07.09.16
Posted in Europe, Patents at 11:58 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Publicado en Europa, Patentes a las 4:44 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Incluso la ilegal vigilancia/interceptación dentro de la EPO es pasivamente aceptada por el Consejo ‘Administrativo’ de la Oficina Europea de Patentes (EPO)
Referencia: La Corte FISA Parece Ser el Sello de Goma para Las Solicitudes del Gobierno (NPR, 2013)
Sumario: El creciénte descubrimiénto de que el llamado Consejo ‘Administrativo’ son poco más que selladores de goma para Benoît Battistelli, quién controla su presupuesto nacional
Un poco más adelante en este año y tendremos más de mil artículos acerca de la EPO. No mucho ha cambiado ya que Benoît Battistelli todavía permanece en el poder y Željko Topić conserva su trabajo y (posiblemente consiga que su término sea extendido, a menos que el Consejo ‘Administrativo’ finalmente aprenda a decir “no”).
La ventaja es que una mayor proporción de trabajadores de EPO ahora sabe la verdad sobre su empleador. Lo mismo ocurre con las partes interesadas, como los abogados de patentes y empresas europeas. “Al final”, escribió una persona de ayer, “lo que proponga Battistelli será aprobado. – Con modificaciones cosméticas para salvarse la cara en el CA” (Consejo “Administrativo”).
He aquí el comentario en su totalidad (la CIPA representa clientes):
como el CIPA lo hizo antes de que sea aprobado, y Merpel también, que pueden seguir y diseccionar estas reglas después de su aprobación y encontrar más problemas – mira, sin ser un experto ni siquiera puedo hacer eso:
A propuesta del Presidente de las Salas de Recurso y después de que el presidente de la Oficina Europea de Patentes se le ha dado la oportunidad de comentar
En primer lugar el presidente de la EPO hace un comentario y luego el Presidente de las Salas de Recurso hace la propuesta … pero lo que si el comentario del Presidente de la EPO es “no me gusta que”? ¿Qué pasa entonces? ¿El residente de las salas de recurso aún hacen la propuesta?
No debemos olvidar que el Presidente de las Salas de Recurso mismo depende de Battistelli para su nombramiento o reelección …
Lo que quiero decir es: el hecho de que todos estamos aquí mentalmente masturbándose [Merpel puede modificar dicha] acerca de los posibles escenarios derivados de la aplicación de estas normas significa que no están claras – no parece ser un diagrama de flujo definitivo.
Pero la verdad es … ni el de CA ni Battistelli parecen preocuparse por sus comentarios y análisis – o el de la CIPA, o los usuarios, o Merpel, o AMBA.
Puedes gritar desde la parte superior de sus pulmones “! Esto no está claro”, “esto reduce la independencia de la BoA!” – Que parece tener el efecto contrario: se adoptan las normas aún más rápido – durante la noche.
Deténgase.
Es tiempo perdido. Al final, lo Battistelli propone será aprobada – con modificaciones cosméticas para salvar la cara de todo el mundo en el AC.
Recuerde, se ha declarado que “este es un logro histórico” – ¿quién eres tú para ir contra la historia?
El derrotismo no se ha convertido en humor. “Está claro”, escribió otra persona, “en este caso, sólo son rubberstampers.” En otras palabras, los delegados se convirtiéron en algo así como el hazmerreír como la vigilancia de a FISA authoritizada en los EE.UU. (nunca dicen “no”, aunque su trabajo es la supervisión ). Para citar el comentario:
La nueva Regla 12c dice “A propuesta del Presidente de las Salas de Recurso y después de que el presidente de la Oficina Europea de Patentes se le ha dado la oportunidad de comentar, el Comité establecido en virtud del párrafo 1 (BOAC) adoptará las Reglas de Procedimiento de las salas de recurso y de la Cámara de Recursos. “
“Establecerá”?
No hay posibilidad de modificar, o comentario a sí mismos, o no adoptar RoP no deseado? ¿Cuál es el Comité entonces necesitábamos para? Es evidente que, en este caso, no son más que rubberstampers.
Un paso claro hacia la dependencia. Pero no necesariamente a la dependencia del Presidente de la EPOff [hielo].
El Poboa puede imponer ninguna regla que quiere, y desde su renovación depende del presidente, …. Pero también se puede aplicar cualquier regla que quiere en contra de los deseos de la PEPOOff. El PEPOOff sólo puede comentar, no modificar.
Hace dos años hubieron rumores consistentes acerca de que el Consejo ‘Administrativo’ y notablemente el sr. Kongstad, deberían ser vistos como complices (no ápatico) en relación a Battistelli. -no puede ser mejor dicho ya que es su compadre, esta alli para cubrir su trásero ya que su puesto está en juego -. La última reunión del Consejo ‘Administrativo’ dejó pocas dudas acerca de ello. El problema no sólo es la Oficina de Patentes pero la Organización en su totalidad. Es como siBattistelli se elevó como Presidente de la Oficina a Presidente de la Organizacón (habiéndo previamente trabajado en la posición de Kongstad).
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 11:46 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Publicado en Europa, Patentes a las 4:49 pm por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Battistelli viene de un país de una revolución famosa y promuéve los interéses corpórativos y ataques a los derechos de los trabajadores.
Sumario: Tarde o temprano, al juzgar por la dañada imagen de la EPO bajo el reinado de Battistelli, todos los aliados que todavía le queden serán igualmente cuestionables
Él sentimiento público hacia la EPO es en gran parte negativo (más sobre esto en nuestro próximo post), especialmente en el Reino Unido. El reclutamiento de los británicos en la EPO se redujo en un 80% (que probablemente no se molestan siquiera aplicar) y estos nuevas comentarios desde el Register también son reveladoras. Una persona escribió (correctamente):
La mayoría de jugadores grandes no cuestionan la validez de una gran pila de patentes – ya que acaban mostrando su propia pila grande de patentes y se ponen de acuerdo en un acuerdo de licencia cruzada. Es más barato y evita una gran cantidad de riesgo.
La mayoría de los jugadores pequeños no pueden impugnar la validez de incluso una sola patente – que simplemente no pueden pagar las cuotas legales (alrededor de un millón de dólares), y que no quieren que el riesgo de un gran juicio contra ellos que los pone fuera de negocio, por lo que sólo tienen que pagar.
Así que la mayoría de las personas que presentaron las patentes les gustaría a todos a ser rubricada. Las solicitudes de patentes deben ser controlados cuidadosamente con el fin de proteger a todos los demás del titular de la patente.
