.10, which is the last one in the series.

    Yes, you’re reading it right, the development cycle of the Enlightenment 0.20 series has come to an end, and if you’re still using this version on your GNU/Linux operating system, you are urged to either upgrade to the Enlightenment 0.20.10 maintenance release or move to the newest stable branch, Enlightenment 0.21.0.

• New Releases

  • Homegrown Budgie Desktop Shows Off the Beauty – and Beastliness – of Solus Simplicity

    The Budgie desktop — and thus Solus itself — lacks the glitz and glitter found in more seasoned desktop environments. Animation is nonexistent. It also lacks any right-click menu finesse other than the ability to change background or settings.

    The Solus Project’s distro is very user-friendly, but experienced Linux users will need more optimized software and desktop functionality in the next release to be tempted to give up more advanced desktop flavors.

  • Parrot Security OS 3.1 Distro for Ethical Hackers Moves to Linux Kernel 4.6

    The guys over Parrot Security OS have announced that the first point release of the 3.x series of the Debian-based distribution designed for security professional and ethical hackers is now available for download.

• OpenSUSE/SUSE

  • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the Week 2016/30

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Satellite 6.2 Adds Docker Deployment

  • Microsoft and Red Hat partnership expanded to Microsoft Azure Government

  • Paul Smith: Red Hat Extends Subscription Program to Microsoft’s Azure Govt Cloud

  • With .NET Shared Between Them, Microsoft and Red Hat Get Cozy

  • Public cloud vendors fueling Red Hat’s growth – Wikibon

    An evolution is in progress in the cloud as all the leading public platforms embrace open source software, both as-a-service and as contributions to new Apache projects, writes Wikibon Lead Cloud Analyst Brian Gracely. At its recent Red Hat Summit 2016, Red Hat Inc., highlighted partnerships with several of the leaders in public cloud. This trend is helping it drive continuing growth that, on a percentage basis, exceeds that of most other traditional IT vendors.

  • Red Hat Satellite 6.2 to focus on container management

    North Carolina-based Red Hat that provides open source software solutions to the enterprise community, has made its Satellite 6.2 generally available. Satellite 6.2 is Red Hat’s systems lifecycle management tool across physical, virtual, and private and public cloud environments. The tool introduces remote implementation and extends capabilities for container management and security for container deployment.

    According to Red Hat, the Satellite 6.2 is an easy-to-use system management product that helps keep Red Hat Enterprise Linux environments and other Red Hat infrastructure run efficiently, with proper security, and is compliant with various standards. The satellite will be generally available to all Red Hat Satellite customers with a valid subscription.

    The company claims that cloud infrastructures continue to shift toward container-based deployments, customers increasingly need an agile management solution for new container setups housing sensitive applications and data and Satellite 6.2 provides scalability and offline support for all the cloud environments.

  • Finance

    • Technology Stocks Worth Chasing: NeoPhotonics Corporation (NPTN), Red Hat, Inc. (RHT)

    • Stock Update After The Closing Bell on Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Thursday Session Roundup For Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Majority Holders Holding on to Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) Realized Volatility Hits An Extreme Low

    • Friday Session Wrap for Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Is Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT), a large market cap stock a smart buy?

  • Fedora

    • Getting involved with Fedora Quality Assurance

    • Fedora PSA: Why is my account listed as spamcheck_* (Updated)

    • Flocking to Kraków

      In less than five days, the fourth annual Flock conference will take place in Kraków, Poland. This is Fedora’s premier contributor event each year, alternately taking place in North America and Europe. Attendance is completely free for anyone at all, so if you happen to be in the area (maybe hanging around after World Youth Day going on right now), you should certainly stop in!

    • Fedora 24 Linux OS Gets New, Updated Lives ISOs with Latest Security Patches

      Founder of The Fedora Unity Project and Fedora Ambassador, Ben Williams, is happy to report that updated Live ISO images of the Fedora 24 GNU/Linux operating system are now available for download.

    • GSoC 2016: Moving towards staging

• Debian Family

  • Contributing with Debian Recommendation System

    Hi, my name is Luciano Prestes, I am participating in the program Google Summer of Code (GSoC), my mentor is Antonio Terceiro, and my co-mentor is Tassia Camoes, both are Debian Developers. The project that I am contributing is the AppRecommender, which is a package recommender for Debian systems, my goal is to add a new strategy of recommendation to AppRecommender, to make it recommend packages after the user installs a new package with ‘apt’.

    At principle AppRecommender has three recommendation strategies, being them, content-based, collaborative and hybrid. To my work on GSoC this text explains two of these strategies, content-based and collaborative. Content-based strategy get the user packages and analyzes yours descriptions to find another Debian packages that they are similar to the user packages, so AppRecommender uses the content of user packages to recommender similar packages to user. The collaborative strategy compare the user packages with the packages of another users, and then recommends packages that users with similar profile have, where a profile of user is your packages. On her work, Tassia Camoes uses the popularity-contest data to compare the users profiles on the collaborative strategy, the popularity-contest is an application that get the users packages into a submission and send to the popularity-contest server and generates statistical data analyzing the users packages.

  • Looking for the artwork for the next Debian release

    Each release of Debian has a shiny new theme, which is visible on the boot screen, the login screen and, most prominently, on the desktop wallpaper.

    Debian plans to release Stretch next year. As ever, we need your help in creating its theme! You have the opportunity to design a theme that will inspire thousands of people while working in their Debian systems.

  • Derivatives

    • SteamOS 2.87 Arrives with Support for Nvidia GTX 1080/1070, AMD “Bonaire” GPUs

      Today, July 29, 2016, Valve announced the availability for download of a new stable version of its Debian-based GNU/Linux operating system designed for gaming, SteamOS 2.87.

      After being in the Beta stages of the development for the past two months, SteamOS 2.87 is now the latest stable and most advanced version of the gaming OS developed by Valve for personal computers and Steam Machines. It comes as a replacement for the previous stable release, SteamOS 2.70, announced back in April 2016.

      Prominent new features of SteamOS 2.87 include the availability of updated Nvidia and AMD Radeon graphics drivers, version 367.27 and AMDGPU-PRO 16.30 respectively, which now offer support for the recently announced Nvidia GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 GPUs, as well as for the “Bonaire” GPUs.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Mint 18 Xfce Imminent, Gmane.org Shutting Down

        Mint project lead Clement Lefebvre today said that Mint 18 Xfce is “almost ready” but KDE users will have to continue to wait. The second alpha in the Ubuntu 16.10 developmental cycle is available to crash testers as of today in Lubuntu, Ubuntu MATE and Ubuntu Kylin flavors only. In other news, the Gmane mailing list archive site is shutting down as the founder has grown weary with the hassles as well as a prolonged DDOS attack. Finally today, Carla Schroder shared her Linux story.

      • Chew on this: Ubuntu Core Linux comes to the uCRobotics Bubblegum-96 board

        Linux and other open source software have been in the news quite a bit lately. As more and more people are seeing, closed source is not the only way to make money. A company like Red Hat, for instance, is able to be profitable while focusing its business on open source.

        Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux-based operating systems, and it is not hard to see why. Not only is it easy to use and adaptable to much hardware (such as SoC boards), but there is a ton of free support online from the Ubuntu user community too. Today, Canonical announces a special Ubuntu Core image for the uCRobotics Bubblegum-96 board.

      • Willing To Experience Linux? Try Ubuntu Demo Right Now In Your Browser

        If you are new to the world of Linux, you might not be knowing about online Ubuntu Linux demo website. If you are planning to make a switch to Linux, you can head over to this website and get familiar with Ubuntu Linux.

      • Ubuntu Touch takes a huge step towards Convergence in OTA-12

        Ubuntu has a very ambitious goal with Ubuntu Touch. It proposed an operating system that could work equally on any capable device, a smartphone that can truly be your computer, no holds barred. That was the promise of Convergence, which we took for a spin with the Meizu PRO 5 smartphone and, before that, the bq Aquaris M10 tablet. The results back then where disappointing yet promising. Ubuntu Touch, as it was when we reviewed these devices, still lacked that punch that would make you truly go “wow!”. But, unlike other operating systems, Ubuntu is fast evolving, and the latest OTA-12 brings much needed improvements to bring us closer to true Convergence.

      • Yakkety Yak Alpha 2 Released

      • Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS Available for System76 PCs, Ubuntu 15.10 Users Must Upgrade

        As reported by us last week, Canonical announced the first point release of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), and it looks like the guys over System76 were pretty quick to push the update to users’ computers.

        Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS is the latest, most advanced version of the Xenial Xerus operating system, and we recommend that you upgrade to it as soon as possible if you didn’t do it already. This is an important point release because it also opens up the upgrade path for users of the Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS (Trusty Tahr) distribution.

      • A Reminder Of Why I Hate Ubuntu

        Yesterday I was reminded why I hate Ubuntu. I suddenly was unable to SSH into Odroid-C2. From Odroid-C2 I could do everything as normal. It turned out the IP address had changed despite my HOST declaration in Beast’s DHCP server and Odroid-C2 being set to use DHCP, or so I thought. Nope. There was a dhclient.conf file in Odroid-C2 which requested everything and the kitchen sink from DHCP, stuff I had no use of like netbios… The man page for the dhclient.conf file says it all: “The require statement lists options that must be sent in order for an offer to be accepted. Offers that do not contain all the listed options will be ignored. There is no default require list.”

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Hands-On: Upgrading Linux Mint 17.3 to 18

          The first thing to do is read through the tutorial very carefully – and preferably more than once. This is not a trivial GUI procedure like the Fedora upgrade was, or like many of the previous Mint upgrades have been. It requires use of CLI commands, and those commands produce positively scary amounts of text output. It takes a relatively long time to perform the complete upgrade by Linux standards (it’s done in a flash by Windows upgrade standards), and it is not entirely automated, so it will require manual intervention numerous times along the way.

        • [Mint] Monthly News – July 2016

Devices/Embedded

• Thin Mini-ITX board taps Braswell SoCs, offers 4K video

  IEI’s “tKINO-BW” Mini-ITX board features Intel Pentium and Celeron “Braswell” SoCs, 4K video, triple display support, and optional remote management.

  Over the last year, numerous Mini-ITX boards based on Intel’s “Braswell” family of 14nm SoCs have reached market, but there have been far fewer models billed as being “thin.” This somewhat arbitrary term refers to boards with low-profile coastline port layouts, generally for space-constrained embedded applications rather than big gaming boxes.

• Phones

  • Sailfish OS 2.0.2 In Early Access With Variety Of Improvements

    Jolla announced today that their Sailfish OS 2.0.2 “Aurajoki” mobile operating system release is available as early access.

    Sailfish OS 2.0.2 makes it easier to take screenshots via the volume buttons, a variety of new keyboard layouts, a new layout on the media app, a new Sailfish OS logo, simplified backups, browser improvements, support for flash when recording videos, the cloud services now supports the VK service, dual SIM support on capable devices, Dropbox and OneDrive integration in the photo gallery, and a wide variety of other fixes and improvements.

  • [Early Access] Sailfish OS 2.0.2 Aurajoki

    This update contains of many bug fixes and new added features such as taking screenshot by holding down volume buttons for 0.5 seconds, added keyboard layouts for Indian languages Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Tamil and Bengali, new layout on Media app’s front page, new Sailfish OS logo and many more.

  • Android

    • Is Android security really too difficult for Motorola?

      Nobody ever said security was easy (other than just about every vendor at just about every expo) but claiming ‘difficulty’ as a reason not to bother is something of a first.

      Yet that’s precisely what Motorola appears to have done. When journalists asked at the launch of the Moto Z smartphone if it would commit to monthly Android OTA security updates, Motorola replied with a straight no.

      One review of the device then went on to suggest, quite rightly, that this was not a good thing. Motorola responded with a statement that the “Moto Z and Moto Z Force will be supported with patches from Android Security Bulletins” which left the matter as clear as mud.

    • Internal Android Nougat Build Appears on A User’s Nexus 6P

    • Nexus 6P user somehow receives updated, internal build of Android Nougat

      In a sign that the final version of Nougat is coming soon, one Nexus 6P user has apparently received a confidential Googlers-only OTA with an updated build of Android 7.0. While DP5 was NPD90G, this internal dogfood version is NRD90M…

    • Stock Android Provides the Best Experience for Android Auto

      That title may sound a bit “fanboyish”, but unfortunately, for Android Auto it is 100% true. You see, every Android manufacturer handles USB connections a bit differently. For example on my Nexus 6P, all I need to do is plug it in and it starts working perfectly fine with Android Auto. The same goes for the Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus. But when it comes to the LG G5, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it recognizes the device for a second, then acts like it isn’t plugged in. Every so often I have to change the USB mode on the LG G5, which isn’t a good user experience at all.

    • BlackBerry: Signs Of Promise From Apple And Android

    • The Holofone Phablet is a 7-inch Android phone / Windows PC with a built-in projector

    • New Android Trojan SpyNote leaks on underground forums

    • New Trojan SpyNote Installs Backdoor on Android Devices [Ed: one has to actually install it, so how much of a threat really?]

    • How to change boot animation in Android: install a custom boot animation on your Android device

    • Android device updates: AT&T Wi-Fi calling comes to Galaxy S7, S7 Edge

    • 7 Points on The Samsung Galaxy Note 7: AKA The Best Android Phone of 2016

    • Android N Update For Huawei P9 Lands, Accidentally

    • Yandex Wins Share in Android Search After Google Antitrust Case

    • Instant Analysis: BlackBerry Ltd Launches Its Second Android Phone

    • Android Nougat 7.0 UK release date rumours | Android Nougat Developer Preview | Android Nougat new features: When will my phone get Android Nougat?

    • A leaked Android 7.0 beta ROM for the Huawei P9 is in the wild

    • Google brings add-ons to Docs and Sheets on Android

    • Google lets third parties extend its productivity software on Android

Continuous Updating Tool VersionEye Now Open Source

The tool is integrated with GitHub, Bitbucket, and Stash to search for outdated dependencies in projects written in Java, Ruby, Node.JS and other common programming languages with package managers.

OwnCloud split threatens the future of cloud computing’s open source option

There really was a Dan Murphy. An indomitable, feisty spiritual son of Ireland who single-handedly disrupted the cosy 1960s world of recommended retail priced liquor in Australia.

With just a handful of stores, all in Melbourne, he was the Aldi of his day. Even though Murphy accounted for a small share of industry turnover, his aggressive price point forced giants to follow suit.

That’s why the open source cloud storage system OwnCloud is so important. Offering cloud at a fraction of the cost of a proprietary service, it helps keep the major players honest.

So it’s concerning OwnCloud has hit a major snag. In the lingo of the open source world, it’s forked.

Open source Flynn takes the headaches out of app deployment

The best part about open source for application delivery is the sheer breadth of tooling available to create and deploy apps. That’s also the worst part.

Flynn, an open source platform-as-a-service now entering its 1.0 phase, deploys apps on an open source infrastructure without requiring the user to stitch together a disparate line of components to be useful.

Google Adds to the Repertoire of Android Developers by Acquiring LaunchKit

Mobile tool maker LaunchKit has been acquired by Google

Google acquires mobile app development platfrom LaunchKit

LaunchKit acquired by Google, to open-source all its tools

Google acquires LaunchKit, will discontinue hosted mobile development services

Launchkit Joins Google To Help Build developer Tools

Google acquires Launchkit, a set of tools helping developers pivot apps on Android and iOS

Events

• 5 great linux.conf.au talks (that aren’t about Linux)

  linux.conf.au, otherwise known as LCA, is one of the world’s longest-running open source events. LCA has been held in a different city around Australia and New Zealand almost every year since 1999. Despite the name, linux.conf.au is a generalist open source conference. LCA hasn’t been just about Linux for a long time. Rather, the conference focuses on everything to do with open source: the software, hardware, and network protocols that underly it. LCA also has a strong track on free and open culture, exploring how open source interacts with science, government, and the law.

• FINAL REMINDER! systemd.conf 2016 CfP Ends on Monday!

  Please note that the systemd.conf 2016 Call for Participation ends on Monday, on Aug. 1st! Please send in your talk proposal by then! We’ve already got a good number of excellent submissions, but we are very interested in yours, too!

• Learn from the Experts at The Linux Foundation’s Europe Events

  The Linux Foundation has released session details for three major conferences coming up this fall: MesosCon Europe, Embedded Linux Conference / OpenIoT Summit Europe, and LinuxCon + ContainerCon Europe.

  MesosCon Europe, which will take place August 31-September 1 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, is an annual conference organized by the Apache Mesos community, bringing together users and developers for two days of sessions about Mesos and related technologies. This year, the MesosCon program will include workshops to get started with Mesos, keynote speakers from industry leaders, and sessions led by adopters and contributors.

SaaS/Back End

• Report: Austria can benefit from Big Data solutions

  Big Data solutions can contribute significantly to Austrian public administrations, a working group concludes in a report published in June. Benefits include improved quality of life, finding optimal business locations, and offering better guidance to citizens. The report by the Big Data working group aims to help public administration when considering Big Data solutions, providing legal, economic and technical context.

• Report: over half of Spain’s regions now use SaaS

  In 2014, 59% of Spain’s regional governments used Software as a Service, according to the 2015 eGovernment report published on 30 June by PAe, Spain’s eGovernment portal. Next most-used cloud computing service is Infrastructure as a Service (40%), and third is Platform as a Service (20%).

  The usage of cloud computing is just one of the attributes of and indicators for eGovernment services that are aggregated in the report. The document shows the use of document management systems and support of electronic signatures. The text looks at interoperability, open data portals and eParticipation, lists region’s maturity levels of eGovernment services, from the availability to download forms online to the fully electronic management of applications.

Databases

• The Firebird Project’s Firebird Relational Database

  Firebird distills its identity into the phrase “True universal open-source database” and boasts not only of being “free like free beer” but also, fittingly, of being “free like a bird”. The latter permits anyone to build a custom version of the Firebird, as long as the modifications are made available for others to use and build upon.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

• Facebook Surround 360 Plans Released to GitHub

• A closer look at Facebook’s open source Surround 360 camera array [Ed: runs Ubuntu]

• Facebook 360-degree Video Camera Now Open-Source

• With ChakraCore on Linux, Microsoft doesn’t discriminate [Ed: wonder who wrote this bizarre headline: “Microsoft doesn’t discriminate”]

• Accenture Acquires Tecnilógica to Scale Its Open Source Digital Skills in Spain [Ed: Microsoft proxy in the UK]

• Accenture (ACN) Shares Tick Lower Amid Announcing Acquisition of Tecnilógica

• Accenture Buys 70-Person Spanish Firm to Bolster Open-Source Digital Capabilities

Public Services/Government

• Software Freedom in Kosovo, Waiting for Xfce Mint & More…

  It’s not FOSS, but I reckon the biggest story in tech this week, ignoring claims of Russia hacking for Trump, is the sale of Yahoo to Verizon for $4.8 billion. Considering that traffic watcher Alexa says the site is the fifth most visited address on the web, that seems like something of a bargain to me. Add to that Yahoo’s prime Silicon Valley real estate and the price seems to be in the “it fell of the truck” category. The sale puts Verizon in control of both America Online and Yahoo, so I suspect we’ll be seeing Verizon trying to compete with Google and Bing for a share of the search advertising market.

  [...]

  We’ve also heard from Software Freedom Kosova, which tells us it’s issued this year’s call for speakers, which will be open through September 15. This will be the seventh year for the Kosovo event, which aims to “promote free/libre open source software, free culture and open knowledge” — all laudable goals in my estimation. Potential speakers should know “the topic must be related to free software and hardware, open knowledge and culture.” Mike DuPont, the SFK member who made us aware of the event, told FOSS Force, “There might be travel expenses for qualified speakers.” The event will take place October 21-23.

• Cloud, open source and DevOps: Technology at the GLA

  David Munn, head of IT at the Greater London Authority, explains what technology his organisation has adopted in order to help individuals keep innovating

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• Our attitude towards wealth played a crucial role in Brexit. We need a rethink

  Money was a key factor in the outcome of the EU referendum. We will now have to learn to collaborate and to share

  [...]

  Does money matter? Does wealth make us rich any more? These might seem like odd questions for a physicist to try to answer, but Britain’s referendum decision is a reminder that everything is connected and that if we wish to understand the fundamental nature of the universe, we’d be very foolish to ignore the role that wealth does and doesn’t play in our society.

• France’s Insee and Drees publish microsimulation model to increase transparency

  Insee (Institut national de la statistique), the French public agency for statistics, and Drees (Direction des études du Ministère des Affaires sociales et de la santé), which is in charge of surveys at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, has published the source code of the microsimulation algorithmic model called Ines.

• Plant Sciences pushing open-source berry model

  Several of those opportunities appear to lie in the development of so-called ‘open market’ breeding.

  Historically, Plant Sciences’ berry varieties have made it into the commercial arena under limited licensing arrangements, with individuals or groups of grower-shippers paying a premium to use them.

  While Nelson is eager to point out that this model continues to perform well, his company have decided to structure its business in Europe in such a way that it offers varieties to the “largest audience possible” at the most competitive price.

  “Given the price pressures that producers, marketers and retailers are under, we sense that such an approach is needed to remain most viable going forward and bring new varieties forward to the broadest market,” he explained.

• Drug discovery test leads to malaria drug prospects at UW

• Worldwide Open-Source Project Discovers Promising Disease-Fighting Compounds

• Open-source drug discovery a success

• Open Data

  • The Global Open Data Index to be updated

    Open Knowledge International, a not-for-profit organisation that promotes openness and transparency, has decided to update the survey for its Global Open Data Index. This index measures Open Data publication in 122 countries.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • This Startup Created the Ultimate Open-Source Prototyping Product

    The world has become a technologically focused place. Unless you’ve set up shop in a cabin in the woods, your life is likely filled with gadgets, wearables, devices, and doodads that control everything from your TV to your laptop. And with all this technology, it’s no wonder tech jobs have become so prevalent in the market. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to learn skills and prototyping projects that will impress even the most critical interviewer. And one startup has built the perfect product to do just that.

    Created by a group of students from the India Institute of Technology, evive is an open-source prototyping module that can make creating projects easier than ever. It has a power module, plug and play hardware interface, user interface, data acquisition module, shield stack space and more. It’s even IoT ready so it can connect to more devices than you can count. Plus, it works across multiple platforms like LabVIEW, MATLAB, Scratch, Eclipse, ROS, Python, Arduino IDE and many more.

Programming/Development

• This GitHub Repo Teaches You Web Design Basics In 4 Minutes

• [Pulp] Sprint Demo 5 — July 28, 2016

  See some of the great features going into Pulp 2.10.

• Community Testing Day on August 5th

• Java Code Challenge: Chemical Symbol Naming-Part One

• How the Java Community Process Has Changed and Where It’s Headed

Science

• Interference Mitigation in the E5a Galileo Band Using an Open-Source Simulator

• Access to vocational education reduces crime—new research

  The crime rate, especially drug crime, decreases significantly when more 16-44 year olds have access to affordable Vocational Education and Training, (VET) according to a new University of Melbourne report.

  Drug crime rate decreased 13 per cent when more people had access to a publicly-funded place in VET. The research also recorded a five percent and 11 per cent decrease in personal and property crime respectively, including assault, theft and burglary.

  Report author, Dr Cain Polidano from the Melbourne Institute found that the extra public funding of VET (TAFE and private colleges) reduced the costs of crime.

  “We found that for every extra dollar spent on VET, the community saved 18 cents in avoided crime costs, such as lost productivity, health and rehabilitation costs,” said Dr Polidano.

• Man and Bird Chat While Honey Hunting

  The Yao people of Mozambique have cooperated with small birds called honeyguides for generations to find bees nests dripping with sweet, calorie-dense honey. Now, researchers from the University of Cambridge and South African institutions have found that the partnership is more complex than the human hunters simply following the birds to the hives. The team’s results, published last week (July 22) in Science, suggest that Yao hunters vocally communicate with the birds in order to recruit them into the quest for honey.

  The key to the mutually beneficial relationship—humans extract honey and leave exposed beeswax for the birds to eat—is a “brrrr-hm” sound that Yao hunters make when they’re on the hunt for honey. “They told us that the reason they make this ‘brrrr-hm’ sound, when they’re walking through the bush looking for bees’ nests, is that it’s the best way of attracting a honeyguide—and of maintaining a honeyguide’s attention once it starts guiding you,” study coauthor Claire Spottiswoode of Cambridge told BBC News. “In particular, we wanted to distinguish whether honeyguides responded to the specific information content of the ‘brrr-hm’ call—which, from a honeyguide’s point of view, effectively signals ‘I’m looking for bees’ nests’—or whether the call simply alerts honeyguides to the presence of humans in the environment.”

  Spottiswoode and colleagues made recordings of the “brrrr-hm” sound and other noises, including the Yao word for “honey” and the sounds of hunters shouting their own names. They then followed Yao honey gatherers on dozens of hunts playing these different sounds through a loudspeaker. The researchers found that hunts accompanied by the “brrrr-hm” call recruited a honeyguide more than 60 percent of the time. Hunts during which other sounds were played only recruited honeyguides about 25 percent of the time. Playing the “brrrr-hm” call also tripled the chances of successfully finding a beehive during these hunts.

  “This is an important paper which experimentally verifies what Yao honey hunters say is true: that honeyguides are attracted by the specialized calls honey-hunters use,” Brian Wood, an anthropologist at Yale University who was not involved in the work, told Smithsonian.

Health/Nutrition

• When Is a Drug Not a ‘Drug of Any Kind’? When It Kills 16 Times More Often Than Opioid ODs

  It’s not mere pedantry to note that cigarettes are, obviously, a “drug of any kind.” They’re actually a drug that kills far more people in the US than opioid overdoses—480,000 per year, according to the CDC, vs. 28,647 for opioid ODs.

  And it’s not just because more people smoke cigarettes: With approximately 2.3 million people addicted to opioid painkillers and to heroin, 28,647 ODs produces an annual death rate of 1.2 percent—the same death rate you get from dividing 480,000 smoking-related deaths among 40 million smokers.

  Opioid addiction is certainly a serious problem. But in describing its heartbreaks, it’s irresponsible to present smoking, by contrast, as a mere bad habit—when that habit is responsible for 16 times as many of this country’s funerals every year.

• Set It and Forget It: How Default Settings Rule the World

  In other countries such as Spain, Portugal and Austria, the default is that you’re an organ donor unless you explicitly choose not to be. And in many of those countries over 99 percent of the population is registered. A recent study found that countries with opt-out or “presumed consent” policies don’t just have more people who sign up to be donors, they also have consistently higher numbers of transplants.

• Zika in the UK: Three cases of virus reported in Yorkshire

  At least three people have been found to be carrying the Zika virus in east Yorkshire.

  Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust said the patients were believed to have contracted the virus overseas.

  Zika has been declared a global public health emergency by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

  The virus, which is mainly spread by the Aedes aegypt species of mosquito, typically causes only mild symptoms in adults but can cause a major birth defect called microcephaly in the babies of pregnant women who are infected.

Security

• Security advisories for Thursday

• Please save GMane!

• The End of Gmane?

  In 2002, I grew annoyed with not finding the obscure technical information I was looking for, so I started Gmane, the mailing list archive. All technical discussion took place on mailing lists those days, and archiving those were, at best, spotty and with horrible web interfaces.

  The past few weeks, the Gmane machines (and more importantly, the company I work for, who are graciously hosting the servers) have been the target of a number of distributed denial of service attacks. Our upstream have been good about helping us filter out the DDoS traffic, but it’s meant serious downtime where we’ve been completely off the Internet.

• Pwnie Express makes IoT, Android security arsenal open source

  Pwnie Express has given the keys to software used to secure the Internet of Things (IoT) and Android software to the open-source community.

  The Internet of Things (IoT), the emergence of devices ranging from lighting to fridges and embedded systems which are connected to the web, has paved an avenue for cyberattackers to exploit.

• Pwnie Express Open Sources Tools to Lock Down IoT/Android Security

  Pwnie Express isn’t a name that everyone is familiar with, but in the security arena the company has a good reputation for its wired and wireless threat detection technologies. Now, the Boston-based firm has announced plans to open source key tools that it has used to secure the Internet of Things (IoT) and Android software.

  Blue Hydra is a Bluetooth utility that can detect Bluetooth devices, and also work as a sniffer to query devices it detects for threats. Meanwhile, the Android Open Pwn Project (AOPP), is an Android ROM built for security testers. It’s based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and community-developed ROMS — one of which is CyanogenMod. It lets developers on the Android front sniff out threats on mobile platforms.

• The Software Supply Chain Is Bedeviled by Bad Open-Source Code [Ed: again, trace this back to FUD firms like Sonatype in this case]

  Open-source components play a key role in the software supply chain. By reducing the amount of code that development organizations need to write, open source enables companies to deliver software more efficiently — but not without significant risks, including defective and outdated components and security vulnerabilities.

• Securing a Virtual World [Ed: paywall, undated (no year but reposted)]

• Google tells Android’s Linux kernel to toughen up and fight off those horrible hacker bullies

  In a blog post, Jeff Vander Stoep of the mobile operating system’s security team said that in the next build of the OS, named Nougat, Google is going to be addressing two key areas of the Linux kernel that reside at the heart of most of the world’s smartphones: memory protection and reducing areas available for attack by hackers.

• Friday’s security updates

Defence/Aggression

• The Killings of Tony Blair

  The film has been predictably lambasted by the mainstream media. But it does include some very essential first hand evidence – myself apart, two other British Ambassadors tell what they themselves witnessed, as do Cabinet members. Noam Chomsky adds some important perceptions. This cannot just be dismissed by cries of “Oh look! George Galloway’s in a hat!! Remember when he was on Big Brother!!” The mainstream media’s response to this film has been unanimously puerile.

• Syrian refugee, 21, hacks PREGNANT woman to death with machete and injures two others before hero BMW driver runs him over in yet another attack in Germany

  A Syrian refugee wielding a machete has killed a pregnant woman and injured a man and another woman in Germany before being arrested by police after he was run over by a man driving a BMW.

  The attack happened in the south western city of Reutlingen near a doner kebab stand in a bus station at Listplatz Square in what has been described as a ‘crime of passion’.

  German media have been reporting that the motive for the attack in the city south of Stuttgart was unclear but the attacker and the 45-year-old Polish victim both worked at the same snack bar.

• Putin’s Warning

  This candid conversation took place with representatives of various media outlets during the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, in June 2016. Putin urged journalists to report genuinely on the impending danger that is a nuclear arms race.

• As the Syrian Government Tightens Its Noose, Aleppo’s Doctors Fear the Worst

  It was just before 4 p.m. local time last Friday in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo when Dr. Farida Almouslem picked up the phone. With bombs falling outside, the 37-year-old calmly described the chaos unfolding around her. “I’m at home and staying in the middle of my home, because airstrikes are hitting us now,” she said. “We are hiding inside our bathroom.”

  For four years now, Aleppo City, Almouslem’s hometown, has been a centerpiece in Syria’s brutal civil war, controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime to the west and opposition forces to the east. The period has been marked by tragedy, bloodshed, and, for the more than 2 million people who called the city home when the fighting began, widespread collective trauma. The situation has now gone from bad to worse.

• Coups Inside NATO: A Disturbing History

  The Turkish government’s strong suspicion that Washington sympathized with or covertly backed the recent failed military coup — even if completely unfounded — may seriously damage the Western alliance.

  After all, the preamble to the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty emphasizes the determination of the signing countries “to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.”

• Wild Turkey With H-Bombs: Failed Coup Heightens Calls for Denuclearization

  An explosive cocktail of political instability mixed with 90 U.S. H-bombs raises the specter of accidental or suicidal nuclear detonation in or near Turkey. This risk was brought into sharp relief by the attempted military coup there in mid-July.

  In June, I warned that the Pentagon’s 180 thermonuclear B61 gravity bombs deployed across Europe – 50 to 90 are at Incirlik Air Force Base in Turkey – are too dangerous deploy in the age of terrorism. Turkey’s B61s are 100 miles from Islamic State territory, a war zone. Now the Los Angeles Times, the Japan Times, Foreign Policy, the San Antonio Express News and other major papers see the Pentagon’s outsourced B61s in Turkey as a hot topic.

• Will the 9/11 Defendants Ever Get a Fair Trial?

  The government has been accused of destroying evidence in the 9/11 military commission, which has spanned more than a decade.

  I spent last week in Guantánamo Bay, where I was supposed to be observing four days of pre-trial hearings in the military commission prosecution of the 9/11 defendants. But as is so often the case, on three of those days, the hearings were closed. On the single day of open hearings, the proceeding focused on the government’s destruction of key evidence in the case. This past weekend, defense lawyers confirmed that the evidence concerns a secret CIA black site abroad where the defendants and others were severely tortured.

  Almost 15 years have passed since the attacks of 9/11, and yet the Guantánamo military commissions are still muddling through pre-trial motions, with virtually the same confusion and lack of transparency that has characterized these proceedings for years. The dichotomy between the importance of the proceedings and their virtual absence from public discourse is astonishing.

  The proceedings that did take place last week focused on the government’s destruction of evidence, which may have been irreplaceable for the defense, and over which the judge had issued a protective order. Defense attorney David Nevin, who represents Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, referred to this evidence as “among the most important evidence of the case.” As Nevin argued, the government’s torture and mistreatment of the defendants is central to the question of whether they can lawfully be subject to the death penalty.

  This key issue has been percolating for some time.

• Activist Shines Light on Clinton’s Dirty Foreign Policy in Honduras (Video)

  Sha Grogan Brown is a member of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, and alongside other activist coalitions, he participated in the movement to “Wall Off Trump” at the Republican National Convention last week. Now, Grogan Brown is in Philadelphia, after traveling from Cleveland in a van with other GGJA members.

  Truthdig contributor Sonali Kolhatkar spoke with Grogan Brown about both major-party candidates. After recounting the various protests held at the Republican convention in opposition to Donald Trump, Grogan Brown explains a key aspect of his presence at the Democratic convention. “Berta Cáceres was an internationally known organizer from Honduras,” he says. “She was an indigenous, environmentalist feminist, and she was assassinated in her home on March [3].” The GGJA has teamed up with Honduran activist forces to call for an investigation into Cáceres’ death.

• U.S. Government Finally Pays Family of Italian Aid Worker Killed in Drone Strike

  The U.S. government has reached an agreement with the family of an Italian aid worker killed in a CIA drone strike in Pakistan, over a year after President Barack Obama acknowledged the operation and promised an investigation and compensation. The news comes as other victims of U.S. counterterrorism strikes are pushing for the administration to also acknowledge their cases under a new executive order signed by Obama this month.

  Lawyers for the family of the slain aid worker, 37-year-old Giovanni Lo Porto, confirmed to The Intercept that the U.S. government had provided a payment, but would not disclose the dollar amount, in keeping with the family’s wishes.

  In January 2015, a missile fired by a CIA drone struck an al Qaeda compound in Pakistan where Lo Porto and an American humanitarian worker, Warren Weinstein, were being held hostage. A few months later, Obama, in an unprecedented admission, took “full responsibility” for Lo Porto’s and Weinstein’s deaths. Despite hundreds of hours of surveillance, he said, the United States had not known that the hostages were present.

• Dozens More Civilians Reportedly Killed in U.S.-Led Coalition Airstrikes in Syria

  On Wednesday, the U.S. military announced that it was pursuing a formal investigation into the July 19 airstrike in a northern Syrian city that observers estimate killed at least 73 civilians. A subsequent airstrike in the same city “may have resulted” in yet more civilian casualties, Centcom disclosed late Thursday.

  “U.S. Central Command initiated an assessment following internal operational reporting that a strike today near Manbij, Syria may have resulted in civilian casualties,” the military said in a statement. “We can confirm the Coalition conducted airstrikes in the area in the last 24 hours.”

  The airstrikes took place around the strategically-critical city of Manbij, where clashes between U.S.-backed Syrian militants and Islamic State fighters have dragged on for months. Local and outside activists described the horrific aftermath of a coalition bombing run against the village of Tokkhar, outside Manbij, earlier this week.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• An Oil Pipeline Nearly As Long As Keystone XL Has Been Fully Approved

  The pipeline will transport up to 570,000 barrels of sweet crude oil per day from North Dakota’s oil-rich Bakken Formation, to a market hub near Patoka, Illinois. Critics have long said the pipeline could severely harm thousands of miles of fertile farmland, forests, and rivers if a spill were to occur. Federal agencies have said the Bakken Pipeline avoids “critical habitat.”

  But Dakota Access, a subsidiary of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, says it will use state-of-the-art monitoring equipment and shut-off valves. Personnel will be stationed along the more than 1,150-mile pipeline for further support. Yet U.S. pipelines spilled three times as much crude oil as trains over the period of 2004 to 2012, according to a recent study by the International Energy Agency. However, pipeline incidents happened much less frequently than oil train accidents.

• Anthrax sickens 13 in western Siberia, and a thawed-out reindeer corpse may be to blame

  First a heatwave hit Siberia. Then came the anthrax.

  Temperatures have soared in western Russia’s Yamal tundra this summer. Across Siberia, some provinces warmed an additional 10 degrees Fahrenheit beyond normal. In the fields, large bubbles of vegetation appeared above the melting permafrost — strange pockets of methane or, more likely, water. Record fires blazed through dry Russian grassland.

• Police need to explain halting investigation on forest fires: Lawmaker

  Deputy chairman of Commission III of the House of Representatives Benny K Harman said police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian has to give reason for halting investigation of cases of forest fires involving 15 companies in Riau.

  “The police chief has to openly give reasons for issuing order to halt investigations (SP3) of the forest fires,” Benny here on Tuesday.

  He also asked President Joko Widodo (Jokowi)to summon the police chief to explain the decision to issue SP3 as the cases have national and international dimension.

Finance

• Can American Apparel’s CEO Mend Its Seams?

  But as we head toward the building’s corporate entrance, I realize something’s a little weird. I see gargantuan, tattooed men in blue shirts smile attentively near the doorway and I vaguely recognize one of them, which is implausible—I don’t live in L.A. It takes me a moment to realize that I saw his face earlier in the day, when I had met Schneider for breakfast in Little Tokyo. When we had gotten in her car afterward, she seemed to be waiting for the car behind us to pass (it didn’t), so I had looked through the rear window to find out what was going on. Now I realize that this man had been following us all along. The security guards accompany us on the ride up the elevator, past six factory levels to the top floor of the building, where another guard greets us and uses his key card to let us through to the company’s offices. The percussive hum of textile machinery below fades as the heavy door closes behind us.

• Scotland has four EU options – but which are realistic?

  Everyone is trying to figure out what Brexit means. Theresa May says Brexit means Brexit and is for the whole UK – but doesn’t mean a border (or not a hard one) with Ireland. Brexit minister, David Davies says the UK will start to negotiate dozens of trade deals in the next two years. And in Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon sets out key criteria (ranging from democracy to solidarity to voice) that any EU option for Scotland should include.

  In Brussels and EU capitals, politicians and officials consider what their red lines will be in the upcoming talks while waiting for the UK to tell them what it wants Brexit to mean. Meanwhile individual businesses, financial and other markets, EU citizens in the UK, and UK citizens elsewhere in the EU start to make their own choices – with UK economic indicators pointing towards likely recession.

• New Jersey Student Loan Agency to Staff: Don’t Tell Borrowers About Help Unless They Ask

  Some restaurants have secret menus, special items that you can only get if you know to ask. New Jersey’s student loan program has secret options, too — borrowers may be able to get help from the agency, but only if they know to ask.

  New Jersey has the largest state-based student loan program in the country, with particularly stringent terms that can lead to financial ruin, as ProPublica and the New York Times recently detailed. The agency overseeing the program says it has a policy to help some families if the children who were supposed to benefit from the loans die.

  But internal emails show that staffers at the Higher Education Student Assistance Authority, or HESAA, have been instructed not to tell families that they may qualify for help unless they explicitly ask.

• Yen jumps against dollar as Japan keeps rates on hold

  The Japanese yen has climbed by more than 2% against the US dollar, after the Bank of Japan decided to keep interest rates on hold after its two-day meeting.

  The BoJ also kept its target for government bond buying unchanged.

  But the central bank said it would double its annual purchase of exchange traded funds to 6tn yen ($57bn; £43bn) from the current 3.3tn yen.

• It’s time to disband the ‘Tribe of the 48%’

  Britain’s surprise vote to leave the EU, with Leave’s narrow but decisive win by a margin of over a million votes, led to a surprising outpouring of emotion on the Remain side of the referendum. It was surprising because there had been precious little emotion over the previous weeks of a campaign, which had been entirely focused on the pocketbook economic risks of leaving the EU. Indeed, there had been precious little emotion across the previous four decades of British engagement in the European club, largely seen as a transactional economic relationship, joining a common market without ever being entirely comfortable with the political idea of ‘ever closer union’ that animated the founders of the European project.

• Brexit diary – UK’s six tasks, and the need for French lessons

  And, in the meantime, it seems Michel Barnier is not going to make it easy for the UK.

• Yanis Varoufakis’s Greek Tragedy

  Yanis Varoufakis was the finance minister of Greece’s radical left government during that heady summer of 2015. He got famous first for his flair: open shirt, shaved head, and motorcycle jacket—but then really famous for playing chicken with his nations’ creditors in Brussels and Berlin.

  His line was that Greece could not and should not be forced to take on huge new loans to pay off bad old ones as a price of staying in the European Union. “Fiscal waterboarding” he called it: periods of intense austerity that crippled the Greek economy in exchange for bailout money that went to big banks.

• London’s tourism bonanza after Brexit vote

  London is enjoying a remarkable “Brexit boom” in tourism as visitors flock to the capital in record numbers to take advantage of the pound’s fall in value.

  The sudden 13 per cent currency depreciation triggered by the Leave vote left sterling at its lowest level against the dollar for more than 30 years at one stage — turning the capital into a “bargain destination” for millions of travellers, according to tourism chiefs.

  Hotels, airlines and attractions all reported a dramatic spike for London bookings in July, with British “staycation” visitors put off travelling abroad by the increased cost of holidays on the Continent also contributing to the surge.

• Clinton Friend, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe Now Pretends Hillary Never Supported TPP

  Except, of course, she has supported it, quite clearly in the past. And almost certainly still is. I understand the political calculations here. Historically, Democrats (especially the progressive wing) have generally been against free trade. So these agreements (even when they’re actually good!) are usually a tough sell to Democratic voters. But this is a weird year. Because while these agreements have almost universally been supported by Republicans, this year Donald Trump suddenly hates them — not for all the legitimate reasons to hate them, but mainly because he doesn’t understand how international trade works.

  But wouldn’t it be nice if Clinton could just come out and say what she really thought about the TPP and have an open conversation about it, rather than playing this “wink wink nod nod” game where basically everyone knows her true position, but she won’t say it?

• Patreon Ends Payments Discrimination Against Adult Content

  Pornography helped usher in the early era of digital payment processing—but not long after that grand debut, the forces of smut and commerce had something of a falling out. Visa/MasterCard declared adult content to be a high risk for fraud and chargebacks, slapped significant fees on anyone wishing to accept credit card payments for XXX sites or merchandise, and instantly transformed the online payment ecosystem, not just for pornographers, but for X-rated artists, sex toy merchants, and even sex workers trying to raise funds for their medical expenses.

  In the decade plus since Visa/MasterCard’s decision, things have been a little tricky for anyone hoping to make a living selling sex online. Most mainstream payment processors—think PayPal, Stripe, and WePay, to name a few—decided to avoid dealing with those pesky additional fees by creating a total ban on anything adult.

• Oracle just bought a company Larry Ellison mostly owns, entitling him to $3.5 billion in cash

  In perhaps the least shocking acquisition news in software history, Oracle has agreed to buy NetSuite for $109 a share, or about $9.3 billion.

  Larry Ellison already owned about 40% of NetSuite, so the deal will net him about $3.5 billion.

  Rumors had been recently circulating that Oracle would buy NetSuite.

• Facebook Tax Bill Over Ireland Move Could Cost $5 Billion

  Facebook said in the filing that the liability “could have a material adverse impact” on its finances, results or cash flows. “In addition, the determination of our worldwide provision for income taxes and other tax liabilities requires significant judgment by management, and there are many transactions where the ultimate tax determination is uncertain.”

  The IRS on Monday asked a federal magistrate judge in California to force the company to turn over detailed internal corporate records related to the value of the assets moved to Ireland. They included all operations outside the U.S. and Canada.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Clinton resists deposition to ask who urged using private server

• Does Julian Assange Really Have an Email That Will Get Hillary Clinton Tossed in Prison?

• Barbarians at the Gates

  WikiLeaks have once again done the world a great service by publishing smoking gun evidence that the Democratic National Committee – which was supposed to be a neutral body overseeing the Democrats primary election – was doing everything possible to tilt the field against Bernie Sanders. Just one of the ways that was done was by secretly promoting to the media the idea that Sanders’ supporters were violent, misogynist and intimidatory thugs.

  [...]

  It is important to say that there is a lot of other video evidence available. This is the clearest I can find. No evidence appears anywhere online which bears out the stories of violence, abuse and spitting – which is quite astonishing given that the entire mainstream media carried and promoted those stories.

  The Labour Party constituency meeting at Brighton gives us a precise analogy to the Nevada Democrats meeting. Again claims were made of violent intimidation, swearing and spitting. Again, in this age where everybody has a video camera in their pocket, there is absolutely zero objective evidence of this behaviour and a great deal of evidence to the contrary. It appears the real sin of the Brighton Labour Party members was to elect pro-Corbyn officers. That election has now been annulled. The National Executive Committee of the Labour Party is playing precisely the role against Corbyn that the NDC played against Sanders.

• The Other Factor in the DNC Hack: WikiLeaks’ Personal War with Hillary Clinton

  Since yesterday, both Jack Goldsmith and Peter Singer have had offered some interesting perspective on the alleged Russian hack of the DNC.

• Hillary Clinton’s Nomination Met With Joy From Many Women at DNC, But Disenchantment From Others

  As the Democratic Party formally announced its nominee on Tuesday night, the gigantic screen at the Wells Fargo Center showed images of the last 44 U.S. presidents until, with a great shattering sound, Hillary Clinton appeared from behind virtual glass shards.

  It was not subtle. Some found it emotional; others found it corny. And in a week that’s been defined by profound divisions inside the convention hall — and greater ones between the convention and the streets outside –- the significance of Clinton’s breaking of a gender barrier also elicited a split response.

  As Clinton became the first woman to receive the presidential nomination of a major party, there were those who celebrated her achievement — and those whose deep disenchantment with her and the Democratic leadership remained unaffected by her gender.

  Among women, in particular, Clinton’s nomination only seemed to accentuate gaping divisions.

  At a DNC women’s caucus meeting on Thursday morning, the crowd was jubilant and running high on the emotions of the week. Hundreds of women of all ages decked out in “I’m with her” gear and pink Planned Parenthood shirts filled the room, as inspirational videos of little girls saying they wanted to be president played in the background.

  “My sisters, we have made history here in Philadelphia,” convention CEO Leah Daughtry told a roaring crowd. “Just think that less than 100 years ago, a woman was not even guaranteed the right to vote, and just think that a little over 50 years ago, an African-American woman, Fannie Lou Hamer, was not even permitted to be seated at our convention. And now, we have nominated our first woman to be president at a convention run by an African-American woman.”

• The Content of Donald Trump’s Character

  Though some anti-war Americans see hope that Donald Trump would pull back from foreign wars, they also must face his undeniable record of racial and sexist bigotry, writes Marjorie Cohn.

• Democrats Adopt a More Progressive Tone

  Instead, we witnessed an evening of progressive rhetoric and thoughtfulness unseen on a big political stage since the days of William Jennings Bryan, Wisconsin’s Fighting Bob La Follette, the Happy Warrior Al Smith and the crusaders of FDR’s New Deal. Not to mention Hubert Humphrey, Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, and a host of others who though history kept beating the drums for ordinary people against the organized might of Big Money.

• Jill Stein Joins Forces with Berner Rebellion Inside and Outside DNC To Bring Powerful New Critical Mass to Political Revolution

  Dr. Jill Stein, presumptive Green Party presidential nominee, joined forces with thousands of Sanders delegates who took to the streets outside the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday to show their outrage at the DNC’s callous, backstabbing treatment of the Bernie Sanders campaign during the primary race – as evidenced by recent email leaks – and of Sanders delegates during the convention itself.

• Greenwald Explains What Out-of-Touch Media Doesn’t Get About Trump, Russia, and US Electorate

  Donald Trump poses “extreme dangers” to the United States and the world, journalist and co-founding editor of The Intercept Glenn Greenwald says in a new interview published at Slate.

  But to stop the GOP presidential nominee from getting elected, “U.S. media and U.S. elites” must take a lesson from the recent Brexit debacle, he warns—and bending over backwards to link Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t the right approach.

  “U.K. elites were uniform, uniform, in their contempt for the Brexit case, other than the right-wing Murdochian tabloids,” Greenwald told Slate contributor Isaac Chotiner by phone.

  “They all sat on Twitter all day long, from the left to the right, and all reinforced each other about how smart and how sophisticated they were in scorning and [being snide] about [U.K. Independent party] and Boris Johnson and all of the Brexit leaders, and they were convinced that they had made their case,” he said. “Everyone they were talking to—which is themselves—agreed with them. It was constant reinforcement, and anyone who raised even a peep of dissent or questioned the claims they were making was instantly castigated as somebody who was endangering the future of the U.K. because they were endorsing—or at least impeding—the effort to stop Brexit. This is what’s happening now.”

• Poverty Protests at RNC/DNC Conventions

  True concern about the plight of America’s poor and disenfranchised has been low on the priority lists of both the Republican and Democratic parties for many years, a challenge that Cheri Honkala, a long-time warrior for the poor and disenfranchised, has taken to the two conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia.

  As National Coordinator of the Poor Peoples’ Economic Human Rights Campaign and the founder of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Honkala participated a Poor People’s March through the streets of Cleveland at the Republican National Convention and, from her home base in Philadelphia, sought to bring the same issues to the Democratic National Convention.

• The Fear of Hillary’s Foreign Policy

  Hillary Clinton’s nominating convention has focused on domestic issues, but her foreign policy has many anti-war Democrats worried, as she surrounds herself with neocons and liberal hawks, writes James W Carden from Philadelphia.

• Politician Speak at the DNC

  None are more adept at the fake-progressive sales job than Bill Clinton. Taking your Hillary history from the Big Creep (as Monica Lewinsky used to call Mr. Clinton) during his “I Met a Girl” speech two nights ago, you’d think he’d never engaged in epic levels of philandering while he’s been married to the noble and selfless liberal idealist Hillary Clinton. You’d never imagine that his wife: worked at a vile corporate law firm like Rose Law; sat on the board of the viciously anti-worker and globalist retail giant Wal-Mart; voted for authorizing George W. Bush to arch-criminally invade Iraq if he wanted to (he did); applauded her co-president husband’s malicious and calamitous elimination of disproportionately Black poor mothers’ and children’s entitlement to basic federal family cash assistance; pushed Bill to criminally bomb Serbian children; backed and protected a right wing coup in Honduras as Secretary of State; led the way in the U.S.-led Western destruction of Libya and Syria; joined Bill in cozying up to vicious authoritarian rulers like Rwanda’s President-for-Life Paul Kagame and the decrepit kings of arch-reactionary ad absolutist Saudi Arabia; joined Bill in helping engineer the full corporate-neoliberal Wall Street takeover of the Democratic Party during the last quarter of the last century.

• Digital democracy meets the oligarchs uptown

  The Blairites in his party were outraged by this off-message opinion that seemed to them like the blunder of an amateur. Yet, it was precisely this admission of the EU’s deficiencies combined with a rejection of Brexit which marked out Jeremy Corbyn as a thoughtful and sincere politician to those on the Left who voted for his Remain and reform position on June 23. As we’re all now discovering to our cost, complex problems can’t be fixed by simple solutions.

• Bill Clinton’s Convention Speech About Hillary Clinton Was Filled With Inaccuracies (Video)

  Rule No. 1 in journalism: Check the facts. With politicians, multiply that rule by 10 to 1,000, depending on the politician.

  On Day 2 of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, former U.S. President Bill Clinton gave a speech about his wife, Hillary Clinton, soon after she was pronounced the official Democratic Party nominee. The speech was glowing and filled with inaccuracies.

  Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) co-founder Jeff Cohen spoke with Truthdig columnist Sonali Kolhatkar about how the media failed to dissect Clinton’s speech.

  “Every time he talked about policy, it was either inaccurate—180 degrees wrong—or it was completely cherry-picked,” said Cohen. “He made it seem like, you’ll remember how Hillary Clinton made climate change the central feature of our foreign policy. That’s virtually word for word. ‘When Hillary was secretary of state, she made,’ well, everyone knows, you can read it in Mother Jones, that she was pushing fracking and U.S. fracking interests all over the world. You cannot simultaneously push fracking all over the world and be making climate change a centerpiece of your foreign policy.”

• On Responsible Sourcing for DNC Hack Stories

• Trump as the Reagan Reboot

  The conventional wisdom says Donald Trump has turned presidential politics into a reality show. It’s an understandable diagnosis, particularly given his intentionally brassy persona and the professional wrestling-style antics he used to dispatch a motley crew of also-rans on this way to victory. Both were on display in Cleveland where — with the name “Trump” towering over him — the sole survivor triumphantly claimed the ultimate prize at the end of a year-long series

• DNC insiders detail months of escalating dysfunction

  Debbie Wasserman Schultz wasn’t supposed to ask Joe Biden to come to her daughter’s bat mitzvah.

  Democratic National Committee staff had sent the chair to the vice president armed with four specific requests for getting him involved in raising money for the party.

• Clinton Writes Off the Left

  When Donald Trump presented his vice presidential running mate to the world, he was forthright with the rationale for selecting the relatively dull Mike Pence—a man who may perfectly embody the notion of a “generic Republican.” At the unveiling press conference, Trump declared in his characteristically unvarnished manner: “I think if you look at one of the big reasons that I chose Mike … one of the reasons is party unity.”

  It doesn’t take much analytical heavy lifting to identify what picking Pence added to Trump’s prospectus. The GOP primary season made clear that ideological movement conservatives, who adhere dogmatically to the classic Reagan-derived “fusionist” brand of Republican politics, are a small, outnumbered faction of the party’s membership. But they still exist and vote at high rates, and a failure to court them would have had a real, adverse electoral impact. Crucially, they also wield disproportionate influence at the elite level. Thus, as Trump readily admitted, Pence serves to mollify these disaffected elements of the GOP coalition, which had been the faction of the party most hostile to Trump. Since the Pence announcement and the conclusion of the Cleveland convention last week, Trump’s favorability rating among GOP voters has risen by several percentage points.

• The Hacking of the 2016 Election – Did I Write the Script? [Ed: too much of Microsoft]

  One of the big political stories this week is that experts believe that Russia has hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers in an effort to help Trump win the presidential election. Today, security expert Bruce Schneier went further, in an editorial in the Washington Post, suggesting that Putin’s next move may be to exploit the woefully inadequate security of US voting machines to hack the election itself.

• Trump Sick And Tired Of Mainstream Media Always Trying To Put His Words Into Some Sort Of Context [Ed: Satire]

  Emphasizing that the practice was just more evidence of journalists’ bias against him, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump stated Thursday that he was sick and tired of the mainstream media always attempting to place his words into some kind of context. “The corrupt news media is constantly taking the things I say and putting them within the larger context of politics and global events—it’s absolutely sickening what they do,” said Trump, adding that many of the comments he has made—including his call yesterday for Russia to hack into the emails of his presidential opponent Hillary Clinton and publish the contents—had been repeatedly and unfairly contextualized with relevant facts about the world and pertinent information about the situation in which they were stated. “It’s completely shameful to take words I’ve spoken or written and try to connect them to some kind of objective reality. I say something, and the next thing I know, a crooked reporter is telling everyone what I said along with a fact-based explanation of what its implications are and why it matters. It’s ridiculous, and it has to stop.” Trump added that he would not hesitate to ban any news organization from his campaign that continued to twist his statements by implying they held any specific meaning about or relation to the world we inhabit.

• 10 reasons why #DemExit is serious: Getting rid of Debbie Wasserman Schultz is not enough

  Shortly after Bernie Sanders publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton a new hashtag trended on Twitter: #DemExit. The hashtag offered Sanders supporters a chance to vent their frustrations with the Democratic Party and with the sense that their candidate had been pressured into an endorsement. Rather than reach out to these disaffected voters, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) ignored them. Understood within the larger narrative that Sanders supporters were just whining brats who refused to concede and move on, #DemExit was dismissed as just more sour milk.

  But now that the latest leak of DNC emails proves that Sanders supporters have a legitimate right to feel cheated, #DemExit increasingly seems like an appropriate response to a rigged system.

  The new leak shows that the DNC never took the Sanders campaign seriously, even when he was winning state after state. Rather than recognize that Sanders was attracting new voters to the party, members of the DNC chose to mock them and close ranks around Clinton.

• “The Two-Party System Is the Worst Case Scenario” – An Interview With the Green Party’s Jill Stein

  As the Democratic convention in Philadelphia progressed, and hopes of a revolution on the floor quickly faded for the thousands of Bernie Sanders supporters, support for another figure began to emerge on the streets: Green Party candidate Jill Stein. By the end of the week, Vote Jill signs where everywhere in the city, her name often scribbled directly over old Sanders posters and T-shirts. Bernie’s revolution had taken an unexpected turn, and as more protesters and delegates called for a “Demexit,” talk of a third-party option suddenly gained ground at a major party convention. On Thursday, as Clinton prepared to accept her party’s nomination, The Intercept spoke with Stein at an improvised South Philly campaign headquarters.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Judge Tosses Out Defamation Lawsuit Filed Against ProPublica, CIR

  A federal district judge in Phoenix threw out a lawsuit on Monday that accused ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Reporting of defaming a government contractor who helped a Chinese national gain access to a counterterrorism center.

  The lawsuit stemmed from an August 2014 story published by the two nonprofit newsrooms that revealed an apparent security breach at the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, an intelligence center set up by state and local authorities after the 9/11 terror attacks. A Chinese national worked at the facility as a computer programmer for five months in 2007, allowing him access to the Arizona driver’s license database and potentially to a roster of intelligence analysts and investigators.

  The contract employee then suddenly returned home to Beijing, taking two laptops and additional hard drives with him. The possible breach, which could have affected as many as 5 million Arizona residents, was not reported to the state’s attorney general.

• Twitter’s caught between a rock and a censorship place

  Twitter posted another set of bummer quarterly results this week: basically flat growth, a loss of over $100 million, and a still-fuzzy plan to turn things around and define itself.

  The company’s new branding effort at least makes an attempt at the latter: it emphasizes that Twitter is a destination for news, video, conversation and analysis in real time. The company says it will work on improving engagement by improving its core product — you know, Twitter itself.

  So, that’s a start. But the most telling part of the investor call this week was the amount of time CEO Jack Dorsey had to spend defending the fact that Twitter is often, simply put, not a nice place to be.

• The West kowtows to China through self-censorship

• Old Comedians Mistake Criticism for Censorship in Whiny Doc

  Can We Take a Joke? is a surprisingly self-righteous and unfunny documentary in which shelf-dated comedians spend 74 minutes misinterpreting the First Amendment to mean that behaving like an asshole should have no social consequences. The film and all of its subjects — including Penn Jillette, Lisa Lampanelli, Jim Norton and Gilbert Gottfried — persistently conflate criticism with censorship. They don’t just want “freedom of speech”; they want total silence from anyone who disagrees with them, free speech for themselves and nobody else.

• Internet trolls are even more hostile when they’re using their real names, a study finds

  Anonymity, we often assume, is the breeding ground for bad behavior on the internet. Among the gatekeepers of comment sections and social media sites, the conventional wisdom is that anonymity empowers bullies to voice hateful opinions without consequence. When unmasked by real-name policies, the theory goes, these trolls will slink back to their caves, taking the vitriol from Twitter, Facebook and other social media with them.

  Not true, says Lea Stahel, a sociology researcher at the University of Zurich.

  Stahel and a team at the university’s Institute of Sociology wanted to know whether anonymity really encouraged the worst kind of behavior seen in online “firestorms.” These are moments when a public figure or group evokes the ire of commentators, who direct thousands or millions of negative messages at their subjects. The harassment of women in the video-gaming community, known as “Gamergate,” and the recent attack on the Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones are just two examples.

  [...]

  Pfeffer cautioned against generalizing the findings too broadly. Anonymity may lower the threshold for aggression in some cases, and encourage the use of bots, automated “users” that amplify trending topics (Twitter has admitted that about 8.5% of its users may be bots).

• Maribyrnong Council demands small business remove ‘offensive’ Hillary Clinton mural

• Melbourne graffiti artist Lushsux’s Instagram account deleted in ‘politically-motivated censorship’ after risque murals

• Melbourne street artist behind racy Hillary Clinton mural has Instagram account deleted

• Street artist Lushsux suspects bias after Instagram account deleted

• Costs of ISP blocking injunctions: is there really an EU rule?

Privacy/Surveillance

• Baidu uses millions of users’ location data to make predictions

  BAIDU, China’s internet giant, has shown what you can learn when you have access to enough location data.

  The firm’s Big Data Lab in Beijing has used billions of location records from its 600 million users as a lens to view the Chinese economy. It has tracked the flux of people around offices and shops as a proxy measurement for employment and consumption activity. The lab even used the data to predict Apple’s second quarter revenue in China.

  Location data has already proved useful for purposes such as keeping tabs on population movements and the spread of disease. This is the first time that a company the size of Baidu – similar to Facebook or Google – has shown what it is capable of doing with the data from their huge user bases, giving these firms enormous power and insight that they don’t typically talk about.

  The researchers hand-labelled thousands of areas of interest – offices, shopping centres and industrial zones – across China. Then they studied location data from the end of 2014 to the middle of 2016 to see how many people were at those places at each time, and how that changed through the year.

• Use a VPN or proxy in the United Arab Emirates, risk a £400K fine or prison

  Anyone using a VPN to visit illegal sites or dodge a ban on using unauthorised voice over IP (VoIP) service faces a £400,000 fine or prison under a new law brought in by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

  The text of the new legislation says: “Whoever uses a fraudulent computer network protocol address (IP address) by using a false address or a third-party address by any other means for the purpose of committing a crime or preventing its discovery, shall be punished by temporary imprisonment and a fine of no less than Dh500,000 [£100,000] and not exceeding Dh2,000,000 [£400,000], or either of these two penalties.”

  However, as the Privacy Online News blog explains, the definition of crime in the UAE includes apparently trivial online actions: “crimes include accessing blocked services or websites, which can only be done with a VPN or proxy, use that the UAE considers fraudulent use of an IP address.”

• NSA certifies KG-350 encryption system

• NSA Certifies Raytheon’s New KG-350 Ethernet Encryption System

• New Law In Illinois Restricts Stingray Use, Requires Court Orders For Deployment

  Roughly eight years after information about law enforcement use of Stingray devices began slowly making its way into the public sphere, positive changes are being made. While the government has often argued it can be the “Third Party” in “Third Party Doctrine” by inserting itself warrantlessly between people’s cell phones and their carriers’ towers, its assertions are being met with increased judicial skepticism.

  Two judges — one state, one federal — have reached the same conclusion in recent months: using a cell tower spoofer to locate suspects by dragging information out of their phones is a search under the Fourth Amendment. Warrants are required.

  A few state legislatures have gotten into the act as well, proposing laws that create a warrant requirement for Stingray deployment. Illinois is the latest to do so (and the law actually passed), creating a new set of guidelines for law enforcement Stingray device use, including limits on data retention. It doesn’t go quite so far as to mandate warrant acquisition, but it does force law enforcement to specify the equipment used in their applications, which also serves to create a paper trail that can be examined by defendants and members of the public.

• Your Email Is Never Going to Be Safe

  Unless you secure everything you will go on the Internet to move some things around. That means there are still other ways for the government to get the data even in-house.

  That material is all discoverable by capturing the ISP streams. Your protection is extended with various virtual private networks but these systems leak when people email outside the umbrella of the VPN.

  Assume that whatever you do on email will be forwarded or cut-and-pasted and get into the wild, somehow. That is exactly what happened to the DNC (Democratic National Committee) with 20,000 emails sent to Wikileaks. While various pundits are trying to blame Russian hackers, it is more likely an inside job by a disgruntled employee.

• ISIS’ 4 Terabyte Cache of Un- or Badly Encrypted Data

  This retreat is happening as we speak. That means that US forces were able to exploit the data almost immediately on seizing it. And that, in turn, either means it is not encrypted, it is badly encrypted, or the US also got passwords for encrypted files along with the rest of the stash.

  Perhaps this can put to rest the calls to weaken encryption because ISIS is using it to great effect?

• The Secret Rules That Allow the FBI to Spy on Journalists

  The bones of our democracy — the core elements that separate that way of life from others — lie in the First Amendment to the Constitution, specifically the rights to free speech and a free press.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Perils of police action: a cautionary tale from US data sets

  To count and characterise injuries resulting from legal intervention by US law enforcement personnel and injury ratios per 10 000 arrests or police stops, thus expanding discussion of excessive force by police beyond fatalities.

• Black Lives Matter in Our Courtrooms Too

  Attorney Andrea Burton didn’t walk into a local Youngstown courtroom with a large banner or poster — she simply had a small metal button with the words “Black Lives Matter” on her lapel. That was enough for Judge Robert Milich to sentence her to five days in the Mahoning County Jail because she refused to remove the pin. While judges may have a great deal of discretion about what happens in their courtroom, this raises some significant questions and continues to highlight the need for a sustained movement for Black lives.

• The ugly and violent death of gender conformity

  Thanks to an upsurge in diverse gender images in the media, gender progressive public conversations and growing parental awareness, millions of our beautiful children are gracefully and elegantly exploring the inbetween spaces of gender; pushing the boundaries of ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ in ways both large and small as a natural part of their self expression.

• Chelsea Manning Could Face Additional Punishment for Her Suicide Attempt

  U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning tried to kill herself on July 5 in her cell at Fort Leavenworth military prison. Now, military officials are considering filing charges in connection to the suicide attempt that could make the terms of her imprisonment much more punitive — possibly including indefinite solitary confinement — while possibily losing any chance of receiving parole.

  According to a charge sheet posted by the ACLU, Manning was informed by military officials on Thursday that she is under investigation for “resisting the force cell move team,” “prohibited property,” and “conduct which threatens.” In the weeks following her suicide attempt, she has been active on social media, thanking her followers for their moral support.

  Manning’s treatment in prison since her 2010 arrest has repeatedly generated outrage among civil liberties advocates. The punitive tactics that have been employed against her include stripping her naked in her cell on a nightly basis, extended solitary confinement and denial of medical necessities like eyeglasses. In 2011, then-State Department spokesman P.J Crowley publicly described Manning’s treatment in prison as “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid.”

• The Long Cruel Reach of Indonesia’s Death Penalty

  On July 25, in the Indonesian port town of Cilacap, a 52-year-old Pakistani man was placed in an ambulance and transferred to Nusa Kambangan, otherwise known as “execution island.” Zulfiqar Ali, a textile worker, was arrested for possessing heroin in 2004; like many caught with drugs in Indonesia, he was convicted and sentenced to die. Human rights activists denounced his case; Ali had been tortured into signing a confession, they said, and his primary accuser had retracted his statements at trial. Nonetheless, on Monday, the Sydney Morning Herald reported, while Ali recovered from stomach and kidney surgery, government officials came for him at the hospital. Three days later, he would be dead, executed by firing squad in the middle of the night.

  Ali would not die alone. Earlier this year, the Indonesian government announced it would soon execute more than a dozen unnamed prisoners, the third round of executions following a four-year moratorium on capital punishment. The announcement — part of a zero-tolerance drug policy implemented under President Joko Widodo in 2013 — sparked grim speculation about who might be next to die. There were the three drug offenders transferred to Nusa Kambangan from Batam, a different island prison, in early May, as reported by the Jakarta Post. Or four “black-skinned people from Nigeria,” in the words of the sentencing judge in the case of Humphrey “Jeff” Ejike Eleweke, who was targeted for surveillance because of his nationality — and who swore he was innocent. By Thursday, newspapers reported, coffins were being ferried to Nusa Kambangan, while family members and spiritual advisers were given name tags for their final visits — “an indication that executions were imminent.”

  But one prisoner was spared from the firing squad. In late June, thousands of miles from Nusa Kambangan, a diminutive Filipino woman spoke from a stage at the Oslo Opera House, a sleek white building on the harbor of Norway’s capital city. “My name is Celia Veloso,” she said in her native Tagalog. “I am the mother of Mary Jane Veloso, who is on death row in Indonesia.” Arrested at the Java airport with heroin in her suitcase, Mary Jane was nearly executed in April 2015 alongside eight other drug convicts, but was spared at the last second. The hasty reprieve was so unexpected that people in the Philippines awoke the next day to inaccurate headlines reporting her death.

• Checking up on Border Patrol Checkpoints to Stop Racial Profiling

  Where are you going? Why are you going there? When did you purchase your vehicle? Can I search your car? Do you have a body in the trunk?

  These are some of the questions agents ask me when I cross through a Border Patrol checkpoint. Before I moved to Alamogordo, New Mexico, to teach, I had no idea such military-style checkpoints existed within the United States. To be clear, I’m not talking about something you encounter at the U.S.-Mexican border; these checkpoints are in an American town. Border Patrol operates checkpoints located upwards of 100 miles into the U.S. This “100-mile zone,” where roughly 200 million people in the U.S. live, sometimes feels like occupied territory.

• Beyond #BlackLivesMatter: police reform must be bolstered by legal action

  Something is missing from the debate over police reform. Though police killings of black men have sparked a nationwide movement to stop police violence, the police can fairly ask whether they deserve all of the blame.

  That’s not because current levels of police violence are warranted (they aren’t), or because policing is race neutral (it isn’t). It’s because the chief architects of American policing are not police departments; they’re courts. The movement for police reform should be joined by an equally ambitious movement for court reform.

• Patients Deserve Their Doctor’s Best Medical Judgment, But Texas Bureaucrats Think They Know Better

  The doctor-patient relationship is the cornerstone of medical practice, and the foundation of that relationship is trust. Doctors have the privilege of helping people through some of the most important and challenging moments of their lives. We earn patients’ trust by giving them our best medical judgment based on science. That’s why I became a doctor.

  Now, as I enter my third year of medical school at the University of Texas Southwestern, I am beginning to understand all the ways Texas politicians are working to corrode this trust by interfering in the doctor-patient relationship.

  Quality, peer-reviewed information is what should be disseminated to our patients rather than politically charged and biased pseudo-science.

• “Say Our Children’s Names” – Victims of Police Violence Honored on Stage and Off at Democratic Convention

  One of the most poignant moments of the Democratic National Convention came on Tuesday night, as Geneva Reed-Veal took the stage. “One year ago yesterday, I lived the worst nightmare anyone could imagine,” she said. “I watched as my daughter, Sandra Bland, was lowered into the ground in a coffin.”

  Bland was found “hanging in a jail cell after an unlawful traffic stop and an unlawful arrest,” she continued. Six other women died in custody that same month, she then added, before reciting their rarely heard names one by one. “I’m here with Hillary Clinton because she is a leader and a mother who will say our children’s names.”

  “Saying the names” of those killed by police, in custody, or in acts of racist violence, has become a ritual since the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, whose mothers were also on stage at the DNC, together with Reed-Veal and six other women — the “mothers of the movement,” as they have been called.

• Falun Gong advocates protest against organ harvesting in China during stop at Peterborough City Hall

• Falun Gong practitioners ask support to stop organ pillaging in China

• Falun Gong in Collingwood to raise awareness of human rights abuses by Chinese government

• Bringing her protest to North Bay Friday

• Subordinates of Disgraced Former Chinese Leader Aide Continue to Fall

• Petition in Northeast Chinese City Shows Broad Support for Legal Action Against Former Party Leader

• A Chinese Spiritual Way Which Ended In Brutal ‘Torturing’ Of The Chinese!

• ‘I was three, making the journey alone’: Ursula Kantorowicz travels on the Kindertransport, 1939

  I was born in July 1935 in Reichenbach, Germany, into a wealthy family. The family textile firm, Cohn Gebrüder, was established in 1876 by my great-grandfather, Herman and his brother Arnold. They had a huge factory in town; we lived opposite, in the Red Villa. It had parquet floors, stained-glass windows and central heating, which was a luxury back then.

  The day after Kristallnacht, on 9 November 1938, my father and grandfather – along with other Jewish men in the town – were taken to Buchenwald concentration camp. My mother got them out by bribing officials with her jewellery. They returned with shaven heads and no shoelaces. At that point, the camps weren’t as final as they became.

  My family spent the next weeks getting together permits and visas. The idea was to send me to England on the Kindertransport to live with my uncle, Helmut Kantorowicz, his wife Berta, known as Putti, and his mother Regina – and for my parents to join me. My uncle emigrated in 1933; my father stayed behind as he didn’t want to leave the family firm.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Wireless Industry To Request En Banc Appeal Hearing On Net Neutrality Rules

  After months of anticipation, last June the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the FCC’s Open Internet Order, an indisputably-massive win for net neutrality advocates. Not too surprisingly, net neutrality opponents have been engaged in histrionics ever since, with ISP loyal allies in Congress doing their best to punish the FCC with a series of senseless, taxpayer funded “accountability hearings” designed specifically to shame the agency for daring to stand up to large, incumbent ISPs. That’s when they’re not busy trying to gut FCC funding and authority via a rotating crop of sneaky bill riders.

  As Mike and I noted in a recent Techdirt podcast on net neutrality, most of these efforts are just lawmakers barking for their campaign contributions. There are really only a few ways for ISPs to effectively kill the rules, one of which being the election of a President who’ll restock the FCC with revolving door regulators who’ll either try to roll back the rules, or (more likely) will just refuse to enforce them whatsoever.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Trademarks

  • Olympic Games: Trademark Revenues Are High Stakes

    With a budget of over 2 US$ billion, the Brazilian Olympics rely heavily on commercial sponsors and licensing for revenue. Protecting the Olympic symbols is thus an imperative for the games with stringent rules on the use of those symbols and related signs. However, the fame of the event also draws covetousness from a variety of commercial actors seeking free rides, which is a dangerous endeavour, according to legal sources. Brazil adopted special rules for the occasion, while in the United States the protection is particularly stringent.

• Copyrights

  • Brexit Could Have Broad Impact On UK Audiovisual Sector

    It is too soon to say precisely what impact the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union might have on Britain’s audiovisual sector, but among other things, Brexit could bring changes to the scope of copyright law and protections, rights clearance, online AV services and content creation, lawyers said.

  • Movie Studios Teamed Up And Removed KAT.am From The Internet

    The Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) has taken serious measures to get rid of the new KAT.am domain that appeared online a few days ago. After sending a warning email to the operator, MPA has managed to get the website deleted by taking the help of the Armenian registry.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Comic-Con and FOSS Comic Book Solutions

After whetting his appetite at this year’s Comic-Con, our resident Linux newbie discovers free and open source apps for reading digital comics, as well as a treasure trove of available sources for free comics online.

Desktop

• You will use Cortana, Microsoft says

  Surprise, surprise. If things remain as they are, Windows 10 users who upgrade to the Anniversary Update won’t be able to turn off Cortana anymore using the Cortana settings.

  If you compare the start menu settings of Cortana of the current version of Windows (version 1511) with those of the Anniversary Update (version 1607) you will notice that Cortana’s off switch is no longer available (thanks Ian Paul @ PC World for spotting that)

• You can’t turn off Cortana in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update [Ed: A listening device, cannot switch it off anymore; keylogger next?]

  Microsoft made an interesting decision with Windows 10’s Anniversary Update, which is now in its final stages of development before it rolls out on August 2.

  Cortana, the personal digital assistant that replaced Windows 10’s search function and taps into Bing’s servers to answer your queries with contextual awareness, no longer has an off switch.

• I’ve been Linuxing since before you were born

  Once upon a time, there was no Linux. No, really! It did not exist. It was not like today, with Linux everywhere. There were multiple flavors of Unix, there was Apple, and there was Microsoft Windows.

  When it comes to Windows, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Despite adding 20+ gigabytes of gosh-knows-what, Windows is mostly the same. (Except you can’t drop to a DOS prompt to get actual work done.) Hey, who remembers Gorilla.bas, the exploding banana game that came in DOS? Fun times! The Internet never forgets, and you can play a Flash version on Kongregate.com.

  Apple changed, evolving from a friendly system that encouraged hacking to a sleek, sealed box that you are not supposed to open, and that dictates what hardware interfaces you are allowed to use. 1998: no more floppy disk. 2012: no more optical drive. The 12-inch MacBook has only a single USB Type-C port that supplies power, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, external storage, video output, and accessories. If you want to plug in more than one thing at a time and don’t want to tote a herd of dongles and adapters around with you, too bad. Next up: The headphone jack. Yes, the one remaining non-proprietary standard hardware port in Apple-land is doomed.

Server

• Bash Tips for Linux Sysadmins

  The Bash shell is a fundamental Linux tool and, in this era of containers and clusters and microservices, good old-fashioned Linux system administration skills are as relevant as ever. Today, we’ll learn about running other command shells, Bash built-ins, configuration files, and shell expansion.

• Poll: How do you abbreviate system administrator?

• 5 tools to support distributed sysadmin teams

  Remotely-distributed system administration teams provide around-the-clock coverage without anyone losing sleep, and have the benefit of drawing from a global talent pool. The OpenStack global infrastructure team relies on these five open source tools to communicate, and to coordinate our work.

• How to Find the Best DevOps Tools

  Almost all VictorOps users are practitioners and heavy users of DevOps tools, said Jason Hand, DevOps Evangelist & Incident & Alerting specialist at VictorOps. He shared the following list of popular tools used by their customers: Icinga, Nagios, Jira, Trello, Hubot, Slack, Jenkins, Graphite, RayGun, Takipi, New Relic, Puppet, Chef, GitHub, Cassandra, Ansible, Grafana, ElasticSearch, Logstash, and Kibana.

• Persistent vs. Non-Persistent Workloads: the Admin’s Conundrum

  Virtualization isn’t the answer to every problem in IT. There are plenty of workloads where neither containers nor hypervisors are the answer. The old problems of being able to easily provision, utilize and make highly available bare-metal workloads remain, so what options exist for the modern sysadmin?

  Solutions to this problem can be largely divided into two groups: persistent and non-persistent workloads. For all intents and purposes, these break down into OpEx and CapEx problems, respectively.

• Agile 2016: How to measure your DevOps initiatives

• Navigating the Data Center Networking Landscape

  It’s really no surprise that these new types of technologies will have major impacts around the entire enterprise networking layer. Most of all – these systems will change the way business create go-to-market strategies and where next-generation networking technologies can make an impact.

Kernel Space

• Linux 4.6.5

  I’m announcing the release of the 4.6.5 kernel.

  All users of the 4.6 kernel series must upgrade.

  The updated 4.6.y git tree can be found at:
  git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.6.y
  and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:

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

  thanks,

  greg k-h

• Linux 4.4.16

• Linux 3.14.74

• BFQ Still Trying To Replace The CFQ I/O Scheduler In Linux

  For a number of months there’s been an effort to replace the CFQ I/O scheduler with BFQ inside the Linux kernel. That isn’t happening for the current Linux 4.8 cycle, but new patches were published today in pursuing this goal.

• Microsoft Surface 3 Touchscreen & Other Input Improvements For Linux 4.8

  The input updates for Linux 4.8 bring support for the Microsoft Surface 3 touchscreen controller, among other improvements.

• Google, Samsung, Radisys join CORD project

  The Open Networking Lab (ON.Lab) and The Linux Foundation have spun off the Central Office Re-architected as a Data Center (CORD) initiative into its own, new open source project, and Google, Samsung Electronics and Radisys are joining the CORD and ONOS Projects as new partners.

  Google plans to host the first CORD Summit on July 29 at Google Sunnyvale Tech Corner Campus in California, where industry leaders, network architects and administrators, developers and engineers will convene.

• CORD Project Aims to Bring Cloud Agility to Service Providers

  The CORD Project recently became an independent project hosted by The Linux Foundation. CORD (TM) (Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter), which began as a use case of ONOS®, brings NFV, SDN, and commodity clouds to the telco central office and aims to give telco service providers the same level of agility that cloud providers have to rapidly create new services. Major service providers like AT&T, SK Telecom, Verizon, China Unicom, and NTT Communications, as well as companies like Google and Samsung, are already supporting CORD.

• CORD becomes a Linux Foundation project

  Central Office Re-architected as a Data Center (CORD), an open source integrated solutions platform for service providers leveraging merchant silicon, white boxes, and open source platforms such as Open Network Operating System (ONOS), OpenStack, Docker, and the cloud operating system XOS, is now part of the Linux Foundation as a new independent project.

  The Linux foundation is already home to many open source networking projects, including OpenDaylight and ONOS, so CORD is a natural fit for the non-profit foundation.

• Linux Kernel 4.4.16 LTS Released with Over 150 Changes, It’s Already in Solus

• Linux Kernel 4.6.5 Has Numerous Nouveau Improvements, ARM and ARM64 Fixes

• Linux Kernel 4.6.5 and Kernel 4.4.16 released

  Just after a couple of weeks,Linux Kernel 4.6.4 and 4.6.15 release was announced,here comes the next release in both series of Linux kernel 4.6 and 4.4.
  Both the releases are to bring fixes and improvements in performance.There are some workarounds made in GPU drivers,Wireless,USB,Sound and others can be checked in the change log,Of Course.
  In the Kernel 4.6.5 there are 220 files changed,1754 files inserted newly and 998 deletations are made.On the other hand,Linux kernel 4.4.16 has 156 files are changed,1475 insetations and 845 deletations are notified as per the announcement.

• Linux 4.7 now out with enhanced security and advanced graphics support

• Linux Kernel 3.12.62 LTS Improves SPARC Support, Updates the Networking Stack

  Linux kernel developer Jiri Slaby announced the release of the sixty-second maintenance update for the long-term supported Linux 3.12 kernel series, which will receive support until 2017 because of SUSE Enterprise Linux.

  Linux kernel 3.12.62 LTS is a modest update, and looking at the diff from the previous maintenance release, version 3.12.61, we can notice that it changes a total of 96 files, with 1213 insertions and 1053 deletions. Among the changes, we can notice lots of fixes for the SPARC hardware architecture, but there are various other improvements for the ARM, MIPS, PA-RISC, and x86 instruction set architectures.

• Graphics Stack

  • More AMD Iceland PowerPlay Patches Appear

  • The OpenGL / Vulkan Slides From Khronos @ SIGGRAPH 2016

  • “Vulkan Next” Is In Active Development

  • Possible Items On The OpenCL Roadmap: Improved Vulkan Interop, Arbitrary Precision

Applications

• Another Linux Terminal App Guake

  Linux users have a lot of terminal emulators to choose. Recently I mentioned one terminal app i.e. Terminator. Here is another one of the most interesting Quake-style drop-down terminal named Guake. It is a terminal app for GNOME which can be used quickly using shortcut keys. ​

• New Version of Linux Pandora Client ‘Pithos’ Released

  A new release of open-source Linux Pandora client Pithos is now available for download.

• Pithos 1.2 Improves The Open-Source/Linux Pandora Desktop Experience

  Chances are if you’ve ever dealt with Pandora music streaming from the Linux desktop you’ve encountered Pithos as the main open-source solution that works out quite well. Released today was Pithos 1.2 and it ships with numerous enhancements for this GPLv3-licensed Pandora desktop client.

  Pithos 1.2 adds a number of new keyboard shortcuts for the main window, initial support for translations, an explicit content filter option, reduced CPU usage with Ubuntu’s default theme, redesigned dialogs and other UI elements, and more.

• ‘Anatine’ Is a Simple Desktop Twitter App for Linux

  Anatine describes itself as a ‘pristine Twitter app for Linux’, but is it anything more than a wrapper around the mobile website?

• Proprietary

  • Blackmagic Releases Blackmagic Fusion for Linux

  • Blackmagic announces two product updates

  • Tresorit For Linux Released To Provide End-To-End Encrypted File Sharing [Ed: proprietary cannot be trusted for this]

    Tresorit is an end-to-end encrypted file sharing service aimed at sharing files among team members. Tresorit has supported Windows, OS X, iOS, Android, and even Blackberry and Windows Phone while now they are finally supporting the Linux desktop.

    Tresorit has released a native Linux binary for customers wishing to engage in an encrypted file-sharing workflow from their desktop. Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, Fedora, Gentoo, Mint, SUSE, and CentOS are all mentioned as being supported.

  • Microsoft’s Skype for Linux Alpha gets device settings and a system tray icon [ed: malware with NSA connections trying to enter system trays]

  • Skype for Linux Alpha 1.3 Released With Small Bug Fixes

    A small bug fix update to Skype for Linux alpha is now available, and fixes, among many changes, errant close to tray behaviour on the Cinnamon desktop.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Smartmontools, ZFS Snapshots with zfs-periodic and OpenSMTPD on FreeBSD 10.3 NAS

  • Stunnel Security for Oracle

  • The Comprehensive Guide To AppArmor

  • Howdy, Ubuntu on Windows! Ubuntu Commands Every Windows User Should Learn

  • Install Samba Server Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) server

  • Machine-specific Git config changes

  • Signing Java Code With Certum Open Source Certificates

  • Automatic metadata download in Music

  • How to perform a system upgrade with DNF

  • When “# needsrootforbuild” in OBS does not work…

  • Zypper commands to manage packages on openSUSE & suse Systems

  • How To Change The Linux Mint Cinnamon Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Linux Dash light Weight System Performance Monitoring Tool

  • Install YetiForce CRM on Ubuntu 16.04

  • Systemback – Restore Ubuntu Desktop and Server to previous state

• Wine or Emulation

  • Wine 1.9.15 Released

  • Wine 1.9.15 Has Patches for Alone in the Dark, Bloodrayne and Kings Quest 8

    Wine 1.9.15 has been made available for download for GNU/Linux users who want to run various Windows games and applications on their favorite distributions, along with Wine-Staging 1.9.15.

• Games

  • ‘Stardew Valley’ PS4, Xbox One, Wii U Ports Soon; Mac, Linux Versions To Be Launched This Week

  • Albion Online final beta start times revealed

    The indie MMO Albion Online is due to have the final beta version and they have revealed when each supporter will get access.

  • Check out ‘The Linux Gamer’ video on Undertale, brilliant as always

    Really do love The Linux Gamer, his work is top quality and he has done his thing for the Linux version of Undertale.

  • Unity game engine 5.4 released, Linux builds now updated

  • Unity 5.4 Arrives With Better Multi-Threaded Rendering, Other Rendering Improvements

    Unity 5.4 was released this morning as the latest version of this popular cross-platform game engine.

  • Kingdom Rush Frontiers due on Linux in the last week of August

    Tower Defence fans rejoice as Kingdom Rush Frontiers is scheduled with the 1.1 updated due in the last week of August.

  • Day of Infamy FPS now available on Linux & SteamOS (updated)

    Note: The game is in Early Access, so remember it will have issues.

  • Empire TV Tycoon, thoughts from a Linux gamer

    I love Tycoon style games, I like being able to build and manage and do awesome things. Running a TV station isn’t something I had thought about before so it’s a very cool idea.

    The first thing that always impresses me is that it starts on the correct monitor and has no troubles with the fullscreen due to having two monitors. You know how often I complain about games having a totally messed up resolution or picking the wrong monitor, but not a problem here at all!

  • God is a Cube: Nanomachines Rising, a programming puzzle game is coming to Linux

    God is a Cube: Nanomachines Rising sounds pretty fun for anyone who likes programming, puzzles and robotics. You control nanomachines to create AIs made of graphical symbols.

    The developer emailed in that they have been working on making the Linux build nice and solid ready for release, so I thought you guys would like to know about it considering it will have a properly supported and tested Linux build.

  • New version of the itch store app released, as slick as ever

  • Headlander, the new game from Double Fine Productions will not come to Linux

Desktop Environments/WMs

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • GTK+ 3.21.4 GUI Toolkit Fixes Clipboard Handling on Wayland, Adds New APIs

    As part of the GNOME 3.21.4 desktop environment release, the development team behind the popular and widely-used GTK+ GUI (Graphical User Interface) toolkit have released development version 3.21.4.

  • On the killing of intltool

    Say thanks to Daiki Ueno for his work maintaining gettext and enhancing it to make change practical, and to Javier Jardon for pushing this within GNOME and working to remove intltool from important GNOME modules.

  • On discoverability

    I’ve discussed elsewhere that usability is about real people doing real tasks in a reasonable amount of time. Some researchers also refer to “learnability” and “memorability” to define usability—this is very similar to discoverability. Can you discover the features of the system just by poking at it? Is the user interface obvious enough that you can figure it out on your own?

Distributions

• ArchStrike Linux Distro For Ethical Hackers: Security Of Kali + Performance Of Arch

  The first ISO release of ArchStrike Linux distribution comes as a great news for ethical hackers and security researchers. If you are finding the new ArchStrike unfamiliar, let me tell you that it was previously called ArchAssault.

  As the name suggests, ArchStrike Linux distro is based on the highly customizable and lightweight Arch Linux distro.

  Now, the ArchStrike developers have announced that ISO images have been made available for download as the official installation medium. So, if you are willing to try out the latest ArchStrike Linux distro for hackers, you can go ahead and download ArchStrike 2016.07.21 ISOs for 64-bit and 32-bit CPUs.

• Finding Solace in Solus Linux

  There are so many reasons why you might want to try a new distribution. For all intents and purposes, the desktop has very few jobs when it comes to the “average” user. You need a desktop that:

• New Releases

  • Puppy Linux Cousin Toutou Linux 6.3.2 “SlaXen” Alpha Released for Public Testing

    Toutou, one of the fastest and most comprehensive minimalist GNU/Linux distributions, is again in development, it looks like we’re now able to test drive the 6.3.2 Alpha release of the upcoming Toutou Linux SlaXen series.

  • Antivirus Live CD 19.0-0.99.2 Released Based on 4MLinux 19.0 and ClamAV 0.99.2

    Softpedia has been informed by GNU/Linux developer and creator of the 4MLinux project, Mr. Zbigniew Konojacki, about the immediate availability for download of the Antivirus Live CD 19.0-0.99.2 distrolette.

  • Bodhi 4 Alpha, More Tor Heads Roll, Wily Werewolf EOL

    Today the Bodhi project announced announced the release of version 4.0.0 Alpha for 64-bit computers only. The final will include support for 32-bit. Elsewhere, Ubuntu 15.10 hit its end of life and the Tor project dismissed two more individuals for inappropriate behavior. Carla Schroder shared some Bash tips for sysadmins and Technews listed commands to avoid.

  • KaOS 2016.07 Adds KDE Plasma 5.7.2 and Linux Kernel 4.6, July’s Software Updates

    The KaOS development team proudly announced the release of the KaOS 2016.07 ISO refresh for the month of July, bringing all the goodies that have been pushed to the main software repositories of the rolling release operating system since June 2016.

  • Parabola GNU/Linux New install medium 2016.07.27

    Dual architecture (i686 and x86_64):

    Main ISO – Live ISO image for installation and recovery.
    MATE desktop ISO – Live ISO image for installation and recovery (with MATE Desktop Environment).
    TalkingParabola ISO – Live ISO image for installation and recovery (adapted for blind and visually impaired users)

  • Tanglu 4 “Dasyatis Kuhlii” Enters Beta, Ships with Linux Kernel 4.6 & GNOME 3.20

    Matthias Klumpp informs the community about the availability of the first Beta build towards the Tanglu 4 “Dasyatis Kuhlii” GNU/Linux operating system, due for release later this year.

    Tanglu 4 “Dasyatis Kuhlii” Beta is distributed with the usual flavors, including with the KDE and GNOME desktop environments. A Core edition is available as well, designed for those who want to build their own Tanglu-based GNU/Linux distribution.

    Under the hood, all Tanglu 4 Beta editions are powered by a kernel from the Linux 4.6 series, along with the systemd 229 init system, but each one incorporates some of the latest open-source technologies that correspond to their user base.

• Arch Family

  • Arch Linux-Based ArchEX Distro Receives Linux Kernel 4.6.4, Latest LXDE Desktop

    GNU/Linux developer Arne Exton has released a new build of its ArchEX computer operating system based on the latest Arch Linux technologies and open-source software.

• OpenSUSE/SUSE

  • openSUSE Tumbleweed Users Get Latest KDE Goodies, Linux Kernel 4.7 Coming Soon

    Today, July 27, 2016, openSUSE Project’s Douglas DeMaio has informed the Tumbleweed community about the latest software updates that landed recently in the main software repositories of the rolling release operating system.

• Red Hat Family

  • Microsoft and Red Hat now working together to bring Azure Linux support to government [Ed: Two NSA partners working with government and 'cloud' nonsense]

  • Microsoft’s .NET Now Runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenShift

    Microsoft and Red Hat made good on their promise to bring .NET to Red Hat’s open source, Linux-based platforms, simplifying life for programmers committed to a DevOps and microservices-based workflow — as well as companies that thrive on partnerships built around open collaborationn.

  • Red Hat Satellite 6.2 Introduces New Features To Help Users Increase Efficiency Across On-Premise, Cloud, And Container-based Environments

  • Finance

    • Analysts Actions to Focus: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co (NYSE:HPE) , Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Blue-chip stocks of the day: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Is this Large Market Cap Stock target price reasonable for Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)?

    • Insiders are Gradually Selling Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Michael Cunningham, EVP – General Counsel of Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) Just Unloaded Shares

    • Unable to Shed Weakness, Shares Still in a Downtrend: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Capital Counsel LLC Increased Red Hat INC Com (NYSE:RHT) by $12.99 Million as Shares Declined

    • Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) Under The Radar Analyst Recommendations

  • Fedora

    • Flock: conference preview for Fedora contributors

    • Getting started with Fedora QA (Part 2)

• Debian Family

  • systemd backport of v230 available for Debian/jessie

    At DebConf 16 I was working on a systemd backport for Debian/jessie. Results are officially available via the Debian archive now.

    In Debian jessie we have systemd v215 (which originally dates back to 2014-07-03 upstream-wise, plus changes + fixes from pkg-systemd folks of course). Now via Debian backports you have the option to update systemd to a very recent version: v230. If you have jessie-backports enabled it’s just an `apt install systemd -t jessie-backports` away. For the upstream changes between v215 and v230 see upstream’s NEWS file for list of changes.

    (Actually the systemd backport is available since 2016-07-19 for amd64, arm64 + armhf, though for mips, mipsel, powerpc, ppc64el + s390x we had to fight against GCC ICEs when compiling on/for Debian/jessie and for i386 architecture the systemd test-suite identified broken O_TMPFILE permission handling.)

  • DebConf16 low resolution videos

    If you go to the Debian video archive, you will notice the appearance of an “lq” directory in the debconf16 subdirectory of the archive. This directory contains low-resolution re-encodings of the same videos that are available in the toplevel.

  • Derivatives

    • Elive 2 Is Still in Beta, Version 2.7.1 Introduces Audacity, Google Voice Search

      The Debian and Enlightenment-based Elive GNU/Linux operating system is still in the Beta stages of development for the upcoming 2.x series, and the devs announced recently the release of the Elive 2.7.1 Beta milestone.

    • Parrot Security OS – A Debian Based Distro for Penetration Testing, Hacking and Anonymity

      Parrot Security operating system is a Debian-based Linux distribution built by Frozenbox Network for cloud oriented penetration testing. It is a comprehensive, portable security lab that you can use for cloud pentesting, computer forensics, reverse engineering, hacking, cryptography and privacy/anonymity.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) Reached End of Life, Upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

        Today, July 28, 2016, was the last day when the Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) operating system received updates for the software available in the repositories, as well as security fixes.

      • PSA: Ubuntu 15.10 Hits End of Life Today

        It’s time to wave a weary goodbye to the Wily Werewolf, as Ubuntu 15.10 support ends today.

      • Yakkety Yak Alpha 2 Released

      • Ubuntu 16.10 “Yakkety Yak” Alpha 2 Released

        Today marks the second alpha release for Ubuntu 16.10 “Yakkety Yak” flavors participating in these early development releases.

        Participating in today’s Yakkety Yak Alpha 2 development milestone are Lubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, and Ubuntu Kylin. No Xubuntu or Kubuntu releases to report on this morning.

      • Jono Bacon on Life After (and Before) GitHub

        Do you want to know what it takes to be a professional community manager? This interview will show you the kind of personality that does well at it, and how Jono Bacon, one of the world’s finest community managers, discovered Linux and later found his way into community management.

        Bacon is world-famous as the long-time community manager for Ubuntu. He was so good, I sometimes think his mother sang “you’ll be a community manager by and by” to him when he was a baby. In 2014 he went to XPRIZE, not a FOSS company, but important nevertheless. From there he dove back into FOSS as community manager for GitHub.

        Now Bacon is a freelance, self-employed community manager. One of his major clients is HackerOne, whose CEO is Bacon’s and my mutual friend Mårten Mickos. But HackerOne is far from his only client. In the interview he says he recently got back from visiting a client in China, and that he has more work then he can handle.

      • Ubuntu Touch OTA-13 Update to Rename the Libertine Scope to “Desktop Apps”

        Now that the Ubuntu Touch OTA-12 update has been successfully deployed to users’ devices, it’s time for Canonical’s engineers behind the Ubuntu mobile OS to concentrate their efforts on the next milestone.

        Yes, that’s right, we’re talking about the OTA-13 update, which should arrive this fall with numerous new features, many improvements to existing components, as well as countless bug fixes. One feature that caught our attention is the rename of the Libertine Scope introduced in the OTA-12 release to “Desktop Apps.”

      • Ubuntu 16.04.1 released

        Canonical has announced the first point release of the latest long-term support (LTS) version of Ubuntu, 16.04.

        Upgrade notifications will be sent to users still on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

        “The first point release for an LTS comes out 3 months after the initial release and then every 6 months until the next LTS is released,” said Canonical.

        “Upgrade notifications happen a short while later after some more QA testing.”

      • Ubuntu 16.10 “Yakkety Yak” Alpha 2 Arrives for Opt-in Flavors, Here’s What’s New

      • Ubuntu 16.10 Alpha 2 Is Available to Download Now

      • Ubuntu MATE 16.10 Alpha 2 Ships with New Unity-Like Heads-Up Display (HUD)

        Martin Wimpress informs Softpedia today, July 28, 2016, about the availability of the second Alpha 2 milestone towards the upcoming Ubuntu MATE 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) operating system.

        If you read our previous report on the availability of the Ubuntu 16.10 Alpha 2 development release of opt-in flavors, you would know already that only Lubuntu, Ubuntu Kylin, and Ubuntu MATE have announced their participation, and they all ship pretty much with the same GNU/Linux technologies under the hood.

      • Lubuntu 16.10 Alpha 2 Released with Linux Kernel 4.4 LTS, Latest LXDE Updates

      • LXLE “Eclectica” 16.04.1 Up to Release Candidate Stage, Based on Ubuntu 16.04.1

        The development of the LXLE 16.04.1 GNU/Linux distribution continues, and we’re announcing today the availability of the Release Candidate (RC) builds for 64-bit and 32-bit systems.

        LXLE “Eclectica” 16.04.1 Release Candidate comes only two weeks after the release of the Beta version, which was seeded to public beta testers at the beginning of the month, but was only available for 64-bit PCs and it dind’t include the goodies Canonical introduces with the first point release of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) OS.

      • Linux Mint 18 Xfce Is Just Around the Corner, KDE Edition Coming This September

        Today, July 28, 2016, Clement Lefebvre has published the monthly newsletter for the month of July to informs the community about the latest happening in the Linux Mint world.

        As you might know, a Beta version of the soon-to-be-released Linux Mint 18 “Sarah” Xfce edition has been made available last week, and Clement Lefebvre now informs us that the final release is expected to land very soon and that the upgrade path for Linux Mint 17.3 “Rosa” Xfce users will be open in the coming weeks.

      • Facebook Open Sources 17-Camera Surround360 Rig with Ubuntu Stitching Software

        The major benefit of the higher end cameras — and the Surround360 in particular — is not only quality and durability, but much shorter processing time stitching videos into a seamless whole. The open source Linux software “vastly reduces the typical 3D-360 processing time while maintaining the 8K-per-eye quality we think is optimal for the best VR viewing experience,” says Facebook.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • This is Lubuntu 16.10’s New Default Wallpaper

          The default wallpaper of Lubuntu 16.10 — yes, that’s Lubuntu, with an ‘l’ — has been unveiled — but will fans of the lightweight Ubuntu spin like it?

Devices/Embedded

• Group-buy site launches 40Msps BeagleBone ADC cape

  Crowdfunding and group-buying site GroupGets has launched a $79, open source “PRUDAQ” BeagleBone ADC cape with 40Msps analog input capabilities.

  Launched in 2013 in Santa Barbara, Calif., GroupGets is both an embedded device manufacturer and a crowdfunding group buying platform for buying existing hacker gear. The group buying platform part of the business specializes in offering products that are not available in under 1,000-unit quantities in smaller quantities including single units. Some products are available as such, but GroupGets can get discounted prices via group sales. GroupGets has already completed 94 campaigns, and has 11 active campaigns, including its latest: a digital acquisition BeagleBone cape called the PRUDAQ.

• How To Build A Raspberry Pi Smartwatch — The Geekiest Watch Ever Made

  In our Getting Started With Raspberry Pi series, we’ve introduced you to the basics of Pi, told you how to get everything you need, and help you boot a basic operating system. But, Raspberry Pi is much more than that. You can use it as a TOR proxy router, build your own PiPhone, and even install Windows 10 IoT.

  This little device comes with lots of flexibility, that allows it to be used in multiple applications. Well, did you ever think about wearing your Raspberry Pi? If your answer is NO, I won’t be surprised.

  If you imagine a scenario where Raspberry Pi is used to build a smartwatch, it would look too bulky. Well, that’s the thing about making geeky things that set you apart from the regular crowd, right?

• Embedded Linux Conference Europe schedule on tap

• Star Cloud PCG61 mini PC launches for $149 and up, runs Ubuntu or Windows

  Chinese device maker Mele’s latest mini-computer is a fanless desktop PC with an Intel Celeron N3150 Braswell quad-core processor, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi, and a starting price of $149.

• AMD R-Series hits the jackpot on casino gaming SBC

  Axiomtek’s “GMB135” casino gaming SBC offers quad- or dual-core AMD R-Series SoCs, up to 32GB DDR4, triple display support, 32 DIOs, and intrusion detection.

• Phones

  • Tizen

    • Upcoming Samsung Z2 Tizen Handset Caught on Video, with Z1 and Z3

      Yesterday we had the online leak of the full Z2 User Manual and also news that the device will be released in the Africa and Southeast Asia. It seems like lots of our news of late has been of the upcoming Z2 device and today seems no different. We have a video showing the Z2, Z3, and Z1 in action (going from left to right). A unity game is launched on each device and checked for functionality. Looking at the Z2 the front of the device looks like similar to the Samsung Z3 whilst the back is more like the Z1.

  • Android

    • Android Developers Take Note: Google Acquires Launchkit

    • Google To Boost Android Security With New Linux Kernel Defense Mechanisms

    • Google Details Linux Kernel Defenses, New and Old

    • Linux Kernel Upgraded With New Patches To Bolster Security

    • Google Adds More Linux Kernel Defenses to Android Core

    • How Google protects the Linux kernel in Android

    • Google Adds New Kernel-Level Protections For Android

    • Android Nougat to Include Upgraded Security

    • Google hardens the Linux kernel in Android

      Memory protections and attack surface reductions.

      Google has switched on new security features for the Linux kernel in Android, hoping to reduce vulnerabilities and to improve the robustness of its mobile operating system.

      Android is built around the open source Linux kernel, the core computer program that controls the software running on devices, and the hardware they’re built upon.

    • Stagefright Poses Serious Risks 1 Year After It First Surfaced

    • Google Play rolls out family sharing

    • Google’s tips and tricks guide for Android users

    • Android Handset Makers’ Advance Squeezes Apple

      Earnings reports from the world’s top smartphone makers this week highlight how fortunes are diverging in the mobile-phone market as competition intensifies.

    • Android Nougat Beta Build for the Huawei P9 is Available – Get it Now!

    • BlackBerry announces $299 DTEK50 Android phone, but it’s just a rebranded Alcatel Idol 4

    • BlackBerry Unveils a $299 Ultra-Secure Android Smartphone

    • Checking the Delivery Date on That Android Update

    • Android Users Constantly Touch Their Smartphones

    • Looking for official Android tips and tricks? Google’s got you covered

    • Motorola doesn’t really care about making your Android phone secure

    • Google beefs Linux up kernel defenses in Android

      Future versions of Android will be more resilient to exploits thanks to developers’ efforts to integrate the latest Linux kernel defenses into the operating system.

      Android’s security model relies heavily on the Linux kernel that sits at its core. As such, Android developers have always been interested in adding new security features that are intended to prevent potentially malicious code from reaching the kernel, which is the most privileged area of the operating system.

Google acquires LaunchKit to make life easier for Android developers

LaunchKit team heads to Google and open-sources its tools for helping devs launch their apps

The team behind LaunchKit, a set of tools that helps developers launch their apps, is heading to Google and joining the Developer Product Group.

It doesn’t look like LaunchKit’s products are moving over to Google, so the team decided to open-source its products and make them available on GitHub. LaunchKit’s hosted services will be available for the next 12 months. After that, they will be discontinued.

LaunchKit currently offers four tools and developers will now be able to take them and run them themselves: Screenshot Builder for easily creating annotated screenshots for Apple’s and Google’s store, App Website Builder for creating responsive landing pages for new apps, Review Monitor for — well… — tracking reviews in Apple’s App Store, and Sales Reporter for keeping track of sales. The team has also written a couple of how-to guides for developers, too.