Hemos escuchado que las PYMEs británicas están muy molestos con la EPO (ver la cobertura de todo enero de este año) y seriamente considerar la adopción de medidas legales sobre la materia. Aquí está el sistema suizo siendo citado por otro comentador:
“Un alto grado de certeza en la validez de su patente”? Sigan fumando. La probabilidad de que su patente sea encontrada no válida se determina por su valor comercial, y tiene muy poco que ver con el proceso de búsqueda y examen. Un examinador EPO pasa unos días en cada caso. En un desafío serio a su validez, moverá cielo y tierra para encontrar la técnica o debilidades en la patente. Puede tomar muchos meses-hombre, o incluso años-hombre. poca contribución de la EPO es un indicador útil, pero no le da “un muy alto grado de certeza”, o incluso cualquier tipo de certeza. De hecho, puede ser francamente engañoso.
Por cierto, algunos sistemas de patentes (por ejemplo, Suiza) funcionan muy bien sin ningún examen de patentabilidad. Es responsabilidad del solicitante, para asegurarse de que no reclama protección para algo que no tiene derecho a. Esto lo convierte en un ambiente muy sobrio patentes y razonable.
He aquí un buen comenatario acerca de las patentes de software y la UK-IPO:
Cada hora que discuten entre sí vale 8 patentes no se concedan. No me puedo imaginar la oficina de patentes del Reino Unido haciendo algo tan constructivo. La oficina de patentes del Reino Unido es responsable de la política de concesión de las patentes de software, siempre y cuando ‘software’ se escribe ‘implementado por ordenador invención “.
Había un poco de basura en la propaganda sobre Brexit jueces extranjeros de la UE llegar a sentencias que se aplicaban a las empresas británicas. El bit que se olvidaron de mencionar es que los jueces del Reino Unido hicieron resoluciones que se aplican a la totalidad de Europa. Una vez que se selecciona un tribunal de la UE para una disputa de patentes, la decisión del tribunal que se aplica a la totalidad de Europa por lo que las empresas no tienen que enfrentar litigios molestia en todos los estados. Antes Brexit, una compañía del Reino Unido podría conseguir su caso sea escuchado en el Reino Unido.
Al salir de la UE no va a hacer que la oficina de patentes europea desaparezca. Trolls del Reino Unido todavía tendrán que presentar allí para demandar a empresas de la UE. Troles de la UE seguirán demandar a las empresas británicas, pero puesto Brexit la audiencia estará fuera del Reino Unido.
Hace años, al igual que miles de otros programadores que escribí a mi MEP y le pidió que voten en contra de la legalización de las patentes de software. El Parlamento Europeo escuchó, por lo que las personas con tiempo y dinero para quemar una buena oportunidad de conseguir una patente de invención implementado por ordenador invalidado porque el software es la matemática que no es patentable. También he escrito a los parlamentarios del Reino Unido y obtuvo respuestas como “No me importa acerca de eso, sólo quiero enviar dinero a África ‘,’ programadores no entienden los beneficios del sistema de patentes, así que voy a gastar millones en una publicidad campaña para educar a ellos “y” los programadores no entienden las patentes’.
Lo que lo de arriba se olvido de mencionar es el loophole creado dentro de la EPO para permitir patentes de software en Europa. Alemania es más leniénte que Inglaterra en esta materia.
La EPO, dice otro comentario, es “[otra] institución que comienza/termina con Europa estaremos encantados de ver la parte de atrás fuera.” [Sic] probable que hayan venido de un defensor Brexit, este comentario ayuda a mostrar el grado en que Battistelli de abusos contribuyen a la opinión / visión negativa de la Unión Europea – un tema sobre el que comentamos aquí antes.
“Dada las actividades de Panama como fuerán reportadas por la prensa, la co-operación de patentes con la EPO es muy improbable que vaya a hacer una diferencia en la economía de Panama.”
–Anonimo
Ahora por otra parte, también nos enteramos de la “Cooperación con Cuba, Colombia y Panamá …” con la EPO (conocidos por sus lazos soviéticas, las bandas, la evasión de impuestos, la censura, y todo tipo de maldades). En palabras de un escritor anónimo: “La cooperación internacional parece ser una de las prioridades del Sr. Battistelli. Se nos ha informado acerca de su cooperación (estos co-operaciones son en forma de acuerdos bilaterales, cuyo contenido no se publica) con la OMPI y con la OAMI (ahora euipo), con China (en relación con la que recibió un doctorado honorario ), con Marruecos y por supuesto con los estados miembros de la EPO, este último con un costo admitido por la EPO de 13 millones de euros (CA / 24/14, punto 25). De acuerdo con un informe interno de la EPO Sr. Battistelli, recientemente, también visitó Cuba, Panamá y Colombia con el fin de “desarrollar actividades de cooperación en América Latina”. Lo que el informe no menciona es que durante los últimos 5 años Cuba presentó un promedio de 8 solicitudes de patentes europeas por año, y Panamá obtuvo un promedio de 5 aplicaciones por año. Columbia está haciendo mejor con 15 aplicaciones por año. De acuerdo con el informe oficial, un memorando de entendimiento fue firmado con Cuba y Colombia. Este no parece ser el caso de Panamá. Citamos: “Allí, el presidente se reunió con el Viceministro de Industria y Comercio y el Director de la Oficina de IP (DIGERP) que, entre otros temas relevantes discutidos, mostró un interés particular para los acuerdos de validación de la EPO actualmente se encuentra cursando con la no los países europeos. “Dada las actividades de Panama como fuerán reportadas por la prensa, la co-operación de patentes con la EPO es muy improbable que vaya a hacer una diferencia en la economía de Panama.”
En una línea similar, estos viajes costosos de Battistelli y su guardia pretoriana hacen mucho menos probable que mejoren los ingresos (tasas de aplicación/renovación) en la EPO. Estas parecen trucos publicitarios baratas, coordinados con personas cuya reputación (o carreras políticas) no sería perjudicadas considerablemente al ser asociado con un tirano como Battistelli.
Si Battistelli pasa tanto esfuerzo crear lazos con países más notorios (sobre los derechos humanos, el comercio ilegal de drogas, la regulación financiera, etc.) que apenas pueda presentar cualquier solicitud de patente, ¿qué dice sobre la visión de Battistelli de Europa? Uno podría ir un paso más allá y decir que los abusos de Battistelli contribuyeron a Brexit. No importa cuánto genera controversia Battistelli, que siempre va a permanecer estrechamente vigilado y bien recibido por los opresores infames y monarcas (con títulos reales). Diplomáticamente es inútil dentro de Europa. La gobernabilidad de la ocupación o de la autoridad por el miedo es el legado de Battistelli en la EPO, lo que sirve para legitimar o dar credibilidad a algunas caricaturas/estereotipos/estigma en relación con los burócratas de la UE.