Fork YOU! Sure, take the code. Then what?

There’s an old adage in the open source world – if you don’t like it, fork it. This advice, often given in a flippant manner, makes it seem like forking a piece of software is not a big deal.

Indeed, forking a small project you find on GitHub is not a big deal. There’s even a handy button to make it easy to fork it. Unlike many things in programming though, that interaction model, that simplicity of forking, does not scale. There is no button next to Debian that says Fork it!

Thinking that all you need to do to make a project yours is to fork it is a fundamental misunderstanding of what large free/open source projects are – at their hearts, they are communities. One does not simply walk into Debian and fork it.

One can, on the other hand, walk out of a project, bring all the other core developers along, and essentially leave the original an empty husk.

This is what happened when LibreOffice forked away from the once-mighty OpenOffice; it’s what happened when MariaDB split from MySQL; and it’s what happened more recently when the core developers behind ownCloud left the company and forked the code to start their own project, Nextcloud. They also, thankfully, dropped the silly lowercase first letter thing.

Nextcloud consists of the core developers who built ownCloud, but who were not, and, judging by the very public way this happened, had not been, in control of the direction of the product for some time.

Apache Graduates Another Big Data Project to Top Level

For the past year, we’ve taken note of the many projects that the Apache Software Foundation has been elevating to Top-Level Status. The organization incubates more than 350 open source projects and initiatives, and has squarely turned its focus to Big Data and developer-focused tools in recent months. As Apache moves Big Data projects to Top-Level Status, they gain valuable community support.

Only days ago, the foundation announced that Apache Kudu has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a Top-Level Project (TLP). Kudu is an open source columnar storage engine built for the Apache Hadoop ecosystem designed to enable flexible, high-performance analytic pipelines. And now, Apache Twill has graduated as well. Twill is an abstraction over Apache Hadoop YARN that reduces the complexity of developing distributed Hadoop applications, allowing developers to focus more on their application logic.

SaaS/Back End

• Spark 2.0 takes an all-in-one approach to big data

  Apache Spark, the in-memory processing system that’s fast become a centerpiece of modern big data frameworks, has officially released its long-awaited version 2.0.

  Aside from some major usability and performance improvements, Spark 2.0′s mission is to become a total solution for streaming and real-time data. This comes as a number of other projects — including others from the Apache Foundation — provide their own ways to boost real-time and in-memory processing.

Databases

• Why Uber Engineering Switched from Postgres to MySQL

  The early architecture of Uber consisted of a monolithic backend application written in Python that used Postgres for data persistence. Since that time, the architecture of Uber has changed significantly, to a model of microservices and new data platforms. Specifically, in many of the cases where we previously used Postgres, we now use Schemaless, a novel database sharding layer built on top of MySQL. In this article, we’ll explore some of the drawbacks we found with Postgres and explain the decision to build Schemaless and other backend services on top of MySQL.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

• Microsoft is bringing ChakraCore JavaScript engine to Linux and OS X

• ChakraCore Works Now on Linux and Mac OS [Ed: JavaScript is dangerous enough as it is (Web-facing); add Microsoft to it?! Only fools would put Microsoft code in FOSS browsers.]

• Microsoft pushes for cross-platform applications with ChakraCore for Linux and OS X

• Microsoft is bringing Edge’s ChakraCore javascript engine to Linux and OS X

• Microsoft Brings ChakraCore to Linux and OS X

• Microsoft opens up Node.js to other JavaScript engines

• Microsoft brings Edge JavaScript engine to Linux, Mac OS X

BSD

• FreeBSD Q2’2016: EFI Improvements, Prepping For FreeBSD 11.0, Package Updates

  For FreeBSD fans not closely following its development on a daily basis, the FreeBSD project has released their Q2’2016 quarterly status report that covers various activities going on around this BSD operating system project.

• EuroBSDCon 2016 schedule has been released

  The EuroBSDCon 2016 talks and schedule have been released, and oh are we in for a treat!

  All three major BSD’s have a “how we made the network go fast” talk, nearly every single timeslot has a networking related talk, and most of the non-networking talks look fantastic as well.

• OPNsense 16.7 released

• pfSense/m0n0wall-Forked OPNsense 16.7 Released

  The latest major release is out of OPNsense, a BSD open-source firewall OS project derived from pfSense and m0n0wall.

  OPNsense 16.7 brings NetFlow-based reporting and export, trafic shaping support, two-factor authentication, HTTPS and ICAP support in the proxy server, and UEFI boot and installation modes.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GNU Hyperbole 6.0.1 for Emacs 24.4 to 25 is released

  GNU Hyperbole (pronounced Ga-new Hi-per-bo-lee), or just Hyperbole, is an amazing programmable hypertextual information management system implemented as a GNU Emacs package. This is the first public release in 2016. Hyperbole has been greatly expanded and modernized for use with the latest Emacs 25 releases; it supports GNU Emacs 24.4 or above. It contains an extensive set of improvements that can greatly boost your day-to-day productivity with Emacs and your ability to manage information stored across many different machines on the internet. People who get used to Hyperbole find it helps them so much that they prefer never to use Emacs without it.

Public Services/Government

• Belgium mulls reuse of banking mobile eID app

  The Belgium government wants to reuse ‘Belgian Mobile ID’ a smartphone app for electronic identification, developed by banks and telecom providers in the country. The eID app could be used for eGovernment services, and the federal IT service agency, Fedict, is working on the app’s integration.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• Water resilience that flows: Open source technologies keep an eye on the water flow

  Communities around the world are familiar with the devastation brought on by floods and droughts. Scientists are concerned that, in light of global climate change, these events will only become more frequent and intense. Water variability, at its worst, can threaten the lives and well-beings of countless people. Sadly, humans cannot control the weather to protect themselves. But according to Silja Hund, a researcher at the University of British Columbia, communities can build resilience to water resource stress.

  Hund studies the occurrence and behavior of water. In particular, she studies rivers and streams. These have features (like water volume) that can change quickly. According to Hund, it is essential for communities to understand local water systems. Knowledge of water resources is helpful in developing effective water strategies. And one of the best ways to understand dynamic water bodies like rivers is to collect lots of data.

Programming/Development

• Why open source programming languages are crushing proprietary peers

  It’s no secret that open source now dominates big data infrastructure. From Kubernetes to Hadoop to MongoDB, “No dominant platform-level software infrastructure has emerged in the last ten years in closed-source, proprietary form,” as Cloudera chief strategy officer Mike Olson reminded us.

• JavaScript keeps its spot atop programming language rankings

  U.K.-based technology analyst firm RedMonk just released the latest version of its biannual rankings of programming languages, and once again JavaScript tops the list, followed by Java and PHP.

  Those are same three languages that topped RedMonk’s list in January. In fact, the entire top 10 remains the same as it was it was six months ago. Perhaps the biggest surprise in Redmonk’s list—compiling the “performance of programming languages relative to one another on GitHub and Stack Overflow”—is that there are so few surprises, at least in the top 10.

• Plenty of fish in the C, IEEE finds in language popularity contest

  It’s no surprise that C and Java share the top two spots in the IEEE Spectrum’s latest Interactive Top Programming Languages survey, but R at number five? That’s a surprise.

  This month’s raking from TIOBE put Java at number one and C at number two, while the IEEE reverses those two, and the IEEE doesn’t rank assembly as a top-ten language like TIOBE does.

  It’s worth noting however that the IEEE’s sources are extremely diverse: the index comprises search results from Google, Twitter, GitHub, StackOverflow, Reddit, Hacker News, CareerBuilder, Dice, and the institute’s own eXplore Digital Library.

  Even then, there are some oddities in the 48 programming environments assessed: several commenters to the index have already remarked that “Arduino” shouldn’t be considered a language, because code for the teeny breadboard is written in C or C++.

Oh Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. Where did it all go wrong?

Name and shame those who follow lots of people one week, fishing for follow backs, who then unfollow you the next. You all know who you are…Twitter influencers my arse.

Twitter must remember its mission if it wants to unlock new growth opportunity

Health/Nutrition

• Denationalise the Olympics to really stamp out cheating

  Where is the justice in this? The Russian athlete, Yuliya Stepanova, risks death by revealing the extent of Russian doping in her Olympic sport. She has to flee her country with her family, live in hiding and train in secret. She is told that, provided she is “clean”, she may compete in the Rio Olympics next week, but “as a neutral”. She is then told she cannot compete. Instead the International Olympic Committee offers her a free ticket to the Games, so she can eat her heart out watching her compatriots perform in front of her. It is the Snowden moral: any whistleblower against any sort of power will be ostracised and humiliated.

• US Senate Judiciary Chairman Questions High Cost Of Medicare Drug Coverage

  United States Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, has demanded answers from the government Medicare programme regarding the rapid rise in costs of coverage of Americans’ prescription drugs. The demand follows a press report showing an extremely high climb in costs for the so-called “catastrophic coverage” program.

• Florida regulators OK plan to increase toxins in water

  Despite the objection of environmental groups, state environmental regulators voted Tuesday to approve new standards that will increase the amount of cancer-causing toxins allowed in Florida’s rivers and streams under a plan the state says will protect more Floridians than current standards.

  The Environmental Regulation Commission voted 3-2 to approve a proposal that would increase the number of regulated chemicals from 54 to 92 allowed in rivers, streams and other sources of drinking water, news media outlets reported. The final vote came after hours of discussion, protests and emotional testimony.

• Office workers must exercise for an hour a day to counter death risk

  Office workers must exercise for one hour a day to combat the deadly risk of modern working lifestyles, a major Lancet study has found.

  Research on more than one million adults found that sitting for at least eight hours a day could increase the risk of premature death by up to 60 per cent.

  Scientists said sedentary lifestyles were now posing as great a threat to public health as smoking, and were causing more deaths than obesity.

  They urged anyone spending hours at their desk to change their daily routine to take a five minute break every hour, as well as exercise at lunchtimes and evenings.

• Details Of September UN High-Level Meeting On Antimicrobial Resistance

  Details of the upcoming United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) are coming clear after the preparation of a text laying out the specifics.

Security

• Linux Security Automation at Scale in the Cloud

  Ten years ago it didn’t seem like Linux growth could increase any faster. Then, in 2006, Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS). Linux growth went from linear to exponential. AWS competitors sprang up and were acquired by IBM, Microsoft, and other big players, accelerating Linux expansion even more.

  Linux became the platform of choice for the private cloud. But this movement wasn’t confined to the cloud. A rush to create Linux applications and services spilled over to traditional on premises. Linux had evolved from that obscure thing people ran web servers on to the backbone operating system of the majority of IT.

• Don’t want to get hacked? Close your laptop.

  My friends often leave their computers open and unlocked. I tell them they should probably get in the habit of locking their computers, but they don’t listen to me. So I’ve created a simple project to hack my friends and show them the importance of computer security.

  All I need to do is wait for them to leave their computer unlocked for a few seconds, open up their terminal, and type a single, short command.

• Citibank IT guy deliberately wiped routers, shut down 90% of firm’s networks across America

  It was just after 6pm on December 23, 2013, and Lennon Ray Brown, a computer engineer at the Citibank Regents Campus in Irving, Texas, was out for revenge.

  Earlier in the day, Brown – who was responsible for the bank’s IT systems – had attended a work performance review with his supervisor.

  It hadn’t gone well.

  Brown was now a ticking time bomb inside the organisation, waiting for his opportunity to strike. And with the insider privileges given to him by the company, he had more of an opportunity to wreak havoc than any external hacker.

• Explo-Xen! Bunker buster bug breaks out guests from hypervisor

  A super-bug in the Xen hypervisor may allow privileged code running in guests to escape to the underlying host.

  This means, on vulnerable systems, malicious administrators within virtual machines can potentially break out of their confines and start interfering with the host server and other guests. This could be really bad news for shared environments.

  All versions of open-source Xen are affected (CVE-2016-6258, XSA-182) although it is only potentially exploitable on x86 hardware running paravirtualized (PV) guests. The bug was discovered by Jérémie Boutoille of Quarkslab, and publicly patched on Tuesday for Xen versions 4.3 to 4.7 and the latest bleeding-edge code.

• Intel Puts Numbers on the Security Talent Shortage

  The cybersecurity shortfall in the workforce remains a critical vulnerability for companies and nations, according to an Intel Security report being issued today.

  Eighty-two percent of surveyed respondents reported a shortage of security skills, and respondents in every country said that cybersecurity education is deficient.

• NIST declares the age of SMS-based 2-factor authentication over

  2-factor authentication is a great thing to have, and more and more services are making it a standard feature. But one of the go-to methods for sending 2FA notifications, SMS, is being left in the dust by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

• 10 Best Password Cracking Tools Of 2016 | Windows, Linux, OS X

• By November, Russian hackers could target voting machines

  Russia was behind the hacks into the Democratic National Committee’s computer network that led to the release of thousands of internal emails just before the party’s convention began, U.S. intelligence agencies have reportedly concluded.

Defence/Aggression

• Horrific pictures: 300 dead in Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s national drug crackdown

  RODRIGO “The Punisher” Duterte vowed to eliminate drug crime via state sanctioned murder and he’s fulfilling that promise with chilling efficiency.

  The official death toll since the Philippine president’s call on authorities and citizens last month to kill drug users and dealers on sight is almost 300 but the true figure is certain to be higher.

  The victims nobody reported missing, or cared enough about to identify, are unlikely to have made anyone’s list.

  Now the horrific results of Duterte’s crackdown have been illustrated in an extraordinary series of photographs by Getty’s Dondi Tawatao.

  According to police data, 293 suspected users and pushers were killed during police operations between July 1 and July 24. Human rights groups say this figure does not include countless people murdered by vigilantes in street executions.

• Watchdog to Kerry: Tell Duterte to probe killings

  The watchdog group Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday, July 26, to tell Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to investigate the recent killings of suspected drug dealers in the Philippines.

  Kerry is set to arrive in the Philippines on Tuesday for a two-day trip that includes a meeting with Duterte.

  In a statement, HRW Asia deputy director Phelim Kine said Kerry should air his concern about Duterte’s war against illegal drugs.

• In a massive attempt to stop the spread of terror, French media are no longer publishing photos of terrorists

  After a spate of violent attacks in France, several French media organizations have vowed to no longer publish the names or images of terrorists.

  In an editorial published yesterday (July 27), after the killing of a priest by knife-wielding men in a Normandy church, newspaper Le Monde said (link in French) that it would stop publishing images of perpetrators. The paper said the decision was necessary to defeat the “strategy of hatred” facing France.

• North Korea: U.S. declared war with sanctions

• North Korea: U.S. “crossed the red line,” effectively declared war

  North Korea’s top diplomat for U.S. affairs told The Associated Press on Thursday that Washington “crossed the red line” and effectively declared war by putting leader Kim Jong Un on its list of sanctioned individuals, and said a vicious showdown could erupt if the U.S. and South Korea hold annual war games as planned next month.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• Are we ready for the gold rush on the sea floor?

  THE submersible Alvin encountered its first “black smoker” 2000 metres deep off the coast of the Galapagos Islands. It was 1977, and the realisation that life could survive in pitch darkness next to deep sea hydrothermal vents was about to stun the world. Now we are returning to those vents, this time on the other side of the Pacific – and armed with diggers.

  The hot water shooting out of these vents contains all sorts of dissolved precious metals. On contact with the cold ocean water, these immediately precipitate out, showering the vicinity with gold, silver, copper and more (see diagram). Some want to tap into this booty, arguing that deep sea mining is not only lucrative, but also a more sustainable alternative to mineral extraction on land. But not everyone is convinced we can exploit the deep without damaging it.

• The Ocean Could Be the New Gold Rush

  The bottom of the world’s ocean contains vast supplies of precious metals and other resources, including gold, diamonds, and cobalt. Now, as the first deep-sea mining project ramps up, nations are trying to hammer out guidelines to ensure this new “gold rush” doesn’t wreck the oceans.

  People have dreamed of harvesting riches from the seafloor for decades. A project off Papua New Guinea could begin as early as 2018, serving as a test case for an industry that could be highly lucrative. If it proves successful, it could kick off a boom of deep-sea mining around the world.

  In response, representatives of many nations, the mining industry, and environmental groups are meeting this week in Kingston, Jamaica, at an annual session of the International Seabed Authority. The purpose is to agree on safeguards and operating procedures for deep-sea mining, especially in the high seas. Under international jurisdiction, the high seas represent roughly two-thirds of the world’s oceans.

• A Fracking Pipeline Puts Tim Kaine’s Fossil Fuel Industry Ties to the Test

  Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Tim Kaine is facing pressure from landowners in his home state of Virginia to stand against the planned Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would carry fracked gas from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia to mid-Atlantic markets.

  He’s made some moves in that direction: He’s held private meetings with landowners in the pipeline’s pathway; he’s asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to strengthen the consultation process for residents; and he introduced an amendment to a federal energy bill that would encourage regulators to carry out a review of the cumulative impact of the region’s four planned pipelines.

Finance

• HMRC cleaners striking over pay: ‘They’ve treated us appallingly’

  When George Osborne announced a new “national living wage” (NLW) to boost low-paid workers’ income and help people off welfare, cleaner Maria Hill looked forward to the modest rise the extra 50p per hour would bring her. Hill, 54, has cleaned the Liverpool offices of HM Revenue and Customs for more than 15 years.

  “Things are tight, really tight to be honest,” she says. When you are earning £201.60 a week “every bit helps”. It never occurred to her that she would be left much worse off and would end up on strike.

  As the April deadline for bringing in the NLW approached, ISS, the company that employs the HMRC cleaners in a complex subcontracting chain, told staff that it could not afford the mandatory rise. It informed them that it intended to claw back any increase in hourly pay by cutting each worker’s number of hours so that their overall wages stayed the same.

• Clinton Friend Admits What Everyone Knows Is True: Clinton Still Supports TPP & Will Back It

  If you’ve followed the whole TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) thing at all, and/or the Presidential election this year, you probably already know that Hillary Clinton famously flip-flopped on TPP. She was for it, before she was against it (and tried to rewrite history to hide her support of it). Of course, basically everyone recognized that her newfound concerns about TPP were made up, as a response to (at the time) surging support for Bernie Sanders, who was vocally against the agreement. But, of course, as tons of people have been saying all along, everyone expects that after the election she’ll magically flip flop back to supporting TPP.

• Anglo American cuts net debt to $11.7 billion, on track for less than $10 billion

• Anglo’s Year of the Turnaround Puts Debt Targets Within Reach

• Lloyds to cut 3,000 jobs, close more branches after Brexit shock

  Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L) said on Thursday it would step up its cost cutting plans to help to offset a more testing economic environment caused by Britain’s vote to quit the European Union.

  Britain’s largest retail bank aims to save 400 million pounds ($528.56 million) by end-2017 by axing a further 3,000 jobs and closing an additional 200 branches to protect its earnings and dividends against the effects of lower-for-longer interest rates.

  Lloyds, rescued in a 20.5 billion pound taxpayer bail-out during the financial crisis, is the first major British bank to report results since the referendum and is the most exposed to any downturn in the British economy.

  Chief Executive Officer Antonio Horta-Osório is searching for ways to prop up Lloyds’ dividend, one of its key attractions, and sustain profit growth in its main UK consumer and commercial lending market, still reeling from the Brexit result on June 24.

• Lloyds cuts a further 3,000 jobs and doubles branch closure plan

  Lloyds has ramped-up its job-cutting scheme, axing a further 3,000 roles, even as it reported a 101% increase in pre-tax profits.

  The bank also doubled its planned branch closures, with 200 more set to vanish from the UK’s high-streets by the end of 2017.

  The cuts are in addition to the 9,000 job and 200 branch closures Lloyds announced in 2014.

  Lloyds reported a £2.5bn pre-tax profit for the half year to the end of June.

  In the same period last year, it made £1.2bn.

• Not Just In The US: TPP Meeting More Resistance In Australia And Japan, Too

  It’s remarkable how TPP, a previously obscure trade deal known only to a few specialists — and to enlightened Techdirt readers, of course — has suddenly become one of the hottest issues in the US Presidential contest. But it’s important to remember that TPP is still a live issue in many of the other participating countries too. Malaysia seems to be the furthest along in the ratification process, and Peru is also moving forward. But there are signs that resistance could be growing, rather than diminishing, in some key nations.

• Ford considers closing factories and raising prices in Europe in wake of Brexit

  Ford has warned it is considering closing factories and raising prices in the UK and Europe in the wake of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.

  Announcing disappointing results on Thursday, the motor company forecast that the referendum decision could cost the company $1bn over the next two years.

  Ford is the largest car brand in the UK and Bob Shanks, Ford’s chief financial officer, warned price rises would be necessary there in order to offset currency fluctuations in the wake of Brexit. The pound has crashed 11% against the dollar since the Brexit vote on 23 June.

• Clinton-Kaine Campaign Should Support TPP, Says CTA

  The following statement is attributed to Gary Shapiro, president and CEO, Consumer Technology Association (CTA)™, regarding the Clinton-Kaine campaign’s “evolving” position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP):

  “As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, the Trans-Pacific Partnership ‘holds great economic opportunities to all participating nations.’ As recently as last Thursday, Sen. Tim Kaine reiterated his support for granting President Obama ‘fast-track’ authority to negotiate the trade deal. We can only hope the politics of the moment are driving the Clinton-Kaine campaign’s evolving rhetoric on TPP, not the substance of the deal.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Can Facts Slow The DNC Breach Runaway Train?

  Yesterday, Professor Thomas Rid (Kings College London) published his narrative of the DNC breach and strongly condemned the lack of action by the U.S. government against Russia.

  Susan Hennessey, a Harvard-educated lawyer who used to work at the Office of the General Counsel at NSA called the evidence “about as close to a smoking gun as can be expected where a sophisticated nation state is involved.”

  Then late Monday evening, the New York Times reported that “American intelligence agencies have “high confidence” that the Russian government was behind the DNC breach.

  It’s hard to beat a good narrative “when explanations take such a dreadful time” as Lewis Carroll pointed out. And the odds are that nothing that I write will change the momentum that’s rapidly building against the Russian government.

• NSA could hold ‘smoking gun’ in DNC leak

• Donald Trump Just Asked Russia To Hack The US Government

  Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump urged Russia to hack into the US government servers, releasing the personal emails of Hillary Clinton when she was the secretary of State.

• Can Jill Stein Lead a Revolution?

  Jill Stein takes public transportation to the Democratic National Convention. On the day after Hillary Clinton made history as the first woman to win a major party presidential nomination, the Green Party presidential candidate is on the subway en route to the Wells Fargo Center. Adoring fans spot her on the way over and demand selfies. A heavily tattooed woman complains to Stein: “It’s been a Hillary party the whole time. It’s like brainwash, like waterboarding. It’s awful.”

  Stein is in high demand. The populist progressive tells me that after Bernie Sanders endorsed Clinton two weeks ago, effectively ending his insurgent campaign for president, a lot more people started paying attention to her campaign. “The floodgates opened,” Stein says. “I almost feel like a social-worker, being out there talking to the Bernie supporters. They are broken-hearted. They feel really abused, and misled, largely by the Democratic Party.”

• Is the Elite Media Failing to Reach Trump Voters?

  The release of hacked Democratic National Committee emails last week was followed on Wednesday by Donald Trump’s invitation to Russia to find and release Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. Trump has since claimed that he was being “sarcastic,” but some believe that he is all too happy to rely on hacked materials to further his campaign for the White House—and doesn’t appreciate the national security implications of Russian intelligence’s alleged breach of DNC servers. Others believe that Trump’s more isolationist foreign policy ideas, such as retreating from NATO, should be discussed rationally and that the DNC hack is being used as a cudgel with which to attack anyone who isn’t sufficiently hawkish on Russia. The hack, and its political and geopolitical implications, has also occasioned a debate about whether and how the media ought to cover leaked—or in this case stolen—information.

• DNC insiders detail months of escalating dysfunctio

  First, she asked Biden to do a fundraiser for her own reelection to her House seat in Florida in the primary challenge she’s facing next month. He agreed.

  The second was to get down to Boca Raton for the bat mitzvah.

  Biden’s staff balked. They offered to tape a video message from him instead, hoping that would satisfy her.

  Wasserman Schultz eagerly said yes. They played it for everyone who came.

  The meeting with Biden was symptomatic of the way the DNC was veering off the rails just as the presidential election was heating up. More than a dozen people inside the party apparatus, speaking in the wake of Wasserman Schultz’s resignation on Sunday, describe an internal culture in which few felt they could challenge an increasingly imperious and politically tone-deaf chair who often put her own interests ahead of party functions.

  Last week’s WikiLeaks dump, releasing thousands of emails showing DNC officials sparring with Bernie Sanders supporters and with one another, was what finally got Hillary Clinton’s top aides to force her out Sunday on the eve of the convention.

• Latest from the DNC: Bernie loyalists plan prime-time protest

  Members of the group — Caitlin Glidewell, 20, an alternate delegate from Colorado, North Carolina delegate Joshua “Fox” Brown, 34, and Tennessee delegate Katie Cowley, 39, — tell USA TODAY that they are fed up with the Democratic Party’s treatment of Sanders and they signaled they would be part of a sort of Democratic tea party movement, agitating for more progressive policies going forward.

  They want everyone to read the nearly 20,000 hacked emails released last weekend by WikiLeaks showing some DNC officials have been biased toward Clinton all along and attempted to undermine Sanders by proposing to push stories in the media saying his campaign was a mess and questioning his religious beliefs.

• Democratic Convention Targets Delegates Holding Signs Which Stray From Party Line

  Democratic Party personnel at the national convention are ejecting any Bernie Sanders delegates, who hold up hand-made signs or signs not officially produced by the party. There are whips walking aisles of the arena or sitting in seats engaged in monitoring the actions of delegates they believe will act out independently and stray from approved party messaging.

  Bryce Hill, a twenty-five year-old delegate from California, watched a number of Secret Service agents eject a delegate after he argued with them about whether the sign he made was dangerous to the convention.

  “They’ve told us not to make any signs,” Hill explained. “They will just warn us if we hold any hand-made or outside signs. We have ‘Ban Fracking’ signs that were brought in and ‘No TPP’ signs. And they say they won’t take them. They’ll just ask us to leave if we hold them up.”

  Democratic National Convention personnel have informed delegates they will receive one warning and then their credentials will be revoked.

• Don’t blame Bernie’s #NeverHillary voters if Trump beats Clinton

  After the glowing testimonials, the gracious concession by Bernie Sanders, and the star power of the current president and an ever-popular past president, Hillary Clinton is sure to get a bounce in the polls from this week’s Democratic convention.

  With virtually the same certainty, however, the other woman running for president this year, the Green Party’s Jill Stein, will also get a bounce coming out of the Philadelphia convention.

  Even though Sanders urged his supporters to back Clinton, a stubborn #NeverHillary faction are poised to flock to Stein, potentially draining votes from Clinton that may — in the headline of the Washington Post’s print edition — “rob” the former first lady of the election.

• Bernie Sanders Announces He Is Leaving The Democratic Party

  He revealed this week that he is resuming his status as a political independent and leaving the Democratic Party when he goes back to work in the U.S. Senate.

  The Vermont senator, a self-described socialist and runner-up to Hillary Clinton in the presidential primary sweepstakes, ran for president as a Democrat.

  Last November, when filing his paperwork for the New Hampshire primary, Sanders said “I am running as a Democrat obviously, I am a Democrat now,” the Burlington Free Press reported. “Sanders says he’ll run as a Democrat in future elections,” the Free Press added.

  On Tuesday, Sanders seemed to change his tune about his party affiliation. During the Bloomberg Politics breakfast in Philadelphia, he declared that “I was elected as an independent; I’ll stay two years more as an independent,” the Wall Street Journal detailed.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Turkey dismisses military, shuts media outlets as crackdown deepens

  Turkey on Wednesday deepened a crackdown on suspected followers of a U.S.-based cleric it blames for a failed coup, dismissing nearly 1,700 military personnel and shutting 131 media outlets, moves that may spark more concern among its Western allies.

  So far, tens of thousands of people – including police, judges and teachers – have been suspended or placed under investigation since the July 15-16 coup, which Turkey says was staged by a faction within the military loyal to the Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen.

  Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania but whose movement has a wide following in Turkey where it runs a large network of schools, has denied any involvement in the failed putsch.

• Russian Copyright Law Allows Entire News Site To Be Shut Down Over A Single Copied Article

  We’ve noted for a long time now that copyright laws are regularly used as a tool for censorship. In Russia, abusing copyright law for censorship and to harass political opponents has become standard. Remember how the Russian government teamed up with Microsoft to use questionable copyright claims to intimidate government critics? And then how the MPAA gleefully got into bed with Russia’s media censor to celebrate copyright? Of course, Russia also expanded its ability to use copyright to censor the internet, following pressure from short-sighted US diplomats, demanding that Russia better “respect” copyright laws.

• China’s tech sector thriving despite online censorship

  Silicon Valley may be powered by organic kale, but when Chinese tech gurus gather at 3W, a coffee shop-slash-incubator in the Chinese capital, they want sunflower seeds. And they want them fast.

  Ahead of a recent meeting, 3W’s co-founder, Xu Dandan, used WeChat, a Chinese platform with hundreds of millions of users, to place an order with Beequick, a local startup that delivers supplies from mom-and-pop shops. Thirty minutes later: Crunch, crunch.

  And if Xu and his friends were craving a different crispy snack like, say, crayfish? A business accelerator at nearby Peking University has a startup just for that. Grab your China-made phone, open WeChat, and, just like that, your crustaceous needs are met.

• Provocative street artist accuses Instagram of ‘political censorship’ for deleting his account after his murals of a half-naked Hillary Clinton and Melania Trump go viral

  A Melbourne artist who painted a provocative mural of US Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has accused Instagram of politically-motivated censorship after his account was deleted.

  Renowned street artist Lushsux said he believed a mural he painted of Clinton in a very revealing stars and stripes monokini last weekend was the reason his Instagram account, which had 107,000 followers, was deactivated on Wednesday.

  ‘I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist with a tin foil hat but the timing of the Hillary Clinton mural posting and the deletion that ensued can’t just be a coincidence,’ he told Daily Mail Australia in an email.

• Turkey: media purge intensifies in coup attempt’s wake

  Reporters Without Borders (RSF) deplores the growing persecution of critical media in the week since the 15 July coup attempt in Turkey. With the government’s response seeming more and more like a witchhunt, journalists have been subjected to arrests, seizures of entire newspaper issues and a menacing state of emergency.

  “No one disputes the Turkish government’s legitimate right to defend constitutional order after this abortive coup but democracy, for which hundreds of civilians gave their lives, cannot be protected by trampling on fundamental freedoms,” said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk.

• Openload Domain Suspended By Namecheap

  Openload, one of the largest file-hosting sites on the Internet, has had its domain suspended. According to the site’s operator, domain registrar Namecheap took action last evening after receiving “too many DMCA complaints”. Openload says all complaints are actioned within 24 hours.

• Tackling trolls isn’t censorship, it’s common sense [Ed: Calling people you don’t agree with “trolls” is not common sense, it’s censorship by another name]

  Once more, free speech is under attack. Not content with being paid millions, lavished with free designer clothes and flying in private jets around the world, Hollywood stars are now also getting to censor the internet.

• Facebook censoring some posts on IOK

  Film makers, activists and journalists have said that their Facebook accounts were blocked this week after they posted messages and images related to the prevailing situation in occupied Kashmir.

  As people posted images, videos and stories about Indian terrorism on Facebook, some discovered their accounts were disabled.

• ‘SABC concession a victory against censorship’

  The decision by the beleaguered SA Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to make a u-turn and allow seven of the eight journalists it fired for disagreeing with the policy of banning violent footage during protests was a victory against censorship, trade union Solidarity said on Wednesday.

  The union had earlier gone back to the Labour Court and issued an ultimatum to the SABC to allow its members back to the workplace before 4pm, failing which the SABC would face a compliance order and an application for contempt of the Labour Court. “Solidarity and the journalists are obviously very relieved about the latest development.

• Victory against censorship as seven SABC journalists reinstated

  The seven SABC journalists who voiced their concerns over the public broadcaster’s censorship of violent protests in the country have been reinstated.

  “The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) management has instructed its legal team not to proceed with further legal action and the SABC will reinstate the seven dismissed news employees,” the SABC said in a brief statement.

• SABC bars journalists from work despite Labour Court ruling

• Journalists happy to return to work at SABC but…

• SABC caves – lets fired journalists return to work

• SABC: Labour court battle won, but the war is still on

• Battling censorship in Lesotho and South Africa

• ‘SABC censorship debate has been sensationalised’ [Ed: should change her job title to Propaganda Minister]

• ‘I don’t know what you mean by censorship’ – Faith Muthambi on SABC

• Faith Muthambi calls commercial media ‘arrogant’

• Faith Muthambi calls commercial media ‘arrogant’

• There is no censorship at the SABC, insists Muthambi

• ‘SABC censorship debate has been sensationalised’

• Communications Minister shrugs off SABC mess – says there is no censorship crisis

• South Africa: Minister of Communications and Hlaudi Motsoeneng Must Be Fired

  Congress of the People (COPE) demands that Mr Zuma fires Minister Faith Muthambi because she is not fit to manage her department.

  Muthambi and her department are all the time in the news for all the wrong reasons.

  Instead of upholding control Muthambi is allowing Hlaudi Motsoaneng to abuse his power to the core.

  Because of the clueless minister like Muthambi, the SABC has become a laughing stock of the world. Today, SABC is in a big mess.

• Right 2 know occupies SABC headquarters

  Right 2 Know (R2K) activists are currently confronting SABC management and staging a sit-in at SABC Headquarters in Auckland Park.

  This, following the SABC management’s decision to bar four journalists from entering their place of work after they were reinstated by the Labour Court on 26 July. The court ruled in favour of the four journalists who were unlawfully dismissed for standing up against SABC’s COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng.

• Right2Know Campaign confronts SABC management

• Hlaudi throws in towel‚ reinstates fired journalists

  The South African Broadcasting Corporation will reinstate seven of the eight news employees who challenged their dismissal for speaking out against a decision by the public broadcaster’s chief operating officer‚ Hlaudi Motsoeneng‚ to ban news coverage of violent protests.

• Faith Muthambi accuses media of ‘feeding propaganda’ to the public

• See how Facebook is accused of censoring posts on Kashmir

• Facebook censorship! Kashmir posts deleted?

• Facebook is censoring some posts on Indian Kashmir

• Pakistan decides to contact Facebook over Kashmir posts’ censorship

Privacy/Surveillance

• ‘Pearls Before Swine’ Cartoon Mocking NSA Wiretapping Censored

  The comic strip “Pearls Before Swine” is no stranger to controversy and is well-known for pushing the envelope. Apparently, yesterday’s scheduled strip went a bit too far, and was not published in newspapers. Pearls Before Swine’s cartoonist Stephan Pastis tweeted it out anyways, saying that he thought the strip was “harmless” and that the censorship was unnecessary.

• Comic Strip Pulled Over ISIS Reference

  Cartoonist Stephen Pastis, creator of the popular comic Pearls Before Swine, announced on his Facebook yesterday that his July 27 strip was pulled by syndicators and newspapers for being overly offensive.

  Pearls Before Swine is a daily comic strip that runs in over 750 newspapers. Its main characters are the sarcastic, narcissistic, beer-loving Rat and his roommate, the blissfully ignorant Pig. Other main characters include Goat, an arrogant intellectual; Zebra, who seeks to avoid the incompetent fraternity of imbecilic crocodiles next door; and Guard Duck, a violent and delusional veteran. Pearls Before Swine won the National Cartoonists’ Society Newspaper Comic Strip Award in 2003 and 2006 and the 2015 Reuben Award for Best Newspaper Comic. It is beloved for its dark humor, violence, foul language, and infamously elaborate puns.

• Trump Shows the Flaws of NSA Surveillance

• Donald Trump’s most chilling comment on the DNC hack had nothing to do with Russia

• Democrats Seem to Want to Forget Obama’s Role in Our Surveillance State

  Anti-war Democrats found their voices again, albeit briefly, when former CIA Director Leon Panetta spoke on behalf of Hillary Clinton at the convention last night. A large pack of delegates (likely Bernie Sanders’ supporters) attempted to drown out part of Panetta’s speech—which attempted to present Clinton as the choice to take on terrorists—with chants of “No More War.”

• Dentist Sues Another Unhappy Patient; Offers To Let Journalist See Patients’ Private Files To Dispute Claims

  Yelp — both a frequent target of misguided lawsuits and the host of many, many targets of similarly-misguided lawsuits — has instituted a nifty new flag that lets readers and reviewers know which businesses are issuing legal threats or filing lawsuits over negative reviews. The warning — pictured below — first showed up in May after Prestigious Pets went legal over a review it didn’t care for.

• NSA Surveillance Compliance Reports Show Typos, Lack Of Communication Resulting In Erroneous Targeting And Collection

  The Director of National Intelligence’s office (ODNI) has just released three Section 702 compliance reports covering December 2012 – May 2014. Considering the six-month lag time between the period covered and the reports’ release, this is very likely as up to date as it can be at this point.

• Get ready to use your fingerprints to make bank withdrawals

  USING a PIN for cash withdrawals and credit card transactions will soon seem as old-fashioned as signing your name.

  The Payments Association of SA has announced a new standard for biometric authentication‚ which will mean fingerprints‚ palms‚ voices‚ irises and even faces can be used to identify cardholders at any bank or shop.

  But the association says it has no plans to force businesses to use the technology‚ and none of the big banks has plans to use biometrics.

  Association CEO Walter Volker said the new standard meant biometric systems would not be limited to individual vendors.

• Tor Project says it has confirmed sexual misconduct by developer Jacob Appelbaum

  The Tor Project, a nonprofit known for its online anonymity software, says it has verified claims that former employee Jacob Appelbaum engaged in “sexually aggressive behavior” with people inside and outside of its organization. “We have confirmed that the events did take place as reported,” Shari Steele, Tor’s executive director, tells The Verge.

  In a blog post today, Steele says that Tor began an investigation into Appelbaum’s behavior after several people came forward with allegations of misconduct in late May. “Many people inside and outside the Tor Project have reported incidents of being humiliated, intimidated, bullied, and frightened by Jacob, and several experienced unwanted sexually aggressive behavior from him,” Steele writes. Steele says the investigation found additional people, beyond those making public accusations, who experienced similar “incidents.”

• What Can a Hacker Do with Your Genetic Information?

  Learning about the genetic markers stored in your DNA can be an illuminating experience, even a life-altering one. Now that direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies such as 23andMe have made these tests more accessible and affordable, it’s no wonder that more than 1 million people have shipped their spit off to be genotyped, and have all their genetic information catalogued (and sold) in the process.

  When a massive cache of private information is all stored in one place, it will naturally be a target for hackers. Though there hasn’t been a hack of any consumer genetic testing company yet, it may just a matter of time before someone breaches one of these sites and gains access to not just your credit card, but also your genetic markers.

  So how concerned should we be, and what might happen if a hacker ever did get his or her hands on your DNA?

• ‘Wish I Had The Power’ To Hack Enemies’ Emails, Says Man Very Close To Having Such Power

  This weird presidential election continues to get weirder. Donald Trump, perhaps upset about being overshadowed this week by the Democratic Convention, held a press conference on Wednesday morning where he said a whole bunch of completely nutty stuff. A lot of the attention is being placed on his weird possibly half-joking request that Russia hack into Hillary Clinton’s emails and reveal the 33,000 that were deleted (or maybe just give them to the FBI, as he later said in a tweet). That was bizarre on a number of levels, including coming right after denying he had any connection to Russia and the possibility that they had hacked the Democratic National Committee’s computer system.

• Court Says Bugs The FBI Planted Around California Courthouses Did Not Violate Anyone’s Expectation Of Privacy

  The FBI’s surreptitious recording devices — scattered around three California courthouses — raised a few eyebrows when the recordings were submitted as evidence. The defense lawyers wondered whether the devices violated the conversants’ expectation of privacy, admittedly a high bar to reach considering their location near the courthouse steps — by every definition a public area.

  The defense team cited a Supreme Court decision involving phone booths, hoping to equate their clients’ “hushed tones” with closing a phone booth door. Small steps like these — used by everyone — are attempts to create privacy in public areas, but courts are very hesitant to join defendants in erecting privacy expectations in public places.

• As surveillance gets smart, hackers get smarter

  There is an escalating technological arms race underway between governments and hacktivists. As governments step up their surveillance, the hacktivists find new ways to subvert it.

• The Phone Case To Protect You From Prying Eyes, Designed By Edward Snowden

• Edward Snowden Designs Device To Detect iPhone Snooping

• Federal Prosecutors Use All Writs Order To Compel Suspect To Unlock Phone With His Fingerprint

  While courts generally agree that a fingerprint is non-testimonial — despite its ability to unlock all sorts of testimonial stuff — there aren’t too many courts willing to extend that coverage to passwords. There are exceptions, of course, but items held in someone’s mind are given a bit more deference than those at their literal fingertips.

  And that’s likely why the All Writs-compelled fingerprint access hasn’t allowed the ATF inside Keys’ phone. The feds can force Keys to place his finger on the iPhone screen all they want, but it likely won’t unlock the device. Apple’s security requires a passcode as well as a fingerprint if it’s been more than 48 hours since the phone was last unlocked. The time elapsed between when the phone was seized and the order obtained for Keys’ fingerprint added another layer of security to the phone — one not so easily defeated with All Writs orders.

  Keys is no one’s idea of a sympathetic party. He allegedly forced two teen girls, aged 14 and 15, to have sex with men for several hours a day by drugging them into submission. Whether or not his phone contained more evidence is unknown. It’s unclear from the recently unsealed documents whether federal investigators found another way into the device after the application of Keys’ fingerprint failed to unlock the phone.

• In Secret Battle, Surveillance Court Reined in FBI Use of Information Obtained From Phone Calls

  Beginning over a decade ago, the country’s surveillance court intervened to limit the FBI’s ability to act on some sensitive information that it collected while monitoring phone calls.

  The wrangling between the FBI and the secret court is contained in previously undisclosed documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC. The documents, part of an ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, were shared with The Intercept.

  The documents reveal that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) told the FBI several times between 2005 and 2007 that using some incidental information it collected while monitoring communications in an investigation — specifically, numbers people punch into their phones after they’ve placed a call — would require an explicit authorization from the court, even in an emergency.

  “The newly obtained summaries are significant because they show the power that the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] has to limit expansive FBI surveillance practices,” Alan Butler, an attorney for EPIC, wrote in an email to The Intercept.

• Raytheon Gets NSA Certification for Ethernet Encryption Tool; John Droge Comments

• Raytheon launches NSA-certified, next-generation Ethernet encryption system

• Raytheon launches NSA-approved ethernet encryption system

Civil Rights/Policing

• Protesters clash with police in South Korea as Japan-funded ‘comfort women’ foundation opens in Seoul

  South Korean protesters clashed with the police on Thursday (July 28) as they tried to disrupt the opening in Seoul of a Tokyo-funded foundation for women forced to work in Japanese wartime brothels.

  Last December, the two nations reached a “final and irreversible” agreement, under which Tokyo offered an apology and a 1 billion yen to open the foundation for the dwindling number of so-called “comfort women” who are still alive. But the deal was condemned by some of the women and South Korean activists, who took issue with Japan’s refusal to accept formal legal responsibility.

  “You can’t silence the victims with money!” scores of protesters chanted at Thursday’s opening event, which they picketed with banners reading: “This is not what the comfort women want!”

  Several college students forced their way into the venue where foundation officials were due to hold a press conference, and had to be forcibly removed by police.

• Yes, democracy is under huge threat; not from Trump or Brexit voters, but liberals

  Sounds like an exaggeration? This is precisely the argument British blogger Andrew Sullivan put forward in his 8,000-word op-ed against Donald Trump, “Democracies end when they are too democratic.” Democracies, argued Sullivan, often drift into passionate excesses, and super smart people must come to their rescue. “Elites matter in a democracy..”, because they are “the critical ingredient to save democracy from itself.”

  The liberal position is an open challenge to the century-old struggle that the world has emerged from in recognising people’s power. It is quite often that the words ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ are interchanged. But there is a difference between the two. Democracy presents the architecture for freedom. Through a set of ideas, principles, set of practices and procedures that have been moulded through a long, arduous history, it institutionalises freedom. Voting is a precious right.

  If Brexit and Trump and the rise of far right in Europe present a challenge, it will take much more agile thinking than merely putting forth cosmetic, superfluous and reckless arguments.

• People smugglers ‘making a mockery’ of UK borders: Damning evidence shows how easy it is for criminals to avoid penalties after a third of fines are never paid

  People smugglers are making a ‘laughing stock’ of Britain’s porous borders, a withering report concludes today.

  Damning evidence shows the Home Office’s failure to crack down on immigration abuse, as well as how easy it is for rule-breakers to avoid penalties.

  In the latest example, it was revealed that more than a third of fines issued to lorry drivers for carrying illegal immigrants into Britain are never paid.

• ‘I am not an extremist’: What ISIS priest murderer told French judges who released him with an electronic tag that only worked after lunch time

  The known ISIS terrorist who murdered a Catholic priest in northern France had told judges ‘I am not an extremist’ before being freed from prison to kill, it emerged today.

  Shocking details about the lax manner with which 19-year-old Adel Kermiche was treated emerged following the slaughter of Father Jacques Hamel, 86, in Normandy.

  Kermich was wearing an electronic tag, after serving part of his sentence for a range of terrorist offences including trying to join ISIS in Syria, and then being released in March.

• I am a Muslim doctor. I saved a Christian in Pakistan and it nearly cost me my life

  I am a Pakistani medical doctor, currently receiving political asylum in the US for the past year and a half. I sought refuge here after having to go through much humiliation and outright hatred for trying to practice ethical medicine and for belonging to a religious minority in my own motherland.

  A while back, my father retired from a reputed local bank in Pakistan and moved to the US, along with the rest of my family. I continued to live in Pakistan: I was a fresh medical graduate pursuing the dream of post-graduate education in nephrology.

  Life seemed well on track until one night while working an ER shift, when I received a patient needing urgent dialysis. Unattended and disheveled as he was, there was no one with him to get him the medicine he needed. Fearing he might die, I instinctually grabbed the emergency medicine donated via zakaat, an Islamic system of alms-giving, and performed the life-saving hemodialysis.

• Senate to probe drug killings

  The Senate is set to investigate the rising incidence of extrajudicial killings of alleged drug pushers even as President Duterte has vowed there will be no letup in his anti-drug campaign.

  The inquiry will be spearheaded by the Senate committee on justice and human rights, chaired by Sen. Leila de Lima, along with Sen. Panfilo Lacson as chairman of the committee on public order and dangerous drugs.

  De Lima earlier filed Resolution No. 9 seeking an investigation into “recent rampant extrajudicial killings and summary executions of suspected criminals to strengthen the mechanisms of accountability of law enforcers and to institute corrective legislative measures to ensure full respect of basic human rights, especially the right to life.”

• We need the Obamas to keep reminding us that America was built by slaves

  It was easily one of the most moving moments of the convention thus far, playing and replaying on various broadcasters throughout the following day. It also inspired some rather predictable blowback from the right, with Rush Limbaugh demanding the First Lady “get over” America’s slaving past, and Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly delivering perhaps the most egregious “but-actually” with a screed on how not all the laborers who built the White House were slaves, and that those who were were “well fed.”

  Her husband, president Barack Obama, was obviously unconcerned by such objections, adding his own acknowledgement of the legacy of slavery in his own DNC speech, delivered Wednesday (July 28). Speaking to the values of “hard work, kindness, courtesy, humility, responsibility, helping each other out,” he noted, “My grandparents knew these values weren’t reserved for one race. They could be passed down to a half-Kenyan grandson, or a half-Asian granddaughter. In fact, they were the same values Michelle’s parents, the descendants of slaves, taught their own kids, living in a bungalow on the South Side of Chicago.”

• Texas Cop Says He Was Threatened For Trying To Tell The Truth About Sandra Bland

  Over a year after Sandra Bland died in police custody, an officer involved in the case is giving the world a glimpse into how the “blue wall of silence” works inside the law enforcement industry.

  Prairie View, TX, police officer Michael Kelley says that a local prosecutor and police officials suppressed facts about Bland’s initial arrest while investigating Brian Encinia, the man who actually cuffed and booked Bland. Encinia was eventually charged, but only with perjury — a decision that sparked further outrage.

  Kelley got to the scene too late to see exactly what happened between Encinia and Bland during the key moments off a dash-cam video where the two are out of frame and Bland says he’s knocked her head against the pavement. But Encinia said he didn’t know what he was arresting Bland for but would come up with something, Kelley says. “She had a large mark on her head. Maybe she fell when she was in handcuffs. Maybe she got kicked,” he told the Huffington Post’s Michael McLaughlin.

• Inside the CIA’s Penal Colonies

  In June 2006, President George W. Bush told Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Michael Hayden that he was worried. The subject of Bush’s concern was a picture of a CIA detainee chained to the ceiling, clothed in a diaper. This came almost five years into the agency’s detention and interrogation program, four years since it began waterboarding prisoners, three years after the revelations of Abu Ghraib, two years after a top-secret report had condemned the agency’s “inhumane and undocumented techniques,” and a year after the Washington Post reported the existence of the CIA’s “covert prison system” — but now President Bush was concerned.

  The public knows this because the CIA recently released fifty previously classified documents — 821 pages in all. Among them is a two-page memorandum from June 7, 2006, consisting of nothing but redactions, save one sentence in which Hayden passed along the president’s concern.

• Government Continues to Deny Manning Access to Health Care

  Imprisoned whistleblower Chelsea Manning received a document from Army officials today informing her that she is being investigated for serious new charges related to her July 5th attempt to take her own life.

  If convicted of these “administrative offenses,” she could be placed in indefinite solitary confinement for the remainder of her decades-long sentence.

  “It is deeply troubling that Chelsea is now being subjected to an investigation and possible punishment for her attempt to take her life. The government has long been aware of Chelsea’s distress associated with the denial of medical care related to her gender transition and yet delayed and denied the treatment recognized as necessary,” said ACLU Staff Attorney Chase Strangio. “Now, while Chelsea is suffering the darkest depression she has experienced since her arrest, the government is taking actions to punish her for that pain. It is unconscionable and we hope that the investigation is immediately ended and that she is given the health care that she needs to recover.”

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• How The EU Might Keep Internet Access Open To The Public

  Earlier this summer, the Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications (BEREC) took in around a half million public comments on its draft guidelines for member states on implementing end user protections for fixed and mobile Internet connections. The largest telecoms in Europe are lobbying hard for weakened interpretations of the so-called “net neutrality” Regulation passed late last year, which also covers data roaming and the EU Digital Single Market.

  A few weeks ago, the largest telecom ISPs issued a 5G Manifesto in which they threatened not to invest in 5G wireless networks unless BEREC waters down its guidelines for enforcement of open Internet access.

  Fortunately for American consumers, startup entrepreneurs and small businesses, the FCC was not swayed by similar ISP threats about how common carrier law would kill network investment here. And so even with U.S. open Internet law now firmly in place after a recent court decision, Verizon has announced significant continued investment in 5G networks and field testing in multiple locations.

  But carriers in Europe, that don’t face competition from cable broadband providers like American phone company ISPs do, enjoy even stronger market dominance that allows them to intimidate regulators attempting to defend end user rights. The current generation of online startups needs to be able to count on the same open Internet connectivity that the most popular global platforms enjoyed in their infancy a decade or two ago. Only now it’s a battle against corporate lobbyists to get it.

• Slovakia to extend reach of broadband network

  The government of Slovakia wants to extend the country’s broadband Internet infrastructure to small villages and communities. In a video speech on 27 June, Deputy Prime Minister for Digitisation Peter Pellegrini said that it is the state’s responsibility to connect the country’s remote areas.

  The country is about to start the construction of broadband infrastructure, and is organising a public consultation to determine which regions and municipalities should be connected first, the Deputy Prime Minister’s office explains in a statement.

• After Ripping Off Cities, States For Years, Verizon Makes Some Familiar Broadband Promises To Boston

  We’ve long discussed how Verizon has a bit of a pattern of getting billions in tax breaks and subsidies in exchange for fiber broadband it only half deploys. State after state, city after city, Verizon gets politicians to sign off on cozy deals that effectively give Verizon everything it wants — in exchange for promises of “full” city or state fiber broadband deployment. Except time, and time, and time again, cities that signed these sweetheart, loophole filled deals then stand around with a dopey look on their face when they realize they’ve been had.

• United Arab Emirates Makes Using A VPN A Crime… To Protect The Local Telcos From VoIP Competition

  The PIA article does point out that there is an “approved” VPN from the two state approved telcos, Etisiat and du, but that it blocks lots of services itself and is prohibitively expensive. And while the natural assumption about any attempt to ban VPNs is that it’s for surveillance purposes, that may just be a side benefit here. The key focus does appear to be very much about blocking access to VoIP services to prop up the two official telcos. In other countries, the concern about net neutrality was always that telcos would do things like block VoIP. In the UAE, the government goes so far as to not just support such blocking, but actively work to criminalize the use of a VPN to get around such blocks.

Intellectual Monopolies

• MSF Hearing On Opposition To Pfizer Pneumonia Patent In India

  Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, Doctors Without Borders) filed a patent opposition in March in India to prevent Pfizer from patenting a pneumonia drug and will defend its position in a hearing tomorrow at the Indian Patent Office.

• Intellectual Property Fun: Is Comedy Central Claiming It Owns The Character Stephen Colbert?

  For years, when Stephen Colbert was on Comedy Central, he actually would discuss intellectual property issues with surprising frequency, including taking on SOPA back when it was a thing. Perhaps this is because he has a brother who is an intellectual property lawyer (who apparently works for the Olympics, which is not very encouraging). So it’s interesting to see that Colbert is now claiming that a lawyer from Comedy Central or Viacom (he’s not entirely clear) has contacted CBS to say that it holds the rights to the “character” of Stephen Colbert.

  If you’re not at all familiar with Colbert, this will take some unpacking. For many years, Colbert hosted a TV show on Comedy Central (owned by Viacom) called The Colbert Report, in which he played a pompous/clueless TV news blowhard… also named Stephen Colbert. A big part of the conceit was that this was a character, quite different than the actual Stephen Colbert in real life. More recently, Colbert ended that show, to move to network TV to take over David Letterman’s old slot, where it’s now the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Importantly, on the Late Show, Colbert insisted that he was leaving “the character” of Stephen Colbert behind and would actually be himself, Stephen Colbert. Got that?

• Copyrights

  • TPB Founder Peter Sunde — “I’ve Been Saying For Years That I Want The Pirate Bay To Shut Down”

    Peter Sunde, co-founder of The Pirate Bay, talked about the decentralization of the torrent ecosystem on TorrentFreak’s audio podcast series Steal The Show. Sunde said that relying on a limited number of torrent websites is not a good idea. These bigger websites lack innovation and thus, become vulnerable.

  • Kim Dotcom’s lawyer will also represent alleged KickassTorrents founder

    Just over a week ago, federal authorities announced the arrest of a Ukrainian man that they say is the mastermind of KickassTorrents (KAT), which, until recently, was the world’s largest BitTorrent search site.

    Now, the suspect, Artem Vaulin, 30, has retained Ira Rothken, the California lawyer who has successfully kept Kim Dotcom out of custody in New Zealand since 2012.

    Rothken serves as Dotcom’s lead global counsel—his client still faces criminal charges over alleged massive copyright infringement on his now-shuttered site, Megaupload. American prosecutors have failed to get Dotcom extradited to the United States.

    Vaulin was charged last week in Chicago federal court with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of criminal copyright infringement.

  • Photographer Sues Getty Images For $1 Billion For Claiming Copyright On Photos She Donated To The Public

    Getty Images has a bit of a well-deserved reputation as a giant copyright troll, sending all kinds of nasty threat letters to people who use the images that Getty licenses. And even though it’s showed some signs of adapting to the modern internet world, it hasn’t given up on its standard trolling practices. It’s also famously bad at it, often sending absolutely ridiculous threat letters.

    But it may have sent one so stupid that it could potentially cost Getty itself a lot of money. That’s because it sent a threat letter to famed photographer Carol Highsmith… demanding she pay up for posting her own damn photo. That would be bad enough on its own… but it’s actually much, much worse. You see, Highsmith is such a wonderful person that she donated a massive collection of her photographs to the Library of Congress — over 100,000 of them, for them to be released royalty free for the public to use. She didn’t put them fully into the public domain, though, instead saying that anyone could use them so long as they gave credit back to her. It was basically a very early kind of version of what’s now known as the Creative Commons Attribution License (which didn’t exist at the time she made that agreement with the Library of Congress).

  • Photographer sues Getty Images for selling photos she donated to public

    A well-known American photographer has now sued Getty Images and other related companies—she claims they have been wrongly been selling copyright license for over 18,000 of her photos that she had already donated to the public for free, via the Library of Congress.

    The photographer, Carol Highsmith, is widely considered to be a modern-day successor to her photographic idols, Frances Benjamin Johnston and Dorothea Lange, who were famous for capturing images of American life in the 19th and 20th centuries, respectfully.

    Inspired by the fact that Johnston donated her life’s work to the Library of Congress for public use in the 1930s, Highsmith wanted to follow suit and began donating her work “to the public, including copyrights throughout the world,” as early as 1988.

  • Sometimes The Good Guys Win

    Many of the issues discussed here involve abuse of copyright by some to enslave the many. Chuckle… This is a classic example of an extremum. Getty Images threatened to sue a photographer for use of an image which the photographer had taken, and donated to the public domain. That ticked her off enough to sue the bastards and I expect she will win. Where there’s smoke there’s fire. I wonder how many other instances of such abuse there is in Getty’s collection.

  • Photographer Files $1bn Copyright Claim Against Getty Images

    When Getty Images sent photographer Carol Highsmith a $120 settlement demand for using one of ‘their’ images without permission, things were about to get messy. The image in question was actually Highsmith’s own work, displayed on her own website. Highsmith has now responded with a $1bn lawsuit.

  • Whose Copyright Office?

    In 2013, in a lecture at Columbia University, Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante announced an ambitious vision for the “Next Great Copyright Act.” That vision appropriately included a prominent role for the Copyright Office in helping policy makers work through some difficult issues relating to copyright and evolving technologies. The Register closed her lecture by stating that a revised Copyright Act “[m]ost importantly…would serve the public interest.” For those of us in the copyright world who believe that balance in the system between the interests of right holders and the interests of the public is structurally and substantively critical to good copyright policy, the Register’s words were greatly reassuring. Some recent developments raise questions, however, about the extent to which the Copyright Office is demonstrating genuine commitment to balanced copyright policy in the public’s interest.

    One such development came last month, when the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Capitol Records v. Vimeo sharply criticized a Copyright Office report which concluded that the DMCA safe harbors do not apply to infringement claims involving pre-1972 sound recordings. The Office’s report supported the record label plaintiffs’ position in the litigation. In its opinion, the court engaged in an extended deconstruction of the Office’s argument, concluding that it was “flawed in several respects” and that it “substantially overstated, and misapplied, what the Supreme Court said.” In a blog post at the time, I pointed out how unusual it is for a court to speak in such strong terms about shortcomings in the legal analysis of an expert government agency on a matter within its domain of expertise. Had the court accepted what it concluded was the Office’s highly problematic analysis of the safe harbor eligibility question, the recording labels would have been handed a significant windfall, and Vimeo (and similarly situated online service providers) would have suffered a commensurate loss.

  • Libraries, Groups Welcome WIPO Copyright Appointment, With Hope

    A range of highly active groups at the World Intellectual Property Organization representing libraries, archives, and digital civil liberties this week welcomed the appointment of a copyright industry lobbyist to lead WIPO copyright issues. But they have voiced their hope that the appointee, Sylvie Forbin of France, will quickly show leadership on the promotion and support of the cultural heritage sector as it relates to copyright.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Gain access to an ARM server running Linux OS, through the cloud

The Linaro Developer Cloud has gone live, and users can apply to test an ARM-based server with Linux

Desktop

• Mi Notebook Air: Xiaomi’s $750 Weapon For A One On One With Apple’s MacBook Air

  Speculations were made that a Windows or a Linux version of the laptop would arrive in the future. The future is the present now and the Mi Notebook Air is ruling the internet search results.

Server

• Docker London: Container Security [Video]

• OpenVZ 7.0 runs Linux VMs like containers

  Mention containers, and the first word that comes to mind these days is “Docker.” But container technology is far bigger than Docker alone, and it covers more use cases than simply delivering and running apps.

  One of the original major proponents of container technology on Linux, OpenVZ — or Virtuozzo in its commercial edition — is releasing a new version of its container solution, packaged as a full-fledged Linux distribution.

Kernel Space

• Hardened Usercopy Protection Sent In For Linux 4.8

  The usercopy protection was sent in today for pulling into the Linux 4.8 kernel.

  This user-copy protection support isn’t about any form of digital rights management but rather about safeguarding objects being copied to/from user-space. I covered this work in more detail a few days ago in Hardened Usercopy Appears Ready To Be Merged For Linux 4.8.

• SMR Drive Support In Linux 4.8 To Be Further Improved

  With the Linux 4.7 kernel came initial work on SMR drives, a.k.a. Shingled Magnetic Recording. With Linux 4.8 the SMR drive support continues to be improved.

  Shingled Magnetic Recording is a magnetic storage tech used by HDDs with high storage density.

• Linux 4.8 Bringing ACPI Low-Power Idle, Intel Denverton Support

• The “Intel Virtual Button” Driver Is Coming For Linux 4.8

• F2FS & XFS See Changes For Linux 4.8

• A detailed list of changes in Linux 4.7

• Version 4.7 of the Linux Kernel is out, adds native support for the AMD RX 480 and Xbox Elite Controller

• Graphics Stack

  • Nouveau Patches Round Out OpenGL 4.1 Support For Maxwell/Pascal

    Samuel Pitoiset continues being one of the most prolific Nouveau driver developers in recent times and today posted support for OpenGL tessellation on NVIDIA Maxwell GPUs and newer.

  • NVIDIA Is Building Its Next-Gen Falcon Controller Using RISC-V

    For the past decade NVIDIA GPUs have shipped with a proprietary micro-controller they’ve called Falcon (also for Nouveau users you may recall it through “FUC” for the Falcon micro-controller), but a next-gen controller is being built now for future NVIDIA GPUs and it’s going to utilize the RISC-V ISA.

  • Relative Pointer Protocol, Pointer Locking & Confinement Land In Wayland’s Weston

    Wayland’s Weston reference compositor picked up support for some new features this morning.

    Finally landing within Weston Git this morning is the longstanding relative pointer protocol. The Wayland relative pointer protocol is currently an unstable protocol and after numerous mailing list patch series is finally in Weston Git. Relative pointer support is important for first person shooter games and other applications.

  • Introducing a New Line of Graphics Cards for “The Art of the Impossible”

  • Free Radeon

    Remember the bad old days when GNU/Linux systems struggled without proper drivers for video-cards? Well, they’re gone with AMD. They’ve produced a very powerful line of powerful graphics cards designed for demanding professionals including those using GNU/Linux.

  • AMD Open Sources Professional GPU-Optimized Photorealistic Renderer

    AMD today announced that its powerful physically-based rendering engine is becoming open source, giving developers access to the source code.

    nables creators to bring ideas to life through high-performance applications and workflows enhanced by photorealistic rendering. Alongside Radeon ProRender, developers also have access to Radeon Rays on GPUOpen.com, a high-efficiency, high-performance, heterogeneous ray tracing intersection library for GPU, CPU or APU on virtually any platform. GPUOpen is an AMD initiative designed to assist developers in creating ground-breaking games, professional graphics applications and GPU computing applications with superior performance and lifelike experiences, using no-cost open development tools and software.

Applications

• The Linux Deepin File Manager Is a Thing of Beauty

  China-based Linux distro Deepin has shown off its all-new desktop file manager. And to say it’s pretty is an understatement.

• GRadio Lets You Find, Listen to Radio Stations from the Ubuntu Desktop

  Love to listen to the radio? My ol’ pal Lolly did. But let’s say you want to listen to the radio on Ubuntu. How do you do it? Well, the Ubuntu Software centre should always be the first dial you try, but you’ll need to sift through a load of static to find a decent app.

• Reprotest 0.2 released, with virtualization support

  reprotest 0.2 is available in PyPi and should hit Debian soon. I have tested null (no container, build on the host system), schroot, and qemu, but it’s likely that chroot, Linux containers (lxc/lxd), and quite possibly ssh are also working. I haven’t tested the autopkgtest code on a non-Debian system, but again, it probably works. At this point, reprotest is not quite a replacement for the prebuilder script because I haven’t implemented all the variations yet, but it offers better virtualization because it supports qemu, and it can build non-Debian software because it doesn’t rely on pbuilder.

• Calibre 2.63.0 eBook Converter and Viewer Adds Unicode 9.0 Support, Bugfixes

  Kovid Goyal has released yet another maintenance update for his popular, open-source, free, and cross-platform Calibre ebook library management software, version 2.63.0.

  Calibre 2.63.0 arrives two weeks after the release of the previous maintenance update, Calibre 2.62.0, which introduced support for the new Kindle Oasis ebook reader from Amazon, as well as reading and writing of EPUB 3 metadata.

  Unfortunately, there aren’t many interesting features added in the Calibre 2.63.0 release, except for the implementation of Unicode 9.0 support in the regex engine of the Edit Book feature that lets users edit books that contain characters encoded with the recently released Unicode 9.0 standard.

• Proprietary

  • Blackmagic Design Announces Fusion 8.2 is now available on Linux free of charge

    Blackmagic Design today announced that Fusion visual effects software is now available on the Linux platform. Linux is extremely popular in the world’s leading visual effects production companies and this new Linux release is a major announcement for the visual effects industry.
    This new Linux version of Fusion and Fusion Studio means visual effects artists can select their preferred computing platform, as Fusion is now available on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. All project files are common, so customers can work collaboratively, even when different artists are running different platforms on the same job.

  • Blackmagic Puts Fusion 8.2 on Linux, Updates Duplicator

    Blackmagic Design released a pair of announcements, the first revealing that Fusion visual effects software is now available on the Linux platform, and second that it has release version 1.0.2 of Duplicator.

  • Blackmagic Design Announces Blackmagic Duplicator 1.0.2 Update

  • Blackmagic Design Finally Introduces Fusion 8 For Linux

  • Why Microsoft’s revival of Skype for Linux is a big deal [Ed: This article is nonsense right from the headline. Web client is not Linux support. And it’s spyware (centralised too).]

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Linux Lexicon: Working With Files In Linux

  • Set a Real Time Photo of Earth as Your Linux Desktop Wallpaper

  • Perl tricks for system administrators

  • 6 things to do after installing Arch Linux

  • Tutorial shows how to create a cheap, DIY IoT cloud platform

  • Building and Developing GStreamer using Visual Studio

  • monitoring HTTP requests on the fly

  • Avahi browsing example in Vala

  • A few Linux Commands that you must refrain from

  • Linux Filesystems Explained — EXT2/3/4, XFS, Btrfs, ZFS

    The first time I installed Ubuntu on my computer, when I was sixteen, I was astonished by the number of filesystems that were available for the system installation. There were so many that I was left overwhelmed and confused. I was worried that if I picked the wrong one my system might run too slow or that it might be more problematic than another. I wanted to know which was the best.

    Since then, things have changed quite a bit. Many Linux distributions offer a ‘standard’ filesystem that an installation will default to unless otherwise specified. I think this was a very good move because it assists newcomers in making a decision and being comfortable with it. But, for those that are still unsure of some of the contemporary offerings, we’ll be going through them today.

• Wine or Emulation

  • Run Windows natively on Mac and Linux without the hassle

  • Commercial Wine Interface CrossOver Improves Support for Microsoft Office 2010

• Games

  • Microsoft gives the okay for SWORDY to come to Linux & SteamOS

    Some good news! SWORDY has been given the green light to come to Linux & SteamOS by Microsoft, as the developer was a bit confused due to the Xbox One exclusive deal they have.

  • Overlord, Overlord: Raising Hell and Overlord II (new port!) released on Steam for Linux

    Overlord, Overlord: Raising Hell and Overlord II are all now available on Steam for Linux. Overlord II is also a brand new port today!

    Note: You may have issues if you previously purchased them from bundles and other random stores. VP has reached out to Codemasters to add Linux to them. If you’re only buying it now, you will be fine.

  • Epic Games founder thinks Microsoft will essentially break Steam in later versions of Windows 10

    Also, for the amount of complaints Mr Sweeney has, maybe it’s time for him to be productive about it and start moving his company towards an open platform. Anyone know an open platform? Lin-something? Oh yes, Linux, that’s it. Linux gives you SteamOS too remember now.

    Only Unreal Tournament (the new one) looks like it will have Epic’s support and possibly not even officially. The Linux version has been seriously lagging behind the Windows version, repeatedly breaking with major graphical issues and it still has no launcher on Linux. It may still be early, but they don’t seem like they’re really putting any effort into it.

  • The Talos Principle updated with more Vulkan stability and performance

    Croteam have continued developing their Vulkan backend for The Talos Principle and have pushed the last beta to stable and released another beta with more Vulkan work.

  • Death Road to Canada released on Steam with Linux support, some thoughts

    Death Road to Canada is a brand new Linux game that released on Steam recently and a GOL user was kind enough to send me a copy to take a look. It’s a randomly generated road trip with Zombies with lots of encounters and annoying people to find.

    I’ve been having more fun with this than I probably should have. Exploring random abandoned “Y’all marts”, dismembering zombies and watching their brains and other organs fly out is grim and hilarious. What’s even more grim is walking over those organs then squishes them!

  • Mojang working on new launcher for Minecraft, Linux might not see support [Ed: Microsoft loves Linux again. After killing GNU/Linux client for Skype now it does this... Microsoft loves Linux so much that not only does it not port software to GNU/Linux but it also buys cross-platform software, removes ports. I can feel the ‘love’.]

    For those still playing Minecraft, you may know that Mojang is working on a new launcher that doesn’t use Java (hooray!), but it might not run on Linux (boo!).

  • HaxeFlixel, a free and open source cross-platform game framework needs funds on IndieGoGo

    HaxeFlixel, a free and open source cross-platform game framework that was used in the creation of Defender’s Quest is needing a bit of funding on IndieGoGo.

    They need only $3,000 (even more helps obviously), as it’s for a full time developer to work on it for a year. The core HaxeFlixel contributors are providing $3,000 themselves, so crowdfunding is just to top him up essentially.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • KDE Plasma 5.7.2 Introduces Lots of Plasma Workspace Improvements, KWin Fixes

    KDE released the second maintenance update for the KDE Plasma 5.7 desktop environment series, which has already been adopted by several popular GNU/Linux operating systems.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • GNOME 3.21.4 Desktop Arrives for Testing As GUADEC Conference Approaches

    Frederic Peters has been happy to inform Softpedia about the availability of the fourth development release for the upcoming GNOME 3.22 “Karlsruhe” desktop environment for GNU/Linux operating systems.

  • gnome-boxes: Coder’s log

    So another two weeks have passed and it’s time to sum things up and reflect a little on the struggles and accomplishments that have marked this time period, which was quite a bumpy ride compared to the others, but definitely more exciting.

  • GNOME Keysign 0.6

    It’s been a while since I reported on GNOME Keysign. The last few releases have been exciting, because they introduced nice features which I have been waiting long for getting around to implement them.

  • Testing for Usability

    I recently came across a copy of Web Redesign 2.0: Workflow That Works (book, 2005) by Goto and Cotler. The book includes a chapter on “Testing for Usability” which is brief but informative. The authors comment that many websites are redesigned because customers want to add new feature or want to drive more traffic to the website. But they rarely ask the important questions: “How easy is it to use our website?” “How easily can visitors get to the information they want and need?” and “How easily does the website ‘lead’ visitors to do what you want them to do?” (That last question is interesting for certain markets, for example.)

Distributions

• New Releases

  • Bodhi 4.0.0 Alpha Release

    Not only is our first 4.0.0 alpha release here – but it is here relatively on schedule. If all goes according to plan we will have something stamped as stable before September hits. I would just like to be clear that this is far from a polished / finished product. I would encourage anyone wanting to write a review to wait to do so until our stable release. If you are not someone who is interested in helping find issues please wait as well.

  • SparkyLinux Now Lets Users Test Drive Linux Kernel 4.7, Here’s How to Install It

    Just one day after the announcement of the GA release of the Linux 4.7 kernel, the SparkyLinux developers inform their users that they can now test drive the new kernel from the unstable repository.

  • Clear Linux Is Among the First Distros to Adopt Kernel 4.7, X.Org Server 1.18.4

    Today, July 26, 2016, Softpedia was informed by the Clear Linux team about the availability of new software updates for the GNU/Linux operating system designed for the Intel architecture.

  • Clear Linux Already Jumps Onto The Linux 4.7 Kernel

• OpenSUSE/SUSE

  • Newest Tumbleweed snapshot updates KDE Applications

    The latest openSUSE Tumbleweed snapshot has updated KDE Applications in the repositories to version 16.04.3.

    Snapshot 20160724 had a considerably large amount of package updates for Tumbleweed KDE users, but other updates in the snapshot included updates to kiwi-config-openSUSE, Libzypp to version 16.1.3, yast2-installation to version 3.1.202 and Kernel-firmware to 2016071

  • Highlights of YaST development sprint 22

    openSUSE Conference’16, Hackweek 14 and the various SUSE internal workshops are over. So it’s time for the YaST team to go back to usual three-weeks-long development sprints… and with new sprints come new public reports!

    With Leap 42.2 in Alpha phase and SLE12-SP2 in Beta phase our focus is on bugs fixing, so we don’t have as much fancy stuff to show in this report. Still, here you are some bits you could find interesting.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Unveils JBoss Data Grid 7 as Platform for Real-Time Data Analytics

  • Finance

    • Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Shares Sold by Panagora Asset Management Inc.

    • Red Hat, Inc. Common Stock (RHT) Investment Decreased by Strs Ohio

    • RHT Crosses Above Key Moving Average Level

    • Equity Watch: Share Strength in Review Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Tuesday Session Roundup For Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Unable to Shed Weakness, Shares Still in a Downtrend: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

  • Fedora

    • New Taskotron tasks

      For a while now, Fedora Quality Assurance (QA) is busy with building Taskotron core features and didn’t have resources for additions to tasks that Taskotron runs. That changed a few weeks back when we started running task-dockerautotest, task-abicheck and task-rpmgrill tasks in our development environment. Since then, we are happy with the results of those tasks. We deployed them to the production instance last week. Please note that the results of those tasks are informative only. Let’s introduce the tasks briefly.

    • Fedora Women Day 2016

      Fedora Women Day is celebrated to raise awareness and bring Fedora women contributors together. This is a great time to network with other women in Fedora and talk about their contributions and work in Fedora Project.

    • The Chromium Browser Is Finally Working Its Way Into Fedora

    • Elections Retrospective, July 2016

      The results are in! The Fedora Elections for the Fedora 24 release cycle of FESCo and the Council concluded on Tuesday, July 26th. The results are posted on the Fedora Voting Application and announced on the mailing lists. You can also find the full list of winning candidates below. I would also like to share some interesting statistics in this July 2016 Elections Retrospective.

    • Fedora: Powered icons to your website.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu OTA 12, Latest Update to Ubuntu Phone, Rolling Out Now

        Ubuntu OTA-12, the latest update for Ubuntu Phone and Tablet, has begun roll out. We show you what’s new.

      • Ubuntu OTA-12 Bringing More Features & Improvements To Mobile Ubuntu

        Ubuntu OTA-12 is being released today by Canonical as the latest over-the-air update for Ubuntu tablet/phone users.

        Ubuntu OTA-12 is bringing wireless display support to supported devices, fingerprint unlock for the Meizu PRO 5 device, color emojis for the on-screen keyboard, improvements to the built-in web browser, and through the command-line it’s possible to install traditional Ubuntu apps as part of the converged experience. The OTA-12 update does bundle in Libertine.

      • Ubuntu Budgie Remix 16.04.1 Released with Full-Disk Encryption, Snap Support

        David Mohammed has been extremely happy to inform Softpedia about the availability of the Ubuntu Budgie Remix 16.04.1 operating system, as part of the recent Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS (Xenial Xerus) release.

      • Ubuntu Touch OTA-12 Launches Today with Biometric Authentication for Meizu PRO 5

        Today, July 27, 2016, Canonical will unveil the 12th Over-the-Air (OTA) software update for its Ubuntu mobile operating system that runs on supported Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu Tablet devices.

      • Canonical Joins The Document Foundation’s LibreOffice Project Advisory Board

        Today, July 26, 2016, Canonical and The Document Foundation (TDF) announced that the company behind the popular Ubuntu operating system had joined the LibreOffice project Advisory Board.

        If you’re using the Ubuntu Linux OS on your personal computer, you are aware of the fact that the award-winning LibreOffice office suite is installed by default. Canonical chose to use LibreOffice as the default office suite for its widely-used GNU/Linux operating system since the first release of the open-source software in early 2011.

        Now that Canonical announced the availability of Snaps as universal binary packages for Ubuntu and other supported GNU/Linux distributions, many application developers decided to offer their software in the Snap package format, and it looks like The Document Foundation is among the first to adopt the latest Snappy technologies for LibreOffice.

      • Canonical Takes a Seat On The Document Foundation’s Advisory Board

      • The Document Foundation welcomes Canonical to the project Advisory Board

      • Canonical Joins The Document Foundation Advisory Board

        The Document Foundation today announced that Ubuntu parent company Canonical has joined The Document Foundation Advisory Board. The foundation said Canonical is to provide “experience and insights” to increase the use of LibreOffice in the enterprise and government. Canonical joins the likes of KDE, GNOME, Red Hat, SUSE, and Google on the board.

        The board’s main purpose is to represent the foundation’s sponsors and their needs to the Board of Directors, although the BoD isn’t under obligation to accept or act on any proposals made by the advisory board. The BoD does, on occasion, solicit advice and guidance from the advisory board and the advisory board does make proposals on behalf of their members. Some of the other members on the Advisory Board include those listed above as well as the Free Software Foundation, Collabora, Intel, the French government, CloudOn, City of Munich government, and AMD.

Devices/Embedded

• 32-bit Arduino Leonardo clone maker offers “ChipKIT Lenny” preview

  “chipKIT Lenny” is a PIC32-based Arduino Leonardo clone with more RAM and flash, and a multifunction microUSB port. Sneak preview boards are now available.

  Majenko Technologies has built an Arduino Leonardo compatible board supported by the open source chipKIT project, which like all chipKIT boards features a MIPS-based Microchip PIC32 microcontroller unit instead of an ATmega32u4. (See farther below for more on chipKIT.) The chipKIT Lenny was teased by the chipKIT project in late June, and is now being released by Majenko in a preview version priced at 19 UK Pounds (currently about $25).

• Open Source ADC BeagleBone Board

  Electronic enthusiasts enjoy building projects using the BeagleBone development boards but interested in a new open source ADC board which has been specifically created for the BeagleBone.

• Compact, rugged, Linux-friendly Skylake module is loaded with I/O

  Axiomtek’s “CEM501” COM Express module runs Linux on Skylake CPUs, and offers triple display operation plus numerous SATA, USB, LAN, and PCIe interfaces.

• Phones

  • Android

    • Smartphone Wars: iPhone 40.4M is about 12% market share for Q2 of 2016

      Quick note from the smartphone wars amidst all the political coverage. Apple reported its Apr-Jun quarter results. iPhone sales 40.4 million, down 21% from the previous quarter.

    • Prisma is a pain in Android and users are venting it on social media

    • How to take control of your Android notifications

    • Google’s “Tips and Tricks” Will Help You Master Android

    • Google Beefs Up Phone App’s Spam-Fighting Skills

    • Top 10 Most Popular Smartphones Of 2016 In The US, India, China, And The World

    • Hands on: Android apps for Chromebook

      Google Play is rolling out onto Chromebooks, meaning the web-only operating system will soon offer millions of local applications. Three devices currently offer Android apps for users brave enough to switch to Developer builds of Chrome OS — the Asus Chromebook Flip, the 2015 Chromebook Pixel, and Acer’s Chromebook R11.

      As it happens, I recently reviewed the Chromebook R 11, and Digital Trends still has it kicking in our closet full of laptops. Jealous of all the cool screenshots I saw on Twitter, and curious about how well Android apps work on the platform, I decided to switch the OS to Developer builds and take a look for myself.

    • Blackberry battles on with Dtek50 Android phone

      Blackberry has launched its first touchscreen-only Android handset, in a bid to diversify its range of devices.

      The company says its Dtek50 smartphone offers improved security over rival Android devices, and will cost less than its previous handset Priv.

      It is the firm’s second Android handset after switching focus away from its struggling BB10 platform.

    • The guy trying to demolish Android with Cyanogen uses an iPhone

    • Google Play gives Android app developers more categories

    • Because Why Not Port The Original Quake To Android

    • YouTube is testing an improved comment UI in the Android app: likes, dislikes, reactions, and sorting

    • Remix OS upgraded to Marshmallow, expands hardware support

    • Remix OS Upgrades To Android 6.0, Brings Better PC Support

    • Jide’s Remix OS For PC Gets Updated To Marshmallow

    • Jide releases Marshmallow-based upgrade to Remix OS for PC and Mac

    • Remix OS for PC moves to Android 6.0, new features in tow

    • Marshmallow-based Remix OS 3.0 is now available w/ improvements to multiple window

    • Remix OS For PC Receives Android 6.0

    • VIDEO: Remix OS for PC now based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow

    • Jide Releases Remix OS 3 Based on Android Marshmallow

    • Remix OS for PC update brings Android 6.0, multi-window improvements

    • Jide Technology Remix OS Now Upgraded To Android 6.0, Features Better PC Support

    • Remix OS for PC is moving up to Marshmallow

    • Remix OS 3.0 PC Update Adds Enhancements For Multi Windows, New NVIDIA, AMD Support And More

    • Chuwi Vi10 Plus Dual OS tablet launches for $239

    • Chuwi Vi10 Plus 2-in-1 Tablet Launched in China at $169 Specification Features Price

    • Chuwi Vi10 Plus 2-in-1 Tablet with 10.8-inch display Launched in China Starting at $169

    • This Tablet Can Run Windows 10 and Remix OS for $239

    • Chuwi Vi10 Plus Windows/Remix-OS tablet launches for $169 and up

    • Check out this $239 tablet that dual-boots Windows 10 and the Android-based Remix OS

    • The Chuwi Vi10 Plus is a $169 10.8″ Tablet that runs Remix OS (and optionally Windows 10 for $239)

    • Chuwi Vi10 Plus Windows 10 And Remix OS Tablet Now Available From $169

    • The Chuwi Vi10 is an affordable 2-in-1 tablet that will run on Remix OS

    • Chuwi Vi10 Plus does a Surface 3 with Windows 10, Remix OS combo

    • Chuwi Vi10 Plus tablet includes Windows 10 and Android for an incredibly low price

    • Xiaomi Redmi Pro launched – Everything you need to know

      Xiaomi is well known for their range of affordable smartphones and tablets, and the company continues to grow their device portfolio with some great options. After much anticipation, Xiaomi has finally taken the wraps off their latest smartphone offering at a launch event in Beijing earlier today. Here’s everything we know about the Xiaomi Redmi Pro!

      The Redmi Pro features a full metal unibody construction with a brushed metal finish, and up front is a 2.5D glass that covers the 5.5-inch Full HD OLED display. The change to OLED, from the usually standard in this price range IPS LCD, is a nice touch, and should provide a more vivid and pleasing viewing experience.

    • Cyanogen OS vs Android: what’s the difference?

      It may have started as Google’s obligatory answer to the iPhone, but Android has grown into a much-beloved operating system that’s currently used by over 107 million people in the U.S. alone and almost one-and-a-half billion worldwide. Much of what makes Android special also distinguishes it from competitors: its power, versatility, and customizability.

      But this isn’t a love ode to Google’s popular software. Instead, we’re going to discuss some of the key differences between Google’s Android and Cyanogen OS, a modified, third-party version of Android that brings added features and gives users additional control over their devices. So let’s jump right in.

Google, Samsung join AT&T and Verizon in independent CORD project

Google Joins New SDN/NFV Open Source Networking Project

Google, Radisys, Samsung join CORD open-source project

ura and the Challenges of Open Source Design

Elio Qoshi is the person behind ura, a fascinating design studio dedicated to improving design in free and open source projects. As part of that mission, ura works with projects of all budgets. When we talk about open source, we’re usually talking code first and then—maybe—documentation second. Design is often an after-thought. But as designers like Elio get involved in open source culture, that order could eventually change.

Google’s Open Source Spatial Audio Tool Joins its Virtual Reality Offering

The digital photography and digital audio arenas have been going through a renaissance for some time now, with 360-degree photo tools arriving that provide panoramic and immersive views of locations and SurroundSound-like audio experiences. On the photography and virtual reality front, Google recently announced that it open sourced VR View, a tool that lets developers tembed 360-degree photo and video content into sites and native apps. The images can be viewed on Cardboard viewers or through a single-lens viewer.

Now, Google has announced that it has open sourced Omnitone, a software tlibrary hat developers can use to integrate spatial audio with websites. The software is available now on GitHub under an Apache license.

Google has posted two videos featuring the spatial audio dynamics that you can achieve with Omnitone. The videos depict musicians that you can listen in on from various spatial angles.

Apache Software Foundation Serves Up Mesos Version 1.0

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), which incubates more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, has announced the availability of Apache Mesos v1.0. In case you missed it, Mesos and related efforts from companies such as Mesosphere have already made a mighty impact on clustering, data center resource management and emerging data center operating systems.

Why you should avoid vanity metrics and measure what matters

In February 2011 we were “dinged” for what was clearly a slowdown in registrations. Something was very wrong, they said. The ship was clearly on fire, they said, and the community manager was at the helm. Not surprisingly, my LinkedIn activity picked up quite a bit that month. So what happened? Funny story—it turns out, in February we enabled a CAPTCHA on our registration form and started blocking spammers rather effectively, drastically depressing the new registration count. A few months later, after the analyst report, spammers figured out a way to get around the CAPTCHA, and things returned to “normal”.

Koding open-sources its cloud IDE, integrates it into GitLab

Koding, a startup with technology for operating a cloud-based integrated development environment (IDE) for collaborative programming across devices, is announcing today that it’s open-sourcing its core technology and making it a part of GitLab, the open-source source-code repository service.

With the push of a green button on GitLab repository pages, developers will be able to run any software on GitLab, with all the necessary dependencies already in place. “It almost feels like a part of GitLab,” Koding cofounder and CEO Devrim Yasar told VentureBeat in an interview.

Events

• Program Announced for Embedded Linux Conference and OpenIoT Summit Europe

• OpenSummit: Open Source Software in—and for—Open Education

• OpenStack Summit Barcelona: Vote for Presentations

• The largest community FOSS conference you never heard of: OpenWest

  Tucked into a corner of the Salt Lake Valley among the Rocky Mountains hides the largest community-organized free/open source technology conference you’ve never heard of. Weighing in at an impressive 1500 attendees, OpenWest is perhaps the third largest conference of its type in the United States, coming in behind SCaLE and LinuxFest Northwest.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Mozilla Delivers Improved User Experience in Firefox for iOS

    When we rolled out Firefox for iOS late last year, we got a tremendous response and millions of downloads. Lots of Firefox users were ecstatic they could use the browser they love on the iPhone or iPad they had chosen. Today, we’re thrilled to release some big improvements to Firefox for iOS. These improvements will give users more speed, flexibility and choice, three things we care deeply about.

SaaS/Back End

• OpenStack embraces Kubernetes to become a whole lot more like Google

• Google Fosters Another OpenStack Kubernetes Mashup

• The worlds of OpenStack and containers are colliding

• How Google Is Trying to Take This Cloud Technology Mainstream

• Mirantis spearheads effort to deploy OpenStack on Docker containers

• Mirantis to Fuse Kubernetes, CI/CD with Commercial OpenStack

• OpenStack’s future: Docker workloads on Kubernetes

• Mirantis Collaborates With Intel & Google to Enable OpenStack on Kubernetes

• Intel, Google & Mirantis to Fuel OpenStack on Kubernetes

• Capitulation? Mirantis refactors OpenStack on top of Kubernetes

• OpenStack on Kubernetes, Mirantis fuels Fuel with Google Intel heat

• OpenStack will soon be able to run in containers on top of Kubernetes

• Mirantis: ‘We’ll Probably Piss Off’ OpenStack

• Nimble Storage Broadens Support To OpenStack Community With Mirantis Certification

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• LibreOffice 5.2 Is Being Released Next Wednesday

  One week from today will mark the release of LibreOffice 5.2 as the open-source office suite’s latest major update.

  LibreOffice 5.2 features a new (optional) single toolbar mode, bookmark improvements. new Calc spreadsheet functions (including forecasting functions), support for signature descriptions, support for OOXML signature import/export, and a wealth of other updates. There are also GTK3 user-interface improvements, OpenGL rendering improvements, multi-threaded 3D rendering, faster rendering, and more.

Healthcare

• Astronaut Achieves 14 Consecutive Months of VistA Features and Fixes

  One of the most prolific VistA developers on Earth Astronaut, LLC has just completed its 14th consecutive month of releasing new VistA features that are clinically tested and in production.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

• AT&T, Amdocs Collaborate on NFV, Open Source [Ed: both are mass surveillance companies]

  Amdocs (NASDAQ: DOX) will be the integrator for telecommunications companies and cloud developers who want to use AT&T’s ECOMP platform to build their own software-centric network services. AT&T created and developed ECOMP and recently committed to releasing that code into open source. Amdocs will help companies deploy that open source software into their own networks. ECOMP is a vital tool for service providers struggling to meet today’s network demands while preparing for an even greater load in the next few years from applications like virtual reality and augmented reality, 4K video and the Internet of Things.

• AT&T, Amdocs to deliver open software solutions

• AT&T working with Amdocs in open source SDN platform push

• Amdocs inks deal with AT&T for ECOMP project

• AT&T names Amdocs as systems integrator for its ECOMP virtual platform

• Microsoft’s ChakraCore JavaScript engine is coming to Linux and OS X

• Teradata buys Big Data company to boost its open source analytics offering

• Facebook Releases Open Source Software For Its Surround 360 Camera [Ed: Facebook is openwashing of all-seeing visual surveillance]

• Facebook makes good on promise to open-source its 360-degree camera

• Facebook open sources Surround 360 camera with Ikea-style instructions

BSD

• OpenBSD 6.0 pre-orders up

  In addition, one of the six release songs has been released early. There will be another compilation CD titled “The songs 5.2 – 6.0″ alongside the release.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• Photos: School-minded Faculty Brewing Co. will be Vancouver’s first open source brewery

  “We want people to criticize and comment on them,” Lozano explained. “People will be able to submit recipes that we can later brew and post online too, and then we can create open source recipes.”

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • RISC-V on an FPGA, pt. 6

  • RISC-V on an FPGA, pt. 7

  • RISC-V on an FPGA, pt. 8

Programming/Development

• Which Programming Language Is Most Important To You In 2016?

Standards/Consortia

• Khronos Livestream SIGGRAPH 2016 Is Now Happening

• Khronos Expands Focus On Safety Critical APIs

Science

• Mystery ancient human ancestor found in Australasian family tree

  Who’s your daddy? An unknown hominin species that bred with early human ancestors when they migrated from Africa to Australasia has been identified through genome mapping of living humans.

  The genome analysis also questions previous findings that modern humans populated Asia in two waves from their origin in Africa, finding instead a common origin for all populations in the Asia-Pacific region, dating back to a single out-of-Africa migration event.

  Modern humans first left Africa about 60,000 years ago, with some heading west towards Europe, and others flowing east into the Asia-Pacific region.

• Stop the privatization of health data

  In many ways, the migration of clinical scientists into technology corporations that are focused on gathering, analysing and storing information is long overdue. Because of the costs and difficulties of obtaining data about health and disease, scientists conducting clinical or population studies have rarely been able to track sufficient numbers of patients closely enough to make anything other than coarse predictions. Given such limitations, who wouldn’t want access to Internet-scale, multidimensional health data; teams of engineers who can build sensors for data collection and algorithms for analysis; and the resources to conduct projects at scales and speeds unthinkable in the public sector?

  Yet there is a major downside to monoliths such as Google or smaller companies such as consumer-genetics firm 23andMe owning health data — or indeed, controlling the tools and methods used to match people’s digital health profiles to specific services.

Health/Nutrition

• Infojustice: NGO And Academics Letter To US Secretary Of State On Access To Medicines

  Dear Secretary Kerry: We are writing to express our concern about recent statements made by representatives of the State Department on issues regarding intellectual property (IP) and access to medicines in various settings, including proceedings in Colombia, several important United Nations fora, and in India.

• Will plain-packaged smokes help bring about the ‘endgame’ for tobacco?

  It’s as if the No Name brand was getting into the tobacco game. No more super slims. No choice of regular or king size. No logo on the filter. No colourful graphics next to the horrifying health warnings on packs, pouches and tins.

• How Uruguay’s tobacco victory could boost Canada’s fight for plain packaging

  Canada’s efforts to force tobacco manufacturers to use plain packaging will get a boost from a recent decision on similar measures in Uruguay, health advocates said Monday.

  The South American country successfully beat back an international trade challenge by Philip Morris International, which objected to rules requiring warning labels on 80 per cent of packaging and restricting each brand to only a single product.

  Rob Cunningham, a senior policy analyst with the Canadian Cancer Society, called the decision just the latest in a string of international defeats for the tobacco industry on the controversial issue of plain packaging.

• Italy parliament begins debate on legalizing cannabis

  Italian lawmakers on Monday began discussing whether to legalize recreational cannabis, a fiercely-contested proposal likely to spark parliamentary battles.

  Loosening Italy’s marijuana laws is divisive, supported by those who say regulating the drug’s production and sale would strip mafia groups of an important source of income, but opposed by conservative groups and the Roman Catholic Church.

  Before the bill, backed primarily by deputies from Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party (PD) and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, even arrived for discussion in the lower house, opponents lodged more than 1,300 amendments.

Security

• Security advisories for Wednesday

• New attack bypasses HTTPS protection on Macs, Windows, and Linux

• HTTPS attack airs browsing habits of Linux, Mac and Windows users

  A NEW ATTACK allows network operators, including anyone who owns a WiFi hotspot, to snoop on people’s browsing habits and see any webpage they visit.

  Fortunately, readers of the INQUIRER look at nothing more incriminating than the latest, hottest tech news, but other, less noble, netizens will no doubt be quaking in their onesies about now.

  The attack works by bypassing the HTTPS encryption which is supposed to prevent this happening. HTTPS would normally prevent the operator seeing the URLs visited by users, but a new technique abuses Web Proxy Autodiscovery and exposes browser requests to any code the network owner wants to fling at it.

  Itzik Kotler, CTO and co-founder, and Amit Klein, VP of security research, at security firm SafeBreach will demonstrate how the attack works at next week’s Black Hat conference in a talk entitled Crippling HTTPS with Unholy PAC.

• Hackers can bypass HTTPS protection on Windows, Linux and Mac PCs

  One of the main reason why all of us trust websites with HTTPS is because the surfing on such sites is invisible to hackers. Most of us are taught to believe that websites with HTTPS encryption are hacker and snooping proof.

• Flaw in HTTPS encryption enables network operators to eavesdrop on web users

• HTTPS bypass allows network operators to snoop on users’ browsing habits

• GuardiCore Unveils Infection Monkey Open Source Cyber Security Testing Tool, Presents At Black Hat 2016

  GuardiCore, a leader in internal data center security and breach detection, today made its Infection Monkey testing tool freely available to the public security community at large. Designed to test the resiliency of modern data centers against cyber attacks, the Infection Monkey was developed as an open source tool by GuardiCore’s research group, led by seasoned cyber security researcher Ofri Ziv.

Defence/Aggression

• There’s No Business Like the Weapons Business

  When American firms dominate a global market worth more than $70 billion a year, you’d expect to hear about it. Not so with the global arms trade. It’s good for one or two stories a year in the mainstream media, usually when the annual statistics on the state of the business come out.

  It’s not that no one writes about aspects of the arms trade. There are occasional pieces that, for example, take note of the impact of U.S. weapons transfers, including cluster bombs, to Saudi Arabia, or of the disastrous dispensation of weaponry to U.S. allies in Syria, or of foreign sales of the costly, controversial F-35 combat aircraft. And once in a while, if a foreign leader meets with the president, U.S. arms sales to his or her country might generate an article or two. But the sheer size of the American arms trade, the politics that drive it, the companies that profit from it, and its devastating global impacts are rarely discussed, much less analyzed in any depth.

• The Obama Administration Has Brokered More Weapons Sales Than Any Other Administration Since World War II

  When American firms dominate a global market worth more than $70 billion a year, you’d expect to hear about it. Not so with the global arms trade. It’s good for one or two stories a year in the mainstream media, usually when the annual statistics on the state of the business come out.

• Revealed: the £1bn of weapons flowing from Europe to Middle East

  Eastern European countries have approved the discreet sale of more than €1bn of weapons in the past four years to Middle Eastern countries that are known to ship arms to Syria, an investigation has found.

  Thousands of assault rifles such as AK-47s, mortar shells, rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons and heavy machine guns are being routed through a new arms pipeline from the Balkans to the Arabian peninsula and countries bordering Syria.

  The suspicion is that much of the weaponry is being sent into Syria, fuelling the five-year civil war, according to a team of reporters from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

  Arms export data, UN reports, plane tracking, and weapons contracts examined during a year-long investigation reveal how the munitions were sent east from Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Slovakia, Serbia and Romania.

• The most ignored aspect of the South China Sea brawl might be the key to solving it

  Amidst the fracas between China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei over claims in the South China Sea, it’s the fish and coral that are the silent victims. With every move made to bolster their claims over the region, these countries, particularly China, are slowly destroying its unique marine havens.

• Syria car bomb: Isis claims responsibility after attack in northern city of Qamishli kills at least 44 people

  Isis has claimed responsibility after least 44 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in a twin bombing in a predominantly Kurdish town in the north of Syria.

  Syrian state-TV said a truck loaded with explosives blew up on the western edge of the town of Qamishli, near the Turkish border.

• France church attack: Priest killed by two ‘IS soldiers’

  An 84-year-old priest was killed and four other people taken hostage by two armed men who stormed his church in a suburb of Rouen in northern France.

  The two attackers, who said they were from the so-called Islamic State (IS), slit Fr Jacques Hamel’s throat during a morning Mass, officials say.

  Police surrounded the church and shot dead both hostage-takers. French media named one of them as Adel K.

  One of the hostages is in a critical condition in hospital.

• This Is What It Was Like To Take Part In The Failed Turkish Coup, In The Words Of The Plotters

  There are two sources for the WhatsApp conversation. One was widely circulated on Twitter soon after the coup, and consists of a video purporting to show messages on the phone of a plotter. The other source is a series of photos obtained by a journalist with Al Jazeera, although no further information on them is given. Naturally, claims that these are authentic need to be treated with caution, and this is where the Bellingcat method of drawing on diverse sources shows its strength.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• Scientists caught off-guard by record temperatures linked to climate change

  Record temperatures in the first half of 2016 have taken scientists by surprise despite widespread recognition that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and intense, the director of the World Climate Research Program said.

  The earth is on track for its hottest year on record with June marking the 14th straight month of record heat, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said last week.

  Temperatures recorded mainly in the northern hemisphere in the first six months of the year, coupled with an early and fast Arctic sea ice melt and “new highs” in heat-trapping carbon dioxide levels, point to quickening climate change, it said.

  In a further announcement on Tuesday, the U.N. agency said it would examine whether a temperature of 54 degrees Celsius (129 degrees Fahrenheit) reported in Kuwait last Thursday was a new high for the eastern hemisphere and Asia.

• Greens take final Senate seat in Tasmania as grassroots campaign to save Labor’s Lisa Singh also claims victory

  The Greens have scraped into the final Senate seat in Tasmania and the Australian Electoral Commission has confirmed the return to Parliament of Labor’s Lisa Singh, who has been re-elected on a wave of public support after being dropped to an otherwise “unwinnable” spot on the ALP ticket.

  The AEC announced the 12 elected senators on Wednesday, with Green Nick McKim’s success coming at the expense of Liberal minister Richard Colbeck – another Tasmanian who fell victim to party power plays.

• Indonesia Forest Fires Carbon Emissions Surpass All of EU

  The 2015 fires were the worst since 1997 when a strong El Niño also fanned widespread Indonesia forest fires, says the study published in Scientific Reports, which was a collaboration between scientists in King’s College London and the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

  The practice of burning in Sumatra and Kalimantan, exacerbated by extended drought associated with El Niño, released 857 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from September to October 2015, which was 97 per cent of annual carbon emissions in Indonesia.

  Martin Wooster, one of the study’s authors and an earth observation science professor at King’s College London, says the data produced from the study were based on satellite observation and on-site measurement of the air in Palangkaraya, the capital city of Central Kalimantan province which experienced the thickest smog during the 2015 fires.

Finance

• UK economic growth accelerated to 0.6% before Brexit vote

  Britain’s economy is now 7.7% higher than the pre-economic downturn peak, in the first quarter of 2008.

• This could be the last economic growth Britain sees for a while

  The UK has recorded three-and-a-half years of uninterrupted economic growth, its third-longest streak since 1955. (But it’s probably over.)

  Gross domestic product increased 0.6% between April and June, including the days after Britain voted to leave the European Union, the Office for National Statistics said today (July 27). The data—which was better than expected—was skewed towards the beginning of that period and only takes into account a week of a post-Brexit world. And most of the GDP figure is derived from estimates of economic activity, as opposed to hard data.

• European Commission appoints chief Brexit negotiator but says he won’t speak to UK until Article 50 triggered

  The European Commission has appointed a chief Brexit negotiator but has made clear he will not engage with Britain until Article 50 is formally triggered – nor start work until 1 October.

  Michel Barnier, a former French government minister and ex-European Commission vice-president, will start work after the holiday season and then spend the next few months preparing the ground in Brussels for the negotiations. His appointment was announced by commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, who said he wanted “an experienced politician for this difficult job”.

  Describing Mr Barnier as “a skilled negotiator with rich experience in major policy areas relevant to the negotiations”, Mr Juncker said: “I am very glad that my friend Michel Barnier accepted this important and challenging task. I wanted an experienced politician for this difficult job.

• Olympics Committee Says Non-Sponsors Are Banned From Tweeting About the Olympics

  The US Olympics Committee has gone off the deep end, when it comes to intellectual property. It’s willing to sue anyone to protect their trademarks, even when the use is no real threat. But the committee’s latest claim is an entirely new level of absurdity.

  What’s getting the US Olympics Committee in a tizzy this time? Tweets. Specifically any company that tweets about the Olympic Games and isn’t a sponsor. ESPN obtained a letter from the US Olympic Committee chief marketing officer Lisa Baird who outlines the absurd demands.

• At World’s Largest Hedge Fund, Sex, Fear and Video Surveillance

  Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, likes to say that one of his firm’s core operating principles is “radical transparency” when it comes to airing employee grievances and concerns.

  But one employee said in a complaint earlier this year that the hedge fund was like a “cauldron of fear and intimidation.”

  The employee’s complaint with the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, which has not been previously reported, describes an atmosphere of constant surveillance by video and recordings of all meetings — and the presence of patrolling security guards — that silence employees who do not fit the Bridgewater mold.

• Bitcoin’s not money, judge rules as she tosses money-laundering charge

  The hotel room was wired with cameras and microphones, and in it sat $30,000 in fake $100 bills. Miami Beach Detective Ricardo Arias, working undercover as an identity thief, flipped them in front of Michell Abner Espinoza. A “flash-roll,” it’s called, the kind you see in the movies where bad guys flick through wads of cash before holding it up in the air.

  For that $30,000, Espinoza had agreed to sell a slew of bitcoins, the almost unregulated virtual currency, which Arias’s character said he would exchange for stolen Russian credit-card numbers.

  The sting was designed to catch Espinoza, then 30 of Miami, laundering money. Florida law prohibits using financial transactions to “promote” illicit activity, such as, in this case, credit-card fraud.

  Ultimately, Arias arrested Espinoza on three felony counts of money laundering, capping a three-month investigation in 2014 into South Florida’s exchange of computerized money.

• EU Plans Database of Bitcoin Users with Identities and Wallet Addresses

  The European Commission is proposing the creation of a database that will hold information on those using virtual currencies and that will record data on the users’ real-world identity, along with all associated wallet addresses.

  This is the first proposal part of an action plan that the EU got rolling after the Paris November 2015 terror attacks and that it officially put forward in February 2016 and later approved at the start of July 2016.

  As we wrote in our article from a few weeks back, the action plan, a reform of the Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD) so it would also include the terms “virtual currency,” was only approved by the (EU President) Juncker Commission.

• Highest-paid CEOs run worst-performing companies, research finds

  The highest-paid CEOs tend to run some of the worst-performing companies, according to new research.

  The study, carried out by corporate research firm MSCI, found that for every $100 (£76) invested in companies with the highest-paid CEOs would have grown to $265 (£202) over 10 years.

  But the same amount invested in the companies with the lowest-paid CEOs would have grown to $367 (£279) over a decade.