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 11:40 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Publicado en Europa, Patentes a las 6:28 pm por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Sumario: El conectado con la EPO IAM, expresa algunos puntos de vista pesimistas acerca del régimen de la Patente Unitaria, la que fué construída secretamente por (y para) firmas de abogados de patentes
La EPO puede haber hecho un amigo (o amigos) en IAM, pero Battistelli no siempre consigue lo que quiere (incluse despues de financiar un evento pro-UPC organizado por IAM con fondos de la firma de Relaciónes Públicas de la EPO). “La UPC,” algunos de adentro notaron, es definitivamente “no por la DG3″ (la que Battistelli está aplástando ahora mismo) y temprano hoy (incluso en Domingo!) el editor en jefe de IAMpublicó “Sería malo políticamente y moralmente indefensible ignorar el voto Brexit y continuar arando por la UPC,” haciéndo eco de lo que hemos venido diciéndo la semana pasada. Es realístament, pesimista, o un despertante sorob de la realidad no-Kool-Aid para IAM, un abogador por la UPC por largo tiémpo? He aquí la parte de esperar dos años y medio antes de que algo pase: “Probablemente, la mayor víctima IP del voto Brexit es la propuesta de tribunal de patentes unificado y el régimen de patente unitaria de la UE. Hasta el Reino Unido deja a la UE es necesaria su ratificación para que el sistema viene a ser, de manera tan realista que probablemente significa un mínimo de dos años y medio de retraso desde aquí. Teniendo en cuenta todo el tiempo y el dinero que se ha invertido en la preparación de lo que se pensaba que era su introducción inminente, eso es un gran golpe”.
“Talvez la democracia es tratada por los círculos de patentes de la misma manera que las autoridades de la UE y el gobierno del Reino Unido lo hacen.”
Acerca del esfuérzo para esquivar las barreras del Equipo UPC (como los llamados equipos ‘expertos’), he aquí lo IAM dice: “Tal vez en parte debido a la inversión, en la última semana se han realizado varias sugerencias (aquí y aquí, por ejemplo) que puede haber formas de evitar el voto Brexit con el fin de obtener que la UPC se ejecute en cualquier caso. Creo que sería un error terrible. [...] La UPC ya tiene sus críticos. Ellos consideran que es el resultado de un hecho a puerta cerrada, diseñado para beneficiar a nadie más que a las grandes corporaciones y los abogados de patentes. Eso puede ser un punto de vista totalmente equivocado, pero una manera de reforzarla y darle más tracción es ignorar las implicaciones de la votación Brexit y de inventar una forma de que el Reino Unido para participar en la UPC”.
IAM no está exactamente feliz con la situación. Las palabras con las que su éditor cierra son: “El pueblo ha hablado, los bastardos.” Muestra de hecho como considera a la gente que sería perjudicada si ellos y Battistelli se hubieran salido con la suya.
Eso muestra también cuán profesionales son. Talvez la democracia es tratada por los círculos de patentes de la misma manera que las autoridades de la UE y el gobierno del Reino Unido lo hacen. Los ¨hijos de putas¨… porque las ofertas a puertas cerradas de los abogados de patentes (complementadas por sesiones fotográficas de Battistelli con sus directivos y políticos), aparentemente debe instruir a los funcionarios elegidos y dirigir toda la política europea de patentes en una sola vez (contra la voluntad de la gente, para los abogados , que se beneficiarían aún más de la UPC si alguna vez se convirtie en una realidad). El editor en jefe de IAM demuestra que el único hijo de puta es él.
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 9:23 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Continuing a tradition of secrecy and dodgy negotiations among prospective beneficiaries, the UPC gets debated in Munich by Battistelli and Team UPC (mostly patent law firms), yielding nothing but lies and no meaningful press coverage
LAST month and earlier this month we published about half a dozen articles about the collapse of the UPC post-Brexit (see the EPO Wiki for details). It is a real problem for the UPC and this problem has become increasingly accepted even among law firms. For instance, citing Henschel’s article which we mentioned the other day, Benjamin Henrion says [1, 2] that “EU Patent Law will be Germanized without the UK “UPC judge were being accepted till 4 July, but UK judge applicants may now be excluded”” (Team UPC advertised jobs that did not exist and will probably never exist, which says a lot about Team UPC and its utter lack of ethics).
Henrion noted that “the UPC has too many problems.” Other than the problem that the UPC is an attack on democracy itself, there are technical problems with implementation now, especially due to Brexit. This was foreseen by many UPC critics other than Henrion and even the EPO admitted this last month. “Brexit Threatens Legal Uncertainty, Higher Costs For Trademarks, Lawyers Say,” according to IP Watch, but asking lawyers about costs is like asking weapons manufacturers about war and peace (this article is behind a paywall by the way). There are a couple of new articles about the EPO right now, but both are in German [1, 2] (translations would be desirable) and the latter is about Brexit. In many ways the UPC is dead, but Battistelli will try to save this ‘baby’ of his. The latest lies from the EPO (warning: epo.org link, linked to from the EPO’s Twitter account) say that there is “strong support for Unitary Patent package,” but as Henrion correctly told them, “when you ask the patent community, that’s like preaching your own church!” (they have only asked Team UPC behind closed doors)
“Other than the problem that the UPC is an attack on democracy itself, there are technical problems with implementation now, especially due to Brexit.”The UPC certainly enjoys support from the self-serving collusion that created it in the first place or at least came up with the plan. Why is it that epo.org basically became a Battistelli propaganda site rather than something scientific? What will companies think? Small companies all across Europe do not like the UPC. Does the EPO care about them at all? Based on this article from Team UPC, Margot Fröhlinger said that none of the available users and companies expressed reticence to continue with unitary patent package. “Whatever they decide,” to quote directly, “the UPC will go ahead. The baseline of this conference could easily have been: where there is will, there is a way.”
But whose will? Team UPC is a bunch of predators, they don’t represent the interests of Europe. Max Brunner (Ministry of Justice – France) is quoted as saying: “The project is good for business. Therefore we have to carry on.”
But the “UPC is harmful,” noted Henrion. SMEs in Europe speak out against it, having caught up with the facts. Team UPC is basically, yet again, misrepresenting Europe and European businesses. Glyn Moody said that the UPC “good for business means bad for the public here: more monopolies, more price-gouging” (at Europeans’ expense).