  Titled ‘Are CEOs paid for performance? Evaluating the Effectiveness of Equity Incentives’, the report looked at the salaries of 800 CEOs at 429 large and medium-sized US companies between 2005 and 2014 and compared it with the total shareholder return of the companies.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Those Viral Trump Supporting Singing, Dancing ‘Freedom Kids’ Now Plan To Sue Trump Campaign

  The fact that no lawsuit has yet been filed suggests that going public first is the latest method by which Popick is hoping to get paid by the campaign. Unless there are more details here, I’m not sure how much success Popick is likely to have with a lawsuit. It seems like a stretch from a legal angle. Without a written agreement, and with any verbal agreement sounding fuzzy at best, with Popick adding his own after-the-fact requirements for alternative compensation, I doubt any legal dispute stands much of a chance. Of course, it still doesn’t look good for the Trump campaign, which had a (somewhat ridiculous) viral sensation in their camp and appears to have squandered it:

• Ex-NSA EMPLOYEE: It’s ‘essentially impossible’ to draw a straight line from the DNC hack to the Russian government

  The FBI suspects the Russian government could be behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee after about 20,000 emails from the political organization were leaked late last week.

  But as one expert tells Business Insider, it would be “essentially impossible” to make a direct connection between the hackers and the Russian government.

  “I mean, it’s essentially impossible, 100%, given the advanced tactics these guys can deploy,” said Will Ackerly, a former cloud security architect at the National Security Agency and cofounder of the data security company Virtru. “It is relatively straightforward to design a misattribution system, where it looks like the attack is coming from somewhere else.”

• US Media Hides Real Scandal, Says ‘Trump a Manchurian Candidate for Putin’

  America’s corporate media have gobbled up the Hillary Clinton campaign’s spoon-fed lines that the real story of the WikiLeaks email revelations isn’t that they stole a US election, but rather that Putin and Russia are somehow interfering with the election to benefit Trump — despite zero evidence.

• Report: FBI Investigating DNC Hack

  Last month, DNC officials and security experts told the Washington Post that Russian government hackers gained access to the computer network of the Democratic National Committee, stealing login credentials and monitoring email and chats. Security firm Crowdstrike was hired by the DNC to investigate, and it concluded that two separate hacking cells with known ties to the Russian government compromised the DNC’s systems.

  This weekend, Wikileaks then posted the emails that had been stolen from the DNC in a searchable format online, revealing that the party’s top brass tried to help presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton clinch the nomination over Bernie Sanders, despite a claim that it was neutral. That prompted the Sunday resignation of the party’s leader, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

• Kerry Confronts Russia About DNC Hack, Russia Threatens To Swear

  Russia’s foreign minister refused to answer U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s question about Democratic National Committee (DNC) hacking allegations because he didn’t “want to use four-letter words.”

  Kerry raised the allegations July 26 in Laos at the ASEAN summit, and told reporters, “I raised the question and we will continue to work to see precisely what those facts are.” Kerry did not reveal Sergei Lavrov’s private response, but highlighted the FBI had opened an investigation into the allegations that Russian intelligence services were behind the DNC hack.

• Lavrov dismisses claims Russia behind DNC leak

  While speaking ahead of talks at the ASEAN summit in Laos with US Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov soundly dismissed allegations that the Russian government was behind the Democratic National Committee (DNC) email leaks.

  Lavrov told a reporter, “I don’t want to use four-letter words”, in response to a question regarding Russia’s unproven involvement.

• Talk Nation Radio: Jill Stein on Why You Should Help Make Her President of the United States

• Internet troll facing jail after violent antisemitic threats to Labour MP

  John Nimmo, previously jailed for abusive messages, sent emails to Luciana Berger telling her she would ‘get it like Jo Cox’

• Hillary Clinton spokeswoman: We believe Russians behind WikiLeaks release of DNC emails

  Hillary for America communications director Jennifer Palmieri discusses the campaigns take on last week’s WikiLeaks release of DNC emails. Palmieri speaks with McClatchy’s political editor Steve “Buzz” Thomma on the sidelines of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

• What WikiLeaks Emails Reveal About The DNC, The White House And Lobbyists

  When Barack Obama became the Democratic presidential nominee in 2008, he directed the national party to reject donations from federal lobbyists. “We will not take a dime from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs,” he said. “We’re going to change how Washington works. They will not fund my party.”

  The ban was perceived as symbolic and did little to stop the flow of corporate cash to the Democratic party, but it was heralded by government watchdog groups as a positive step towards limiting the influence of business interests over policymaking. Now, late into Obama’s presidency, the Democratic National Committee has begun accepting and soliciting lobbyist cash, and the White House has warmed to the idea of lobbyists playing a role in the party’s fundraising.

  Under the party’s new fundraising policy, detailed by the Washington Post in February, lobbyists cannot participate in DNC events with President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden or their wives. But lobbyists can attend party events with White House staffers, according to a MapLight review of DNC emails. The messages were part of the nearly 20,000 emails from hacked DNC accounts that were released by WikiLeaks on Friday.

• Democrats Ignored Cybersecurity Warnings Before Theft

  The Democratic National Committee was warned last fall that its computer network was susceptible to attacks but didn’t follow the security advice it was given, according to three people familiar with the matter.

  The missed opportunity is another blow to party officials already embarrassed by the theft and public disclosure of e-mails that have disrupted their presidential nominating convention in Philadelphia and led their chairwoman to resign.

  Computer security consultants hired by the DNC made dozens of recommendations after a two-month review, the people said. Following the advice, which would typically include having specialists hunt for intruders on the network, might have alerted party officials that hackers had been lurking in their network for weeks — hackers who would stay for nearly a year.

  Instead, officials didn’t discover the breach until April. The theft ultimately led to the release of almost 20,000 internal e-mails through WikiLeaks last week on the eve of the convention.

• Assange: Why I Created WikiLeaks’ Searchable Database of 30,000 Emails from Clinton’s Private Server

  In March, WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive for over 30,000 emails & email attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton’s private email server while she was secretary of state. The 50,000 pages of documents span from June 2010 to August 2014; 7,500 of the documents were sent by Hillary Clinton. The State Department released the emails as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request.

• This Isn’t the First Time Donald Trump Has Asked Hackers for Help Taking Down His Enemies

  Donald Trump on Wednesday urged Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, setting off howls of outrage from across the political spectrum for actually soliciting foreign espionage on his opponent. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said.

• Putin’s Internet Trolls Are Stoking The Vitriolic Fire By Posing As Trump Supporters

  Over the last year we’ve repeatedly noted how Putin’s Internet propaganda efforts go well beyond flinging insults in news story comment sections. Thanks to whistleblowing by the likes of Lyudmila Savchuk, we learned how Putin employs multiple factories operated by a rotating crop of shell companies whose sole purpose is to fill the internet with Putin-friendly drivel twenty-four-hours a day. Early reports noted how these efforts focused on what you’d expect from Putin: discrediting reporters, distorting Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, or opposing Finland’s entry into NATO.

  But a little more than a year ago, New York Times Magazine’s Adrian Chen decided to see just how deep that particular rabbit hole went.

• Leaked emails reveal Atherton’s bill for Obama fundraiser

  Buried in the avalanche of the WikiLeaks email drop that brought down Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is an interesting item closer to home — this one dealing with President Obama’s fundraising visit in February to the Atherton home of millionaire businessman and former state Controller Steve Westly.

  Not everyone in the exclusive Peninsula enclave has been happy about the president’s repeated drop-ins. After a fundraising event in 2013 wound up costing Atherton about $8,000, the City Council drafted an ordinance allowing the town to seek repayment from hosts of such large-scale gatherings.

  The leaked emails show that Atherton officials sent Westly an itemized invoice to cover $5,909 for the February fundraiser, including the pay for eight police officers, a police sergeant, a dispatcher and a public works crew.

  The emails also show that upon receiving the invoice, Westly wrote to Democratic National Committee officials, asking, “How you like us to handle this?

  “I will do whatever you would like here, including paying the bill,” messaged Westly, who has been eyeing a 2018 run for governor. “We are all very loyal to you and the president.”

• Declaring Cyberwar On Russia Because Of The DNC Hack Is A Bad Idea

  There’s been plenty of talk, of course, about whether or not Russia did the hack that exposed various Democratic National Committee emails and other documents. While we’ve already pointed out that this shouldn’t impact the newsworthy nature of the material leaked, it’s still an interesting story. We’ve highlighted some reasons to be skeptical of the claims attributing the hack to Russia, but it does appear that more and more evidence is pointing in that direction. Thomas Rid, over at Vice, has a pretty good analysis of why much of the evidence points to Russia as being behind the attack, and the FBI is now apparently on board with that as well. While I’d still prefer more evidence, at least at this point, it should be admitted that there’s quite a lot of evidence pointing in Russia’s direction making it, at the very least, the most likely suspect.

  [...]

  This is insane for a variety of reasons, and hopefully no one is seriously listening to this. First of all, hacking happens all the time. In fact, as Ed Snowden points out, revealed documents show that the US itself has authorized the hacking of foreign political parties. So if Russian hackers possibly doing that to us is a “cyberwar attack” and it’s the kind of thing we need to hit back on, then, uh, haven’t we been committing “cyberwar” on tons of other parties via the NSA — for which we, too, deserve retaliation?

• Jill Stein vs. Ben Jealous: Should Progressives Reject Hillary Clinton & Vote Green?

  After a tension-filled opening day of the Democratic National Convention that saw Senator Bernie Sanders endorse his former rival Hillary Clinton, we host a debate between Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein and Ben Jealous, former NAACP president and CEO and a Bernie Sanders surrogate.

• Who Is Jill Stein? Meet The Third-Party Alternative To Hillary Clinton And Donald Trump

  With Donald Trump officially named the Republican presidential nominee last week and Hillary Clinton poised to become the Democratic candidate Thursday, you may feel like your options for the November general election are locked in.

  But you’re wrong. Jill Stein, a 66-year-old physician, is also in the running for the White House.

  Stein is on track to become the Green Party’s 2016 nominee for president, just like she was four years ago. And though a third-party candidate has never landed in the Oval Office, Stein is performing well among voters who are dissatisfied with the establishment and faced with choosing between Trump and Clinton. As of Tuesday morning, she was polling at about 3 percent support, according to RealClearPolitics.

• Bernie Sanders Delegates Prepare to Confront Obama About TPP, Symbol of Corporate Control

  Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both now oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — so why were so many Bernie Sanders delegates yelling about it Monday night and waving anti-TPP signs over their head?

  The TPP has become a hot-button issue for a lot of progressives who want the party to take a more anti-corporate tone.

  Some of the opposition comes from bad memories of the job-losses that came in the wake of the NAFTA agreement in the 1990s. But the TPP is not actually a free-trade pact. It won’t lower tariffs, the most common trade barriers.

• The Trump-Putin Fallacy

  In the earlier months of the Donald Trump campaign, many people I knew asked me to comment on the similarities between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Recently I have been asked to comment on direct connections between Trump and Putin. And now, with the release of nearly 20,000 emails apparently stolen from the Democratic National Committee’s email server by Russian hackers, has come the suggestion that Putin may actually be interfering in the US election to help get Trump elected. These ideas—that Trump is like Putin and that he is Putin’s agent—are deeply flawed.

  Imagine that your teenage child has built a bomb and has just set it off in your house. The house is falling down all around you—and you are blaming the neighbor’s kid, who threw a pebble at your window. That’s what the recent Putin fixation is like—a way to evade the fact that Trump is a thoroughly American creation that poses an existential threat to American democracy.

• Did Russian Intelligence Hack the DNC Servers?

  The only experts cited work for a company hired by the Democratic National Committee to investigate the hack. There is no indication of any neutral third party investigation. The company, Crowdstrike, issued a publicly available report on what they found.

• Assange: WikiLeaks to release ‘a lot more’ on US elections

  WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says his organization plans to publish “a lot more material” concerning elections in the U.S.

  “This is having so much political impact in the United States,” he told CNN on Tuesday, referencing last Friday’s leak of 20,000 internal emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

  Assange said Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is trying to disrupt focus on the messages by blaming Russia for their release.

  “What we have right now is the Hillary Clinton campaign using a speculative allegation about hacks that have occurred in the past to try and divert attention from our emails, another separate issue that WikiLeaks has published,” he said.

  “I think this raises a very serious question, which is that the natural instincts of Hillary Clinton and the people around her, that when confronted with a serious domestic political scandal, that she tries to blame the Russians, blame the Chinese, etc,” Assange added. “If she does that when she’s in government, that’s a political, managerial style that can lead to conflict.”

• Some Sanders backers spurn Clinton, say they’ll go Green Party

  Bernie Sanders delegates and supporters speak out about the DNC email scandal, the Democratic Party and how they should move forward. Delegates on the floor during the Democratic National Convention often booed as Clinton was mentioned. USA TODAY

• The DNC email leaks expose the rampant elitism that made way for Trump

  Compared to the sturm und drang swirling around last week’s Republican National Convention, the Democratic convention this week seemed likely to be a fairly placid affair. Then, as Democrats prepared to gather in Philadelphia to officially nominate Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate, Wikileaks released a dramatic cache of hacked emails sent and received by members of the Democratic National Committee.

  The emails confirmed many Sanders supporters’ fears—previously derided as conspiracy theories—about both anti-Sanders sentiment within the DNC and the role of money in politics. The emails showed, among other things, that supposedly neutral DNC staffers were actively hostile to Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign and gave donors access to president Barack Obama and other key White House staffers.

• Leaks show DNC asked White House to reward donors with slots on boards and commissions

  Email exchanges involving top officials at the Democratic National Committee released along with private documents by WikiLeaks show that DNC officials hoped to reward top donors and insiders with appointments to federal boards and commissions in coordination with the White House.

  The revelations give an inside look into how the Democratic Party attempted to leverage its access and influence with the White House to bring in cash.

  In an April 20, 2016 email, DNC National Finance Director Jordan Kaplan canvassed what appears to be the committee’s finance department – its fundraising office – for names of people (mainly donors) to reward with federal appointments on boards and commissions.

  That email exchange yielded a list compiled by DNC Finance Chief of Staff Scott Comer and emailed to Kaplan on April 26 titled “Boards and Commissions Names_Final,” which listed the names of twenty-three DNC donors and insiders.

• ALEC 2016 Agenda Boosts Charters, Coal, and Other Corporate Funders

  The American Legislative Exchange Council will push bills to protect failing charter schools, silence political speech, and obstruct environmental protections in the ALEC 2016 agenda introduced at its annual meeting in Indianapolis this week.

  ALEC faces renewed public attention as it gears up for the annual meeting, where corporate lobbyists sit side-by-side with state legislators in luxury hotels to vote as equals on “model bills” that then get pushed to become law in states across the country.

  As the Center for Media and Democracy has reported, Donald Trump chose an ALEC ally, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, as his running mate, while his party’s 2016 platform was clearly stamped in the Koch-fueled ALEC mold.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Russian Censor Bans Comodo… Doesn’t Realize Its Own Security Certificate Is From Comodo

  The Russian government’s state censorship organization, Roskomnadzor (technically its telecom regulator) has been especially busy lately as the government has continued to crack down on websites it doesn’t like. However, as pointed out by Fight Copyright Trolls, it appears that Roskomnadzor may have gone a bit overboard recently, in response to a court ruling that had a massive list of sites to be banned (over a thousand pages). Apparently, as part of that, various sites associated with Comodo were all banned. That’s pretty bad for a variety of reasons, starting with the fact that Comodo remains one of the most popular issuers of secure certificates for HTTPS.

• Anti-Vax Film Distributors Threaten Critic And Autistic Rights Advocate With Defamation

  Any time we discuss the segment of our population that is still, despite all evidence to the contrary, pushing anti-vaccination conspiracy theories out into the ether, the comments section is inevitably invaded by these proponents. I know I can’t stop it, so just go ahead and leave what I’m sure will be your well-reasoned, science-backed arguments as to why we shouldn’t trust one of the most life-saving kinds of medicine ever invented.

  That said, this is not a post about the plausibility that vaccinations are the reason for all the world’s ills. It is instead a post about how the distributors of the upcoming sure-to-be smash hit film about the horror of vaccinations, creatively entitled Vaxxed, are also going around threatening people arguing against its message with defamation for pointing back at the filmmakers’ own words.

  Meet Fiona O’Leary of Ireland. Fiona is an advocate for autistic children, helping to run a group called ART (Autistic Rights Together) as well as a Tumblr page dedicated to dispelling the myths of autism and vaccines. On that Tumblr page and on social media, O’Leary has often set her sights on the makers and distributors of Vaxxed, including producers Polly Tommey and Del Bigtree. Included in her pushback, O’Leary points out some rather unfortunate comments both have made about autistic children, as well as interviews and videos in which Tommey in particular pushes religious faith to treat autism. Through it all are the calls for parents to not vaccinate their children.

• Vaxxed anti-vaccine film distributor threatens autism rights advocate

  Cinema Libre Studio, the distributor of the dishonest Andrew Wakefield anti-vaccination fiction-film, Vaxxed, has threatened an Irish autism-rights advocate with defamation.

• Students debate censorship and the EU

  Censorship in society and a second EU referendum were subject to debate when two schools competed against each other.

• Entire website blackholed over one allegedly plagiarised story

  Russian ISPs have been ordered by the Moscow City Court to block access to a website for 15 days over one allegedly plagiarised story that it ran.

  The story—a travel piece about what to do in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan—was first published by the popular Russian site Gazeta.ru back in March, but then apparently plagiarised by Story-media.ru.

  It is not currently possible to check whether the two texts are indeed the same, since Story-media.ru is currently offline, and there is no copy on Archive.org.

• Kerala writer attacked over book title

  An upcoming Malayalam writer was allegedly attacked by a group of people for using the word ‘padachon’ (the creator) in the title of his soon to be released book at Koottanad in the district.

  ‘Padachon’ is a colloquial Malayalam word used to refer to ‘God, the Creator’. It is used generally by the Muslim community in the state.

• Kuwaiti PM sentenced 14 years jail for insulting Saudi and Bahrain

  Kuwait has handed one of its parliamentarians, Abdul-Hamid Dashti, to 11 years and six months in prison for insulting Saudi Arabia and a seperate sentence for insulting Bahrain.

  He was tried as well for defaming Kuwait’s judiciary.

  In March, the National Assembly of Kuwait, approved the claim presented for lifting Dashti’s parliamentary immunity. The request was based on the case on a homeland security lawsuit issued against Dashti for incitement against Saudi Arabia.

• Colorado Republican Committee Tries To Use CFAA To Get Even With A Bogus Tweeter, Fails Completely

  The tweet was taken down minutes later and the official Twitter account explained that someone with “unauthorized access” had posted the tweet and it was not a reflection of the Colorado GOP’s official stance.

  This led to a brief internet wildfire, where CRC reps were interviewed by reporters about the tweet and enraged Trump supporters [also: 4chan] — believing the fix was in — began posting threatening messages to and about Colorado GOP leaders. So far, so internet.

  The CRC took this a step further though, attempting to sue the “Doe” with allegedly “unauthorized access” for breaching the “threat to public health or safety” clause of the CFAA. The original complaint [PDF] shows the CRC is perhaps far better at electioneering than investigating.

• Mudzvova speaks on censorship

  AWARD winning actor, Sylvanos Mudzvova, who was recently in Norway for the Bergen Afro Arts Festival, said Zimbabwe’s censorship laws were archaic and draconian compared to other progressive societies.

• Censorship company drops bogus lawsuit against researchers who outed them

• An Internet Censorship Company Tried to Sue the Researchers Who Exposed Them

  Netsweeper is a small Canadian company with a disarmingly boring name and an office nestled among the squat buildings of Waterloo, Ontario. But its services—namely, online censorship—are offered in countries as far-flung as Bahrain and Yemen.

  In 2015, University of Toronto-based research hub Citizen Lab reported that Netsweeper was providing Yemeni rebels with censorship technology. In response, Citizen Lab director Ron Deibert revealed in a blog post on Tuesday, Netsweeper sued the university and Deibert for defamation. Netsweeper discontinued its lawsuit in its entirety in April.

  [...]

  When reached over email, Deibert said Citizen Lab is not offering comments to the press on the lawsuit. Netsweeper did not respond to Motherboard’s request for comment.

  If the lawsuit had gone to court, Deibert wrote that Citizen Lab intended to lean on the 2015 Protection of Public Participation Act, which was designed to thwart litigation against organizations acting in the public interest.

  “Citizen Lab does rigorous research into censorship, surveillance, and digital attacks and it is clearly in the public interest for them to be able to share those results,” Brenda McPhail, director of the surveillance project at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, wrote Motherboard in an email. “We support their right to freely disseminate and discuss their important work.”

• Lawsuit charging USDA censorship dismissed

  A lawsuit that accused the USDA of censoring its scientists in violation of their free speech rights has been dismissed by a federal judge.

  Last year, the non-profit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, filed a complaint claiming that USDA’s “scientific integrity policy” unconstitutionally muzzled scientists to appease “corporate stakeholders.”

  The USDA policy, issued in 2013, states that “scientists should refrain from making statements that could be construed as being judgments of or recommendations on USDA or any other federal government policy, either intentionally or inadvertently.”

  According to PEER, the policy effectively prohibited USDA researchers from making public statements about controversial subjects, stifling scientific discourse about agriculture.

  Specifically, the complaint pointed to Jonathan Lundgren, an entomologist for USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, who was prevented from speaking publicly about certain subjects.

  For example, USDA barred Lundgren from speaking to the media about the impact on non-target insects from crops that are genetically engineered to have pesticidal qualities, the complaint said.

• South Africa sacked reporters win SABC censorship case

• South African Court Rules Journalists Sacked in Censorship Row Must be Reinstated

• New battle in SABC censorship row

  A new court battle is expected after an employment tribunal in South Africa ordered the state broadcaster, SABC, to reinstate four journalists. They’d been sacked for fighting its policy of not showing footage of violent protests. But William Bird from the campaign group Media Monitoring Africa says the arguments are set to rage on.

• SABC management incur third legal setback

• Sacked SABC journos must return to work, says court

• Fired SABC journalists reinstated by Labour Court

• Labour court finds SABC’s dismissal of four journalists unlawful

• Sanef welcomes court decision on SABC journalists

• Censorship in Turkey: what it really means for terrorism and freedom of speech

• Facebook admits it blocked links to DNC email leaks after censorship accusations

Privacy/Surveillance

• Snowden is designing an anti-spyware gadget for iPhone 6

• Edward Snowden Designs Device To Detect iPhone Snooping

• Edward Snowden has Designed a Phone Case that Can Tell if You’re Being Hacked

• Edward Snowden’s Ears Must Be Burning in Russia– He’s Mentioned in Two Movies Opening this Weekend

• Who Hacked The Democratic National Committee?

• Snowden: US should modernize disclosure process

• Snowden On Russia Backing DNC Hack: I Wanna See The Receipts

• US Intel Has ‘High Confidence’ Russia Behind DNC Email Hack

• US Intel Agencies Have ‘High Confidence’ Russia Hacked DNC Emails

• Snowden says NSA would know if Russian behind DNC leaks

• NSA Whistleblower: Not So Fast On Claims Russia Behind Hillary Clinton Email Hack

• Edward Snowden said the NSA could ‘certainly’ trace the DNC hack — here’s what experts think

• Tor: Statement

  Seven weeks ago, I published a blog post saying that Jacob Appelbaum had left the Tor Project, and I invited people to contact me as the Tor Project began an investigation into allegations regarding his behavior.

  Since then, a number of people have come forward with first-person accounts and other information. The Tor Project hired a professional investigator, and she interviewed many individuals to determine the facts concerning the allegations. The investigator worked closely with me and our attorneys, helping us to understand the overall factual picture as it emerged.

• Democrats wants to balance liberty and security in encryption debate

  In 2012, the Democratic party platform document (released every four years at the Democratic National Convention) made barely a mention of internet privacy and how it affects US citizens. But that was before Edward Snowden’s revelations. This year, as the DNC kicks off in Philadelphia, the new Democratic Party platform addresses the privacy concerns brought to light in 2013. It also gets into the recent battle over encryption that was highlighted by the FBI trying to force Apple to decrypt an iPhone connected to a murder suspect.

• The Internet of Things Will Turn Large-Scale Hacks into Real World Disasters

  Disaster stories involving the Internet of Things are all the rage. They feature cars (both driven and driverless), the power grid, dams, and tunnel ventilation systems. A particularly vivid and realistic one, near-future fiction published last month in New York Magazine, described a cyberattack on New York that involved hacking of cars, the water system, hospitals, elevators, and the power grid. In these stories, thousands of people die. Chaos ensues. While some of these scenarios overhype the mass destruction, the individual risks are all real. And traditional computer and network security isn’t prepared to deal with them.

  Classic information security is a triad: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. You’ll see it called “CIA,” which admittedly is confusing in the context of national security. But basically, the three things I can do with your data are steal it (confidentiality), modify it (integrity), or prevent you from getting it (availability).

• Hiding Internet Infrastructure Doesn’t Really Keep It Safe

  There are two questions that come up pretty frequently when I tell people that I document and write about network infrastructure. The first one is, So, where’s the cloud? (Spoiler: mostly, northern Virginia, but also it’s not a cloud and you should really stop calling it that.) The other is, Why do you want to let terrorists destroy the internet? The implication is that by mapping out the internet’s geography, I’m basically offering up a blueprint for destroying it.

  Anxiety about physical infrastructure security is understandable. Sometimes the threats to infrastructure security can feel a little over the top, as in the case of the New York Times report on the possibility of Russian submarine cable taps. It isn’t a purely speculative concern, however. Last year, a spate of mysterious fiber optic cable cuts in northern California left parts of the region disconnected for hours.

  My book, Networks of New York, is an illustrated guide to identifying network infrastructure, including internet cables. Conceivably, this could guide a would-be vandal to their targets—but the primary method they’d use to find those targets is a tactic explicitly already used to keep cables safe. Labeling buried utilities with color-coded flags, posts, or spray paint is a well-established part of street excavation. If one utility provider needs to do work that requires digging up a road, they need to know what’s buried under that road so they don’t end up damaging anything else buried nearby.

• EU Data Protection Official Says Revised Privacy Laws Should Ban Backdooring Encryption

  The EU’s “Cookie Law” is a complete joke and waste of time. An attempt to regulate privacy in the EU, all it’s really served to do is annoy millions of internet users with little pop up notices about cookie practices that everyone just clicks through to get to the content they want to read. The EU at least recognizes some of the problems with the law and is working on a rewrite… and apparently there’s an interesting element that may be included in it: banning encryption backdoors. That’s via a new report from European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) Giovanni Buttarelli, who was put in charge of reviewing the EU’s ePrivacy Directive to make it comply with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that is set to go into effect in May of 2018.

• Privacy International reveals extent of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ bulk data collection

  THE HEARING into Privacy International’s challenge to the UK security services’ collection of bulk communications and personal data opened in London on Monday, and previously secret documents revealed for the first time the extent of government surveillance into ordinary citizens’ communications.

  This follows a ‘dirt dump’ in April which showed that successive home secretaries have allowed this to carry on since at least 2005.

  The documents provide evidence that MI5, MI6 and GCHQ collected data on every citizen in the UK, including location information, telephone numbers dialled and calls received, as well as metadata regarding time, date and duration of calls.

  In addition, the security services are accused by Privacy International of collecting data in bulk via the internet, including browsing history, IP addresses visited, instant messaging data and operating systems. The bulk collection of personal information even includes physical post data.

• Oliver Stone’s Snowden, about NSA whistle-blower, to premiere at Toronto film festival

  Director Antoine Fuqua’s remake of the 1960s Western The Magnificent Seven is expected to kick off the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, which will include movies about whistle-blower Edward Snowden and former US president Lyndon Johnson among the usual Oscar hopefuls.

• ‘Honions’ Used To Find More Than 100 Snooping TOR Nodes

  TOR anonymity network is one of the most useful online security measures that we’ve got.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Official who oversees whistleblower complaints files one of his own

  The Obama administration’s top official overseeing how intelligence agencies handle whistleblower retaliation claims has lodged his own complaint, alleging he was punished for disclosing “public corruption.”

  Daniel Meyer, who previously oversaw the Defense Department’s decisions on whistleblowing cases, also says he was targeted for being gay, according to records obtained by McClatchy.

  Meyer made the allegations in a complaint before the Merit Systems Protection Board, an administrative panel that handles employment grievances from federal employees, after another agency rejected his claims.

• Disobedience Has Its Award

  As one whose early early political education, after I was old enough to quit listening to my father and think for myself, came largely from the various civil disobedience factions in the 1960s, it’s heartening to see that disobedience now has an award. So far it’s one off, but if successful might be repeated and perhaps be awarded annually. The award will also offer the recipient more than mere accolades, as it’s attached to a $250,000 prize.

• MIT Media Lab Launched Disobedience Award, Funded By Reid Hoffman

  That’s a pretty cool idea for a prize. And I particularly like Michael Petricone’s suggestion that the award should be named after Aaron Swartz, who of course was engaged in a great number of civil disobedience projects. And, unfortunately, one of them involved MIT turning on him, leading him to getting arrested and charged with a variety of ridiculous charges. Since then, there has been a struggle among many at MIT to figure out how that happened and what the university should do to prevent similar things in the future. Naming this kind of award after him would be a great start.

  We recently wrote about the book The Idealist, about Swartz and the world of free culture (and had the author, Justin Peters, appear on our podcast for an excellent two-part discussion about the book). One things that becomes clear from the book was the absolute disbelief by Swartz and his family of the fact that MIT refused to support Swartz after his arrest. The university basically turned its back on him completely. It’s something that the university still ought to do something about, and naming this award after Swartz would be a step in the right direction.

• Catalonia tells Spain it will push for secession with or without assent

  The Catalan government has intensified its war of words with Spain by vowing to use its democratic mandate to forge a separate Catalan state with or without the approval of Madrid.

  Catalonia is preparing to defy Spain’s constitutional court this week by debating the conclusions of a working group on sovereignty, nine months after the Catalan parliament put forward a resolution calling for the “beginning of a process of the creation of an independent Catalan state”.

• Official who oversees whistleblower complaints files one of his own

  The Obama administration’s top official overseeing how intelligence agencies handle whistleblower retaliation claims has lodged his own complaint, alleging he was punished for disclosing “public corruption.”

  Daniel Meyer, who previously oversaw the Defense Department’s decisions on whistleblowing cases, also says he was targeted for being gay, according to records obtained by McClatchy.

  Meyer made the allegations in a complaint before the Merit Systems Protection Board, an administrative panel that handles employment grievances from federal employees, after another agency rejected his claims.

  Meyer’s claims add to a barrage of allegations that the federal government’s handling of defense and intelligence whistleblower cases is flawed.

  In the complaint, Meyer, who once worked for the Pentagon’s inspector general’s office, accused his former Defense Department bosses of “manipulation of a final report to curry favor” with then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

• Bradford woman’s death in Pakistan investigated after ‘honour’ killing claims

  Police are investigating the death of a British woman in Pakistan after her husband claimed she was the victim of an “honour” killing for marrying a man from outside the family allegedly against her parents’ wishes.

  Samia Shahid, a beauty therapist from Bradford, died on Wednesday while visiting relatives in Pandori village near Mangla Dam in northern Punjab, the Foreign Office confirmed.

  Shahid’s local MP, Naz Shah, has demanded that authorities in Pakistan exhume her body and commission an independent autopsy.

  The police officer leading the investigation in Pakistan told the Guardian he had sent samples from the body to the country’s top forensics lab in Lahore on Tuesday.

  Mohammad Aqeel Abbas, the station house officer for Jhelum district who is investigating the case, said a postmortem was carried out immediately after Shahid died and she was then buried in her village graveyard. There were no visible injuries or signs of violence on her body, he said.

• Illinois politician resigns after fighting social network fakes

  Politicians tend to quit over scandals or sheer public outcry, but fake social networking accounts? That’s new. Illinois House representative Ron Sandack has resigned after spending weeks battling with “cyber security issues” — namely, people creating multiple impersonating Facebook and Twitter accounts. The fight made him “re-evaluate” his role in office and whether or not it was worth missing “important family events” to be there, he says.

• Young Muslims Threaten Nudist Bathers With ‘Extermination’

  A swimming pool in the town of Geldern in the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany is home to bathers who prefer a more “natural” form of swimming. Nudists at the pool were verbally abused by a group of young Muslim men who threatened them because they consider swimming in the nude ‘indecent behaviour’. The group of Muslims not only threatened the male bathers but also spat upon them and several women and children, reports Junge Freiheit.

  A total of six Muslim men were involved in the incident and are described by witnesses as being in their mid 20’s, all with full Islamic-style beards. The men insulted and threatened the nudists in both German and Arabic, yelling “Allahu akbar” at the bathers along with other Arabic insults.

• Homicide rate surging for black Chicagoans, report finds

  Chicago’s per capita homicide rate climbed over the last decade, and the chances of an African-American being killed in the city spiked drastically, according to a new report.

• Black Lives, Blue Lives, and the Fight Over Criminal Justice in America

  Two people from Milwaukee took to the national stage at the Republican National Convention (RNC) and the Democratic National Convention (DNC) to present two very different perspectives on one of the most divisive issues of our time, the shootings of unarmed African Americans by police and civilians.

  The conventions took place against a backdrop of traumatic news stories. The shooting death of Philando Castile and its dramatic aftermath, live-streamed on Facebook by his girlfriend, sparked national protests. At one protest in Dallas, Texas, five police officers were shot and killed by an African American military veteran who had served in Afghanistan. This was followed by the shootings of police in Baton Rouge. The very next week, Charles Kinsey, an African American caregiver for an autistic adult, was shot by police while he was on the ground with his arms raised.

  While the terrible events and constant media churn left many wondering if the nation was coming apart at the seams, some fanned the flames of division.

  Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, an African American and right-wing commenter for Fox News, who has blamed several of the victims of police killings, took to the floor in full dress uniform: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to make something very clear: Blue Lives Matter!”

• Singapore PM’s visit is chance to address censorship, LGBT protections

  United States President Barack Obama should press visiting Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to address the Singapore government’s severe restrictions on fundamental freedoms, Human Rights Watch said today. President Obama will meet with Prime Minister Lee in Washington, DC, on 2 August 2016.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Is the internet being ruined and manipulated by big companies?

  We think of the internet as disrupting, and sometimes replacing, traditional institutions and industries, as it has grown and changed. There are now more than 3.2 billion users, and over time, a handful of companies — Facebook, Apple and Google among them — have come to have an outsize influence on how we use the internet.

  Zeynep Tufekci, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill who studies the social impact of technology, noticed a troubling problem in August 2014. She was following the news on Facebook and Twitter, and realized that Twitter was full of updates after the shooting of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black resident of Ferguson, Missouri, by a white police officer.

  Meanwhile, Facebook’s algorithm — with its emphasis on what people “like” — largely missed the protests. “I’d go to Facebook and I’d see nothing,” Tufekci told Freakonomics recently. “These complex algorithms are having all these downstream effects. … Facebook is unleashing these computer programs that are designed to make Facebook advertiser-friendly and that are designed to keep us on the site.”

Intellectual Monopolies

• IP Lawyers Tell Copyright Office To Stop Screwing The Public By Opposing Cable Box Reform

  Last week we noted how the cable industry was distorting the definition of copyright to try and fend off the FCC’s attempt to bring competition to the cable box market. Through misleading editorials and leveraged relationships with beholden lawmakers, the cable industry has been successfully convincing some regulators that we can’t bring competition to the cable box or we’ll face a piracy and copyright apocalypse.

  Dig deeper and you’ll find that copyright has nothing to do with the proposed changes being tabled. The FCC’s proposal simply requires (pdf) that cable providers deliver their existing programming, sans CableCARD, to third party set tops with an eye toward boosting competition. The FCC has stated repeatedly that under their plan, cable providers can utilize the standards and copyright protection of their choice to make this happen, keeping existing DRM in place (for better or worse). Again, it’s important to understand that for cable providers this fight is about control and $21 billion in annual rental fees.

• South African Government Staves Off Critics With IP Consultative Framework

  South Africa’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) appears to be meeting its detractors halfway with a new intellectual property consultative framework it says will help pave the way for consultative engagement with IP stakeholders both inside and outside of government.

• Many Hepatitis C Patients Do Not Have Access To Medicines In India, Group Says

  Despite being the global leader of generic drug manufacturing, access to hepatitis C treatment in India remains out of reach for a large portion of the population, a civil society group has said in a new paper. The authors call for India to work on a national programme of prevention and treatment of hepatitis, and warn against voluntary licences developed by multinational pharmaceutical companies.

• WTO DG Sees Positive Changes, More Engagement; Would Consider A Second Term

  World Trade Organization Director General Roberto Azevêdo today said he would consider a second mandate at the head of the organisation. He also described a positive momentum in the organisation in the first semester of 2016, after two successful ministerial conferences, with members coming up with new ideas. About Brexit, potential scenarios are being explored but it seems a lot of renegotiations might be on the United Kingdom’s plate.

• Copyrights

  • Court Orders News Site Blocked Following Article Piracy

    Blocking torrent and streaming sites is a regular occurrence in many countries but the practice is now extending to other areas. Following a complaint by Russian news site Gazeta, the Moscow City Court has ordered a news portal to be blocked by ISPs after it ‘pirated’ a tourism article.

  • Pirate Bay Founder: The ‘Piracy’ Scene Needs Innovation

    Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde says that the “piracy” scene needs more innovation if it wants to sustain itself. In the wake of the KickassTorrents shutdown, he argues that the current ecosystem relies too heavily on a few large sites. More decentralization is the key to solve this vulnerability.

  • But Wait: Copyright Law Is So Screwed Up, Perhaps The Rolling Stones Are Right That Donald Trump Needed Their Permission

    So for years and years and years, every time a musician or a group whined about politicians using their music at an event, we’d point out that they have no legal basis to complain. Assuming either the venue or the campaign (or both) had the proper blanket licenses from ASCAP/BMI/SESAC no other permission was needed. That’s actually part of the point of the structure of those blanket performance licenses. Everyone recognizes that it would be virtually impossible to play music publicly without such a blanket license structure. And so, every time a musician complains that the use was “unauthorized,” they’re almost certainly wrong. In fact, we pointed that out (again) for the nth time earlier this week. Now, as we’ve said all along, we still think smart politicians and smart campaigns should first seek out musicians who don’t mind (or, better yet, who endorse the candidate), because otherwise they’re just giving someone famous an easy platform to slam them. But, from a legal standpoint, we’ve always pointed out that there’s basically no legitimate argument here, and people who toss around non-copyright theories like publicity rights and Lanham Act arguments are generally wrong.

    But… we forgot about one thing. Copyright law is so screwed up that there actually may be a case where the law does require permission. And it has to do with pre-1972 sound recordings. If you’ve been reading Techdirt for any length of time, you know that we’ve discussed this issue many times in the past. Historically, while compositions were covered by copyright, under the 1909 Copyright Act sound recordings were not. This resulted in a patchwork of state laws (and state commonlaw) that created special forms of copyright at the state level. Eventually, sound recordings were put under federal copyright law, but it only applied to works recorded after February 14, 1972. Works recorded before that are not under federal copyright law, but remain basically the only things under those state copyright laws (the 1976 Copyright Act basically wiped out state copyright laws for everything but that one tiny thing).

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• Last gasp: Microsoft updates Get Windows 10 nagster, KB 3035583, yet again

  With nine days to go, Microsoft really, really wants you to claim your free upgrade to Windows 10. Come to think of it, Microsoft has really, really wanted you to upgrade your Windows 7 or 8.1 PC to Windows 10 for more than a year, and backed it with the GWX subsystem — first installed by KB 3035583 in March 2015, 15 months ago.

Server

• Open Source Docker Monitoring & Logging

  Docker is growing by leaps and bounds, and along with it, its ecosystem. Being light, the predominant container deployment involves running just a single app or service inside each container. Most software products and services are made up of at least several such apps/services. We all want all our apps/services to be highly available and fault tolerant. Thus, Docker containers in an organization quickly start popping up like mushrooms after the rain. They multiply faster than rabbits.While, in the beginning, we play with them like cute little pets, as their numbers quickly grow we realize we are dealing with a herd of cattle, implying we’ve become cowboys. Managing a herd with your two hands, a horse, and a lasso will only get you so far. You won’t be able to ride after each and every calf that wonders in the wrong direction. To get back to containers from this zoological analogy—operating so many moving pieces at scale is impossible without orchestration—this is why we’ve seen the rise of Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, Mesos, CoreOS, RancherOS, and so on.

• DevOps: A Pillar of Modern IT Infrastructure

  A massive transformation is underway in the way we manage IT infrastructure. More companies are looking for improved agility and flexibility. They are moving from traditional server stacks to cloudy infrastructure to support a new array of applications and services that must be delivered at breakneck pace in order to remain competitive.

• The one big change in IT

  Yet Bob does not believe the devops hammer should be used on anything that looks remotely like a nail. Accounting systems, supply chain management systems, warehouse management systems, and so on do not benefit from the constant modification enabled by devops. Those are bound by precise, interlocking processes along with granular permissions and regulations. Here, continuous change invites disaster of the type that ITIL-huggers and OCM (organizational change management) proponents fear most.

Kernel Space

• Linux 4.8 Bringing Intel MPX Enhancements, Work Towards Virtually Mapped Kernel Stacks

• HDMI CEC Framework Finally Queued For Linux 4.8

• NVMe Over Fabrics (NVMeF) & Other Block Improvements For Linux 4.8

• Collabora contributions to Linux Kernel 4.7

  Linux Kernel 4.7 was released this week with a total of 36 contributions from five Collabora engineers. It includes the first contributions from Helen as Collaboran and the first ever contributions on the kernel from Robert Foss. Here are some of the highlights of the work Collabora have done on Linux Kernel 4.7.

  Enric added support for the Analogix anx78xx DRM Bridge and fixed two SD Card related issues on OMAP igep00x0: fix remove/insert detection and enable support to read the write-protect pin.

  Gustavo de-staged the sync_file framework (Android Sync framework) that will be used to add explicit fencing support to the graphics pipeline and started a work to clean up usage of legacy vblank helpers.

• The new Linux Kernel 4.7 is now officially released

  For users who are running some form of Linux, this should come as welcome news–the final version of the Linux Kernel 4.7 is now finally released. Linux founder Linus Torvalds said of the announcement, “Despite it being two weeks since rc7, the final patch wasn’t all that big, and much of it is trivial one- and few-liners. There’s a couple of network drivers that got a bit more loving.”

• Linux 4.7 lands

• Graphics Stack

  • NVIDIA Unveils The Quadro P6000, The “World’s Fastest GPU”

  • NVIDIA “OpenGL 2016″ Driver Leaks Out Early, Adds GLSL SPIR-V Extension

  • AMD Introduces The Radeon Pro WX Series

  • Radeon Pro SSG Packs 1TB Of SSD Storage On The Graphics Card

  • AMD FireRender is now the open-source Radeon ProRender

Applications

• Conversation With Jonathan Thomas of OpenShot

  I think my initial fascination with Linux was based on rebuilding all my old, broken computers laying around my office/garage. I was having a ton of fun, pulling components out of old computers, installing various distros and seeing what worked/didn’t work. And then there was the 3D desktop cube, which was pretty awesome! Pretty soon I had built my kids their own computer, with “safe” web-browsing, education games, etc. It was many months of playing around with Linux before I learned about Python and started slowly getting more into the programming side of things.

• OpenVZ 7.0 Becomes A Complete Linux Distribution, Based On VzLinux

  OpenVZ, a long-standing Linux virtualization technology and similar to LXC and Solaris Containers, is out with their major 7.0 release.

  OpenVZ 7.0 has focused on merging the OpenVZ and Virtuozzo code-bases along with replacing their own hypervisor with that of Linux’s KVM. Under OpenVZ 7.0, it has become a complete Linux distribution based upon VzLinux.

• OpenVZ 7.0 released

  I’m pleased to announce the release of OpenVZ 7.0. The new release focuses on merging OpenVZ and Virtuozzo source codebase, replacing our own hypervisor with KVM.

• Announcing git-cinnabar 0.4.0 beta 2

  Git-cinnabar is a git remote helper to interact with mercurial repositories. It allows to clone, pull and push from/to mercurial remote repositories, using git.

• FreeIPA Lightweight CA internals

  In the preceding post, I explained the use cases for the FreeIPA lightweight sub-CAs feature, how to manage CAs and use them to issue certificates, and current limitations. In this post I detail some of the internals of how the feature works, including how signing keys are distributed to replicas, and how sub-CA certificate renewal works. I conclude with a brief retrospective on delivering the feature.

• Lightweight Sub-CAs in FreeIPA 4.4

  Last year FreeIPA 4.2 brought us some great new certificate management features, including custom certificate profiles and user certificates. The upcoming FreeIPA 4.4 release builds upon this groundwork and introduces lightweight sub-CAs, a feature that lets admins to mint new CAs under the main FreeIPA CA and allows certificates for different purposes to be issued in different certificate domains. In this post I will review the use cases and demonstrate the process of creating, managing and issuing certificates from sub-CAs. (A follow-up post will detail some of the mechanisms that operate behind the scenes to make the feature work.)

• RcppArmadillo 0.7.200.2.0

  The second Armadillo release of the 7.* series came out a few weeks ago: version 7.200.2. And RcppArmadillo version 0.7.200.2.0 is now on CRAN and uploaded to Debian. This followed the usual thorough reverse-dependecy checking of by now over 240 packages using it.

  For once, I let it simmer a little preparing only a package update via the GitHub repo without preparing a CRAN upload to lower the update frequency a little. Seeing that Conrad has started to release 7.300.0 tarballs, the time for a (final) 7.200.2 upload was now right.

  Just like the previous, it now requires a recent enough compiler. As g++ is so common, we explicitly test for version 4.6 or newer. So if you happen to be on an older RHEL or CentOS release, you may need to get yourself a more modern compiler. R on Windows is now at 4.9.3 which is decent (yet stable) choice; the 4.8 series of g++ will also do. For reference, the current LTS of Ubuntu is at 5.4.0, and we have g++ 6.1 available in Debian testing.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • me vs terminal emulator

  • How To Install Ubuntu In Windows

  • 6 wacky hacks for Linux on Windows

  • Avoiding data disasters with Sanoid

  • How to restore older file versions in Git

  • Need Linux or FOSS Help? Ways to Make Sure You Don’t Get It

  • Howdy, Ubuntu on Windows! Getting Started

  • TripleO QuickStart vs Attempt of official Mitaka TripleO HA install via instack-virt-setup

  • How to export e-mails from DBMail mailserver to Maildir format in a Linux VPS

  • How To Check Pokémon Go Server Status on Ubuntu

• Games

  • Stardew Valley is now in beta for Linux

    The Stardew Valley developer tweeted out a password for a beta, but after discussing it with them on their forum I was able to show them that we can’t actually access it yet.

    While what I was telling them may not have been entirely correct (SteamDB is confusing), the main point I made was correct. Normal keys are not able to access the beta yet, but beta/developer keys can, as it’s not currently set for Linux/Mac as a platform for us.

  • Physics-based 3D puzzler Human: Fall Flat released on Steam for Linux

    Human: Fall Flat is an open-ended physics puzzler with an optional local co-op mode, developed by No Brakes Games, and available now on Steam for Linux.

  • 7 Mages brings a touch more of traditional dungeon crawling to Linux

    Controlling a party of adventurers, exploring dungeons and fighting weird magical creatures is an RPG tradition as old as the genre. Expect all that and more in this modern iteration of the classical dungeon crawler.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• NWM: An X11 Window Manager Written In Node.js

  In case you ever wanted to have a Node.js window manager, there’s now one that works for X11 environments that works on Chrome OS, Debian, and friends.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • KDE Applications 16.08 Software Suite Is in Beta, Final Release Coming August 18

    Now that the third and last maintenance update of the KDE Applications 16.04 software suite has debuted, it’s time for us to take the Beta build of the next major KDE Applications release for a test drive.

  • We’ve come a long way from where we began!

    After working for several weeks on our WikiRating:Google Summer of Code project Davide, Alessandro and I have slowly reached up to the level where we can now visualize the entire project in its final stages.

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Bringing your kids to GUADEC 2016

  • GNOME Keysign – Report #2 GSoC 2016

    More than a week ago I blogged about the new GUI made with GtkBuilder and Glade [1]. Now, I will talk about what has changed since then with the GUI and also the new functionality that has been added to it.

    I will start with the new “transition” page which I’ve added for the key download phase. Before going more in depth, I have to say that the app knows at each moment in what state it is, which really helps in adding more functionality.

Distributions

• Chakra GNU/Linux Users Get KDE Plasma 5.7.2, Qt 5.7 and KDE Applications 16.04.3

  Chakra GNU/Linux developer Neofytos Kolokotronis today, July 25, 2016, announced the release of the latest KDE and Qt technologies, along with new software versions in the main repositories of the Linux kernel-based operating system.

• Reviews

  • Point Linux 3.2

    Point Linux released their newest version, 3.2, in June 2016. Their goal is, “To combine the power of Debian GNU/Linux with the productivity of MATE, the GNOME 2 desktop environment fork. Point Linux provides an easy-to-set-up-and-use distribution for users looking for a fast, stable and predictable desktop.”

    Point Linux aims to use MATE as their primary desktop environment, but also offers Xfce as an option. The Point Linux website is simple and professional. The download page is full of fresh and very nice options that allow the user to download the exact distro they require to fit their needs. Some of the options include 32- or 64-bit, torrent or direct download, and the location of the download server. I found using the website was effortless and the options available cut down on the download time (by giving the option to torrent or the location of the server) and lowered the install time by giving the consumer options before retrieving the whole file.

    The MATE desktop environment (DE) is available in the standard Debian installation media, but the full Debian installer image is 4.7GB, overwhelmingly large, and has too many DE options to make the disc any smaller. This is the small void that Point Linux fills. They provide the MATE desktop environment (or Xfce) and a significantly smaller live OS / installation media. Even when selecting the full featured desktop from the options on their website, the Point Linux installer is only 1.00GB. The “Desktop with core components” option lowers this installation media size further to 772MB.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

  • OpenMandriva Lx 3.0 Linux Is Coming Soon with Mesa 3D 12.0, Latest KDE Goodies

    Kate Lebedeff from the OpenMandriva project informed Softpedia about the availability of the first Release Candidate (RC) development build of the upcoming OpenMandriva Lx 3.0 operating system.

• OpenSUSE/SUSE

  • Introducing: openSUSE heroes

    During the last weeks, the openSUSE board and others expressed their concern about the current state of some openSUSE infrastructure: especially the reaction times to change something in the setup were mentioned multiple times. Looks like we lost some administrators and/or contact points at SUSE who helped out in the past to eliminate problems or work together with the community.

    As result, there was a meeting held during the openSUSE Conference 2016, including some SUSE employees and openSUSE community members to discuss the current situation and search for some possible solutions. The discussion was very fruitful and we’d like to share some of the results here to inform everyone and actively ask for help. If you want to join us, the openSUSE heroes, do not hesitate to contact us and join an incredible team!

• Slackware Family

  • The saga continues with Slackware 14.2

    Slackware is the oldest surviving Linux distribution and has been maintained since its birth by Patrick Volkerding. Slackware has a well deserved reputation for being stable, consistent and conservative. Slackware is released when it is ready, rather than on a set schedule, and fans of the distribution praise its no-frills and no-fuss design. Slackware adheres to a “keep it simple” philosophy similar to Arch Linux, in that the operating system does not do a lot of hand holding or automatic configuration. The user is expected to know what they are doing and the operating system generally stays out of the way. The latest release of Slackware, version 14.2, mostly offers software updates and accompanying hardware support. A few new features offer improved plug-n-play support for removable devices and this release of Slackware ships with the PulseAudio software. PulseAudio has been commonly found in the audio stack of most Linux distributions for several years, but that is a signature of Slackware: adding new features when they are needed, not when they become available. In this case PulseAudio was required as a dependency for another package.

    Slackware 14.2 is available in 32-bit and 64-bit builds for the x86 architecture. There is also an ARM build. While the main edition of Slackware is available as an installation disc only, there is a live edition of Slackware where we can explore a Slackware-powered desktop environment without installing the distribution. The live edition can be found on the Alien Base website. Both the live edition and the main installation media are approximately 2.6GB in size. For the purposes of this review I will be focusing on the main, installation-only edition.

    Booting from the install media brings us to a text screen where we are invited to type in any required kernel parameters. We can press the Enter key to take the default settings or wait two minutes for the media to continue booting. A text prompt then offers to let us load an alternative keyboard layout or use the default “US” layout. We are then brought to a text console where a brief blurb offers us tips for setting up disk partitions and swap space. The helpful text says we can create partitions and then run the system installer by typing “setup”.

• Red Hat Family

  • Finance

    • Notable Analyst Views: Illinois Tool Works Inc. (NYSE:ITW), Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT)

    • Pioneer Natural Resources Takes Over #26 Spot From Red Hat

    • Investor’s Observing Stocks: Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC), Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Earnings Focus and Crowd Sourced Sentiment Review for Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Take a look at Analyst Tips: Groupon, Inc. (NASDAQ:GRPN) , Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Top Technology Stock Picking: Red Hat, Inc. (RHT), Alphabet Inc. (GOOG)

    • Stock Slipping Lower This Year Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

  • Fedora

    • Fedora 24: systemd-analyze

      I am still searching for an explanation, but Google searches are not turning up much that is useful. In the end it is curiosity more than something that is actually impacting me as I am able to start working long before systemd-analyze is capable of giving me results and certainly it is not taking 1 minute and 30 seconds for the computer to boot. In fact, when I timed the boot it only took 18.5 seconds for me to get to the desktop.

    • It’s Time to Upgrade to Fedora 24 Linux If You’re Still Using Fedora 22

      Fedora Program Manager Jan Kurik announced that the Fedora 22 Linux operating system officially reached end of life on July 19, 2016, urging users to upgrade to either the Fedora 23 or Fedora 24.

      Of course, this is not the first time we inform our readers about the end of life (EOL) support for the Fedora 22 GNU/Linux distribution, but just in case you haven’t noticed our previous story, and you’re still using Fedora 22 on your personal computers or servers, it’s time to upgrade to a newer release immediately.

    • Blivet-gui 2.0

    • FISL17

      Ana Mativi, Rino (@Villadalmine), Itamar Jp, Ezequiel (QliXed) Brizuela, Bruno R. Zanuzzo, Eduardo Echeverria, Junior Wolnei e Daniel Lara. I personally knew only two of those people so it’s nice to see new faces behind the nicknames.

    • Looking forward to flock 2016

      Just over one week until flock ( https://flocktofedora.org ), Fedora’s main yearly conference. This time it’s in Kraków, Poland. This of course means a long time traveling for myself and other North American Fedorans, but it’s always well worth it.

    • PreLinuxDay: Talk about Fedora QA and L10N

      Linux Day is a global celebration of Linux. According to the event site, there is currently 9 teams in 5 countries. One of these teams is from my country, Panama. The responsible of doing this is Jose Reyes, our newest Panamanian Fedora Ambassador.

    • Final phase

      Last week I finished up the prototype for the release widget fully and started coding the calendar widget monthly view and weekly view. So far the implementation consists of the main view and weekly view (link). I am hoping to finish this by Monday evening and concentrate on prototyping the empty state widget.

    • Reworking Docs

      In May of this year the docs team, with the help of some great folks from Red Hat and the CentOS project held a Documentation FAD. During that event we discussed a lot of important topics including the docs team’s publishing toolchain, and the barrier to entry that is docbook.

    • Korora 23 – is it an alternative to Linux Mint?

      Cinnamon is a desktop environment that is widely promoted by the Linux Mint team. Linux Mint Cinnamon is their flagship distribution. In its turn, Linux Mint is a leader in the world of Linux distributions, especially for the newbie-oriented part of it. Unfortunately, the recent release of Linux Mint 18 made things worse, and many Linux bloggers wrote about this.

      There was a comment on my recent post about Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon that asked me to look into the Korora distribution.

    • Check out these Korora Wallpapers

    • Slack 14.2 & Korora 23 Reviewed, Distros for Average Joe

      Jesse Smith reviewed Slackware 14.2 in today’s Distrowatch Weekly, saying it was stable as always if a bit dated topping Monday’s Linux news. Elsewhere, The Everyday Linux User listed his top five distributions for the “everyday Linux user” and DarkDuck test drove Korora 23 Live. Christine Hall gave Mint 18 a solid meh and OpenBSD kicked Linux to the curb.

    • Korora 24 “Sheldon” Linux Is Available Only for 64-bit PCs, Based on Fedora 24

      After a long wait, the Korora 24 GNU/Linux distribution has been released, based, as its version number suggests, on many of the technologies included in the popular Fedora 24 operating system.

    • Dale Raby: How do you Fedora?

      Dale started using Linux around 1999 when he became disconcerted with his Windows 95 computer and a young clerk in an office supply store told him about Linux. “I started reading some of the magazines, most notably Maximum Linux and eventually got to know their senior editor, Woody Hughes and Show Me the Code columnist Mae Ling Mak,” said Raby. His first distribution was Mandrake 6.5 which came in a box with a boot floppy.

      Raby manages a small gun shop in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He is also an author with four published books: The Post-Apocalyptic Blacksmith, 777 Bon Mots for Gunslighers and Other Real Men, The Wives of Jacob I, and In the Beginning.

    • Lennart Poettering Announces systemd 231 Init System for GNU/Linux Distributions

      Today, July 25, 2016, systemd creator Lennart Poettering has proudly announced the release and general availability of the systemd 231 init system for major GNU/Linux OSes.

      Bringing lots of fixes and numerous additions, systemd 231 is now the most advanced version of the modern and controversial init system that has been adopted in the last few years by more and more Linux kernel-based operating systems, including Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, openSUSE, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and many others.

    • Systemd 231 Officially Released

    • systemd 231

    • New Taskotron Tasks

      For a while now, we, Fedora QA, have been busy with building Taskotron core features and didn’t have much resources for additions to the tasks that Taskotron runs. That changed a few weeks back when we started running task-dockerautotest, task-abicheck and task-rpmgrill tasks in our dev environment. Since we have been happy with the results of having run those tasks, we deployed them to the production instance as well last week. Please note that the results of those tasks are informative only. Lets introduce the tasks briefly:

• Debian Family

  • Debian LGBTIQA+

    I have a long overdue blog entry about what happened in recent times. People that follow my tweets did catch some things. Most noteworthy there was the Trans*Inter*Congress in Munich at the start of May. It was an absolute blast. I met so many nice and great people, talked and experienced so many great things there that I’m still having a great motivational push from it every time I think back. It was also the time when I realized that I in fact do have body dysphoria even though I thought I’m fine with my body in general: Being tall is a huge issue for me. Realizing that I have a huge issue (yes, pun intended) with my length was quite relieving, even though it doesn’t make it go away. It’s something that makes passing and transitioning for me harder. I’m well aware that there are tall women, and that there are dedicated shops for lengthy women, but that’s not the only thing that I have trouble with. What bothers me most is what people read into tall people: that they are always someone they can lean on for comfort, that tall people are always considered to be self confident and standing up for themselves (another pun, I know … my bad).

  • [GSOC] Week 8&9 Report

    This particular week has been tiresome as I did catch a cold ;). I did come back from Cape Town where debconf taking place. My arrival at Montreal was in the middle of the week, so this week is not plenty of news…

  • Debian on Jetson TK1

    I became interested in running Debian on NVIDIA’s Tegra platform recently. NVIDIA is doing a great job getting support for Tegra upstream (u-boot, kernel, X.org and other projects). As part of ensuring good Debian support for Tegra, I wanted to install Debian on a Jetson TK1, a development board from NVIDIA based on the Tegra K1 chip (Tegra 124), a 32-bit ARM chip.

  • RC bugs 2016/01-29

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Women In Tech: Jane Silber, CEO Of Canonical

        When I sat down to interview Jane Silber, CEO of Canonical, I don’t think it was lost on either of us that our ability to chat freely even though I was in my office in the middle of the U.S. and she was in her office in London, England had everything to do with cloud computing, an area in which her company does brisk business.

        Silber has been running Canonical (maker of Ubuntu, among a great many other software products) in one form or another for well over a decade at this point, first as COO and now CEO. She answers questions thoughtfully, with carefully chosen words; even though I’m sure I’m not the first journalist to ask her some of the below questions (maybe not even the first one this week), she had no canned responses, and she never veered off course to discuss her own agenda. There were no preset talking points; simply, I asked questions, and she answered them.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Ubuntu GNOME 16.04.1 LTS Released but Still Doesn’t Uses the GNOME 3.20 Stack

          As we reported last week, Canonical published the first point release of its long-term supported Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, offering users new installation mediums with all the updates made available since April 21, 2016.

Devices/Embedded

• Artila Releases New Cortex-A5 based industrial embedded Linux computer

• Phones

  • Tizen

    • Samsung to setup a Tizen Academy in Telangana, India

      Samsung originally released their first Tizen smartphone, the Samsung Z1, in India last year and with that move have signalled the importance of the Indian sub-continent to their future Tizen plans. Now, the korean tech giant is looking at setting up a Tizen Academy in the Telangana state in India. Samsung Electronics this month have signed an agreement with the Telangana Academy of Skill and Training (TASK). As part of the deal App developers from the Telangana state will receive special mentoring on the Tizen Operating System (OS).

  • Android

    • Ford will offer Apple CarPlay and Android Auto on all 2017 vehicles

    • Twitter now has a night mode on Android

      Twitter may finally have found the feature that gets people excited about its service again: night mode. Twitter is launching a night mode feature on Android today that switches most of the interface from white to a really deep blue. It looks nice, and I have no doubt that a lot of people will use it, because everyone seems to love a good night mode.

    • Remix chomps Marshmallow, updates its Android for PCs

    • As an iPhone user, I couldn’t be more jealous of Google’s newest Android feature

    • Android Nexus phones can now screen spam calls

    • Google launches Emergency Location Service for Android

    • How to fix “Snapchat login temporarily failed” error on Android

    • Android will now automatically send your location to 999 operators

    • Why your Android phone could now save your life

    • How to use Prisma for Android

    • BlackBerry officially announces the DTEK50, pre-orders now open for $299

    • Android-powered BlackBerry Neon leaks online with official images and specifications

    • BlackBerry’s cheaper DTEK 50 skips the keyboard, but keeps Android

    • BlackBerry Launches Its Second Android-Powered Phone

    • Top 15 Android smartphones we reviewed recently

      The second half of 2016 took off with some exciting launches from notable manufacturers like Motorola, HTC, Xiaomi and others. With so many smartphones being launched on a near-daily basis by brands both big and small, it gets quite difficult to keep track of them.

    • Google and Android avoid ‘bullet through the head’ as Cyanogen lays off staffers

    • Prisma for Android

    • Prisma has launched on Android

    • Prisma is now available to everyone on Android

    • The popular Prisma app is now on Android — here’s how it works

    • Must read: top 10 Android stories

    • Apple CarPlay, Android Auto Coming to All New Ford Vehicles

    • All 2017 Ford vehicles are getting CarPlay and Android Auto

    • Ford’s SYNC 3 Brings Android Auto, CarPlay To All Models

    • HTC ‘Marlin’ Nexus Prototype Running Android Nougat Leaked in Image

    • HTC Nexus Sailfish leak reveals 1080p display, MSM8996 chipset

      Twitter leaker Evan Blass is apparently in possession of a ROM dump from one of the upcoming 2017 Nexus phones. The smaller of the two rumored devices, internally known as Sailfish or the HTC S1, has just had its build.prop file shared on Twitter, uncovering a couple of device specs including display resolution and the chipset to be used.

    • Google Maps for Android Getting Wi-Fi Only Mode and More

    • Google Maps for Android to add “WiFi-only” mode

    • July Android Security Update Causing Nexus 5 Volume Bug; Fix Coming Soon

    • Superbook gives Android smartphones a laptop form factor

    • Android Operating System Specific Crashes

    • What’s new in Android Nougat

    • The Great White Way Heads to Android: Check Out the New Broadway.com App!

    • Google adds Emergency Location Service to Android, rolling out first in the UK and Estonia

    • Android Feature Helps Pinpoint Mobile User Locations in Emergencies

    • Google Camera gets twist gesture in Nougat Dev Preview 5

    • How to free up space on your Android phone or tablet

    • This $100 smartwatch is powered by Android

      The smartwatch market may not be the next big thing as many hoped it would be, but that isn’t stopping countless smaller companies from trying to take a piece of the pie. The latest effort comes from a Chinese company called Mobvoi and is an Android-based smartwatch complete with its own proprietary software and voice assistant. The Ticwatch 2 is launching through a Kickstarter campaign today and is expected to hit retail availability in the US and Europe this fall. The starting price for backers is under $100.

    • Remix OS for PC upgraded to Marshmallow, supports more hardware

      Remix OS has been putting Android 5.1 on PCs for only half a year, but now users can upgrade their devices to Android Marshmallow. The update also makes the OS compatible with additional NVIDIA and AMD GPUs, which adds support for more than a dozen x86 PCs and laptops. It can be installed on most Intel-based PCs and Macs, although Android and most of its apps will probably always work best on ARM.

Wal-Mart Proves Open Source Is Big Business

Keeping the FCC and Open Source Happy

The FCC is worried. You and they spend all this time and energy getting your radio certified, and then some bozo hacks in, changes how the radio works, and puts you out of spec.

And so, back in early 2015, the FCC issued some guidelines or questions regarding WiFi devices – particularly home routers – in an effort to ensure that your radio isn’t hackable.

The result has been that some router makers have simply locked down the platform so that it’s no longer possible to do after-market modifications, and this has caused an outcry by after-market modifiers. The reason why it’s an issue is that these open-source developers have used the platform for adding apps or other software that, presumably, have nothing to do with the radio.

In an attempt to find the magic middle way, the prpl organization, headed by Imagination Technologies (IMG) and featuring the MIPS architecture, recently put out a proof of concept that they say gives both assurance to the FCC and freedom to open-source developers.

Questions from the FCC

Wire open-sources messaging client, woos developers

Communications startup Wire has open-sourced the full codebase for its Wire app, so it’s easier for developers to build their own encrypted messaging clients.

Wire open-sourced the rest of the client base that wasn’t initially publicly available, including components related to the user interface, the web and native clients, and some internal developer tools. The company always planned to open-source the codebase, but didn’t start out that way initially “because we were still working on other features,” Alan Duric, co-founder and CTO of Wire, wrote in a Medium post.

Events

• TUG 2016 – Day 1 – Routers and Reading

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Servo Is Planning For More GPU-Accelerated WebRender Improvements

    As mentioned in today’s This Week in Servo newsletter, their Q3 roadmap plans have been published.

    Among the work to be tackled by Mozilla developers working on the next-generation Servo layout engine this quarter includes finishing the development of WebRender, experiments around WebRender 2, Stylo as the sryle system in Gecko integration work, and continuing with the Servo nightly builds support. There’s also work around Promise API, Autolander migration, Android work, auto-updating, JavaScript error reporting, Web Font loading, performance improvements, correcting more layout bugs, etc. You can see the current road-map via this GitHub page.

  • What Happens to Mozilla and its Deal with Yahoo?

    In late 2014, many observers were flummoxed to see that Yahoo and Mozilla had announced a “strategic five-year partnership” agreement which would make Yahoo the primary search option for Firefox. Mozilla was up for renewal negotiations for its deal with Google, which had historically subsidized more than 90 percent of Mozilla’s revenues, to the tune of more than $300 million per year at times. In return, for lots of money, Google got primary search placement in the Firefox browser over the years.

    Last week, though, Verizon,announced its intention to purchase Yahoo for $4.8 billion. What are the implications for Mozilla and its deal? Here are the details.

SaaS/Back End

• OpenStack Pico and Questa set to Debut in 2017 and 2018.

  Members of the OpenStack Foundation have been voting on upcoming release names and the results are now in.

• Partnerships Ensure That OpenStack’s Future is Running Containers on Kubernetes

• Open source & cloud computing

  Today’s interview is with David Egts, chief technologist, North America Public Sector at Red Hat. Red Hat has been around for twenty-five years and has hit over two billion on annual revenue. Topics range from open source to partnering with Microsoft to the up and coming DevNationFederal.

  In the federal government circles, Red Had made a big splash years ago by working with NASA to have incredibly fast systems. Red Hat has expanded so much in the past decade that the conversation with Egts didn’t even get to NASA.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

• Open source project on Facebook will allow you to design apps [Ed: React is NOT "open source", Facebook maintains or reserves rights to revoke licence from competition]

BSD

• pfSense 2.3.2 Open Source BSD Firewall Distro Arrives with over 70 Improvements

  Electric Sheep Fencing LLC, through Chris Buechler, proudly announced on July 25, 2016, the immediate availability for download of the second maintenance update aimed at the pfSense 2.3 series of the FreeBSD-based open-source firewall distribution.

• OpenBSD 6.0 to be released September 1, 2016

  Theo de Raadt (deraadt@) has updated the (in-progress) OpenBSD 6.0 release page to indicate that release will occur earlier than is usual…

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• Open Data

  • Austria awards ‘Open Data Oscars’

    Last month, the Austrian State Secretary Muna Duzdar handed out the ‘Oscars of the Open Data Community’. The awards were part of the ‘open4data.at challenge 2016′ organised earlier this year. The annual challenge aims to bring open data and ideas together in innovative and creative solutions.

  • Open data platform on Emilia-Romagna reconstruction

    After the two earthquakes that caused multiple casualties and widespread damage in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna in 2012, multiple programmes were launched to reconstruct the affected areas. To make these efforts more transparent, a team from the Gran Sasso Science Institute last week presented an Open Data platform that will provide all information on who is responsible, which company is doing what, and how the money is being spent.

    The ‘Open Data Ricostruzione’ initiative was presented last week at the Italian Festival of Participation. The platform will bring together all the numbers, figures and information on the reconstruction, and allow visitors to visualise, filter, track and map the available data. All information will be made available as open data, in the original database format as well as JSON.

• Open Access/Content

  • Open is the solution to improving 21st century education

    Much of the Internet runs Linux and open source software, yet in most of our schools—whether PK-12 or higher education—Linux and open source software are given short shrift.

    Linux has made serious inroads on hand-held devices, the desktop, and the Internet of things (IoT) that use platforms such as Raspberry Pi, Galileo, and Arduino. Despite this astounding growth, a relatively small number of secondary and post-secondary schools offer technology training that prepares students for increasingly in-demand technical skills. The growth of the maker movement and the concurrent interest in STEM skills, which include coding and ethical hacking, may provide a much-needed impetus to change this trend.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • AArch64 desktop hardware?

    Soon there will be four years since I started working on AArch64 architecture. Lot of software things changed during that time. Lot in a hardware too. But machines availability still sucks badly.

    In 2012 all we had was software model. It was slow, terribly slow. Common joke was AArch64 developers standing in a queue for 10GHz x86-64 cpus. So I was generating working binaries by using cross compilation. But many distributions only do native builds. In models. Imagine Qt4 building for 3-4 days…

    In 2013 I got access to first server hardware. With first silicon version of CPU. Highly unstable, we could use just one core etc. GCC was crashing like hell but we managed to get stable build results from it. Qt4 was building in few hours now.

  • RISC-V on an FPGA, pt. 1

    Last year I had open source instruction set RISC-V running Linux emulated in qemu. However to really get into the architecture, and restore my very rusty FPGA skills, wouldn’t it be fun to have RISC-V working in real hardware.

    The world of RISC-V is pretty confusing for outsiders. There are a bunch of affiliated companies, researchers who are producing actual silicon (nothing you can buy of course), and the affiliated(?) lowRISC project which is trying to produce a fully open source chip. I’m starting with lowRISC since they have three iterations of a design that you can install on reasonably cheap FPGA development boards like the one above. (I’m going to try to install “Untether 0.2” which is the second iteration of their FPGA design.)

  • RISC-V on an FPGA, pt. 2

  • RISC-V on an FPGA, pt. 3

  • RISC-V on an FPGA, pt. 4

  • RISC-V on an FPGA, pt. 5

Hardware

• In Memoriam: The VCR, 1956 – 2016

  The future was closer than ever with the hip-sounding Sony U-matic, which came on the market in 1971. It could fast-forward and rewind! Then the Philips VCR, made available to consumers in 1972, changed the game with its first model, the N1500, that incorporated all the best qualities of recorders that came before it. There were basic controls — the play, pause, fast-forward, and rewind buttons — plus a clock with a timer, so you could record shows when you weren’t even home.

Health/Nutrition

• The Porn ‘Public Health Crisis’ Has Competition

  With all the protests, plagiarism allegations, and literal smoke that swirled around the Republican National Convention, it’s easy to forget about the drier parts—like approving the 2016 GOP platform. But you should probably read it, because more than any word salad Duck Dynasty dude or Scott Baio might have to offer, the Republican platform indicates the GOP grownup’s actual priorities. Same deal with the Democratic platform, passed on the first day of the Democratic National Convention.

  One of the Republican platform’s buzziest stances is that pornography “has become a public health crisis that is destroying the lives of millions.” Not that porn can’t be sleazy and problematic. But a crisis of public health? Like, say, Zika? Or opioid addiction? Or, you know, cancer?

• Swift Decision On Plain Packaging At WTO Unlikely; Ukraine Drops Out

  As the list of countries adopting legislation making the packaging of tobacco products a lot less sexy is growing, the long-awaited decision of a World Trade Organization panel on Australia’s decision to enforce such legislation might not be coming before the end of the year. Meanwhile, one of the countries complaining about Australia’s legislation has left the fight.

• Officials Discuss Meeting Global Fund Target Of US$13B

  As the fund to help the world’s most suffering prepares for a conference hosted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the government of Canada in September to raise US$13 billion for its 2017-2019 period, the prospect of failing to meet the target is unsettling for the civil society and the health community.

• The U.S. Blew $1.4 Billion on Abstinence Education in Africa

  That is the amount of money the U.S. spent over a 10-year period from 2004 through 2013 promoting abstinence before marriage as a way of preventing HIV in 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Unfortunately, according to the most comprehensive independent study conducted to date of the effort, the money was more or less wasted. A rigorous comparison of national data from countries that received abstinence funding under the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) with those that got none of the funding showed no difference in the age of first sexual experience or in the number of sexual partners or teenage pregnancies—all aspects of behaviors that have been linked to a higher risk of becoming infected with HIV.

• Abortion and contraception in India: the role of men

  The callous attitude of Indian men that ‘she can always abort’ in cases of an unwanted pregnancy caused by failure to use a condom needs to be tackled at the root.

Security

• Security advisories for Monday

• EU to Give Free Security Audits to Apache HTTP Server and Keepass

  The European Commission announced on Wednesday that its IT engineers would provide a free security audit for the Apache HTTP Server and KeePass projects.

  The EC selected the two projects following a public survey that took place between June 17 and July 8 and that received 3,282 answers.

  The survey and security audit are part of the EU-FOSSA (EU-Free and Open Source Software Auditing) project, a test pilot program that received funding of €1 million until the end of the year.

• What is your browser really doing?

  While Microsoft would prefer you use its Edge browser on Windows 10 as part of its ecosystem, the most popular Windows browser is Google’s Chrome. But there is a downside to Chrome – spying and battery life.

  It all started when Microsoft recently announced that its Edge browser used less battery power than Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or Opera on Windows 10 devices. It also measured telemetry – what the Windows 10 device was doing when using different browsers.

  What it found was that the other browsers had a significantly higher central processing unit (CPU), and graphics processing unit (GPU) overhead when viewing the same Web pages. It also proved that using Edge resulted in 36-53% more battery life when performing the same tasks as the others.

  Let’s not get into semantics about which search engine — Google or Bing — is better; this was about simple Web browsing, opening new tabs and watching videos. But it started a discussion as to why CPU and GPU usage was far higher. And it relates to spying and ad serving.

• Is Computer Security Becoming a Hardware Problem?

  In December of 1967 the Silver Bridge collapsed into the Ohio River, killing 46 people. The cause was determined to be a single 2.5 millimeter defect in a single steel bar—some credit the Mothman for the disaster, but to most it was an avoidable engineering failure and a rebuttal to the design philosophy of substituting high-strength non-redundant building materials for lower-strength albeit layered and redundant materials. A partial failure is much better than a complete failure.

  [...]

  In 1996, Kocher co-authored the SSL v3.0 protocol, which would become the basis for the TLS standard. TLS is the difference between HTTP and HTTPS and is responsible for much of the security that allows for the modern internet. He argues that, barring some abrupt and unexpected advance in quantum computing or something yet unforeseen, TLS will continue to safeguard the web and do a very good job of it. What he’s worried about is hardware: untested linkages in digital bridges.

• Your Smart Robot Is Coming in Five Years, But It Might Get Hacked and Kill You

  A new report commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security forecasts that autonomous artificially intelligent robots are just five to 10 years away from hitting the mainstream—but there’s a catch.

  The new breed of smart robots will be eminently hackable. To the point that they might be re-programmed to kill you.

  The study, published in April, attempted to assess which emerging technology trends are most likely to go mainstream, while simultaneously posing serious “cybersecurity” problems.

  The good news is that the near future is going to see some rapid, revolutionary changes that could dramatically enhance our lives. The bad news is that the technologies pitched to “become successful and transformative” in the next decade or so are extremely vulnerable to all sorts of back-door, front-door, and side-door compromises.

• Trump, DNC, RNC Flunk Email Security Test

  At issue is a fairly technical proposed standard called DMARC. Short for “domain-based messaging authentication reporting and conformance,” DMARC tries to solve a problem that has plagued email since its inception: It’s surprisingly difficult for email providers and end users alike to tell whether a given email is real – i.e. that it really was sent by the person or organization identified in the “from:” portion of the missive.

• NIST Prepares to Ban SMS-Based Two-Factor Authentication

  The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released the latest draft version of the Digital Authentication Guideline that contains language hinting at a future ban on SMS-based Two-Factor Authentication (2FA).

  The Digital Authentication Guideline (DAG) is a set of rules used by software makers to build secure services, and by governments and private agencies to assess the security of their services and software.

  NIST experts are constantly updating the guideline, in an effort to keep pace with the rapid change in the IT sector.

• 1.6m Clash of Kings forum accounts ‘stolen’

  Details about 1.6 million users on the Clash of Kings online forum have been hacked, claims a breach notification site.

  The user data from the popular mobile game’s discussion forum were allegedly targeted by a hacker on 14 July.

  Tech site ZDNet has reported the leaked data includes email addresses, IP addresses and usernames.

• Hacker steals 1.6 million accounts from top mobile game’s forum [Ed: vBulletin is proprietary software -- the same crap Canonical used for Ubuntu forums]

• Tuesday’s security updates

• Oops: Bounty-hunter found Vine’s source code in plain sight

  A bounty-hunter has gone public with a complete howler made by Vine, the six-second-video-loop app Twitter acquired in 2012.

  According to this post by @avicoder (Vjex at GitHub), Vine’s source code was for a while available on what was supposed to be a private Docker registry.

  While docker.vineapp.com, hosted at Amazon, wasn’t meant to be available, @avicoder found he was able to download images with a simple pull request.

• US standards lab says SMS is no good for authentication

  America’s National Institute for Standards and Technology has advised abandonment of SMS-based two-factor authentication.

  That’s the gist of the latest draft of its Digital Authentication Guideline, here. Down in section 5.1.3.2, the document says out-of-band verification using SMS is deprecated and won’t appear in future releases of NIST’s guidance.

Defence/Aggression

• Exclusive: MH370 Pilot Flew a Suicide Route on His Home Simulator Closely Matching Final Flight

  New York has obtained a confidential document from the Malaysian police investigation into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that shows that the plane’s captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, conducted a simulated flight deep into the remote southern Indian Ocean less than a month before the plane vanished under uncannily similar circumstances. The revelation, which Malaysia withheld from a lengthy public report on the investigation, is the strongest evidence yet that Zaharie made off with the plane in a premeditated act of mass murder-suicide.

• Japan Knife Attack Kills 19 at Center for Disabled

  A former employee of a center for the disabled in a Tokyo suburb broke into the building and killed 19 people with a knife early Tuesday, local officials said.

  The suspect, Satoshi Uematsu, 26, went on a rampage around 2:20 a.m. in Sagamihara, a town an hour west of Tokyo, according to the authorities in Kanagawa Prefecture. Twenty-five people were reported wounded, all but one of them seriously.

  Just half an hour after the attack, Mr. Uematsu turned himself in at a nearby police station and was charged with attempted murder. Additional charges were expected. The attack was the worst mass killing in Japan in decades. The country has one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

• Defeating Islamic Terrorism. Here’s How…

  As terrorism struck again in Nice and Germany and… Donald Trump outlined his policy against Islamic State: as president, he will seek a full declaration of war from Congress, the first such formal invocation since Pearl Harbor.

  Trump was short on specifics but very clear he would take the strategies of the post-9/11 era into a presidency. Clinton, for her part, intends on “intensifying the current air campaign [and] stepping up support for local forces on the ground.” Their French counterpart, President Francois Hollande, declared “We will continue striking those who attack us on our own soil.”

• Doctors in Danger: How the Assad Regime is Targeting Syrian Physicians

  In Syria’s civil war, it’s dangerous to even treat the wounded. Since the beginning of the civil war, the Syrian government has killed hundreds of medical personnel, and dozens of doctors have been assassinated by ISIS. The few doctors who dare to treat the casualties have been forced to work in secret.

  In his piece for the New Yorker, journalist Ben Taub profiles some of the underground community of health providers, documenting how they’re keeping clinics open and preserving medical knowledge, despite the risk of violence from both President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and ISIS.

• The Atlantic Council: The Marketing Arm of the Military/Security Complex

  The sales pitch is titled “Arming For Deterrence.” The Kremlin is unpredictable, say the arms salesmen, and could at any moment decide to attack Poland. However the Russian regime “respects a show of force” and would back down if Poland has a sufficient inventory of US weapons.

  The sales pitch encourages Poland to take many aggressive and dangerous steps toward Russia, such as targeting Russia cities and facilities including RT. But before provoking the Bear like this, Poland needs “to join the tactical nuclear capability scheme within NATO, so enabling its F-16s to be carriers of tactical nuclear ordnance.”

• French officer claims interior ministry made her alter Nice attack report

  A senior French police officer has claimed that the interior ministry “harassed” her into altering a security report from the deadly terrorist attack in Nice.

  Sandra Bertin, the officer in charge of Nice’s CCTV control room, told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper on Sunday that an unnamed interior ministry official contacted her after the attack and pressured her into altering her report for the night of the incident.

  On July 14, a truck driver plowed through a Bastille Day crowd in Nice, killing 84 people and wounding 200 others.

  Bertin claims that she was “harassed for an hour” by the official who wanted her to detail the presence of local and national police at the fireworks event where the carnage took place.

• How US Propaganda Fuels New Cold War

  The anti-Russian propaganda across the U.S. political/media system is so pervasive that even members of Congress know little about the events that launched a new Cold War, as Elizabeth Murray learned and David Swanson reported.

• Israel/Palestine: Bad Policy, Bad Politics

  To understand why the United States fails so miserably in efforts to achieve an Israeli/Palestinian peace, all you need to do is take a look at the mix of bad policy and bad politics found in the Israel/Palestine sections of platforms of both the Republican and Democratic parties.

• The Secret US-UK Airwar Against Iraq

  The Chilcot Inquiry, set up to look into the British role in the war in Iraq, reported on July 6, and although it was overshadowed by the political fallout from the Brexit vote to leave the European Union, received a largely favorable reception from the media and commentators. It is unclear why those commentators judged it to be “hard-hitting” because in terms of its conclusions all it did was tell us what we already knew.

  Then British Prime Minister Tony Blair pursued a war that was arguably illegal has had disastrous consequences, not least for the 179 British servicemen and women killed and their loved ones, but also for Iraq, its people and the fight against terrorism.

  I was staggered by the rush to say the report was hard hitting. It wasn’t. It simply laid out the facts in a narrative format and let the reader decide. Those facts were of course damning but I struggle to find anything in the report that a well informed reader of British newspapers wouldn’t already know.

  It was a very workmanlike narrative of what happened taken from secret documents and witness testimony and therefore providing far more detail than had been previously available but it was not anything like a proper inquiry in the real sense. It was more like a neutral court report than the solid analysis which was required, and what we actually got from the curiously much derided Butler report.

• There’s No Business Like the Arms Business

  When American firms dominate a global market worth more than $70 billion a year, you’d expect to hear about it. Not so with the global arms trade. It’s good for one or two stories a year in the mainstream media, usually when the annual statistics on the state of the business come out.

  It’s not that no one writes about aspects of the arms trade. There are occasional pieces that, for example, take note of the impact of U.S. weapons transfers, including cluster bombs, to Saudi Arabia, or of the disastrous dispensation of weaponry to U.S. allies in Syria, or of foreign sales of the costly, controversial F-35 combat aircraft. And once in a while, if a foreign leader meets with the president, U.S. arms sales to his or her country might generate an article or two. But the sheer size of the American arms trade, the politics that drive it, the companies that profit from it, and its devastating global impacts are rarely discussed, much less analyzed in any depth.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• Wikileaks Leak Of Turkish Emails Reveals Private Details; Raises Ethical Questions

  Last week, we (like many others) reported on the news that Turkey was blocking access to Wikileaks, after the site released approximately 300,000 emails, supposedly from the Turkish government. We’ve long been defenders of Wikileaks as a media organization, and its right to publish various leaks that it gets. However, Zeynep Tufekci, who has long been a vocal critic of the Turkish government (and deeply engaged in issues involving the internet as a platform for speech) is noting that the leak wasn’t quite what Wikileaks claimed it was — and, in fact appears to have revealed a ton of private info on Turkish citizens.

• WikiLeaks Put Women in Turkey in Danger, for No Reason

  Just days after a bloody coup attempt shook Turkey, WikiLeaks dumped some 300,000 emails they chose to call “Erdogan emails.” In response, Turkey’s internet governance body swiftly blocked access to WikiLeaks.

  For many, blocking WikiLeaks was confirmation that the emails were damaging to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the government, revealing corruption or other wrongdoing. There was a stream of articles about “censorship.” Even U.S. National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden tweeted the news of the WikiLeaks block with the comment: “How to authenticate a leak.”

  But Snowden couldn’t have been more wrong about an act that was irresponsible, of no public interest and of potential danger to millions of ordinary, innocent people, especially millions of women in Turkey.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• Crisis on high

  At the top of the world a climate disaster is unfolding that will impact the lives of more than 1 billion people.

  Deep in the Himalayas sits a remote research station that is tracking an alarming trend in climate change, with implications that could disrupt the lives of more than 1 billion people and pitch the most populated region of the world into chaos.

  The station lies in the heart of a region called the Third Pole, an area that contains the largest area of frozen water outside of the North Pole and South Pole.

  Despite its relative anonymity, the Third Pole is vitally important; it is the source of Asia’s 10 largest rivers including the Yellow, the Yangzi, the Mekong, the Irrawaddy and the Ganges — and their fertile deltas.

• Peru Scrambles to Drive Out Illegal Gold Mining and Save Precious Land

  The miners use so much mercury to process the gold that the government declared a health emergency in much of the Madre de Dios region in May. Tests in 97 villages found that more than 40 percent of the people had absorbed dangerous levels of the heavy metal. Mercury poisoning affects people in many ways, from chronic headaches to kidney damage, but it is most harmful to children, who are likely to suffer permanent brain damage.

• The global environmental impact of air conditioning is big and will get even bigger

  With a heat wave pushing the heat index well above 100° F (38 °C) through much of the US, most of us are happy to stay indoors and crank the air conditioning. And if you think it’s hot here, try 124 °F in India. Globally, 2016 is poised to be another record-breaking year for average temperatures. This means more air conditioning. Much more.

  In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), Paul Gertler and I examine the enormous global potential for air conditioning. As incomes rise around the world and global temperatures go up, people are buying air conditioners at alarming rates. In China, for example, sales of air conditioners have nearly doubled over the last five years. Each year now more than 60 million air conditioners are sold in China, more than eight times as many as are sold annually in the United States.

• EPA Admits Airplane Pollution’s Climate Danger But Drags Feet on Emissions Rules

  After nine years of delay, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today officially acknowledged in a so-called “endangerment finding” that planet-warming pollution from airplanes disrupts the climate and endangers human welfare. But the agency failed to move forward on rules to actually reduce aircraft emissions.

  “EPA officials finally acknowledged airplane pollution’s obvious climate threat, but they’re still not actually cutting the airline industry’s skyrocketing emissions,” said Vera Pardee, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. “After nearly a decade of denial and delay, we need fast, effective EPA action. The Obama administration must quickly devise ambitious aircraft pollution rules that dramatically reduce this high-flying hazard to our climate.”

• British badgers are more afraid of the BBC than of bears — and that’s very bad

  Armed with a speaker system and a bucket full of peanuts, wildlife ecologist Liana Zanette hiked into the Wytham Woods with just one mission: to terrorize some woodland creatures with recordings of the BBC.

  For five nights, she broadcast snippets of BBC documentaries and news programs — as well as clips from the Canadian radio show “Quirks and Quarks” and the audiobook of “The Wind in the Willows” — to a forest full of unsuspecting English badgers. She and her colleagues then monitored the animals’ response to the sounds in order to measure how much they feared humans.

  “Oh, I don’t want to be dissing public radio and television,” Zanette hurriedly insisted when I asked whether she thought the BBC was frightening. She laughed, “I had all these clips on hand because it’s what I love to listen to.”

  Zanette, a professor at Western University in Ontario, has spent much of her career studying “the landscape of fear,” how animals’ anxiety about getting eaten by predators shapes their behavior and in turn, shapes the ecosystem in which they live. She’s used a similar methodology — playing predator sounds through a speaker system, then watching to see how animals respond — at least a dozen times before. Then, last year, she read a study in Science claiming that humans had become a “superpredator,” killing mesocarnivores like badgers four times as much as non-human predators do.

• Planned Gas Pipeline Construction on East Coast Puts Climate at Risk: Report

  Nineteen now-pending pipeline projects, if constructed, would let enough natural gas flow out of the Appalachian basin to cause the entire US to blow through its climate pledges, ushering the world into more than 2 degrees Celsius of global warming, a newly released report by Oil Change International concludes.

  Even if the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently-announced methane rules manage to slash leaks from new natural gas infrastructure as planned, building those pipelines would be catastrophic for the climate, the researchers warn.

  “All together, these 19 pending pipeline projects would enable 116 trillion cubic feet of additional gas production by 2050,” the report, entitled A Bridge Too Far: How Appalachian Basin Gas Pipeline Expansion Will Undermine U.S. Climate Goals, says. “The currently planned gas production expansion in Appalachia would make meeting U.S. climate goals impossible, even if the [Obama] Administration’s newly proposed methane rules are successful in reducing methane leakage by 45 percent.”

• The Remarkable Inconsistency Of Climate Denial

  This is a year of politics. That means everyone has opinions about where the world should be headed and how we should get there.

  No matter how weird this political season has been, however, there remains a key difference between opinions and facts. That difference comes into the starkest relief when people must face their own inconsistencies in reconciling the two domains.

  And nowhere is the gap between opinions and facts more apparent than the subject of climate change. As a recent action by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) demonstrates, for climate deniers there is a chasm between what is said and what is done.

Finance

• UK suspended payments from £3bn EU development fund days after Brexit vote

  Payments from a £3bn European development fund were suspended indefinitely by the UK Government, just days after the vote to leave the EU, The Independent can reveal.

  In a move that exposes the almost immediate impact of Brexit on the UK economy, businesses say they have been told they will not now receive money that was due to be paid out under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

• Panama Papers Reveal Wide Use of Shell Companies by African Officials

  Entrepreneurs and corrupt officials across Africa have used shell companies to hide profits from the sale of natural resources and the bribes paid to gain access to them, according to records leaked from a Panamanian law firm.

  Owners of the hidden companies include, from Nigeria alone, three oil ministers, several senior employees of the national oil company and two former state governors who were convicted of laundering ill-gotten money from the oil industry, new reports about Africa based on the Panama Papers show. The owners of diamond mines in Sierra Leone and safari companies in Kenya and Zimbabwe also created shell companies.

  Some of the assets cycled through the shell companies were used to buy yachts, private jets, Manhattan penthouses and luxury homes in Beverly Hills, Calif., the law firm documents show.

  Articles posted on Monday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and reports being published this week by news media organizations in 17 African countries, underscore the critical role that secret shell companies can play in facilitating tax evasion, bribery and other crimes. In Africa, offshore finance often underlies the exploitation of mineral wealth, with the benefits bypassing the public and going largely to wealthy executives and the government officials they pay off.

• Brexit rewrites UK budget rules as borrowing set for first big rise since 2010

  Britain could borrow nearly 65 billion pounds more than planned in the next couple of years as new Chancellor Philip Hammond seeks to ‘reset’ government budget policy to ease the shock of last month’s vote to leave the European Union.

  Ratings agencies and economists widely expect borrowing to rise materially next year for the first time since 2010, as Hammond has to call time – temporarily – on the austerity which dominated his predecessor George Osborne’s six years in office.

  After taking office two weeks ago, Hammond said the darker post-Brexit outlook meant policies the Conservative government had pursued since 2010 needed to change – and economists are now starting to put numbers on what this might mean.

  Hammond told reporters on Sunday the scale of any stimulus would hinge on how rapidly the economy was slowing by the time of the Autumn Statement, the half-yearly budget update that usually comes in late November or early December.

• Vicenza: dark heart of Italy’s banking crisis where locals have lost millions

  From a distance, Vicenza does not look like a city engulfed in turmoil. On the elegant Corso Andrea Palladio, named after the Renaissance architect whose work defines this city, a finely dressed woman clutches a Chanel handbag during her evening passeggiata. Locals sit back and enjoy their Campari spritz cocktails in the July heat. A black Maserati rolls slowly down the street.

• Father of EU divorce clause demands tough stance on British exit

  A former Italian premier who wrote the European Union divorce clause that Britain is poised to trigger said on Thursday that Brussels should offer no concessions to London in looming negotiations to quit the trading bloc.

  “When it comes to the economy they have to lose,” said Giuliano Amato, explaining that only then might the British reconsider abandoning the world’s largest single market.

  Britain voted in a referendum on June 23 to leave the EU. To do so, London will have to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which starts a two-year countdown to a formal exit from the 28-nation bloc.

  “I wrote Article 50, so I know it well,” Amato told a conference in Rome, saying he had inserted it specifically to prevent the British from complaining that there was no clear cut, official way for them to bail out of the Union.

  “My intention was that it should be a classic safety valve that was there, but never used. It is like having a fire extinguisher that should never have to be used. Instead, the fire happened.”

• First Brexit, now this: British companies could be forced to pay to put their money in the bank

  In yet another sign the financial world is being turned on its head, one of the UK’s biggest banks has warned customers that it may saddle them with negative interest rates. That is, depositors would be charged for putting their money in the bank.

  Royal Bank of Scotland, one of Britain’s largest banks, and Natwest, one of its subsidiaries, sent letters to 1.3 million business customers warning them of the change, citing low interest rates. The letter announcing the changes said: “Global interest rates remain at very low levels and in some markets are currently negative. Dependent on future market conditions, this could result in us charging interest on credit balances.”

  Some central banks already charge commercial lenders for their deposits, and interbank lending markets have also featured negative interest rates. A third of government bonds globally now have yields below zero, meaning investors won’t get all their money back if they hold the securities to maturity.

• Doubling Down on Wall Street: Hillary and Tim Kaine

  By picking 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. The two politicians to whom she gave serious consideration to choosing as her running mates were Kaine and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. What both men share in common is, like the Clintons, being leaders of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). The DLC was, on economic and foreign policy issues, a servile creature of Wall Street – funded by Wall Street.

• Clinton Running Mate Tim Kaine Supported TPP, Offshore Drilling & Anti-Union Right-to-Work Measures

  As the Democratic National Convention begins in Philadelphia, tension is rising between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. The Democratic National Committee chair, Florida Congressmember Debbie Wasserman Schultz, resigned Sunday following WikiLeaks’ release of nearly 20,000 emails revealing how the Democratic Party favored Hillary Clinton and worked behind the scenes to discredit and her rival, Senator Bernie Sanders. When Sanders speaks tonight at the Democratic convention, he is expected to praise the Democrats for agreeing to what he describes as the most progressive platform in Democratic Party history. But he lost a major battle with the platform when the Democratic National Committee defeated an amendment brought by his delegates to abolish superdelegates. We speak with Zaid Jilani of The Intercept, who reported on how the “DNC Votes to Keep Superdelegates, But Sets Some Conditions.”

• Brexit supporters hit with record £935bn pension deficit because of the EU referendum

  The UK pension deficit hit a record level of £935 billion following UK’s vote to leave the EU, likely hitting pro-Brexit voters the hardest.

  Support for the UK to leave the EU bloc grew with each age category, peaking at 60 per cent among those aged 65 and over, according to a survey of 12,356 referendum voters by Lord Ashcroft.

  Ironically, the same voters are reliant on defined benefit pension to deliver their retirement income.

• One Woman’s 10-Year Fight to Save Her Family From Foreclosure

  Many people are responsible for the financial disaster of 2008, and the economic hardship that has continued to unravel since. We still have not seen one criminal prosecution among the CEOs who were – and many still are – at the frontlines where everything started to crumble. Those people are hiding behind corporate protection, always blaming the next in line behind them, never accepting responsibility, and very often putting the blame on the very people they have ruined with their fraudulent dealings.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• The influence diaries: Dispatches from the Democratic National Convention

• Susan Sarandon: DNC email leak confirms Sanders backers’ fears weren’t “paranoia”

  Actress Susan Sarandon was feeling the Bern during the Democratic primary-and on Monday blasted the Democratic National Committee for its bias against Bernie Sanders, saying the DNC email leak is proof Sanders supporters’ concerns about a rigged system weren’t “paranoia.”

  “I mean, it’s not surprising. It’s great that everyone finally understands that this wasn’t some kind of paranoia,” she said in an interview with Democracy Now. “But every little thing, from not allowing Bernie’s table with his information into the dinners in some of the states I went to and what I saw at caucuses, and I know what happened in New York, where all of that information, the wall went down, and then 137,000 people were just disappeared out of Brooklyn, and I know other people that went and were registered as–I mean, it was clear in California what happened, in Puerto Rico what happened.”

  She added that Sanders supporters are disappointed in the results of the primary, but that it’s important that Sanders gets to speak directly to those people from the convention stage Monday night.

• WikiLeaks founder: DNC emails show ‘collusion’ by Clinton, Wasserman Schultz

  The founder of WikiLeaks told NBC News on Monday there is no evidence Russia was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s email server.

  Julian Assange told “Nightly News” correspondent Richard Engel the issue is not who stole the information, but what is in the emails.

  “Well, there is no proof of that whatsoever. We have not disclosed our source, and of course, this is a diversion that’s being pushed by the Hillary Clinton campaign. That’s a meta-story. The real story is what these emails contain and they show collusion,” Assange said in the pre-taped interview that aired Monday night.

  Assange pointed to the effect of the scandal. He said even though the emails were leaked three days ago, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has already resigned for her role in “subverting” the nomination process to ensure Hillary Clinton beat Sen. Bernie Sanders.

• DNC Leak Shows Mechanics of a Slanted Campaign

  As is sadly the case with most political stories these days, whether or not you care about the so-called “DNC leak” probably depends on which candidate you supported in the primaries.

• Randy Quaid Screams He Is ‘Glad As Hell’ About the DNC Email Leak

  Randy Quaid hasn’t acted in years, but he’s still making movies. The difference is that the 65-year-old who played roles in such films as National Lampoon’s Vacation and Independence Day is now making them for social media instead of the multiplex.

  On Monday, Quaid posted a series of clips that featured him, with his signature Santa Claus-like beard, screaming directly at the camera about the email leak plaguing the Democratic Party, which kicked off its convention in Philadelphia on Monday. While the vids are certainly entertaining, we’re not sure whether we should laugh or cry. What happened to Cousin Eddie?

• DNC emails: Behind the scenes look at care of big donors

• Former Dem faith director condemns plot to attack Sanders’ religion

  The former director of Faith Outreach for the Democratic Party “absolutely” condemns an alleged plot by a Democratic operative to undermine Bernie Sanders by questioning his religion.

  “I can certainly say from first-hand experience that I was part of a campaign where it was a solemn vow in no way, shape or form to use faith as a wedge issue,” Rev. Dr. Derrick Harkins, who also served as an adviser to President Obama, told the Washington Examiner.

  His remarks, which came as he spoke Monday on a “Faith Council” panel hosted as part of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, were made in reference to his role campaigning in 2012 against former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

• Leaked DNC Email Mocks Past Accusations Of Weak Cybersecurity

• What We Know So Far About WikiLeaks’ #DNCLeaks

  Commonly asked questions and answers about WikiLeaks’ #DNCLeaks as the Democratic National Convention kicks off.

• Facebook Admits It Blocked Links To Wikileaks DNC Emails

  Facebook Chief Security Officer says the company has fixed the error, after receiving heavy criticism from WikiLeaks.

  This isn’t the first time Facebook has accidentally blocked high profile news events on the platform. Earlier this month, Facebook briefly removed video showing Philando Castile dying, covered in blood, moments after being shot by a police officer. Prior to that, the company admitted to removing a meme circulating about convicted Stanford rapist Brock Turner.

• WikiLeaks fires off warning to MSNBC host

  WikiLeaks made waves on Friday by releasing a huge trove of internal emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

  The hacked emails included what appears to be evidence of a concerted effort by DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other party officials to thwart the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) during the primary season. Wasserman Schultz resigned Sunday and will serve as an honorary chair on presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign instead.

  According to CNN, U.S. officials briefed on the investigation into the compromised DNC emails now suspect Russian hackers are part of a bigger effort targeting political organizations and Washington, D.C., think tanks.

  On ABC’s “This Week,” Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, said the emails were leaked right before the Democratic National Convention “by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump,” citing “experts.” Mook could not offer any evidence for the claim.

• The Good TPP

  So Baby DonDon was reading all these stories about how Russia hacked the email system of the Democratic National Committee and this led to the ouster of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. And I got nervous.

• WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange: ‘No proof’ Russian intelligence responsible for DNC hack

  WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says “there is no proof whatsoever” that Russian intelligence is behind the thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee that WikiLeaks released.

  “The real story is what these emails contain and they show collusion,” Assange said during an interview with NBC News that will air Monday night on “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.”

  While three cybersecurity experts told NBC that the DNC emails were hacked by Russian intelligence, Assange stressed that Wikileaks has not disclosed the source of the leak.

• Julian Assange: Choosing Between Trump or Clinton is Like Picking Between Cholera or Gonorrhea

  Following the end of the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump has received a surge in his popularity. He’s now leading Hillary Clinton 44 to 39 percent in a four-way match-up, according to the most recent CNN poll. Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson received 9 percent, and Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein received 3 percent. But for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the threat of a Donald Trump presidency doesn’t inspire him to back Hillary Clinton. When asked, Assange said: “You’re asking me, do I prefer cholera or gonorrhea?”

• Leaked DNC emails reveal the inner workings of the party’s finance operation

  In the rush for big donations to pay for this week’s Democratic convention, a party staffer reached out to Tennessee donor Roy Cockrum in May with a special offer: the chance to attend a roundtable discussion with President Obama.

  Cockrum, already a major Democratic contributor, was in. He gave an additional $33,400. And eight days later, he was assigned a place across the table from Obama at the Jefferson Hotel in downtown Washington, according to a seating chart sent to the White House.

• WikiLeaks emails: Pro-Clinton CNN political commentator pre-checked op-ed with DNC

  On May 18, CNN.com published a pro-Hillary Clinton op-ed by Maria Cardona, a CNN political commentator. Titled “Why Sanders must take the high road,” the piece was published in the aftermath of an out-of-control Nevada Democratic state party convention.

• WikiLeaks blows up Clinton’s shot at smooth convention

  Before WikiLeaks struck, Hillary Clinton already had work to do at this week’s Democratic National Convention to unify her party.

  Now that task has become a lot more difficult. The weekend release by WikiLeaks of more than 19,000 hacked emails from Democratic National Committee staffers has provided embarrassing evidence of DNC favoritism toward Mrs. Clinton during the primaries – a bias long suspected by Bernie Sanders, the runner-up for the Democratic presidential nomination.

  The scandal led to the forced resignation Sunday of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who will step down after the convention.

• Assange Slams Clinton Campaign, Says There Is No Evidence Putin Behind Wikileaks

  If the Russian government is behind the theft and release of embarrassing emails from the Democratic Party, as U.S. officials have suggested, it may reflect less a love of Donald Trump or enmity for Hillary Clinton than a desire to discredit the U.S. political system.

  A U.S. official who is taking part in the investigation said that intelligence collected on the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails released by Wikileaks on Friday “indicates beyond a reasonable doubt that it originated in Russia.”

• Leaked DNC Memo Complains Gay Donor Is ‘Extremely High Maintenance’

  In an internal DNC memo published by WikiLeaks, one party staffer complained to colleagues that one of the party’s gay donors was just too high maintenance for her to handle.

  The leaked memo, which is titled “Close out memo” and dated April 22, 2016, was authored by DNC staffer Julia Lahl, who recaps much of the work done with the party’s LGBT Leadership Council. The memo contains information on dozens of donors — not all of which is positive.

• Let’s Be Honest: The DNC Asked To Be Hacked With Passwords This Dumb

  Perhaps these passwords had been changed, but if they were anything remotely close to the above, they were no good.

• Hillary’s Name Booed At Democratic Convention [VIDEO]

  At the start of the Democratic National Convention on Monday when chair Marcia Fudge mentioned Hillary Clinton’s name, the crowd promptly booed.

• Leaked DNC Email Mocks Past Accusations Of Weak Cybersecurity

  A leaked email from a Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer ridiculed reports from experts that the DNC and Republican National Convention had glaring cybersecurity issues.