Moreno, another UPC critic, quoted Kluwer Patent Blog (part of or a wing of Team UPC) as saying “The UK now has to take certain political decisions. Whatever they decide, the UPC will go ahead” (sounds rather vain and assertive).
Watch who promoted this “Munich Conference” and the Kluwer Patent Blog post. And over at Patent WatchTroll’s blog there’s a Bird & Bird column about “Brexit Implications” (Kluwer Patent Blog is connected to Bird & Bird, which is a core part of Team UPC). Proponents of software patents in Europe like Bastian Best go further by promoting this London seminar and saying: “This could be an interesting seminar “Patent Protection for Software-Related Inventions in Europe & USA”” (in other word, promotion of software patents in spite of the EPC).
“In the case of UPC, as one might expect, it’s a bunch of patent law firms that write ‘the laws’ behind closed doors (no transcripts published) and then ask politicians to ratify or rubberstamp these.”Perhaps the interesting thing will be the composition of attendants at this London seminar. Judging by this tweet posted several days ago (“Post #Brexit #UPC conference at #EPO in #Munich tomorrow http://bit.ly/29y0AAT @EIPLegal’s Rob Lundie Smith attending – look for updates”), Battistelli too was there (“#UP #UPC conference update – #Battistelli provides personal view of #brexit on #UPC – either UK ratifies or UPC delay until UK leaves EU”). Well, Battistelli will have left by then (it can take 2.5 years) and the EPO is currently in a state of crisis (of Battistelli’s own making). The UPC as it was envisioned is dead/dying, but UPC fantasies persist and its creators carry on as if nothing happened (“#UP #UPC Conference: Dr Carsten Zulch: technically qualified judges means bifurcation under UPC only sensible in limited circumstances…”)
“EU laws [are] written by large corps,” Henrion noted, “wonder why people vote for Brexit. Especially when spectrum could be freed instead.”
“When there are no written transcripts of what Member of European Parliament says in committee,” he added, “don’t be surprised people vote for #brexit [...] 15 years ago I requested written transcripts of the discussions in committees of the European Parliament, we are still nowhere” (source)
In the case of UPC, as one might expect, it’s a bunch of patent law firms that write ‘the laws’ behind closed doors (no transcripts published) and then ask politicians to ratify or rubberstamp these. Remember that the Chair UPC select committee is part of the collusion to override law in Europe and this tweet from the conference said “#UP #UPC Conference: Chair UPC select committee – UK could still ratify and post Brexit politicians may or may not find way to keep UK in…” (all speculative).
“Given length of time Brexit could take, this seems an increasingly plausible scenario,” MIP wrote about it.
“We saw the same lack of coverage surrounding the TTIP and TPP in past years; this relied on secrecy and at times on collusion.”“No UPC critics are speaking there,” Henrion noted, linking to this page. This conspiracy of self-enrichment by patent lawyers and their big clients requires that public stay sout, unaware and totally uninvolved. These people are just trying to ram UPC down our politicians’ throats and the more the public knows about it, the worse it will get for Team UPC. “UK preparations for #UPC ratification are finished,” wrote Patently German. “Ratification, however, will be decision of the new PM expected to take office in Sept” (they have much more pressing issues to deal with other than UPC).
As usual, all these secretive meetings were not covered by the media. There was a bunch of lies about it in the EPO’s site and Team UPC blogs. Battistelli, at the expense of the EPO, is buying 'articles' in European 'media', sometimes ‘articles’ or puff pieces in favour of the UPC (some of his ‘media partners’ did this last year and this year). What a disgrace this is. We saw the same lack of coverage surrounding the TTIP and TPP in past years; this relied on secrecy and at times on collusion. █
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Posted in America, Deception, Patents at 8:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The profit motive poisons everything; impedes peace and calm, distorts facts and reality
Summary: A critical breakdown of recent articles regarding software patents, patent courts (primarily in the US), and what patent law firms are trying to tell us in order to improve sales (of their services)
PATENT systems like the USPTO and EPO make a lot of sense when granted patents are assigned/merited based on innovation and incentive to create. Several domains demonstrated need for patents and we are not disputing patents in general. Software patents, on the other hand, are neither desirable nor needed, as software developers worldwide can attest to (their work is copyrighted at zero cost and without hassle, protecting against plagiarism).
James Nurton, writing about CJEU right now, says that patent licensing deals stand even “if the patent is revoked or found not to be infringed,” which is of course outright ridiculous. When and if patents are asserted and become a cashflow regardless of their (in)validity, how are people expected to respect this system? Moreover, what happens when the plaintiff or the licensor is a patent troll that produces nothing at all? What happens to the premise of “promoting innovation”? Patent trolling is, in some sense, protectionism warped into racketeering and this does nothing but create uncertainty, which in turn depresses investment and reduces innovation.
“Patent trolling is, in some sense, protectionism warped into racketeering and this does nothing but create uncertainty, which in turn depresses investment and reduces innovation.”Tackling the issue of software patents, recall the Enfish case and see some of the latest articles about it [1, 2]. The latter asks, “Are ‘Improvements’ Key to Subject Matter Eligibility for Software Patents?” The notion of “improvement” is so vague that this question is rather meaningless. Improvement over what and in what terms? Performance? Accuracy?
Now consider also the Rapid Litigation case, which we wrote about the other day. This new article about it reminds us that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) is a big barrier to progress. It’s CAFC that brought software patents to the United States in the first place. Several new articles about the Bascom case at CAFC [1, 2] (by Andrew H. DeVoogd and Matthew A. Karambelas from Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.), as well as related CAFC articles about Cuozzo case in lawyers’ sites, show much of the same pattern. Patent lawyers pretty much ignore all the cases where software patents get invalidated and only emphasise the exceptions. One site even produced an article titled “Federal Circuit’s Recent Primer on Patent-Eligibility” in which tips are given for tricking CAFC into acceptance of software patents in spite of Alice, just like in this new case. It was rather clear that SCOTUS does not tolerate software patents, but spin sites like IAM would have us believe that “the pendulum is swinging back”. They rely on CAFC in order to discredit SCOTUS, for instance: “Here’s how’s former CAFC Chief Judge Paul Michel describes the Supreme Court’s recent impact on patent law: “Since eBay [it] has been taking authority away from the Federal Circuit. By rejecting every major decision of the CAFC – except Cuozzo and i4i – the Supreme Court has sharply rebuked the Federal Circuit and upended tests that the CAFC had instituted.” That has led, Michel insists, to a strengthening of SCOTUS’s power at the expense of the CAFC and of Congress.”