  DNC staffer Eric Walker called a Buzzfeed article detailing the security weaknesses of the DNC “The dumbest thing I’ve ever read.” The email is dated May 5, 2016, just over two months before the Wikileak release of over 20,000 DNC emails.

• [Satire] ‘Fear Not—She Means You No Harm,’ Says Elizabeth Warren, Revealing Docile Hillary Clinton To Crowd

  Sending terrified gasps through the audience as she pulled back a thick velvet curtain onstage to reveal the formidable politician, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren assured the thousands of progressive onlookers at the Democratic National Convention Monday night that the docile Hillary Clinton standing before them meant them no harm. “Ladies and gentlemen, there is no need to fear this candidate, for despite her menacing reputation, she will not attack you or your progressive movement,” said Warren, who then wowed those in attendance by signaling for the compliant Clinton to repeat a series of talking points about regulating financial institutions in an effort to prove that the presumptive Democratic nominee could easily be trained and was not roused into a horrible frenzy by the presence of radical reforms. “Despite the tales you may have heard, she is nothing but a tame, pragmatic Democrat. The terror she stirs inside you belies her true gentle nature. I assure you she is no threat to the policies you hold most dear.” At press time, Clinton had broken free from her iron restraints, ripped off both of Warren’s arms, and tossed the senator’s body into the crowd.

• DNC sought to hide details of Clinton funding deal

  Leaked emails show the Democratic National Committee scrambled this spring to conceal the details of a joint fundraising arrangement with Hillary Clinton that funneled money through state Democratic parties.

  During the three-month period when the DNC was working to spin the situation, state parties kept less than one half of one percent of the $82 million raised through the arrangement — validating concerns raised by campaign finance watchdogs, state party allies and Bernie Sanders supporters.

  The arrangement, called the Hillary Victory Fund, allowed the Clinton campaign to seek contributions of hundreds of thousands of dollars to attend extravagant fundraisers including a dinner at George Clooney’s house and a concert at Radio City Music Hall featuring Katy Perry and Elton John. That’s resulted in criticism for Clinton, who has made opposition to big money in politics a key plank in her campaign platform.

• In Hacked D.N.C. Emails, a Glimpse of How Big Money Works

  Last October, a leading Democratic donor named Shefali Razdan Duggal emailed a sweetly worded but insistent list of demands to a staff member at the Democratic National Committee.

  Ms. Duggal wanted a reminder of how much she had raised for President Obama and the Democrats (the answer: $679,650) and whether it qualified her for the premium package of hotel rooms and V.I.P. invitations at the party’s convention in Philadelphia. She asked whether she could have an extra ticket to Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s holiday party, so she could bring her children. But most on her mind, it seemed, was getting access to an exclusive November gathering at the White House.

  “Not assuming I am invited…just mentioning/asking, if in case, I am invited :),” wrote Ms. Duggal, who was appointed by Mr. Obama to oversee the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and is married to a San Francisco financial executive. “Might you have an intel?”

• Democratic National Committee chief resigns after hacked e-mails show anti-Sanders tone

  Late Friday, WikiLeaks published 20,000 internal e-mails from the Democratic National Committee acquired in a hacking attack last month. The dumped messages, including some that had a derisive tone toward primary candidate Bernie Sanders, roiled the Democratic Party on the eve of its convention and led to the resignation yesterday of DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

  The DNC hack was discovered on June 14, and soon after, some evidence of a Russian connection was found. Now, the belief that the hack was sponsored by the Russian government on some level has been explicitly endorsed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Yesterday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, said Russian hackers are explicitly trying to get Clinton’s opponent, Donald Trump, elected in November.

  “I don’t think it’s coincidental that these e-mails were released on the eve of our convention here, and I think that’s disturbing,” Mook told program host Jake Tapper. The leak took place just after the Republican Party changed its platform “to make it more pro-Russian,” Mook added.

• Clinton and Kaine, #SoProgressive!

  Barack Obama will be the last President of the Democratic party. Hillary Clinton with her choice for Tim Kaine as VP has declared war to the Progressive side of her own party. Donald Trump could benefit from this situation by using a “divide and conquer” strategy. Clinton just made a Trump presidency more likely, because she choose to divide her party instead of trying to unite blue. Progressives are wise enough not to let Trump exploit this situation. Progressives are also wise enough to hold Clinton accountable for her decisions at the right time.

  It is up to Progressives to first defeat Trump, and then Clinton. This means with all the pain in their hearts Progressives will have to vote for Clinton. And not forget this declaration of war of Clinton, but wait with fighting Centrist Democrats until 2017. In a militant non-violent way; in the good tradition of Martin Luther King Jr.

• Is the DNC Hack an Act of War?

  But the truth is that there is no public evidence whatsoever tying Russia to the hack. Attribution for cyberoperations of this sort is very tricky and tends to take some time.

• DNC Emails Published by WikiLeaks Show Links to AFT and Common-Core Anxiety

  By now you’ve probably heard about the trove of emails to and from the Democratic National Committee that were released last week by WikiLeaks, an organization that publishes leaked documents to expose what it says is corruption and malfeasance by governments, as well as corporations.

  So what if any links do these emails reveal between the DNC and teachers’ unions in particular?

• Will The FTC Investigate People & Companies Paid By Facebook To Use Facebook Live?

  In the last few months, Facebook Live has certainly become “a thing.” Launched just recently, it was suddenly everywhere — from the pure (but very viral) joy of Candace Payne and her Chewbacca mask to the live streaming of the tragic aftermath of Philando Castile being shot by a police officer in Minnesota. Of course, it appears that part of the reason why Facebook Live is getting so much usage isn’t necessarily that it’s a better product than its competitors, but rather that Facebook has been generously throwing around cash to all sorts of people and companies to get them to use the platform.

• Emergency Censorship: Schultz Has Speaking Privilege Revoked by Clinton

  Just hours after the breaking news regarding the DNC’s hacked e-mail servers, it has been announced that chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has been removed from the position of party chair and will now be revoked from participating at the convention.

• The Democrats’ Second Email Problem

• Heckled offstage, Wasserman Schultz now seeks re-election

• Florida congresswoman faces harsh reception at Democratic National Convention

• Sanders Delegates Slam Clinton For Hiring Wasserman Schultz

• Clinton, Wasserman Schultz and the Wheezing Corpse of the Democratic Process Revealed

  Wikileaks over the last few days dumped tens of thousands of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server.

  The disclosures of dirty tricks directed against Bernie Sanders contained in those emails are startling, and only add to the whirlpool of corruption and sleaze surrounding Hillary Clinton and the wheezing corpse of the democratic process.

• Robert Kagan and Other Neocons Are Backing Hillary Clinton

  As Hillary Clinton puts together what she hopes will be a winning coalition in November, many progressives remain wary — but she has the war-hawks firmly behind her.

  “I would say all Republican foreign policy professionals are anti-Trump,” leading neoconservative Robert Kagan told a group gathered around him, groupie-style, at a “foreign policy professionals for Hillary” fundraiser I attended last week. “I would say that a majority of people in my circle will vote for Hillary.”

  As the co-founder of the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century, Kagan played a leading role in pushing for America’s unilateral invasion of Iraq, and insisted for years afterwards that it had turned out great.

• Group of Bernie Sanders Delegates Object to Tim Kaine VP Pick — May Protest on Floor

  A group of Bernie Sanders delegates to the Democratic National Convention announced their discontent with the selection of Tim Kaine as the vice presidential nominee on Monday and signaled they might protest that decision on the convention floor.

  Calling themselves the Independent Bernie Delegates Network, the group includes 1,250 Sanders delegates — about two-thirds of the total Sanders delegate count — who have been organized by RootsAction.org and Progressive Democrats of America. The group is holding snap straw polls among its members to help inform options for its actions at the convention.

  In a survey of the delegates taken 10 days ago, just 3 percent said that Tim Kaine was an “acceptable” vice presidential choice for presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton, with 9 percent saying they were undecided, and 88 percent said the choice would not be acceptable.

• “The Real Revolution Is Down the Street, to Your Left” — The Green Party Rallies at the Democratic Convention

  For many Bernie Sanders supporters, the move to the Green Party’s Jill Stein was easily laid out. On Monday afternoon, hours before their candidate took the Democratic convention stage to reiterate his support for Hillary Clinton to the boos of some of his own delegates, a young man with a loudspeaker directed protesters to a park down the road from the Wells Fargo Center.

  “The real revolution is down the street, to your left,” he told them, as others handed out “Jill 2016” posters to people still wearing their “Bernie 2016” shirts.

  As several hundred people sat on a grass field waiting for Stein, the vibe was as much Coachella as it was leftist political rally. The crowd — as with Sanders rallies, largely white — lit up joints and hung out under trees, as speakers called attendees comrades, shouted out indigenous movements in Central America and the boycott movement in Palestine, and spoke in Spanish about Jill being “the only revolutionary.”

  Stein, who took the stage in a sleeveless top and green scarf, introduced by Cornel West and hailed by a roaring crowd chanting “Jill not Hill,” welcomed Sanders supporters to her party, calling the move a “marriage made in heaven.”

• The Two Intelligence Agency Theory of Handing Trump the Election

  Now, again, I’m not saying the Russians didn’t do this hack, nor am I dismissing the idea that they’d prefer Trump to Hillary. By far the most interesting piece of this is the way those with the documents — both the hackers and Wikileaks — held documents until a really awkward time for some awkward disclosures, with what may be worse to come.

  But discussions that want to make the case should explain several things: Which of the two agencies alleged to have hacked DNC are behind the operation — or are they both, even though they weren’t, at least according to eh report that everyone is relying on without question, apparently cooperating? How certain can they be that the GRU is Guccifer, and if Guccifer is supposed to be a false flag why was it so incompetently done? What explains Guccifer’s sort of bizarre strategy along the way, encompassing both Wikileaks (an obvious one) and The Hill?

  Again, I absolutely don’t put this kind of thing beyond Putin. Russia has used hacking to influence outcomes of elections and authority in various countries in the past and the only thing new here is that 1) we wouldn’t already be playing the other side and 2) we’re big and can fight back. But the story, thus far, is more complex than being laid out.

• Bernie Sanders Left Delegates With No Way to Fight But Boo

  The first night of the Democratic National Convention featured rousing tributes to Hillary Clinton, blistering critiques of Donald Trump – and a chorus of boos from Bernie Sanders delegates at invocations to vote for Clinton, even when it came from Sanders himself.

  Many commentators wondered why the Sanders delegates persisted in their protest, weeks after their nominee had conceded the election to presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton.

  The answer may rest in a step that Sanders himself took.

  In the lead-up to the convention, the Sanders campaign worked with both the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to help write the party’s platform. Those meetings featured debates between the Sanders and Clinton teams, and while there was progress on many issues, there were many more where Team Sanders suffered defeats – including opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians, banning fracking, and enacting a carbon tax.

• “The People Want Bernie” — Sanders Supporters Protest Hillary Clinton Nomination at DNC

  If the Democratic nominee were chosen by those who showed up in the streets of Philadelphia to protest the convention, there would be one uncontested winner. “The people want Bernie,” read a sign at a rally Sunday that drew the same enamored crowds that turned out for the Vermont senator along the primary trail. The sign summed up the general sentiment of the crowd, as the rally grew into the thousands and began marching from City Hall in 93-degree weather. As the DNC kicked off, downtown Philadelphia was all about Bernie.

  Hillary Clinton’s name and image showed up mostly in signs and chants saying “Never Hillary,” “Warlord,” and “Hell no, DNC, we won’t vote for Hillary.” Last week’s DNC email leaks and the ensuing party scandal spilled into the streets, leaving Bernie supporters bitter and upset, and prompting calls for a “DemExit” from the party. Using the same slogans seen at the Republican convention in Cleveland, some Bernie supporters sported “Hillary for Prison” shirts.

• On Day One of the Democratic Convention, the Boos Have It

  Sanders backers got some of the concessions they wanted from the Democratic National Committee. This year, 700 superdelegates, who are not bound by state voters, helped give Clinton a decisive edge over Sanders in the primary campaign. In the 2020 election, that number will be reduced to 250. The DNC also agreed to appoint a commission to study the possibility of opening up the party’s primaries to Republican and independent voters, another one of Sanders’s complaints.

• EXCLUSIVE: WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange on Releasing DNC Emails That Ousted Debbie Wasserman Schultz

  WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange joins us from London about their release of nearly 20,000 emails revealing how the Democratic Party favored Hillary Clinton and worked behind the scenes to discredit and defeat Bernie Sanders. This comes as the Democratic National Convention is opening today in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, amid massive party turmoil. The DNC chair, Florida Congressmember Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has resigned following the leak. The emails also reveal a close relationship between mainstream media outlets and the DNC.

• If Russian Intelligence Did Hack the DNC, the NSA Would Know, Snowden Says

  As my colleague Glenn Greenwald told WNYC on Monday, while there may never be conclusive evidence that the Democratic National Committee was hacked by Russian intelligence operatives to extract the trove of embarrassing emails published by WikiLeaks, it would hardly be shocking if that was what happened.

• Sanders Delegates Push DNC to Reform Anti-Democratic Superdelegates

• Florida Town Proposes a Ban on Super PACs—What Could Happen?

  It could have seemed like a singular act of defiance to abolish super PACs in one Florida town. Members of the City Council in St. Petersburg approved 6-1 today a motion to consider an ordinance that would limit the amount donors can give to groups that support or oppose candidates in local elections.

  The ordinance, if passed later this year, would directly affect only elections in St. Petersburg. But it’s part of a far-reaching legal strategy to reduce the influence of money in politics by abolishing super PACs—groups that can take unlimited amounts of money from donors to spend in political campaigns—at the national level.

  “This is a serious issue in our country and it has a corrosive effect on our elections and in our democratic process,” said Darden Rice, vice chair of the City Council. “But we are going to have to tackle it on all levels—from our city halls all the way up to the Supreme Court.”

Censorship/Free Speech

• Facebook Admits It Censored The WikiLeaks DNC Email Dump, Offers No Explanation As To Why

  Facebook admitted Sunday that it blocked links to WikiLeaks’ trove of emails that were hacked from the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

  WikiLeaks took to Twitter Saturday night informing followers that Facebook was censoring content and offered people an alternative way to post links to Facebook from WikiLeaks.

• Government using private sector censorship for political objectives

  Censorship is censorship. If you block someone from speaking freely or delete people’s content from the Internet you do censor them.

  But there are different sorts of censorship.

  One is when the government silences opposition, controversial voices or whatever. That is, in general terms, a violation of freedom of speech and our civil rights. That should not be accepted in a democratic society.

  Another form of censorship is when Twitter censors Milo Yiannopolous, when Google censor artist Dennis Cooper or when Facebook is accused of downgrading news depending on political affiliations.

  These are private companies and they choose to whom they want to provide their services. This is clearly stated in these companies voluminous terms and conditions.

• Facebook admits blocking WikiLeaks’ DNC email links, but won’t say why [iophk: "A delay in accessing breaking news has significant impact. This "temporary" block was not a small thing"]

  Facebook has acknowledged it blocked links to WikiLeaks’ DNC email dump, though (again) hasn’t explained why.

• Appeals Court Rejects Silly Case Against Google Over Search Results Summary

  The court is not impressed. The case against Google is rejected in large part because Section 230 of the CDA clearly protects Google. And this was true even though O’Kroley also asked the court to throw out CDA 230 “as a simple matter of logic.” That’s not how all this works. The other defendants got out even easier, seeing as O’Kroley apparently never served them. In fact, the court finds most of O’Kroley’s legal arguments to be a waste of time, including trying to add Georgetown University as a defendant after a law school class said it planned to teach this case.

• China orders top Internet firms Sina, Tencent to halt original news reporting

  China’s top online companies have been ordered by the country’s Internet regulator to stop producing original news reporting.

  The Cyberspace Administration of China’s latest order represents another online clampdown in the People’s Republic.

  The companies affected include Sina, which describes itself as “an online media company serving China and the global Chinese communities,” the portal Sohu, and NetEase, a major player in the online gaming world.

  This latest edict, according to Bloomberg, follows a similar order given last week to Asia’s largest Internet company, China-based Tencent, which had a turnover of $15 billion last year, and is best known for its hugely-popular WeChat messaging app.

• A wicked problem to draw censorship line

  Censorship is always a topic fraught with danger, because everyone’s standard of what is and isn’t right is different.

• Facebook Admits To Blocking WikiLeaks Links, Calls It An “Accident”

• Cinema Libre Studios and Andrew Wakefield’s Vaxxed team threaten autistic autism mom

  I am hesitant to write this. Not hesitant because I have any doubts that the actions of Cinema Libre Studios and Andrew Wakefield’s team are wrong. No, hesitant because it has all the hallmarks of people trolling for attention and free publicity. I do not like giving people like Andrew Wakefield or Cinema Libre Studio attention.

• US film studio threatens to sue Cork autism-rights advocate

  A US film studio has threatened to sue an Irish autism-rights advocate if she continues to speak out against its controversial anti-vaccine documentary, Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe, writes Eoin English.

  West Cork-based mother, Fiona O’Leary, who wants to block the film’s release in Ireland and Britain, said she was outraged to receive a legal letter from California-based Cinema Libre Studios over the weekend.

• “Censorship Breeds Prejudice in the Long Run”

  China is currently in the process of finalizing a new internet security law that will strengthen online censorship and further tighten information control within the country. At the same time, there has been a rise in pre-publication censorship by new media platforms in China, which has helped promote the practice of self-censorship among users. CNN’s James Griffiths recently reported fears that China might eventually perfect its Great Firewall and create a censorship system that is impervious to circumvention tools; others like Google’s Eric Schmidt or World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee, on the other hand, have predicted that mass censorship will become either technically infeasible or economically unviable.

• Shenkar’s Censorship of Provocative Painting Is Worse Than Sexism in the Work Itself

• Cops requested censorship of Kabali scenes, says IGP

• Tamil movie will have Malaysia-only ending thanks to film censors

• ‘Kabali’ to have different ending in Malaysia

• ‘Kabali’: IGP says advised censors to cut select scenes shot in Malaysia

• Budget a bigger concern than censorship for Pakistani filmmakers

Privacy/Surveillance

• The Internet Of Things Is a Security And Privacy Dumpster Fire And The Check Is About To Come Due

  If you’re a long-standing reader of Techdirt, you know we’ve well documented the shitshow that is the “internet of things.” It’s a sector where countless companies were so excited to develop, market and sell new “smart” appliances, they couldn’t be bothered to embrace even the most rudimentary security and privacy standards once these devices were brought online. The result is an endless stream of stories about refrigerators, TVs, thermostats or other “smart” devices that are busy hemorrhaging personal data, inadvertently advertising that sometimes the smart option — is actually the dumb one.

  This systemic incompetence has now fused with a cultural disdain for more modern consumer privacy protections. The end result has been an obvious uptick in concern about how much data is now being collected by even childrens’ toys like Barbie dolls, something that last year’s Vtech hack illustrated isn’t just empty fear mongering. Convincing parents who already find technology alienating has proven to be difficult, as is attempting to craft intelligent regulation that protects kids’ playtime babbling from being aggressively monetized, without hindering emerging sector innovation and profits.

  To that end, the Family Online Safety Institute and the Future of Privacy Forum held a presentation last week (you can find the full video here) where analysts and experts argued, among other things, that privacy policies need to be significantly simplified and modernized for an era where a child’s doll can profoundly impact the privacy of countless people. It has been, needless to say, an uphill climb.

• Malicious computers caught snooping on Tor-anonymized Dark Web sites

  The trust of the Tor anonymity network is in many cases only as strong as the individual volunteers whose computers form its building blocks. On Friday, researchers said they found at least 110 such machines actively snooping on Dark Web sites that use Tor to mask their operators’ identities.

  All of the 110 malicious relays were designated as hidden services directories, which store information that end users need to reach the “.onion” addresses that rely on Tor for anonymity. Over a 72-day period that started on February 12, computer scientists at Northeastern University tracked the rogue machines using honeypot .onion addresses they dubbed “honions.” The honions operated like normal hidden services, but their addresses were kept confidential. By tracking the traffic sent to the honions, the researchers were able to identify directories that were behaving in a manner that’s well outside of Tor rules.

• Privacy – why is it mostly a buzzword?

  Nowadays even mainstream media is full with privacy related concerns. Ever since the Snowden leaks, people are aware that they are watched by different governmental agencies in the US and around the world. We give up our privacy for cheap / free on-line services, like Gmail. Facebook knows more about us than our own parents. Pokemon Go is a location-based game, therefore its creators know the location of about a hundred million players around the world. Lenovo has installed privacy-threatening bloatware to Windows machines using the BIOS.

  [...]

  The use of open hardware can help to avoid ugly surprises, for example in case of Lenovo. There are many definitions of open hardware. The simplest definition is that it does not require a binary blob loaded under Linux to run. I find this definition a bit too broad, however, such hardware is still difficult to find. Many x86 PC hardware belongs to this category.

  Hardware can be open by having all information to rebuild the same hardware or to perform some modifications to the design on our own available. For example, Novena has all of its design sources online. It can also be open on the firmware side, like u-boot on most ARM developer boards.

  While most open hardware efforts involve underpowered older parts, there are some notable exceptions. The Librem 2-in-1 tablets from Purism are blob-free and have a privacy-oriented Linux-based operating system. Raptor Engineering with its POWER-8-based Talos Secure Workstation goes even further with its schematics and firmware being fully open and auditable. In addition to this, its performance beats anything running on an x86 CPU.

• Privacy International releases new tranche of previously secret documents shedding further light on Government mass surveillance

  Previously secret official documents, containing new revelations about the Government’s mass surveillance regime, have today been disclosed as a result of litigation brought by Privacy International against the Intelligence Agencies (MI5, MI6, GCHQ). These documents shed further light on the secretive bulk data collection regime operating under section 94 of the Telecommunications Act 1984 and the Bulk Personal Data-set regime.

• Nonagenarian model citizen wants secret surveillance data on him deleted

  A 91-year-old civil liberties campaigner, John Catt, is taking his fight to have police surveillance records of his peaceful participation in protests deleted to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

  Catt is classified by UK police as a “domestic extremist,” even though he has no criminal record. His name was added to a secret national database run by the UK’s National Public Order Intelligence Unit. It contains details of his attendance at over 80 lawful demonstrations with his daughter, including their appearance and slogans on their T-shirts.

• Researchers discover 110 snooping Tor nodes

  In a period spanning 72 days, two researchers from Northeastern University have discovered at least 110 “misbehaving” and potentially malicious hidden services directories (HSDirs) on the Tor anonymity network.

• Police seek to unlock murder victim’s phone using 3D replica of fingertips

  Computer science professor Anil Jain spends most of his time researching and improving biometric systems, like fingerprint scanners and facial recognition software. Last month, however, law enforcement agents approached the Michigan State University academic with an unusual request: to create a 3D-printed replica of a dead man’s finger.

  Police needed the prosthetic digit to try and unlock a murder victim’s smartphone, protected by a fingerprint scanner instead of a password.

  “The authorities think that unlocking the phone could give them the identity of the murderer,” Jain said. “We are doing our social duty to assist in a criminal investigation.”

  Law enforcement agents had seen a YouTube demonstration of a technique developed by Jain’s lab which could transform fingerprint scans into fake fingertips that could fool the sensors on smartphones.

• Suspect required to unlock iPhone using Touch ID in second federal case

  A second federal judge has ruled that a suspect can be compelled to unlock their iPhone using their fingerprint in order to give investigators access to data which can be used as evidence against them. The first time this ever happened in a federal case was back in May, following a District Court ruling in 2014.

• Canadian Teens Cause an International Incident Playing Pokémon Go

  Two Canadian youngsters distracted by playing Pokémon Go accidentally crossed the border into the U.S. and had to be apprehended in Montana by federal agents, officials said Friday.

  The U.S. Customs and Border Protection said agents found the pair of juveniles illegally entering the U.S. last Thursday by foot. The two were “unaware of their surroundings” while playing the popular game on their cellphones.

  “Both juveniles were so captivated by their Pokémon Go games that they lost track of where they were,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Michael Rappold said in a statement.

• Yahoo Ordered to Show How It Recovered ‘Deleted’ Emails

  Just what kind of email retentions powers does Yahoo have? According to a policy guide from the company, Yahoo cannot recover emails that have been deleted from a user’s account—simple as that. If the email is in a user’s account, it’s fair game, and Yahoo can even give law enforcement the IP address of whatever computer is being used to send said email.

  Or, at least, that’s what Yahoo has said. A magistrate judge from the Northern District of California has ordered Yahoo to produce documents, as well as a witness for deposition, related to the company’s ability to recover seemingly deleted emails in a UK drug case.

  As Motherboard reports, a UK defendant was convicted—and is currently serving an extra 20-year prison sentence—as part of a conspiracy to import drugs into the United Kingdom. He’s currently appealing the conviction, in part because the means by which Yahoo recovered the emails in question allegedly violate British law.

• Commission plans export controls for surveillance technology

  Technology companies may face stricter licensing requirements to export products that could be used to violate human rights, as part of a change to EU rules.

  The European Commission is set to propose controversial measures in September that may force firms to go through lengthy approval processes when they export technologies including location tracking devices, biometrics and surveillance equipment.

  A draft proposal, obtained by EurActiv.com, would require export controls for cyber-surveillance technologies under a revised EU law that covers so-called dual-use goods that can either be used as weapons or for civil purposes.

  Technology firms are worried the change will make it harder to export a broad range of common products like smartphones because they can track users’ locations.

  “You can’t make suspects out of the whole branch for items that are harmless. It will overwhelm the licensing authorities,” one industry source said.

• Feds try to forcefully search Wall Street Journal reporter’s phone

  A Wall Street Journal reporter was detained by federal agents at the Los Angeles airport who demanded to confiscate her two cell phones — and was surprised to find that border agents have the authority to do that.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Thousands of Turkish soldiers ‘RAPED and STARVED’ as punishment for failed Turkey coup

  The human rights group said it has “credible evidence” that around 10,000 Turkish soldiers face the severe punishments for their part of the failed military coup against president Erdogan.

  Victims are being held in makeshift cells, such as stables and sports halls, and are being tortured and held in stress positions for 48 hours, the group said.

• Turkey Cracks Down on Journalists, Its Next Target After Crushing Coup

• teleSUR Host Abby Martin Released After Violent Arrest at DNC

  Martin and her producer, Mike Prysner, got into an Uber transport to try to get to the location and were dropped off by the Uber driver at the DNC site where only those with credentials are allowed.

  The police stopped them and told them to leave the area. As they were complying and leaving the area, another police officer grabbed Martin, tore her dress and arrested her for “disorderly conduct.”

• 40 HOUSE DEMOCRATS URGE SECRETARY KERRY TO CALL FOR DEMOCRACY IN BRAZIL

  U.S. Representatives John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Keith Ellison (D-MN) and more than thirty other members of the House of Representatives sent a letter today to Secretary of State John Kerry, urging him to refrain from gestures that could be interpreted as supportive of Brazil’s interim government and to instead “express strong concern” regarding the impeachment process targeting Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and to “call for the protection of constitutional democracy and the rule of law in Brazil.” The letter is the first Congressional letter expressing concern over Brazil’s democracy in more than two decades.

  The letter notes that the legal basis for the ongoing impeachment of Brazil’s first female elected president has been widely contested and that there is compelling evidence showing that key promoters of the impeachment campaign are seeking to remove Rousseff in order to contain the investigation of corruption cases and impose a far-right policy agenda that was rejected by Brazilian voters in the country’s most recent elections.

• Hate crime levels are rising in England and Wales. How bad is it where you live?

  The Bureau sent Freedom of Information Requests to every police force in England and Wales, asking them to provide complete outcome data for all hate crimes recorded in 2014/15 and, separately, 2015/16.

  Forty police forces responded to our request. Because of discrepancies in their recording systems, particularly among smaller forces, we weren’t able to perform detailed comparisons of each of them. However, we are able to map changes in recorded hate crime at a regional level.

  There are significant regional difference, but the vast majority have seen increases in recorded hate crime. West Yorkshire, which has a large Muslim population, has seen the greatest rise, with recorded hate crimes up 69% from the previous year. Out of the 40 respondents, six forces have seen a fall. To see how your region compares, hover your mouse over the map and click for the data.

  The data obtained by the Bureau revealed that the chances of police or prosecutors taking action against hate crime offenders have plummeted over the last year. Victims of hate crime now have only a one in four chance of seeing a perpetrator charged, cautioned or dealt with in some other way by the police – down from one in three in the previous year.

• Turkey’s president is using the failed coup as an excuse to snuff out secular democracy

  In the immediate aftermath of the Turkish military’s attempted coup on July 15, the international community responded with relief. While many people within Turkey and outside of it are no fans of president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarian regime, the bloodshed and chaos that would have resulted from a government overthrow seemed like the worse of two options.

  But a little more than a week after the failed coup, it’s clear that the Turkish president is taking advantage of it in an attempt to gain absolute power in Turkey, enacting draconian measures and targeting any person or institution who might act as a voice of dissent. As Turkey moves toward dictatorial rule, here’s what the international community needs to know.

• Non-Spanish-Speaking Teacher Sues Miami-Dade After She’s Denied Job Teaching Spanish

  An English-speaking teacher says the Miami-Dade County School Board discriminated against her by not hiring her for a job. The position? Teaching an hour of Spanish per day.

  Tracy Rosner, a third-grade teacher at Coral Reef Elementary, filed a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida last week claiming employment discrimination on the basis of her race — which is white.

  Miami-Dade School Board attorneys have not filed a formal response in court and did not return calls for comment Thursday. We’ll update this post if they provide one.

• Yavuz Baydar: The largest clampdown in modern Turkey’s history

• The internet saved Turkey’s president from a coup. Now he’s doubling down on censorship.

• Letter to US Government Officials Concerning Recent Events in Turkey

  We, the undersigned, condemn the actions taken by the Turkish government in violation of human rights and the rule of law. The principle of independence and impartiality of the judiciary—together with freedom of the media—is at the foundation of the rule of law and democracy. The political independence and the academic freedom of the educational profession is essential for free societies.

• Arab Street Shocked as Saudi Delegation Visits Israel

  The Egyptian news site the Arab Observer Network reports that the visit to Israel of a former Saudi military intelligence officer, Gen. Anwar Eshki, came as a body blow to the Arab in the street. He conducted several meetings with Israeli officials last week, along with a “high level” Saudi delegation.

  Saudi Arabia and Israel, the old hegemons in the Middle East, are increasingly coordinating to confront a rising Iran.

  Eshki met with Dore Gold, the general director of the Israeli foreign ministry, as well as Israeli members of parliament. On his agenda was restarting the Israel-Palestine peace process on the basis of the 2002 Saudi/ Arab League plan, which calls for a two-state solution on the basis of 1967 borders.

• Robot-Delivered Death in Dallas

  The Dallas police decision to use a robot-delivered bomb to kill the cornered shooter blamed for murdering five police officers raises troubling legal, technological and public-safety questions, writes Marjorie Cohn.

• Do Black Kids Matter in Memphis?

  PREA is the Prison Rape Elimination Act, sweeping federal legislation targeting the nation’s prisons and jails. Passed in 2003, the law was aimed in part at places like this — facilities for youth who present a danger to others or themselves. But while PREA has proven hard to implement, that’s not why I was there that day. Less than a year after Shelby County Sheriff Bill Oldham took over the detention center that sits directly above juvenile court, officials were running dangerously afoul of a different federal intervention — one designed specifically for Shelby County.

• NSA and CIA Hacked Enrique Peña Nieto before the 2012 Election

  Part of the frenzied discussion about the possibility that Russia hacked the DNC includes claims that the US would never do something so dastardly.

  Except that the Foreign Government Section 702 Certificate makes it clear the NSA is authorized to spy on foreign based political organizations even within the US (and would have far more liberty under EO 12333). Among the parties specifically authorized for targeting in 2010 was Pakistan’s People Party, the incumbent party in a nominal ally.

• Israel’s Tightening But Weakening Grip

  Zionism’s range of influence is shrinking. One can see this progression worldwide. At a popular level the Israelis have lost control of the historical storyline of Israel-Palestine. They may teach their own citizens their version of the story, the one wherein the Jews have a divine and/or historical right to all of Palestine’s territory. But beyond their fellow Zionists and the loony Christian Right, no one else believes this story. Significantly, an increasing number of Jews no longer accept it either.

  None of this means that the Zionists are not still influential. Yet their influence no longer has a broad popular base. It is now largely restricted to Western government circles. Of course, that is still impressive, and such lobby power does a lot of damage in the West through the corruption of elites and the perversion of state policies. We are seeing examples of this in the many stories of American police officers being trained by Israelis while (coincidently?) episodes of police brutality in the U.S. multiply.

• Federal “Blue Lives Matter” Legislation Picks up Steam, Advances Myth that Cops are Under Threat

  If Donald Trump’s “Law and Order” convention is any indication, Republicans in Congress could soon try to amend federal law to equate violence against police officers to assaults fueled by bigotry.

  The Blue Lives Matter Act of 2016, which was introduced to the House in April, gained two co-sponsors in the two weeks prior to the Republican Convention. The bill would amend Chapter 13 of Title 10 of the US Code to “make an attack on a police officer a hate crime.”

  Trump’s convention focused heavily on the idea that crime is out of control, in part, because police are on the receiving end of unfair criticism.

  “I have a message to every last person threatening the peace on our streets and the safety of our police,” Trump said during his speech on Thursday. “When I take the oath of office next year, I will restore law and order our country.”

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• EC approves EUR 4 billion Italian broadband plan

  In June, the European Commission approved Italy’s high-speed broadband plan to deliver fast Internet access to 7300 of the country’s 8000 municipalities. The EUR 4 billion plan will build a country-wide network infrastructure, improving Internet access for citizens, businesses, and public administrations – including schools and hospitals.

• Poland studies ways to improve broadband for SMEs

  Poland’s Ministry of Digitisation is studying how it can best help the country’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that wish to offer broadband Internet access. Recently, the ministry met with banking organisations and SME telecom trade groups, to discuss options for financing infrastructure upgrades, including possibilities for European co-financing.

Intellectual Monopolies

• How A Supreme Court Case On Cheerleader Costumes & Copyright Could Impact Prosthetic Hands And Much, Much More

  Every time this case has come up (and it’s been bouncing around the courts for a while now), I’ve been meaning to write about it, but am only just getting around to it now that organizations are filing amici briefs with the Supreme Court. The case is Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands, and it sounds kind of stupid: the issue is that both companies make cheerleading uniforms, and Varsity Brands accused Star of copying its uniform designs. Star argued that as a “useful article” a cheerleading uniform is not subject to copyright protection, and it won at the district court level. The 6th Circuit, however, reversed that ruling about a year ago, saying that while the uniform design may not be copyrightable, elements within the design (stripes, zigzags, chevrons, etc.) could be.

  This is problematic for a variety of reasons. Clothing and fashion have never been considered covered by copyright for many good reasons, and it’s actually helped create a more innovative, more competitive, thriving market for fashion. There’s a reason why copyright is not allowed on “useful articles,” and it’s worked. We shouldn’t suddenly be changing those rules now.

  The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case, and various amici have begun filing their briefs. You can also see Star Athletica’s own filing as well, which focuses (as it should) on the narrow technical question regarding “separability” and whether or not you can “separate” the design that’s being claimed for copyright from the article itself. That is, you could argue that a square painting done on a T-shirt could be “separable” from the T-shirt and thus get a copyright, while the T-shirt itself could not. Here, however, we’re talking about basic elements of a cheerleading uniform such as stripes and color patterns that help identify it as a cheerleading uniform.

• Copyrights

  • New Piracy Kings And KickassTorrents Alternatives — The Pirate Bay And ExtraTorrent

    After the demise of KickassTorrents, internet pirates are looking for alternatives.

  • Katcr.co: Original KickassTorrents Community Is Back, Without Torrents

    Some KickassTorrents employees have grouped to form a KickassTorrents community website that has become a home to the loyal users. Named Katcr.co, this website doesn’t offer any torrent links. Many original staffers and team members are present on the website that are acting as moderators and admins of the forum.

  • IsoHunt Settles The Last Of Its Lawsuits, Laughably Agrees To ‘Pay’ Recording Industry $66 Million

    You may recall that almost three years ago, the BitTorrent search engine IsoHunt agreed to shut down and to “pay” Hollywood studios $110 million. The number was a joke, because IsoHunt and its creator didn’t have $110 million. It’s just that the legacy copyright players always like to end these lawsuits with a giant headline grabbing number, while they’ve quietly agreed to accept very little, if any, actual money (and whatever money they do receive is not then distributed to any artists). The Sony email hack a few years back revealed that the industry does this frequently in closing out its lawsuits against search engines. IsoHunt was more or less forced into that settlement after the MPAA misled the court about IsoHunt’s actions. But the court bought it, and the IsoHunt court rulings have created some really unfortunate precedents. It’s the case that the legacy players always point to, because it’s the only case to find that a search engine platform has “red flag knowledge” of copyright infringement without having specific knowledge of infringing files.

    The case against Hollywood, however, wasn’t the only case IsoHunt was fighting. It also was fighting the recording industry up in Canada in a case that began with IsoHunt filing for declaratory judgment that it didn’t infringe in Canada, all the way back in 2008. The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), then sued back — but did everything it could to keep the case out of the news because it was also fighting for new copyright laws in Canada… and part of its argument was that the existing Canadian copyright laws were inadequate to go after IsoHunt and similar sites.

  • 20th Century Fox Accuses Kim Dotcom of Asset Freeze Breach

    20th Century Fox has accused Kim Dotcom of breaching a freeze on his assets imposed following his arrest in 2012. According to claims made by the studio in the New Zealand High Court, Dotcom took a US$154,000 loan from his lawyers on behalf of a trust for his children.

  • KAT Takedown Triggers Traffic Spike at Torrent Sites

    Earlier this week KickassTorrents was taken down following a criminal investigation into the site’s alleged owner. Since then, millions of frequent users have taken refuge elsewhere. The Pirate Bay and ExtraTorrent are among the major beneficiaries, with the latter reporting an instant traffic spike of more than 300%.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Running Windows apps on Linux

Now just to clear the air. I personally don’t run Windows in a virtual machine or dual-boot. However, there are some games I play using WINE. If you’re stuck trying to pull yourself away from legacy Windows applications take heart, there is hope. One of the options above may provide you with a means of using Linux for most daily tasks while still having access to any Windows applications you can’t live without.

What say you? Do you find yourself dual-booting or using WINE? Perhaps you didn’t know that it’s possible to run an unregistered copy of Windows 10 without any show-stopping restrictions? Hit the Comments and share your experience with Windows applications as a Linux user.

Desktop

• The subtle art of the Desktop

  The history of the Gnome and KDE desktops go a long way back and their competition, for the lack of a better term, is almost as famous in some circles as the religious divide between Emacs and Vi. But is that competition stil relevant in 2016? Are there notable differences between Gnome and KDE that would position each other on a specific segment of users? Having both desktops running on my systems (workstation + laptop) but using really only one of them at all times, I wanted to find out by myself.

  My workstation and laptop both run ArchLinux, which means I tend to run the latest stable versions of pretty much any desktop software. I will thus be considering the latest stable versions from Gnome and KDE in this post. Historically, the two environments stem from different technical platforms: Gnome relies on the GTK framework while KDE, or more exactly the Plasma desktop environment, relies on Qt. For a long time, that is until well into the development of the Gnome 3.x platform, the major difference was not just technical, it was one of style and experience. KDE used to offer a desktop experience that was built along the lines of Windows, with a start center on the bottom left, a customizable side bar, and desktop widgets. Gnome had its two bars on the top and bottom of the screen, and was seemingly used as the basis for the first design of Mac OS X, with the top bar offering features that were later found in the Apple operating system.

• Linux for Windows 10 users

  MAYBE it’s how intrusive Windows 10 can be. Or maybe you’re just fed up with working under the constant threat of viruses and other malicious software. Or perhaps, you’re tired of paying thousands of pesos for applications and equally weary of breaking the law by installing pirated versions of the software. Indeed, there are many reasons to dump Windows in favor of the free and open-source Linux operating system. Here’s what Windows users who are contemplating the move should keep in mind.

• In a Quiet Market for PCs, Chromebooks are Marching Steadily Forward

  It’s no secret that Chrome OS has not been the same striking success for Google that the Android OS has been. And yet, Chromebooks–portable computers running the platform–have not only found their niche, but they are also introducing a new generation to cloud computing. Chromebooks are firmly entrenched in the education market, where many young users have become used to the convention of storing apps and data in the cloud.

  Now, according to new research from Gartner, Chromebooks are ready to hit new milestones. Analysts there report that Chromebook shipment growth will be in the double digits this year. At the same time, though, Chromebooks have not become fixtures in the enterprise, replacing Windows PCs.

Server

• SysAdmins With Open Source Skills Are In Demand

  System administrators play a crucial role in businesses today. They are the individuals responsible for the configuration, support and maintenance of company computer systems and servers. For this reason, they are a popular hiring request, with defense and media companies alike looking for these professionals on Dice.

  Yet, despite the ongoing demand, finding and recruiting system administrators may be more of a challenge. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) found that the quarterly unemployment rate for system administrators was 0.6%, well below the national quarterly average (4.9%) and the quarterly average for all tech professionals (2.1%). Employers thus need to focus more of their recruitment strategies on poaching this talent from competitors.

• One Phrase Sysadmins Hate to Hear (And How to Avoid It)

  A few years later, sysarmy, the local IT community, was born as the “Support for those who give support.” And in that spirit, for this 8th AdminFest edition, we want to do exactly that: support those who help others in our Q&A platform, sysarmy.com/help. Each 500 points a participant earns, he/she gets a free drink in return!

• DevOps’n the Operating System

  John Willis takes a brief look at the history of how Devops principles and operating systems have converged. He spends most of the time forward looking at what and how unikernels will converge with Devops tools, processes and culture. He ends with a demo of how containers, unikernels and Devops ideas can work together in the future.

• 5 reasons system administrators should use revision control

  Whether you’re still using Subversion (SVN), or have moved to a distributed system like Git, revision control has found its place in modern operations infrastructures. If you listen to talks at conferences and see what new companies are doing, it can be easy to assume that everyone is now using revision control, and using it effectively. Unfortunately that’s not the case. I routinely interact with organizations who either don’t track changes in their infrastructure at all, or are not doing so in an effective manner.

  If you’re looking for a way to convince your boss to spend the time to set it up, or are simply looking for some tips to improve how use it, the following are five tips for using revision control in operations.

Kernel Space

• Linux 4.7

  So, after a slight delay due to my travels, I’m back, and 4.7 is out.

  Despite it being two weeks since rc7, the final patch wasn’t all that
  big, and much of it is trivial one- and few-liners. There’s a couple
  of network drivers that got a bit more loving. Appended is the
  shortlog since rc7 for people who care: it’s fairly spread out, with
  networking and some intel Kabylake GPU fixes being the most noticeable
  ones. But there’s random small noise spread all over.

• Linux 4.7 Kernel Officially Released

• Linux Kernel 4.7 Officially Released, Introduces Support for Radeon RX480 GPUs

  Today, July 24, 2016, after a week of holiday fun, Linus Torvalds has had the great pleasure of announcing the release of Linux kernel 4.7 for all GNU/Linux operating systems.

  The Linux 4.7 kernel has been in development for the past two months, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone who is either reading our website on a regular basis or keeping pace with the Linux kernel development cycle, which was very normal for this branch. A total of seven Release Candidate (RC) testing builds were released since May 29, 2016, which introduced numerous new features and improvements.

• The Biggest Features Of The Linux 4.7 Kernel

  If all goes according to plan, the Linux 4.7 kernel will be released before the day is through.

• The Size Of Different DRM Graphics Drivers In Linux 4.7

  Last October I looked at The Size Of The Different Open-Source Linux DRM/Mesa Graphics Drivers, but with it being nearly one year since then and Linux 4.7 due out today, I decided to run some fresh L.O.C. measurements on the popular DRM/KMS drivers to see their current sizes.

  This lines-of-code counting was mostly done out of a curiosity factor. In this article I’m just looking at the in-kernel DRM code and not the Mesa drivers, DDX drivers, LLVM back-ends, or anything else in user-space related to the open-source graphics drivers.

• The Btrfs Windows Driver Updated With RAID Support & Other Features

• Hardened Usercopy Appears Ready To Be Merged For Linux 4.8

  Yet another Linux kernel security feature coming to the mainline kernel that appears readied for the Linux 4.8 merge window is hardened usercopy.

  Hardened usercopy was originally based upon GrSecurity’s PAX_USERCOPY feature but reworked into a whole new form, according to developer Kees Cook at Google. This hardened usercopy is to be exposed as the CONFIG_HARDENED_USERCOPY option within the kernel.

• GNU Linux-libre Kernel 4.7 Officially Released for Users Who Want 100% Freedom

  Alexandre Oliva from the GNU Linux-libre project happily announced the release and general availability for download of the GNU Linux-libre 4.7 kernel for those who want 100% freedom when using a GNU/Linux operating system.

  The release of GNU Linux-libre kernel 4.7 comes a few hours after Linus Torvalds’ announcement for the new Linux 4.7 kernel branch, on which GNU Linux-libre 4.7-gnu is based, and, as usual, it contains deblobbing changes for various of the included drivers, including Radeon, Intel i915 CSR, Intel Skylake audio, HFI1 InfiniBand, Realtek rtl8xxxu Wi-Fi, iwlwifi, mwifiex, Broadcom brcmfmac, and Atheros ath10k.

• GNU Linux-libre 4.7-gnu Deblobs More Drivers

• Linus Torvalds Releases Linux Kernel 4.7 — Here Are The New Features

• Linux 4.7 Debuts with Improved Security

• Linux 4.7 has been released, comes with support for AMD’s RX480 GPU

• /dev/random Seeing Improvements For Linux 4.8

• EXT4 Encryption To Be Unified In Linux 4.8

• Linux 4.8 Implements ASLR For Kernel Memory Sections

• Linux 4.7 arrives with Radeon RX480 GPU support and a new security system

• Linus Torvalds Officially Releases Linux Kernel 4.7

• Linux kernel 4.7 released

• You can run your RX 480 on Linux kernel 4.7

• Linux 4.7 Kernel Update Released, Support for RX 480, Kaby Lake Fixes and More

• Graphics Stack

  • H.264 VA-API Encode Lands For Gallium3D, Benefits RadeonSI

    The latest work landing in Mesa Git has been for H.264 VA-API video encoding.

    Earlier this month I wrote about the work being done by AMD engineers on H.264 VA-API video encoding inside Gallium3D. Of course, with the code being worked on by AMD, the primary focus has been for their RadeonSI Galloum3D driver with GPUs that have their VCE video encode engine. However, this could end up benefiting other Gallium3D drivers too.

Applications

• Oracle Outs VirtualBox 5.1.2 with Better Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

  Oracle announced the release of the first maintenance update to the VirtualBox 5.1 series of the open-source and cross-platform virtualization software for all supported computer operating systems.

• Terminator A Linux Terminal Emulator With Multiple Terminals In One Window

  Each Linux distribution has a default terminal emulator for interacting with system through commands. But the default terminal app might not be perfect for you. There are so many terminal apps that will provide you more functionalities to perform more tasks simultaneously to sky-rocket speed of your work. Such useful terminal emulators include Terminator, a multi-windows supported free terminal emulator for your Linux system.

• WMail Is a Desktop App For Gmail

• What Apps Do You Wish Linux Had, Or Can’t Find a Replacement For?

  If you could magically, instantly, create any sort of app for the Linux desktop right now, what would it be?

• Proprietary

  • Skype for Linux Alpha 1.2 improves stability, adds device settings and HD avatar support

  • Microsoft Releases Skype 1.2 for Linux Alpha

  • Skype for Linux gets updated with a handful of improvements

  • Skype for Linux alpha gets new functionality in update

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Yes, This Is The Droid For Which You’ve Been Looking

  • Rebase feature branches in Git/Github

  • Configuring a single Ubuntu installation as a dual-boot option and a VirtualBox appliance under Windows 10

  • Troubleshooting Postfix

  • How to install Korora Linux with screenshots

  • Netdata – Real Time Performance Monitoring Tool

• Games

  • The Battle for Wesnoth, the great open source fantasy strategy game is now on Steam Greenlight

    The Battle for Wesnoth is probably one of the all time great open source games. It’s been around for a long time, it’s well polished and now it’s looking to get on Steam.

  • Vikings – Wolves of Midgard Announced from Kalypso Media and Games Farm with Linux support

    Kalypso Media really are getting Linux friendly aren’t they! Vikings – Wolves of Midgard has been announced as a new action RPG that will launch in early 2017.

  • Quake 1 Ported To Run On Vulkan

    One of the latest fun projects making use of Khronos’ Vulkan API is a port for Quake 1.

    If you have some time to kill this week, vkQuake is a port of Quake 1 to the Vulkan API for graphics rendering. The Quake 1 code is derived from QuakeSpasm, a popular open-source Quake project.

  • FOX n FORESTS, a very interesting looking 16-Bit style action platformer is on Kickstarter

  • Fancy playing Quake with the Vulkan API? Now you can

  • Auto-Staccato looks like a great new take on rhythm games

    Auto-Staccato is a new action rhythm game coming to Linux and it’s trying to get on Steam.

  • There should be a Stardew Valley opt-in beta soon (update: the beta is now live!)

  • Progress on our User Statistics Page has continued, feedback requested

    Three new Linux Distributions join the ranks:
    - PCLinuxOS
    - Netrunner
    - ZorinOS

  • Feral Interactive Ports Life Is Strange to Linux and Mac, Episode 1 Is Now Free

    Feral Interactive announced recently that they managed to successfully port the popular, award-winning Life Is Strange game to GNU/Linux and Mac OS X operating systems.

    Life Is Strange is an episodic graphic adventure game published by Square Enix and developed by Dontnod Entertainment. The story follows the life of Max Caulfield as a photography senior that discovers a time traveling method to save her friend Chloe Price. The player will be able to rewind time, which will affect the past, present and future.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • GNOME Software 3.22 Will Support Installation of Snaps, Flatpak Repository Files

    The GNOME 3.21.4 desktop environment was released last week, which means that many of the default applications and components were updated with bug fixes and various enhancements.

Distributions

• Solus Project to No Longer Offer a Release Schedule, Solus 1.2.1 Gets Delayed

  Solus Project founder and architect Ikey Doherty announced on July 24, 2016, that the static release schedule for their Solus operating system is officially and completely dropped.

• The Top 5 Linux Distributions For The Everyday Linux User

  Why 5? Why not 10?

  The more distributions that I list, the more confusion that I will introduce to potentially new users. If I had to recommend 1 it would be Linux Mint but we are all different so I have tried to add a bit of variety.

  The list includes 2 main stream behemoths, a rolling release distribution, a lightweight distribution and a cool modern distribution. I think that covers most bases.

  Thankyou for reading.

• New Releases

  • 4MLinux 19.0 Distro to Ship with GCC 6.1.0 and Qt 5.7, Public Beta Out Now

    Zbigniew Konojacki informs Softpedia about the availability of the public Beta release f his upcoming 4MLinux 19.0 GNU/Linux distribution, which comes one week after the release of the 4MLinux 19.0 Core edition.

    As reported by us in the second week of July, the Beta release of 4MLinux 19.0 Core, which the developer uses as the base for all the distributions and distrolettes that are being distributed as part of the 4MLinux family, including 4MParted, 4MRescueKit, BakAndImgCD, 4MRecover, and Antivirus Live CD, the operating system uses the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) 6.1.0.

• OpenSUSE/SUSE

  • openSUSE Leap 42.2 Now Merged with SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 2

    The development cycle of the openSUSE Leap 42.2 operating system continues, and today we would like to inform our readers about the availability of the third and last Alpha build in the series.

  • Machinery Team: Navigating your Linux system descriptions the pretty way

    Starting from version 1.21.0 you’ll experience an improved graphical user interface, where show and compare views are connected. With this you can navigate between viewing different descriptions as well as comparing them, so working with multiple system descriptions is much faster and offers greater usability.

    When you start the graphical user interface you will get a list of all available system descriptions, where you can choose one to view more details. The following screen shot shows this list. You can use the search mask to filter them for certain terms. Simply click on the description you would like to see and it will get you to the details view. Run the command `machinery list –html` to get to the list view.

  • SUSE Studio enabled Microsoft Azure image type for SLES 12

    We are happy to announce that Azure image type has been enabled for SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP1 appliances. From now on you can build and upload SLE12 SP1 based appliances in the Microsoft Azure Cloud.