“The matter of fact is, calls to abolish CAFC have only grown in recently years.”What’s wrong with the Supreme Court having more power than a corrupt court (with track record of misconduct) and a US Congress that’s inherently corrupted because politicians there are funded by large corporations to do their bidding? “SCOTUS weighs in on Halo/Stryker,” says IAM, and “The CAFC rules in Enfish v Microsoft” (a case whose outcome was virtually overturned in another case only days later), perhaps hoping to distract the readers and give the impression that CAFC will ‘save’ patent lawyers from Alice. The matter of fact is, calls to abolish CAFC have only grown in recently years.
Not only patent law firms but also publishers associated with patent law firms peddle the same nonsense. Now that Huawei is making enemies in the West with its bad policies and its patent aggression IAM uses the “swing” buzzword in the headline again (not the swing that in the US is a patent, a method of swinging a swing) to give false hope of litigation rebound now that it’s down considerably. In the words of IAM:
Huawei has accelerated its patent assertion campaign on two fronts over the past week, launching a new complaint against T-Mobile in the United States and a further suit against Samsung in China.
“Huawei’s IP coming-of-age in full swing,” IAM says, but actually, Huawei as a whole is growing (it’s now one of the biggest Android OEMs) and its growing patent stockpile accompanies this growth. Don’t believe IAM and all those patent law firms (like those that fund IAM) when they tell the public that software patents are fine and patent litigation has great prospects. They’re just trying to invite business. It’s called marketing. █
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Posted in News Roundup at 7:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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But it seems those intent on keeping pesky government agencies out of their online business may well be shooting themselves in the virtual foot.
As documents related to the XKeyscore snooping program reveal, the US’s National Security Agency has started focusing its snooping efforts on Linux Journal readers, Tails Linux, and Tor users.
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Desktop
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Kernel Space
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Sometime in 2016 Linux will be 25 years old. Exactly when is a matter of opinion.
We could consider Linux’s 25th birthday to be August 25th. That’s because on that date in 1991, Linus Torvalds made his announcement to the minix community to let them know that he was working on a modest new OS. He had started the work in April. By October 5th, he felt that his new OS was usable and ready for the community at large.
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Graphics Stack
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Alex Deucher has submitted the main feature pull request for DRM-Next of the Radeon and AMDGPU DRM driver changes for the next kernel cycle, Linux 4.8.
Some will be sad though, the AMDGPU material for Linux 4.8 doesn’t contain the huge DAL display abstraction layer code that’s needed for bringing the open-source AMDGPU driver display capabilities more on par with the former closed-source driver stack and also necessary for supporting new features like FreeSync/Adaptive-Sync.
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Sadly, another blow to report on with regard to Intel’s open-source efforts… Just days after reporting on Intel losing its chief Linux/open-source technologist, Dirk Hohndel, there’s another high profile departure in the open-source world.
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While it’s coming late, the huge Mesa 12.0 release is now official! Mesa 12.0 is easily one of the biggest updates to this important open-source user-space OpenGL driver stack in quite some time and will offer much better support and features especially for Intel, Radeon, and NVIDIA open-source Linux desktop users/gamers.
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Today, July 8, 2016, Collabora’s Emil Velikov has had the honor of announcing the release of the final Mesa 12.0.0 3D Graphics Library for all GNU/Linux operating systems.
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While there isn’t yet any 3D/hardware acceleration support, the first milestone of open-source bring-up for the latest-generation NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1000 “Pascal” graphics processors is now available for Nouveau.
Nouveau DRM maintainer Ben Skeggs has managed to publish initial open-source, reverse-engineered graphics driver support for Pascal (GP100 series) GPUs. Ben Skeggs at Red Hat continues to do this without official documentation from NVIDIA Corp but rather just receiving hardware samples and the hard process of reverse engineering.
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Applications
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At some point, you probably have installed or configured a piece of software on a server or desktop PC. Since you read Linux Journal, you’ve probably done a lot of this, as well as developed a range of glue shell scripts, Perl snippets and cron jobs.
Unless you are more disciplined than I was, every server has a unique, hand-crafted version of those config files and scripts. It might be as simple as a backup monitor script, but each still needs to be managed and installed.
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It’s always funny watching a new open source initiative gain traction — all the more so when the initiative in question isn’t yet firmly ensconced into the warm, inviting bosom of its own full-fledged foundation. This is certainly the case for Kubernetes.
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Today, July 8, 2016, Calibre developer Kovid Goyal has been proud to announce the release of Calibre 2.62 ebook library management software for all supported platforms, including GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, and Mac OS X.
It looks like the Friday weekly releases of Calibre are back, and Calibre 2.62 is here to add a couple of new features, as well as to fix many of the annoyances reported by users since last week’s Calibre 2.61 update or previous releases.
The most important feature of Calibre 2.62 is support for the newest Kindle Oasis e-reader model that has started shipping today. So if you receive your new Kindle Oasis device this weekend, you’ll be able to connect it to Calibre to upload your books.
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wlc 0.4, a command line utility for Weblate, has been just released. This release doesn’t bring much changes, but still worth announcing.
The most important change is that development repository has been moved under WeblateOrg organization at GitHub, you can now find it at https://github.com/WeblateOrg/wlc. Another important news is that Debian package is currently waiting in NEW queue and will hopefully soon hit unstable.
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Proprietary
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Microsoft’s perception of Linux has changed completely in the last couple of years and with the open-source world growing at a fast pace, Redmond had no other option than to adapt and look into ways to get closer to this continuously expanding community.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Wine or Emulation
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The Wine team released today another development release of their software. Version 1.9.14 has many small changes including 20 bugfixes.
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Today, July 8, 2016, the development team behind the popular Wine open-source software used by many Linux users to run Windows apps and games, have announced a new milestone towards Wine 2.0.
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The Wine development release 1.9.14 is now available.
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Wine 1.9.14 was released today as the newest bi-weekly Wine development release for running your favorite Windows games/applications on Linux and other operating systems.
As has been the trend recently, there’s been more work going on for Shader Model 5 support in their Direct3D implementation along with more prep work for Direct3D Command Stream. The SM5 support will be needed for Direct3D 11 support and the D3D command stream code will offer nice performance improvements for gamers once all of the code has been readied.