• Red Hat Family

  • Finance

    • Distress Signals Prevail for Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Analysts Watch on Price Target Estimates: Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT)

    • Tech Stocks To Look Out For: Red Hat (RHT), CA (CA)

    • Red Hat (RHT) Shares are Up 0.88%

    • Smart Money Favorite Holding Strong Their Stake in Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

  • Fedora

    • Introduction to Modularity

      Modularity is an exciting, new initiative aimed at resolving the issue of diverging (and occasionally conflicting) lifecycles of different “components” within Fedora. A great example of a diverging and conflicting lifecycle is the Ruby on Rails (RoR) lifecycle, whereby Fedora stipulates that itself can only have one version of RoR at any point in time – but that doesn’t mean Fedora’s version of RoR won’t conflict with another version of RoR used in an application. Therefore, we want to avoid having “components”, like RoR, conflict with other existing components within Fedora.

    • It’s Time to Upgrade to Fedora 24 Linux If You’re Still Using Fedora 22

      Fedora Program Manager Jan Kurik announced that the Fedora 22 Linux operating system has officially reached end of its life on July 19, 2016, urging users to upgrade to either the Fedora 23 or Fedora 24 releases.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu 16.04.1 is out with improvements to software installation and low-graphics mode

        Canonical just released Ubuntu 16.04.1, the first point release in the Ubuntu 16.04 “Xenial Xerus” series. All the changes made to Ubuntu 16.04 have been combined into a new installer image, which you can now download.

      • Battery Monitor Offers Ubuntu Notifications for Battery Events

        It doesn’t what sort of portable device you use, from laptop, to tablet, to phone: you know how crucial it is to monitor battery life.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • elementary OS 0.4 “Loki” Gets New Beta with over 70 Bugfixes, RC1 Coming Next

          The guys over elementary OS have released a second Beta version of the highly anticipated elementary OS 0.4 “Loki” operating system, fixing numerous of the issues reported by users since the first Beta.

          This time, the announcement was made by Daniel ‘DanRabbit’ Foré, who reports that more than 70 bugs reported by public beta testers since last month’s Beta release have been squashed, and that many of the fixes are in fact configuration changes, which means that they won’t be available to those running the first Beta build, so they’ll have to make a fresh install.

        • Ubuntu MATE 16.04.1 LTS Fixes the Raspberry Pi Partition Resizer, Adds MATE 1.14

          As part of the Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS (Xenial Xerus) announcement, Martin Wimpress informs us about the release of the Ubuntu MATE 16.04.1 LTS operating systems for users of Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS.

          Ubuntu MATE 16.04.1 LTS is not a major release, and if your Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) installation is up to date, you already have the latest software updates and security patches that have been injected in the new installation mediums generated mainly for those who want to reinstall or deploy the OS on new systems.

        • Xubuntu 16.04.1 LTS Released, Upgrade Path from Xubuntu 14.04 LTS Now Open

          The first point release of the Xubuntu 16.04 LTS computer operating system has been officially published as part of the Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS (Xenial Xerus) announcement earlier in the week.

        • Our First Look at Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon

          Now that I’ve had about a week to play around in Mint 18, I find a lot to like and have no major complaints. While Cinnamon probably isn’t destined to become my desktop of choice, I don’t dislike it and find it, hands down, the best of the GNOME based desktops I’ve tried so far. Anybody looking for a powerful, all purpose distro that’s designed to work smoothly and which can be mastered with ease would be hard pressed to find anything better.

Devices/Embedded

• Compact, fanless, Cortex-A5 embedded computer runs on 3W

  Artila’s “Matrix-700” control computer runs Linux on a Cortex-A5 SoC, and offers 8GB eMMC, plus three USB, four RS-232/485, GbE, and Fast Ethernet ports.

  The Matrix-700 is the first Cortex-A5 based model in Artila’s family of traditionally ARM9-driven Matrix industrial computers. The device is designed for non-stop operation in remote locations, such as device networking and remote monitoring.

• $20 “Neutrino 2.0” is a tiny Arduino Zero clone

  Rabid Prototypes is crowdfunding a $20 “Neutrino 2.0” version of its earlier, tiny Arduino Zero clone. Rev 2.0 adds RX/TX pins and several other tweaks.

  Like last year’s Neutrino clone of the Arduino Zero, Rabid Prototypes chose Kickstarter to launch Neutrino 2.0. The latest campaign has four days to cover the last $700 or so of its $5K goal.

Internet of Things Web Editor Open Source Project Started

The StackSavings Web Editor has recently been launched as an open source project. The aim of the project is to be a Web Editor for the Internet of Things.

Fluxday: A no-fuss open source productivity tracker

It would have been easier if we already had an open source platform we could build on. Although we did manage to build it quickly without disrupting our main projects, other companies might find it easier to adopt an existing platform rather than allocate extra time towards building an in-house productivity management application. For that reason, we’ve made Fluxday an open source project.

Reasons Organizations Opt Not to Use Open Source Software

Black Duck’s latest open source survey shows that a majority of companies are now using open source. So what’s stopping the rest? Here’s a look at the reasons why businesses might choose not to use open source, or avoid partnering with companies that do.

Virtuozzo’s new Kernel-based Virtual Machine for ISPs is a ‘huge thing,’ years in the making

Virtuozzo debuts hyper-converged offering based on open source technology and optimized KVM

Virtuozzo announced on Monday general availability of Virtuozzo 7. With this new version, the platform ushers in a new level of portability, reliability, and performance, especially for customers in large data center environments where vendor flexibility, as well as low latency, is critical.

Wire private messenger goes open source, invites users to build compatible clients

Wire is one in a growing number of messaging services that promise to keep their users’ correspondence private. In this case, the service offers encrypted text, voice, and video calls. And now it’s open source.

Messaging Service ‘Wire’ Goes Open-Source, Invites Devs to Build Clients

Encrypted text, voice and audio calling service Wire has gone open-source, releasing the code for everything devs need to build their own apps that interface with the service.

Apache Kudu is the Latest Open Source Big Data Project to Reach Top-Level Status

For the past year, we’ve taken note of the many projects that the Apache Software Foundation has been elevating to Top-Level Status. The organization incubates more than 350 open source projects and initiatives, and has squarely turned its focus to Big Data and developer-focused tools in recent months. As Apache moves Big Data projects to Top-Level Status, they gain valuable community support and more.

Continuing the trend, the foundation has announced that Apache Kudu has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a Top-Level Project (TLP). Kudu is an open source columnar storage engine built for the Apache Hadoop ecosystem designed to enable flexible, high-performance analytic pipelines.

“Under the Apache Incubator, the Kudu community has grown to more than 45 developers and hundreds of users,” said Todd Lipcon, Vice President of Apache Kudu and Software Engineer at Cloudera. “We are excited to be recognized for our strong Open Source community and are looking forward to our upcoming 1.0 release.”

Events

• GNU Health will be at the International Symposium on Open Collaboration, OpenSym 2016

  Thank you very much to OpenSym for having the GNU Health project, and looking forward to meet with the GNU Health and other Free communities in Berlin !

  Following is the abstract of the presentation Luis Falcon will be giving. For more details please visit the OpenSym homepage.

• SIGGRAPH 2016 Kicks Off Today: What Exciting News Awaits?

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Susan Chen, Promoted to Vice President of Business Development

    Susan joined Mozilla in 2011 as Head of Strategic Development. During her five years at Mozilla, Susan has worked with the Mozilla team to conceive and execute multiple complex negotiations and concluded hundreds of millions dollar revenue and partnership deals for Mozilla products and services.

SaaS/Back End

• TNS Research: Multiple Orchestrators, Multiple Clouds, What a Mess

  Bundling some of the functionality into the container itself is one approach. However, orchestration may also become subsumed into a PaaS offering or be included as capability offered by a cloud provider. Wikibon’s Brian Gracely described this option as a container management platform in a recent article. This term is useful because it captures a broader stack of services being deployed together as a stack. Along with workload and company size, the choice of container management platforms is also still affected by the cloud(s) being deployed to.

• Teradata Acquires Big Data Partnership Consultancy, Expands Open Source Analytics Services

• Teradata bolsters Hadoop consulting biz with new UK acquisition

• Finding security issues, regional events, and more OpenStack news

Databases

• PostgreSQL 9.6 Beta 3 Released

  The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces today that the third beta release of PostgreSQL 9.6 is available for download. This release contains previews of all of the features which will be available in the final release of version 9.6, including fixes to many of the issues found in the first and second betas. Users are encouraged to continue testing their applications against 9.6 beta 3.

• PostgreSQL 9.6 Beta 3 Released This Week

  PostgreSQL 9.6 Beta 3 was released on Thursday as this major database update gets closer to its general availability release later this year.

  PostgreSQL 9.6 Beta 3 brings a number of fixes to the parallel query support and fixes many other items throughout the PostgreSQL server code. The official 9.6 release isn’t expected until “late 2016.”

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

• Facebook’s New Open Source Project Helps You Create Apps Easily With React.js

BSD

• OpenBSD 6.0 tightens security by losing Linux compatibility

  OpenBSD, one of the more prominent variants of the BSD family of Unix-like operating systems, will be released at the beginning of September, according to a note on the official OpenBSD website.

  Often touted as an alternative to Linux. OpenBSD is known for the lack of proprietary influence on its software and has garnered a reputation for shipping with better default security than other OSes and for being highly vigilant (some might say strident) about the safety of its users. Many software router/firewall projects are based on OpenBSD because of its security-conscious development process.

• Google’s “Lanai” Backend In LLVM Seeks Non-Experimental Status

• DragonFlyBSD 4.6 Up To Release Candidate Stage

  DragonFlyBSD 4.6 is up to the release candidate stage and the official release of this next feature version is coming in just a few days.

  The release candidate to DragonFlyBSD 4.6 is now available for testing.

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• OpenKnit: Open Source Digital Knitting

  OpenKnit is an open-source, low cost, digital fabrication tool that affords the user the opportunity to create her/his own bespoke clothing from digital files. Starting from the raw material, the yarn, and straight to its end use, a sweater for example, in about an hour. Designing and producing clothes digitally and wearing them can now happen in the very same place, rewarding the user with the ability to make decisions regarding creativity and responsibility. (homepage) (full instructions for a Wally120 open-source knitting)

• Open Access/Content

  • The Open Patient: Advocating for open access to medical data

    Steven Keating had always been interested in data and learning about things, which is why he volunteered to do a research scan when he was a student. The scan revealed an abnormality. In 2014, the abnormality had grown into a massive tumor. Soon he learned that there were many barriers keeping him from accessing his own data. “And that’s what I’ve been sharing, which is this question: How come as a patient we’re last in line for our own data? How come my doctors and my university researchers can see my tumor genome and I can’t?”

Health/Nutrition

• Sports Federations, Not IOC, Will Decide Which Russian Athletes Can Play In Rio

  On Sunday, the International Olympic Committee decided not to call for a blanket ban on Russia for the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games after reports of doping scandals endangered the country’s chances of competing.

  Instead, individual international sports federations will make the call on whether or not Russian athletes can compete in the games — which means they will review them all, one by one. Athletes who have been served suspensions for doping will not be allowed in the games. That includes athletes who already completed their suspensions, according to The Wall Street Journal. The findings must be upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport to be final.

Security

• ArchStrike Ethical Hacking Linux Operating System Gets Its First ISO Builds

  The ArchStrike developers have announced today, July 25, 2016, that their Arch Linux-based operating system designed for ethical hackers now has official installation mediums as ISO images.

• Vine Hack: Here’s How This Hacker Downloaded Vine’s Entire Source Code

  An Indian security researcher was able to find Vine’s source code in plain sight.

• Pornhub Gives $20,000 Cash Prize To A Hacker Trio For Finding PHP Zero Day Vulnerability

  Pornhub hosted a bug bounty program a couple of months ago.

• Critical patches from multiple vendors, Ubuntu forums hacked: Security news IT leaders need to know

• Open Source Tools to Get Brussels Security Audit

  Apache HTTP Server and password manager Keepass are to receive a code audit from the European Commission (EC) after a public vote.

  The open source tools were by far the most popular – chosen from a lengthy list of similar open source software platforms including FireFox, Drupal and OpenSSL which are in use at the EC and the European Parliament (EP).

  In the coming weeks the audits will look to uncover any security issues in the code and share the findings with software developers.

  They represent the next phase in a pilot project between the IT departments of the Commission and the Parliament.

• Europol, Intel and Kaspersky team up to crack down on ransomware

  The European Police Agency Europol on Monday announced a collaboration with tech giant Intel, security expert Kaspersky Lab and the Netherlands police to tackle the exponential growth of ransomware use by criminals.

  Together, the companies and agencies launched an online portal called No More Ransom to help inform the public about the dangers of ransomware and help victims recover their data without having to fork over money to criminals.

  Ransomware steals and holds user data hostage, forcing individuals and companies to pay criminals in order to regain control of that data. Kaspersky research shows that the number of ransomware attacks increased more than fivefold between 2014-2015 and 2015-2016, from 131,111 to 718,536.

• Speed Bumps Ahead for Network Security

Defence/Aggression

• Afghanistan: President Obama’s Vietnam

  President Obama is keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan fighting an unwinnable war for fear of the political consequences if he faces reality and admits defeat, an echo of Vietnam, writes Jonathan Marshall.

• Islamophobia Kills: German Munich shooter admired Breivik, Killed Turks

  The shooter at a Munich mall last week who killed 9 and left 27 wounded was an admirer of far right wing Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, and appears to have hated Muslims.

  Although David Sonboly was of Iranian heritage, he does not seem to have been a Muslim and appears to have felt no connection to that community.

  Iranians are mostly Shiite Muslims who are often victimized by ISIL, so it wasn’t ever very likely that his rampage was inspired by that organization.

  The current insistence by politicians and journalists on treating anyone with a drop of Middle Eastern blood as a “Muslim” is frankly racist. After all, millions of people of Christian heritage would now insist that they are not Christians. Why can’t people from Muslim families convert to other things, too? Sonboly appears to have considered himself a Christian or at least a Westerner.

  As with many mass killers, the 18-year-old likely had mental problems. But to the extent that he was driven by ideology, it was the that of the Islamophobia Network. Sonboly was part of a far-right anti-Muslim tendency that now haunts Europe .

  As many attacks in Europe are carried out by the white far right as by Muslims.

  The ambiguities of identity were on display in this case, since Sonboly shouted “I am German!” at the Turkish-Germans he targeted, whom he called ‘Fucking Turks.’ He seems to have blamed practicing Muslims for creating the conditions of prejudice toward people who looked like him in Germany.

• Crimes Against the Future/The World After Me: Eternal ‘Wartime’ in America

  I wonder, too – how could I not with my future life as a “refugee” in mind? – about the 65 million human beings uprooted from their homes in 2015 alone, largely in places where we Americans have been fighting our wars for this last decade and a half. And it’s hard not to notice how many more have followed in their path this year, including at least 80,000 of the Sunni inhabitants of Iraq’s recently “liberated” and partially destroyed city of Fallujah. In the process, tens of millions of them have remained internal exiles in their own country (or what is left of it), while tens of millions have officially become refugees by crossing borders into Turkey, Lebanon, or Jordan, by taking to the seas in flimsy, overcrowded craft heading for Greece (from Turkey) or Italy (from Libya) moving onward in waves of desperation, hope, and despair, and drowning in alarming numbers. At the end of their journeys, they have sometimes found help and succor, but often enough only hostility and loathing, as if they were the ones who had committed a crime, done something wrong.

• Political Correctness: Handle with Care

  Racial, gender, and ethnic diversity matters, of course, but political correctness (PC) tied to bourgeois identity politics can be deadly to Left thinkers and activists and to the causes of peace and social justice. Part of what made the deeply conservative Barack Obama attractive to the U.S. corporate and imperial establishment during the long run up to the 2008 presidential election was the American power elite’s reasonable, born-out expectation that Obama’s skin color and status as a First Black President (FBP) would help make progressives, leftists, and serious liberals reluctant to forthrightly protest his coming service to the nation’s unelected and interrelated dictatorships of money, class, empire, and (curiously and stealthily enough) white privilege. Smart power brokers calculated correctly that political correctness around race – and the related fear of being considered racist because one dared to criticize a FBP – would help keep the left in check on Obama’s corporatist, Wall Street-pleasing, and imperial policies.

• Ansbach explosion: Syrian asylum seeker blows himself up in Germany

  A failed Syrian asylum seeker has blown himself up and injured 12 other people with a backpack bomb near a festival in the south German town of Ansbach.

  The state of Bavaria’s interior minister said the 27-year-old man had detonated the device after being refused entry to the music festival.

  About 2,500 people were evacuated from the venue after the explosion.

  Bavaria has been on edge since a knife rampage on a train claimed by so-called Islamic State last Monday.

  The Ansbach blast is reported to have happened at about 22:10 (20:10 GMT) outside the Eugens Weinstube bar in the centre of the town, which has a population of 40,000 and is home to a US military base.

• Two dead, 14 wounded in shooting at Florida nightclub: U.S. media

  The shooting comes the month after a massacre at a nightclub in the Florida city of Orlando, in which a lone gunman killed 49 people in the deadliest mass shooting in U.s. history.

• In troubled times, Germans embrace ‘Mommy’ Merkel

  Nothing erodes public confidence in the ruling class like political upheaval, violence and economic uncertainty. Yet in Germany these days, that combustible mix is fueling a quiet revival of Angela Merkel’s political fortunes.

  The weekend violence in Germany, which began with the deadly rampage by a bloodthirsty teen in Munich and ended with a suicide bombing in a small Bavarian city, marked the latest in a series of events, from the U.K. referendum to an ISIL-inspired hatchet attack on a German commuter train, that have unnerved the Merkel Republic.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• The Clean Energy Revolution Starts Now

  This weekend, we’re bringing the call for clean energy to Philadelphia in a big way, and if you want a ban on fracking, you won’t want to miss this.

• Mass killing of elephants: Will the EU go on turning a blind eye?

  However, the EU continues to turn a deaf ear to the calls for a total ivory trade ban. On 1 July 2016, the European Commission decided that a global ivory trade ban did “not seem justified” and encouraged the Council to take a position against “a general closure of domestic ivory markets.”

  This recommendation comes ahead of the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CoP17) to the 1976 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which will take place in South Africa from 24 September- 5 October and in which 182 member states of CITES will participate.

• How Utah coal interests helped push a secret plan to export coal from California

  One by one, the seven council members present voted to uphold the ban on transporting coal. The decision was finalized by a second vote on July 19, leaving the proposed $250 million project in limbo. Without coal as one of the terminal’s possible bulk commodities, proponents warned, it would be at risk of losing critical funding — depriving an economically struggling neighborhood of job opportunities. Critics of the plan, however, worried that transporting millions of tons of coal by rail — even in covered cars — through West Oakland poses a public health and safety risk to local residents, who already experience high levels of air pollution.

• Northwest Tribes Band Together to Stop Oil-by-Rail

  There’s no such thing as a good place for an oil-train derailment, but this year’s June 3 spill outside Mosier, Oregon, could have been worse if the 16 oil cars had derailed and caught fire even a few hundred feet in either direction. The derailment was just far enough away from populated areas, including a nearby school and mobile home park, that no injuries resulted, and the amount of oil that spilled into the river was limited. If it had happened another mile-and-a-half down the tracks, the damaged tank cars would have tumbled directly into the Columbia river during the peak of the spring Chinook salmon run.

• Demonstrators Demand ‘Clean Energy Revolution’ on Eve of Dem Convention

  With plenty of overlap between them, both climate justice campaigners and supporters of Bernie Sanders held marches and rallies in downtown Philadelphia on Sunday, making their presence and political demands heard a day before the Democratic National Convention officially kicks off.

  Under a banner calling for a “Clean Energy Revolution,” the climate march put a focus on key shortcomings when it comes to the Democratic Party’s commitment to addressing an increasingly hot planet.

  Mark Schlosberg, national campaign director for Food & Water Watch, which spearheaded the protest with the backing of nearly 900 other local and national organizations, said neither party has shown the necessary urgency when it comes to dealing with the crisis. “Together,” Schlosberg explained in a blog post ahead of the march, “we are sending a clear message to our elected officials: we demand a future powered by clean, renewable energy, not one that depends on dirty, polluting fossil fuels.”

Finance

• Long queues at Dover may be the first sign of what it means to live outside the European Union

  Perhaps Britain will find, in the uncertain new world it has chosen to live in, that it cannot implement Boris Johnson’s policy on cake – ‘pro having it and pro eating it’. Easy as a backbencher, or even mayor of London; not so easy as Foreign Secretary

• Buddhism and economic transformation

  Economies have no essential nature. Once this is recognized, many more opportunities for change present themselves.

• Sir Philip Green responsible for ‘systematic plunder’ of BHS, say MPs in scathing report

  ‘What kind of man is it who can count his fortune in billions but does not know what decent behavior is?’ – Frank Field MP, chair of the Work and Pensions Committee

• Hewlett Packard Enterprise: Brexit, weak pound. A price hike is coming

  Hewlett Packard Enterprise is to bump up the price of its infrastructure gear in Blighty from today, 25 July, blaming the crash in the value of UK sterling currency for the hike.

  According to sources close to the matter, the cost of servers will go up between six to seven per cent, and storage and legacy networking by circa 10 per cent.

• Theresa May visits Northern Ireland to insist border controls will not be erected after Brexit

  Theresa May will today insist that peace and stability in Northern Ireland is her “highest priority” as she pledges to ensure that border controls will not be erected after Brexit.

  The Prime Minister will travel to Belfast today to hold talks with First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, to discuss delivering stability in Northern Ireland in the wake of the EU referendum.

• We Must Reject Economic Cannibalism

  “What can I do to fix a broken global economy?” It’s a question I’ve been asked a lot these past few months as I’ve crisscrossed the US speaking at TED venues, music concerts, the World Affairs Council, bookstores, on radio and TV shows, and at a variety of other forums.

  During this election year it is important to recognize that corporations pretty much run the world. Despite the outcome of the elections, they will continue to do so — at least until we organize and change the rules that have created the dominant neoliberal system.

• Fighting for Seats at the Table: A Poor People’s Movement in a Rustbelt Town

  The Think Tank is an organization started in 2014 that is modelling a new approach for addressing poverty. Based in Newark, Ohio, the town where Wills lives, the group is made up of people currently struggling with poverty, or who have struggled in the past. The group’s goal is to have their voices heard by people who make decisions.

• Thought we’d escaped TTIP by leaving the EU? Think again – it’s setting the terrifying blueprint for our future trade deals

  Despite being without national trade policy for four decades, we can predict a lot about the UK’s future trade deals outside of the EU from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and what we know gives great cause for concern.

  If and when Brexit is completed, TTIP will not directly apply to a UK outside the single market. But with the US knocking on the door to create a trade deal with the UK we know its interests are the same as expressed in TTIP. All the warning signs from TTIP suggest that under the current government vested interests will be satisfied ahead of the wider public interest.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Does Hillary Get It?

  Does Hillary Clinton understand that the biggest divide in American politics is no longer between the right and the left, but between the anti-establishment and the establishment?

  I worry she doesn’t – at least not yet.

  A Democratic operative I’ve known since the Bill Clinton administration told me “now that she’s won the nomination, Hillary is moving to the middle. She’s going after moderate swing voters.”

  Presumably that’s why she tapped Tim Kaine to be her vice president. Kaine is as vanilla middle as you can get.

  In fairness, Hillary is only doing what she knows best. Moving to the putative center is what Bill Clinton did after the Democrats lost the House and Senate in 1994 – signing legislation on welfare reform, crime, trade, and financial deregulation that enabled him to win reelection in 1996 and declare “the era of big government” over.

• Mission Accomplished at DNC, Clinton Hires Wasserman Schultz for Top Post

  Clinton responds to party chair’s resignation on Sunday by thanking “longtime friend” for her service at DNC and immediately naming her as honorary chair of her own campaign

• Wasserman Schultz to Have a New Role in Clinton Campaign

  Hillary Clinton is thanking her “longtime friend” Debbie Wasserman Schultz after the Florida congresswoman’s decision to step down as chair of the Democratic National Committee. Clinton says that Wasserman Schultz will serve as honorary chair of her campaign’s 50-state program to help elect Democrats around the country.

• Leaked DNC emails reveal the inner workings of the party’s finance operation

  In the rush for big donations to pay for this week’s Democratic convention, a party staffer reached out to Tennessee donor Roy Cockrum in May with a special offer: the chance to attend a roundtable discussion with President Obama.

  Cockrum, already a major Democratic contributor, was in. He gave an additional $33,400. And eight days later, he was assigned a place across the table from Obama at the Jefferson Hotel in downtown Washington, according to a seating chart sent to the White House.

• The Far Right Proposals in the 2016 Republican Party Platform

  Here are 50 excerpts from the 2016 GOP platform.

  1. Tax cuts for the rich: “Wherever tax rates penalize thrift or discourage investment, they must be lowered. Wherever current provisions of the code are disincentives for economic growth, they must be changed… We propose to level the international playing field by lowering the corporate tax rate to be on a par with, or below, the rates of other industrial nations.”

  2. Deregulate the banks: “The Republican vision for American banking calls for establishing transparent, efficient markets where consumers can obtain loans they need at reasonable rates based on market conditions. Unfortunately, in response to the financial institutions crisis of 2008-2009, the Democratic-controlled Congress enacted the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, otherwise known as Dodd-Frank.”

• At RNC, Media Put a Happy Face on Suppression of Speech

  “News media could either be our ally or our enemy—we wanted them as an ally,” Laurie Pritchett said in a 1985 interview about his strategy as police chief in Albany, Georgia, during Martin Luther King, Jr.’s desegregation efforts in 1962.

  Pritchett famously ordered his officers to enforce the city’s segregation laws nonviolently and arrest as few protesters as possible. He knew that if he had acted as other police departments had—like Bull Connor’s dogs and firehoses in Birmingham (1963) and Jim Clark’s Bloody Sunday in Selma (1965)—news media would show the country how brutally oppressive police were, inspiring greater public support for King’s cause. In short, he beat nonviolent protesters at their own game by exploiting the media.

• With DNC Leaks, Former ‘Conspiracy Theory’ Is Now True––and No Big Deal

  While it’s impossible to know whether systemic pro-Hillary Clinton bias at the DNC was decisive in the 2016 Democratic primary race, we now know beyond any doubt that such a bias not only existed, but was endemic and widespread. DNC officials worked to plant pro-Clinton stories, floated the idea of using Sanders’ secular Judaism against him in the South, and routinely ran PR spin for Clinton, even as the DNC claimed over and over it was neutral in the primary. The evidence in the leaks was so clear that Debbie Wasserman Schultz has resigned her role as DNC chair—after her speaking role at the Democratic National Convention this week was scrapped—while DNC co-chair Donna Brazile, who is replacing Wasserman Schultz in the top role, has apologized to the Sanders camp.

• Trump Doesn’t Totally Rule Out Supporting A David Duke Candidacy

  Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump didn’t completely rule out the possibility that he would support a Democrat running against David Duke, former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, who announced he is running as a Republican for U.S. Senate seat in Louisiana.

  When asked by Meet The Press’ Chuck Todd whether he would support a Democrat if it meant defeating Duke, Trump waffled, saying, “I guess, depending on who the Democrat, but the answer would be yes.”

• [Older] Faith-based Attribution

  Every network attack against a company like Sony Entertainment, an organization like the DNC, or a government agency like OPM, comes with a series of questions to be answered, including the obvious ones like when did it begin? What was taken? Who was responsible? Are the attackers out of my network?

  Attribution, simply put, purports to answer the question of who is responsible. For example, CrowdStrike investigated the DNC network breach and determined that the Russian government was responsible. FireEye investigated the Sony Entertainment network attack and determined that the North Korean government was responsible.

  It’s important to know that the process of attributing an attack by a cybersecurity company has nothing to do with the scientific method. Claims of attribution aren’t testable or repeatable because the hypothesis is never proven right or wrong.

  Neither are claims of attribution admissible in any criminal case, so those who make the claim don’t have to abide by any rules of evidence (i.e., hearsay, relevance, admissibility).

  The closest analogy for a cybersecurity company’s assignment of attribution is an intelligence estimate, however intelligence analysts who write those estimates are held accountable for their hits and misses. If the miss is big enough (No WMDs in Iraq, missed India’s five nuclear bomb tests in ’98, missed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, etc.), there are consequences, and perhaps a Congressional investigation.

• Kshama Sawant Shows Up at the DNC to Tell Bernie Sanders Supporters to Vote for Jill Stein

  On the heels of a law-and-order-obsessed Republican National Convention, Democrats are meeting this week in Philadelphia to do their thing. The protests are already more impressive than anything on the streets of Cleveland.

• Let’s debate! Who will be the first woman president?

  On October 16, 2012, my vice presidential running mate and I were arrested. Our crime? Daring to try to attend a presidential debate.

  This year, I hope the American people will demand that Libertarian Gary Johnson and I take our rightful places in the presidential debates. Because Americans not only have a right to vote. We have a right to know who we can vote for.

• In political turnabout, Democrats play soft-on-Russia card by linking Trump to Putin

  For decades, Republicans were the fiercest of Cold Warriors, fighting the spread of communism and, not incidentally, winning elections by painting Democrats as the party of the frail and feckless.

• The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald on What’s Wrong (and Right) With the Media

  First of all, I think that a lot of coverage decisions are often made subconsciously. Most journalists think that they don’t actually make decisions about what’s newsworthy and what isn’t and their media outlets cover anything that’s newsworthy. And this is plainly not the case; there’s huge numbers of obviously newsworthy stories that are routinely, systemically ignored by large media outlets. And sometimes it’s just a by-product of the news-cycle rhythms, but a lot of times there are clear patterns to it. One major pattern is that the political media in particular views everything through a partisan lens. So if there’s some sort of dispute between the two parties, where the Democrats think one thing and the Republicans think another, that tends to get covered, because that’s viewed as an important political debate. But on the issues where there’s bipartisan consensus, where the two parties essentially agree, which is far more common than disagreeing, those tend to get completely ignored. So you look at U.S. support for Israel, or for Saudi Arabia in a foreign-policy context, or the idea that the U.S. should have the largest military in the world, or that we should continue with our state of mass incarceration, or just the general neoliberal economic policies that both parties believe in and support — those tend to be completely excluded from any kind of media discussion or coverage, because it just doesn’t get onto the radar of what matters. So these kinds of choices get made all the time.

• Green Party’s Jill Stein: Trump’s a ‘Racist’ and Clinton’s Not a True Progressive

  Jill Stein believes the American people deserve another choice between “a racist billionaire and a proponent of the billionaire club.”

  As the presumptive presidential nominee for the far-Left Green Party, Stein wants Donald Trump to be stopped. But she doesn’t think Hillary Clinton is the best alternative.

  “Donald Trump, he is a racist, a xenophobic, anti-woman, just anti-working people and it’s very important that that movement, that right wing extremism needs to be stopped,” Stein said in an interview with ABC News at the Democratic National Convention today.

• Green Party’s Jill Stein Offers Glimpse of Hope for Bernie Sanders Supporters

  Protesters in Philadelphia have found a new glimpse of hope: Dr. Jill Stein.

  Though Stein has been running as the Green Party’s presumptive presidential candidate for 13 months now, here in the City of Brotherly Love she’s had something of a bump in public opinion.

  At a protest with a few hundred people today near City Hall, there were several rounds of chants for “Jill Not Hill” and signs lining Stein up with Sanders as the progressive alternative to Clinton.

• Whether Or Not Russians Hacked DNC Means Nothing Concerning How Newsworthy The Details Are

  As you almost certainly know by now, on Friday Wikileaks released a bunch of hacked DNC emails just before the Democratic Presidential convention kicked off. While Wikileaks hasn’t quite said where it got the emails, speculation among many quickly pointed to Russian state sponsored hackers. That’s because of the revelation last month of two sets of hackers breaching the DNC’s computer system and swiping (at the very least) opposition research on Donald Trump. Various cybersecurity research firms, starting with CrowdStrike, which was hired by the DNC to investigate, pointed the finger at the Russians.

  Of course, whether or not you believe that may depend on how credible you find the big cybersecurity firms like CrowdStrike, FireEye and Mandiant (the big names that always pop up in situations like this). For what it’s worth, these guys have something of a vested interest in playing up the threat of big hacks from nation-state level hackers. For a good analysis of why this finger-pointing may be less than credible, I recommend two articles by Jeffrey Carr, one noting that these firms come from a history of “faith-based attribution” whereby they are never held accountable for being wrong — and another highlighting serious questions about the designation of Russia as being responsible for this particular hack (he notes that some of the research appeared to come pre-arrived at that conclusion, and then ignored any evidence to the contrary).

  Still, the claim that the data came from the Russians has become something of a story itself. And, of course, who did the hack and got the info is absolutely a news story. But it’s an entirely separate one from whether or not the leaked emails contain anything useful or newsworthy. And yet, because this is the peak of political silly season, some are freaking out and claiming that anyone reporting on these emails “has been played” by Putin and Russia. Leaving aside the fact that people like to claim that Russia’s behind all sorts of politicians that some don’t like, that should be entirely unrelated to whether or not the story is worth covering.

• DNC Comms Guy Mocked Story Saying DNC Is Bad At Cybersecurity; Revealed Because DNC Is Bad At Cybersecurity

  Protip: maybe don’t laugh off accusations that you’re bad at cybersecurity in emails on a network that has already been infiltrated by hackers. That message did not make it through to one Eric Walker, deputy communications director for the Democratic National Committee. As you’ve heard by now, the DNC got hacked and all the emails were posted on Wikileaks. An anonymous user in our comments pointed us to a now revealed email from Walker brushing off a story in BuzzFeed, quoting cybersecurity professionals arguing that both the RNC and the DNC are bad at cybersecurity, mainly because they’re handing out USB keys at their conventions.

• Green Party’s Jill Stein Wants To Be ‘Plan B’ For Bernie Sanders Supporter

  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.

• teleSUR Host Abby Martin Arrested at DNC

  Martin was covering the DNC protests in Philadelphia for teleSUR.

  Abby Martin, host of “Empire Files,” was covering the DNC protests in Philadelphia for teleSUR when she was arrested by police.

  Martin was on her way to a “Democracy Spring” event where there were reports of civil disobedience and arrests being made. The police had closed off all streets surrounding the action.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Reports: WikiLeaks Links Facing Censorship On Facebook

  WikiLeaks has accused Facebook of censorship after multiple users reported that they could not post links on the social network following the explosive DNC Leaks.

• Facebook Calls WikiLeaks Block ‘An Accident’ After Accusations Of Censorship

  Facebook has reportedly told WikiLeaks that it has unblocked links to the site on Facebook, calling the block “an accident” after it faced widespread accusations of political censorship.

• Facebook Unblocks DNC Email Leak After WikiLeaks Accuses Them of Censorship

• Did Facebook’s Censorship of DNC Leak Defame Wikileaks?

• Facebook CSO responds to claim Wikileaks links to DNC emails were blocked

• Facebook blocked links to DNC emails disclosed by Wikileaks

• How campus censorship is conquering the world

  ‘Hate speech is excluded from protection’, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo tweeted last year, echoing a dangerously common misconception. ‘Hate speech isn’t free speech’, people say, assuming they have a right not to hear whatever they consider hateful language and ideas. US government officials sometimes share this view: the mayor of West Hollywood confirmed to Eugene Volokh that she would not issue a special events permit for a Donald Trump rally so long as he trafficked in hate, contrary to the ‘values and ideals’ of the West Hollywood community.

• Jodie Ginsberg: Bahrain needs to know that #opinionsarenotcrimes

  This is the tweet that Index on Censorship shared on 14 March 2015 when Nabeel Rajab, the Bahraini human rights campaigner, was challenging a six-month suspended sentence for “denigrating government institutions” for comments about the role of prisons as incubators of extremism. It is also one of the tweets now being used in evidence against Nabeel in a new case the government has brought against him. The latest case charges Nabeel, president of the award-winning Bahrain Center for Human Rights, with “publishing and broadcasting false news that undermines the prestige of the state”.

• Shashant Shah: I believe in self-censorship

  Filmmaker Shashant Shah, who has helmed films like ‘Dasvidaniya’ and ‘Chalo Dilli’ and has now directed a web series ‘Shaadi Boys’ for Viacom18′s digital platform Voot, says he believes in self-censorship. ‘Shaadi Boys’ is about three boys who accidentally get into the shaadi business and make big bucks. Asked whether a filmmaker enjoys complete freedom in terms of censorship with web series, Shah told IANS: “I believe in self-censorship.

• After harsh censorship, Myanmar’s booksellers face new challenges

• Candidate challenges ‘political censorship’ over China allegiance pledge

• ‘Political censorship’: Gov’t sends email asking for election candidate’s stance on HK independence

• Hong Kong booksellers under threat from China ‘steamroller’ censor

• New Hong Kong election China pledge rule faces first legal challenge

Privacy/Surveillance

• Should Facebook And The Rest Of Silicon Valley Invoke More Paranoia Than The NSA?

• Drug Dealer’s Lawyers Want To Know How Yahoo Is Recovering Communications It Previously Said Were Unrecoverable

  Russell Knaggs, the accused drug dealer, apparently utilized a Yahoo email account to hook up suppliers in Colombia with buyers in Europe. To add to the difficulty level, Knaggs did this while serving time for another drug bust. The method used was not all that uncommon. Everyone shared a single email account and composed draft messages. Each party would log into the account, read the draft message left for them, and compose a draft of their own in response. No emails were sent. All drafts were then deleted from both the “Draft” folder and the “Trash.”

• Encryption backdoors appear on EU data chief’s ban wishlist

  Revised ePrivacy laws should guarantee confidentiality of communications and encourage encryption, the European Union’s data watchdog has said.

  European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) Giovanni Buttarelli published his official opinion on the review of the ePrivacy Directive on Monday.

  An overhaul to the so-called Cookie Law is currently be worked on by officials at the European Commission, with the completion date expected before the end of the year to bring it into line with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

  “The EU rules designed to protect privacy in electronic communications need to reflect the world that exists today,” said Buttarelli.

• We Can Stay Safe Without Creating a Surveillance State

  The new Prime Minister spent six years as Home Secretary but Theresa May’s legacy at the Home Office is not one to be proud of. She cut front line police services relentlessly and her record on civil liberties was appalling.

  Two years ago, at the height of summer, she rushed through legislation that gave GCHQ the power to force companies to hand over their customers’ personal data, including phone records and information about emails and browsing history.

  She used the spectre of terrorism to justify the legislation, called the Data Retention and Investigator Powers Act (DRIPA), but it was poorly drafted and deeply flawed. Among other things, it effectively gave the Government the right to monitor mobile phone data and internet browsing history without the approval of a judge. That’s why I took the unusual step of joining forces with my Conservative party adversary David Davis to sue the Government in the High Court.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Donald Trump’s War on Islam, Beheld Live from the Cleveland Floor, Part Two

  The Floor might have been a prop for TV, but it was beautiful. Spotlights danced off the red, white and blue bunting, off the tall, triangular signs spelling out the names of the states and the territories, off the delegates themselves, equal and unruly, a republic made flesh. To stand on it gave one a feeling of chaos and joy.

  The states were defined by red carpets running between them, and by their costumes. The Guam wore tropical-print shirts. Texas had Lone Star flag shirts and cowboy hats and supersized enamel pins. North Carolina seemed patrician and a slightly aloof in their seersucker suits. West Virginia wore hardhats and pinstripes waving “Trump Digs Coal” signs. Chunks of Colorado displayed a mutinous, die-hard love for Ted Cruz by walking out of the convention on Monday afternoon. The many-footed whip was walking up and down the aisles, handing out Trump/Pence signs, whipping up cheers of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” often settling for “USA! USA! USA!”

• Rough handling and restraint: UK forced removals, still a nasty business

  The charter flight on Titan Airways departed Stansted for Nigeria and Ghana on May 24. It was staffed for the UK Home Office by the private security company Tascor, a subsidiary of Capita, who claim to achieve the “safe and secure escorting and removal of more than 18,000 individuals from the UK each year”.

• 9/11 defense lawyers: Judge let U.S. secretly destroy CIA ‘black site’ evidence

  Defense lawyers for the alleged 9/11 plotters said for the first time Sunday that the government destroyed a secret CIA prison with secret permission of the trial judge, and they learned of it only after the fact.

  Defense attorneys have been complaining about a mysterious destruction of evidence episode in a cloaked manner since May. Prosecutors have said they did nothing wrong but declined to explain with any specificity. After a closed session Friday, during which the judge apparently agreed some details were no longer classified, the defense lawyers laid out what they knew in a Sunday roundtable.

• History tells us what may happen next with Brexit & Trump

  It seems we’re entering another of those stupid seasons humans impose on themselves at fairly regular intervals. I am sketching out here opinions based on information, they may prove right, or may prove wrong, and they’re intended just to challenge and be part of a wider dialogue.

  My background is archaeology, so also history and anthropology. It leads me to look at big historical patterns. My theory is that most peoples’ perspective of history is limited to the experience communicated by their parents and grandparents, so 50–100 years. To go beyond that you have to read, study, and learn to untangle the propaganda that is inevitable in all telling of history. In a nutshell, at university I would fail a paper if I didn’t compare at least two, if not three opposing views on a topic. Taking one telling of events as gospel doesn’t wash in the comparative analytical method of research that forms the core of British academia. (I can’t speak for other systems, but they’re definitely not all alike in this way).

Intellectual Monopolies

• UNDP Initiative Seeks Impact-Driven Entrepreneurs From 10 Developing Countries

  The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has launched a joint initiative with Impact Hub, an international community of social entrepreneurs. The initiative is a platform named “#Accelerate2030,” aiming at supporting and promoting the most promising impact-driven ventures focusing on the UN Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs).

• Verizon Buys Yahoo In $4.8 Billion Attempt To Bore The Internet To Death

• Copyrights

  • John Oliver’s Story On Campaign Music And Copyright Is… Wrong

    This is flat out wrong in most situations. As we’ve pointed out again and again and again and again, in nearly all cases, politicians using music at an event have the proper licenses. They don’t need to get permission from the musicians so long as either the campaign or the venue have ASCAP or BMI blanket licenses, which they almost always do. The whole point of ASCAP/BMI licenses is that you don’t need to get individual permission from the artists or their publishers.

    There are instances, occasionally, where politicians ridiculously don’t have such a license, but it’s pretty rare. And there may be a few other narrow exceptions, such as if there’s an implied endorsement by the musicians, but that’s rarely the case.

    Unfortunately, the song from John Oliver and friends ignores all of that, even stating directly at one point that for a politician to use music, you first have to call the publisher. That’s wrong. ASCAP and BMI already have taken care of that.

    Perhaps this isn’t a huge deal, but one would hope that Oliver would actually get the basic facts right on this too, because every election season this issue comes up and spreading more misinformation about it doesn’t help.

  • MPAA Front Group, Pretending To Represent Consumer Interests, Slams CloudFlare For Not Censoring The Internet

    So you may have seen reports last week charging CloudFlare and some other tech companies with “aiding” internet malware pushers. The “report,” called “Enabling Malware” was announced in a press release last week from the Digital Citizens Alliance — a group that describes itself as representing consumer interests online:

    Digital Citizens is a consumer-oriented coalition focused on educating the public and policy makers on the threats that consumers face on the internet and the importance for internet stakeholders – individuals, government and industry – to make the Web a safer place.

    And while the story wasn’t picked up that widely, a few news sources did pick it up and repeated the false claim that DCA is a consumer advocacy group. TorrentFreak, FedScoop and Can-India also picked up the story, and all simply repeated DCA’s claim to represent the interests of “digital citizens.”

    But that leaves out the reality: DCA is a group mostly funded by Hollywood, but also with support from the pharmaceutical industry, to systematically attack the internet and internet companies, for failing to censor the internet and block the sites and services that Hollywood and Big Pharma dislike. DCA has been instrumental in pushing false narratives about all the “evil” things online — “counterfeit fire detectors! fake drugs!” — in order to push policy makers to institute new laws to censor the internet. DCA buries this basic fact in its own description, merely noting that it “counts among its supporters… the health, pharmaceutical and creative industries.”

    The organization was formed in late 2012, partly as a response to the MPAA’s big loss around SOPA. Recognizing that it needed to change tactics, the MPAA basically helped get DCA off the ground to push scare stories about horrible internet companies enabling “bad things” online, and how new laws and policies had to be created to stop those evil internet companies. Much of this was merely speculation for a while, based on the fact that every DCA report seemed to wrongly blame internet companies for other people using those tools to do bad things online. However, it became explicit thanks to the Sony Hack, which revealed that a key part of the MPAA’s anti-Google plan, dubbed Project Goliath, involved having the DCA pay Mississippi’s former Attorney General Mike Moore (who mentored its current AG, Jim Hood), to lobby Jim Hood to attack Google.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

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

• Graphics Stack

  • Intel Graphics Gen4 and Newer Now Defaults to Modesetting Driver on X

Applications

• Caddy 0.9 Released with All New Core

  Wow, where to begin. Caddy 0.9 is the biggest update yet. We completely overhauled the core design and TLS features, renovated addons into a new plugin model, added experimental QUIC support, fixed bugs, upgraded the Caddyfile, and made a significant number of other improvements and changes. I’ll try to cover them all in this post and talk about what’s coming next and in the future. Sorry (not sorry) for the long post!

  For those finding Caddy for the first time: Caddy is an easy-to-use HTTP/2 web server that uses HTTPS—not HTTP—by default. With this release, we’re bringing that TLS magic to more than just HTTP. We’re also the first to usher in QUIC support.

• EncryptPad: Secure Text Editor That Protects Files With Passwords, Keys, Or Both

  EncryptPad is a free and open source text editor for sensitive information, which protects files with passwords, key files, or both, available for Linux, Windows and Mac. The app can also be used to encrypt binary files, such as images, videos, and so on.

• Cumulus – A Real Time Weather App for Linux Desktops

  Cumulus is a Yahoo! Weather Powered Desktop Weather App for Linux. It has a friendly user interface and is easy to setup. Cumulus is a small and light weight app that does not take up much space on your desktop window or system. No real Linux Experience required to install or configure Cumulus. Cumulus is written in Python so it can run on any Linux distribution.

• 4 Best Command-Line Email Clients For Linux

  Recently, I wrote an article covering the 6 Best Email Clients you can use on Linux Desktop, all of the email clients in that list where graphical user interface (GUI) programs, but sometimes, users prefer to deal with email directly from the command-line.

• Watch Twitch Using Your Favorite Video Player With Livestreamer Twitch GUI

  According to its description, the main reason behind creating this application is to allow using your favorite video player, like VLC, Totem, mpv, and others to watch Twitch.tv streams (the app even allows watching multiple streams at once) instead of Flash.

  That’s because while Twitch.tv now uses HTML5 for the video controls, it still uses Flash for the video itself, which can be pretty resource-heavy.

• Terminix – A New GTK 3 Tiling Terminal Emulator for Linux

  But sometimes, we find it difficult to choose which terminal emulator to work with, depending on our preferences. In this overview, we shall cover one exciting terminal emulator for Linux called Terminix.

• Minimalist Web Browser ‘Min’ Sees New Release

  The Min browser project has picked up a new update. Version 1.4 of the open-source, cross-platform web browser adds browser actions and full-text search.

• Proprietary

  • Opera Developer Update Brings Built-In RSS Reader, Chromecast Support

  • About the future of Seafile

    Instead we will continue to develop Seafile independently in Germany and Europe for the Seafile Professional Edition based on version 5.1.8. The same applies for the Seafile Community Edition. We have already assembled a team to continue the development.

  • Chat With Your Skype Friends From Pidgin With SkypeWeb Plugin (Ubuntu PPA)

    Developed by Eion Robb, the Skype4Pidgin developer, SkypeWeb Plugin for Pidgin has a major advantage over the old Skype4Pidgin plugin: it doesn’t require Skype to run in the background.

  • Skype For Linux Alpha Update Adds ‘Close to Tray’, Call Settings, More

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Chrooting Apache 2.4 with mod_unixd on Debian 8 (Jessie)

  • 10 Easy Examples of GNU sed Command Lines (Episode 3)

  • HTTPOXY Vulnerability: How to protect and test your web server

  • How to Use ‘find’ Command to Search for Multiple Filenames (Extensions) in Linux

  • Learn How to Use Awk Special Patterns ‘BEGIN and END’ – Part 9

  • Four Habit-Forming Tips to Faster C++

  • GNS3 – Emulating Network Infrastructure on Debian 8.2

  • 10 Easy Examples of GNU sed Command Lines (Episode 4)

  • Setting up a telnet handler for OpenStack Zuul CI jobs in GNOME 3

  • How to Install and Configure Cobbler on CentOS 7.x

  • Maintaining remote web sites with sitecopy on Ubuntu 16.04

  • Install BigTree on a CentOS 7 VPS

  • How to install ESXi nested inside ProxMox VE

  • Introduction to Turnkey Linux Appliances with No Pain

  • How-to Install JFrog Artifactory on Ubuntu 14.04

  • Spawn your shell like it’s 90s again!

  • View Hardware Information Using the Command Line on Linux

  • bcache on Xenserver 6.5 by static linking

  • HowTo Netflix on Chromium, Linux

  • Hello world Unikernel Walkthrough

  • How to fix Httpoxy a CGI PHP/Nginx/Apache/Go application vulnerability on Linux or Unix

• Games

  • Cheese Talks: Porting Games to Linux & Day of the Tentacle

    In addition to my own thoughts, the article includes insights from a number of other Linux game porters including Leszek Godlewski (Painkiller Hell & Damnation, Deadfall Adventures), Ryan “icculus” Gordon (StarBreak, Left 4 Dead 2, Unreal Tournament 2004, Another World, Cogs, Goat Simulator), David Gow (Keen Dreams, Multiwinia), Ethan Lee (Salt & Sanctuary, Hiden in Plain Sight, HackNet, Waveform, Dust: An Elysian Tail) and Aaron Melcher (Outland, La-Mulana, Hyper Light Drifter, Darkest Dungeon). Betweem them, they offer a great range of attitudes and approaches that support and provide counterpoint to my own experiences.

  • ​Bundle Stars presents the Indie Legend Bundle 4

    Boasting one of the most star-studded game line-ups ever seen in an indie bundle, the brand new and exclusive Indie Legends 4 Bundle is here.

    Bundle Stars has pulled 8 incredible Steam games out of the bag for just $3.49 – that’s a saving of more than $100, and a discount of more than 95%.

    So just how good are the games? Games like Party Hard and Door Kickers are award winners, and the average Steam user score is a stunning 91%, across nearly 30,000 reviews!

  • Life is Strange: a Groundhog Day Simulator

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

  • What’s Happening in OpenStack-Ansible (WHOA) – July 2016

  • Finance

    • Next Weeks Broker Price Targets For Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Shares Sold by Legal & General Group Plc

  • Fedora

    • Korora Linux explained

      At first Kororra was used to make Gentoo Linux installation easier but in November 2007 this project was discontinued. In 2010 Korora project was continued as a Fedora based distribution. It was also renamed to Korora from Kororra. First major release of Korora distro was in 2013. Since then Korora is providing a simplified and beautiful experience of Fedora to users. For this topic We are using latest Korora 24 in Mate flavor. Why Mate? because, we never tried this flavor before. Let’s see some important things that we experienced while using it.

• 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

        • Linux Mint 18 Xfce Enters Beta, Gets X-Apps, Mint-Y, Many Ubuntu 16.04 Goodies

          It all took approximately one month, but the Xfce community edition of the Linux Mint 18 “Sarah” operating system is now available for download, as a public Beta release for 64-bit and 32-bit computers.

Devices/Embedded

• Can the Omega 2 Replace Raspberry Pi? The $5 Linux IoT Module

  The Omega 2, a $5 Linux Module concentrated on ease of use and accessibility, managed to surpass its Kickstarter funding goal in just a few hours after being published.

• Phones

  • Android

    • Nokia might re-enter mobile market with two high-end Android handsets

    • Superbook: A case that turns your Android smartphone into a laptop

    • MESUIT’s smartphone case will let you run Android on your iPhone

    • OnePlus 3 International Giveaway!

    • 15 top Android smartphones we reviewed recently

      The second half of 2016 took off with some exciting launches from notable manufacturers like Motorola, HTC, Xiaomi and others. With so many smartphones being launched on a near-daily basis by brands both big and small, it gets quite difficult to keep track of them.

      To help our readers in making their purchase decisions, here is a list of the 15 top Android smartphones we reviewed recently. Take a look.

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.

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

• Wassenaar Arrangement ‘inhibits international cyber-security efforts’

• July ’16 security fixes for Adobe Flash

• How we broke PHP, hacked Pornhub and earned $20,000

  Pornhub’s bug bounty program and its relatively high rewards on Hackerone caught our attention. That’s why we have taken the perspective of an advanced attacker with the full intent to get as deep as possible into the system, focusing on one main goal: gaining remote code execution capabilities. Thus, we left no stone unturned and attacked what Pornhub is built upon: PHP.

• Latest massive DDoS attack suggests criminals are plotting long campaigns

  The attack also abused DNSSEC because, the criminals have cleverly fathomed, the DNS security protocol generates larger responses and can therefore be used to boost DNS amplification still further. Akamai has mentioned such tactics in several of its traffic reports during 2015 and 2016 but it is ironic that a security standard should end up being manipulated in this way.

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.