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Games
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The trailer and screenshots of Haven Moon show off some of its fantastical landscapes and machinery in crisp detail. What they don’t show is that although rendered in real-time 3D, Roussel has designed the game to be played entirely with the mouse. Your journey across Seleos reveals a “calm and lonely place where you hear the sounds of the sea, the wind and the beautiful music.” You’ll also encounter a variety of puzzles that are fully integrated with the story and promise to be “not too hard nor too easy, just like the length of the adventure is made to be not too long nor too short. Everything is balanced to provide a light relaxing and peaceful experience, to spend a pleasant time in an imaginary world.”
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It’s important for us, as gamers, to know our favorite medium’s past. Doing so informs us of what past developers did well, what they didn’t do well, what kinds of gaming experiences and knowledge manifest today in altered or re-interpreted forms, and which directions games might be heading both technically and conceptually. It’s especially important to learn about gaming’s past in our current era, where information is ephemeral and is especially prone to being misinterpreted due to rapid communications technologies. Institutions like the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment (and the planned Videogame History Museum in Frisco, Texas) and websites like The Cutting Room Floor help us achieve that task in various ways. Source code repositories like Github, meanwhile, archive the essential components of specific games in more literal forms.
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Barony, a pretty cool looking 3D first-person roguelike has opened up the engine under the GPL license and is now on github.
Note: While the engine is now open source, the assets are not. You still need to own a copy to use the now open source engine.
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Black Mesa is officially coming to Linux, and the developer confirmed so in a rather delightful way of shooting down an anti-Linux troll in the Steam forums.
You may or may not heard of a user who goes by the username “meraco” on Steam. He seems to be popping up all over Linux support posts on the Steam forum to spread anti-Linux sentiments, this time it was different.
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Wizard of Legend is currently on Kickstarter and the great thing is that they built a demo game to show off, it has Linux support and it’s pretty cool.
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Fossil Echo is a pretty awesome looking story-driven platformer that has plans for a Linux version, it’s not ready just yet but will be soon.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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Last weekend, I was exploring GuixSD, the distribution that introduces a universal package manager developed by The GNU Project. Part of the novelty was the lack of a graphical installer, a luxury that most Linux users expect today, but was once controversial, as well as Linux’s first encounter with user experience.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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Plasma 5.8 has its Kickoff meeting yesterday and we Kickered the plans into shape. The big news is it’ll be an LTS release with bugfix releases coming out for 18 months after the .0. This matches Qt 5.6 which is also on an LTS schedule and we’ll still to 5.6 as the minimum Qt version for Plasma 5.8 LTS. Full schedule on wiki.
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One of the greatest aspects of Linux is its flexibility—it can be whatever you need it to be. It can be a massive server for big data, a desktop for rendering video or editing audio. A graphic designer’s studio. An every-day, get things done machine.
Or something in between.
For every job, you’ll find a distribution. For every need, you’ll find a tool. For every piece of hardware, you’ll find a version of Linux ready to make it work for you. Whether you’re working working with big iron or a low-end, aging desktop or laptop…there’s a Linux for the job.
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OpenSUSE/SUSE
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openSUSE developer Dominique Leuenberger today, July 8, 2016, informed the openSUSE Tumbleweed community about the latest GNU/Linux technologies and software components that landed in the repositories.
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Today in Linux news Sandra Henry-Stocker looked at how far Linux has come since its humble beginnings 25 years ago. Elsewhere, Lifehacker.com has four alternatives to Windows 10 and Matt Asay wrote that Red Hat is the only profitable Open Source company because they sell piece of mind rather than software. Tumbleweed is poised to accept recently released Plasma 5.7 and Slackware received two security updates this week.
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Summer holiday is here (at least in the northern hemisphere) – and we can see a slightly reduced beat for new snapshots. I can ‘only’ report 3 instead of the usual 4 releases for this week (0701, 0703 and 0705), but the changes were still rather substantial. The slowness seems to be less an issue of package submissions as compared to OBS having trouble getting the stagings completely built. There seem to be a couple PowerPC workers missing.
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Red Hat Family
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CentOS Project’s Jason Brooks announced today, July 8, the general availability of a new maintenance update of the CentOS Atomic Host operating system designed to run Docker containers.
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In the modern world of open source, software vendors are becoming increasingly irrelevant. At least, at the infrastructure layer.
In fact, in a world awash in open source software built and contributed by companies that have no interest in directly monetizing that software, it is the packager of other people’s innovations that thrives. Small wonder, then, that the one “open source company” making serious money is Red Hat, a company whose real innovation is in how it packages and streamlines the innovations of others.
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Finance
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Fedora
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Today in Linux news Adam Williamson issued a public service announcement concerning Fedora and Skyland systems. Elsewhere, Bruce Byfield said that graphical installers began the influx of the regular Linux user and Ubuntu 15.10 is approaching its end of support. My Linux Rig spoke to System76′s James Blaede and The Hectic Geek said Linux Mint 18 is how a distro should be done.
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One of our main communication channels is IRC. We’ve recently decided to standardize the name of our efforts as ‘Modularity’ where we prior to that sometimes used the term ‘Modularization’ and sometimes ‘Modularity’.
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And it was quite some task because the app is… well… wildly put together. Just see the build instructions provided by upstream. Flatpak manifests are usually fairly simple files, less complex than spec files, but this one ended up being 394 lines long.
I think such an app is an ideal target for Flatpak. There is no way that an app like this would make it to the official Fedora repositories and its authors don’t even seem to be interested in making it more possible.
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The Southeast Linux Fest (SELF) is an annual Linux conference in the southeast region of the United States. This year, the conference ran from June 10 – 12, 2016. SELF was located in the Sheraton by the airport in Charlotte, NC. As expected, the booth site was the same as the earlier years while at this venue. Booth placement plays a vital role in visibility and accessibility. When presentations finish, attendees come out and the first booth visible is Fedora.
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The HTCondor grid scheduler and resource manager follows the old Linux kernel versioning scheme: for release x.y.z, if y is an even number it’s a “stable” series that get bugfixes, behavior changes and major features go on odd-numbered y. For a long time, the HTCondor packages in Fedora used the development series. However, this leads to a choice between introducing behavior changes when a new development HTCondor release comes out or pinning a Fedora release to a particular HTCondor release which means no bugfixes.
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This post is say thank you to Patrick Uiterwijk, who is part of Fedora Infrastructure sysadmin team (along with nirik, and smooge). He is one of our silent warrior who keeps the Fedora Infrastructure running. Many may not heard about him, unless you came down to any of our admin or development IRC channels, and asked for help. I personally ask him for help in many different areas, starting for basic sysadmin questions, to complex deployment issues, to programming ideas. He is one of the hackers I know who can code in assembly to the web frontend as required. He is our main force behind Fedora Infrastructure Cloud, and spam fighting 
He is also our new Fedora Infrastructure Security Officer. If any of our new and young contributor thinks that she/he is too young to do things, you may want to look at Patrick’s work. He started contributing back in 2012, and he is right now 24
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Debian Family
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Here is the latest look at the performance of Debian GNU/Linux 8.5 vs. Debian Testing on the same system for showing how the performance is looking for Debian 9 “Stretch” ahead of its release next year.
Originally I was planning to do a Debian GNU/Linux vs. GNU/kFreeBSD comparison too, but the Debian Testing GNU/kFreeBSD installer was yielding problems… So for this article is just a fun look at clean installs of Debian 8.5 versus the current Debian GNU/Linux testing on the same hardware and using each OS release out-of-the-box.
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I was naively thinking that the way autopkgtest would work is that it would set the current working directory of the schroot call and the ensuing subprocess call would thus take place in that directory inside the schroot. That is not how it works. If you want to change directories inside the virtual server, you have to use cd. The same is true of, at least, environment variables, which have their own specific handling in the adt_testbed.Testbed methods but have to be passed as strings, and umask. I’m assuming this is because the direct methods with qemu images or LXC containers don’t work.
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Ian Murdock, the founder of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution of Free/Libre Open Source Software operating system and repository, died by suicide according to a medical examiner’s report.
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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If you have ever wanted an application like Apple’s Siri working on open-source software and hardware, you are in luck.
Mycroft is just that: open-source software that functions exactly the same way as Siri does, but it is housed within its own hardware operating off of a Raspberry Pi 2 and Arduino. The best part, since it’s based on open-source software, is that it runs on Ubuntu’s Snappy Core.
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Chinese device maker has been offering tiny Windows and Android computers for a few years, but the company first came to my attention back in 2012 when I learned that the Android-powered Mele A1000 TV box was also able to run Linux.
This year the company started selling some products with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed, and the latest is the PCG03U, a compact computer/TV box with 2GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, an Intel Atom Bay Trail processor, and Ubuntu 14.04 Linux.
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The only good reason to buy the BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition is if you’ve been dying for an Ubuntu tablet and don’t want to install the operating system yourself. For $312, you’re getting an underpowered tablet with an operating system that you can install on a plethora of other devices for free.
For $155, you can get the Acer Iconia One 10 running Android and install Ubuntu on it yourself (or, of course, use Android). It uses a similar, underpowered processor, but at least you’re getting a deal. Those who are interested in a viable desktop mode might want to consider the Microsoft Surface 3 while it’s still available. The $386 2-in-1 runs full Windows, works as a tablet and is roughly the same size, at 10.8 inches. You could even install Ubuntu if you’re so inclined.
All things considered, almost anything is better than the BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition. Between its weak CPU and a suite of apps that lack touch optimization, the company fell woefully short of the mark.
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Should Linux distributions continue to issue 32-bit images any longer or phase them out over a year or two? This question was resurrected recently by Ubuntu developer Dimitri John Ledkov, with a cutoff date of October 2018 proposed.
At that time, Ubuntu would have been around for 14 years and it is increasingly getting more and more bloated. The same goes for many other distributions.
So, even if anyone wanted to run Ubuntu on an older machine, it would not be a good idea. Computing would have to be done at a rather glacial speed.
The idea of dropping the 32-bit build was first raised on the Ubuntu mailing lists in February by Bryan Quigley. Several other distributions like Fedora and openSUSE have already dropped their 32-bit images.
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Ubuntu announced its 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) release almost 9 months ago, on October 22, 2015. As a non-LTS release, 15.10 has a 9-month month support cycle and, as such, the support period is now nearing its end and Ubuntu 15.10 will reach end of life on Thursday, July 28th. At that time, Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu 15.10.
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Ubuntu is world’s most popular free Operating System. It is Linux based and used very widely across the globe. Noticeably, many important government agencies across Europe and Asia use Ubuntu in their offices.
The fact that Ubuntu gets a free upgrade every year and it comes with familiar apps like Firefox and Thunderbird along with free MS Office alternative called Libre Office makes it a very valuable alternative.
Additionally, Ubuntu requires very fewer system resources enabling it to run quite well on older systems and are mostly free of viruses and malware.
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Flavours and Variants
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Linux Mint is one of the most popular (GNU/Linux) operating systems around, and according to Distrowatch.com‘s popularity ranking factor, for many years now Linux Mint has been on the top 3 most popular distributions (now it’s actually the number one!, surpassing Debian and Ubuntu. By the way, Fedora’s ranking is sinking fast, no surprise there though. Fedora is just a distribution for the coding elite of the GNU/Linux world and not for the average user, there I said it!). And there’s a good and a sensible reason for it (in my opinion anyway).
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It looks like the developers of the lightweight LXLE distribution are working hard on the next major update for the Lubuntu-based computer operating system, and they’ve just released the first Beta in the LXLE 16.04 series.
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Cassidy works for elementary OS AND System76, so he’s what those of us in the business call a double threat. I haven’t spent much time with elementary, so it’s nice to hear about someone using it for so much day-to-day work. It’s also nice to hear how good System76’s hardware is. It’s an important reminder for people looking to have Linux easily installed while also supporting the Linux economy.
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FriendlyARM launched an $8 open-spec, 40 x 40mm “NanoPi Neo” SBC that runs Ubuntu Core on a quad-core Allwinner H3. It’s Ethernet-ready, but headless.
With the NanoPi Neo, FriendlyARM has released what appears to be the world’s smallest quad-core ARM based single-board computer, and one of the smallest ARM SBCs we’ve seen. This open spec, 40 x 40mm sibling to the $11, 69 × 48mm NanoPi M1 has the same 1.2GHz, quad-core, Cortex-A7 Allwinner H3 SoC with 600MHz Mali 400MP2 GPU, and the higher-end, $10 model has the same 512MB of DDR3 RAM. However, in order to slim down, the Neo sacrifices the HDMI port, the camera and CVBS interfaces, DC jack, and Raspberry Pi compatible expansion connector.
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Phones
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Android
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Zebra Technologies’ latest enterprise wristband computer, the WT6000 Industrial Wearable Computer, has debuted as the first of the company’s business wearables to run on the Android operating system instead of Microsoft software. Also unveiled were the RS6000 Wearable Ring Scanner and HS3100 Rugged Headset accessories, adding flexibility for a wide range of enterprise users. The WT6000 runs on Android Lollipop 5.1, but the ring scanner and headset don’t include their own operating systems. The Zebra WT6000 Industrial Wearable Computer, which is ruggedized against dust, water and temperature extremes, is built to operate in myriad working environments such as in refrigerated warehouses or factories where hot ovens or smelters are used. Zebra made the move to Android because Microsoft Embedded will reach the end of its development life at the end of the decade and because Android has improved dramatically to fit the needs of enterprise users, according to Zebra. Peruse this eWEEK slide show for more details about the latest Zebra products.
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There are new smartphones hitting the market constantly, but which is the best to pick up when you’re trying to save a buck or two? We’ve seen some great launches this year and we’re only expecting more over the coming months, but for now, let’s go over the best budget Android smartphones you can go pick up today.
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In recent times there hasn’t been much potential for new features in phones. All phones have enough RAM and screen space for all common apps. While the S5 Mini has a small screen it’s not that small, I spent many years with desktop PCs that had a similar resolution. So while the S5 Mini was released a couple of years ago that doesn’t matter much for most common use. I wouldn’t want it for my main phone but for a secondary phone it’s quite good.
The Nexus 6P is a very nice phone, but apart from USB-C, the fingerprint reader, and the lack of a stylus there’s not much noticeable difference between that and the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 I was using before.
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Santali, an aboriginal South Asian language, has a brand new freely licensed font and set of cross-platform open source input tools on the way.
More than 6.2 million people in four South Asian countries (India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan) speak Santali. In India, it is one of the 22 major languages as mentioned in the eighth schedule of the Indian constitution. However, Santali is not the official language in regions where it is largely spoken, nor is it widely taught in schools. A large segment of the native speakers are socially and economically disadvantaged, which doesn’t help either.
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To understand the impact that open source technology has made on the enterprise, one need only look to the numbers. With over 35 million GitHub repositories, 1,961,460 lines of code on Hadoop and over a thousand Apache Spark contributors, the open source ecosystem is home to some of the world’s most innovative and impressive tech collaborations. With some of the biggest names in tech leading the charge — Apple’s Swift programming language, IBM’s machine learning technology SystemML and Facebook’s Relay JavaScript framework were all made public in the past year — open source technology is set to change the way we process, stream and analyze data.
In this slideshow, IBM VP of Big Data and Analytics on z, Dinesh Nirmal, and IBM VP of Offerings, Big Data and Analytics, Ritika Gunnar, outline several tips to help enterprises make the most of their open source strategy.
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A full snapshot of more than 2.8 million open source project hosted on GitHub is now available in Google’s BigQuery, Google and GitHub announced. This will make it possible to query almost 2 billion source files hosted on GitHub using SQL.
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If you’ve been here for the past few years, it would have been hard for you to miss the digital stampede from ticket-based processes to continuous delivery. But somehow, this transition has skipped over load-testing processes. This is probably because performance problems are hard to fix, as they are removed from the code.
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During his time recruiting young programmers on college campuses, one of the questions Chris Aniszczyk would hear a lot is, “How do I get involved in open source?”
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Web Browsers
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Chrome
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Google has launched a new encryption algorithm in its Chrome web browser to fend off attacks launched by powerful quantum computers. Called the New Hope algorithm, this “post-quantum cryptography” is being tested in Chrome Canary builds to develop a stronger security algorithm within two years. The new encryption adds just 2KB of extra data that is sent in each direction when a new HTTPS connection is made.
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SaaS/Back End
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Less than a year ago, Wikibon published a series of research focused on Structured and Unstructured platforms, with a focus on how these platforms were designed to help developers build cloud-native applications. The evolution of PaaS and Container platforms has significantly evolved over the past 9-12 months. While some platforms are still highly Structured, the growing trend has been for the previously Unstructured platforms to become more “composable” or even Structured. Wikibon defines “composable” as a packaged offering that leverages a set of modular open source projects, but is more tightly integrated as a set of services that accelerate developer productivity and application deployments. Composable platforms are becoming more “opinionated” in their architectural choices, but they still allow architects, developers and operators some amount of architectural flexibility that may not be present in Structured platforms.
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Recently, the OpenStack Foundation conducted a survey to dig deeper into who was actually involved with its community. The results were quite shocking, showing that only 11 percent of the entire OpenStack population identify as women. Team leaders across the industry took notice, with many asking how they could improve diversity not only within their communities but their hiring practices.
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CMS
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WordPress upgraded to version 4.5.3 last month with a security release for all versions of the content management system. But it quickly discovered a number of vulnerabilities.
A total of 17 bugs were found in the last three releases from this year, many of which allowed attackers to take over websites running on WordPress. And according to the latest estimates from BuiltWith, 48 percent of the top million websites globally run on WordPress. But popularity has a price: It is also one of the most hacked platforms.
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Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)
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Why does this raise questions? Mainly because VMware doesn’t have a reputation for having much to do with open source, although it was an early player spurring the development of OpenStack Neutron (then called Quantum), a cloud networking controller and a networking-as-a-service project for OpenStack. Since Dell still appears to be in the process of purchasing VMware, this might be in preparation for some plans Dell has afoot.
Hohndel’s hiring would certainly seem to indicate that something is in the works. Not only is he considered very good at what he does, he’s a huge open source advocate who often speaks at open source conferences — so he brings some FOSS community cred to the table. Stay tuned. I have a feeling that at VMware it’s going to be “something open source this way comes.”
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After being noticed by TechCrunch last week, Nike published three open-source projects on the version control system, GitHub – a space that companies such as Walmart, Target, Best Buy and rival Adidas have used in the past. Nike’s release consisted of a JSON parsing framework, a distributed tracing solution for Java and a logging library written in Swift.
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Microsoft’s Project Malmo AI platform goes open source [Ed: Project Malmo under #MIT licence isn't the full story; a lot of the required parts remain proprietary, hence openwashing of Microsoft]
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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Java Training Wheels has become the newest GNU package.
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Public Services/Government
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The city of Ciudad Real is to switch to using free and open source software. A resolution by the city’s Ganemos party to use open source for all of the city’s 400 PC workstations, got a majority of the votes in a meeting on 23 May. The city will begin with an inventory of the potential hurdles, according to press reports.
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Adullact, the French organisation for public administrations using free software, has unveiled a new website, Comptoir du Libre.org, which aims to raise the interest of public administrations’ IT decision makers.
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iVIS provides an open ICT platform for a fully digital school administration. The software is developed and made available as open source, so anyone is free to use the code, adjust it, and build their own modules, applications and mobile apps on top of it.
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Openness/Sharing/Collaboration
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Open Hardware/Modding
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Distributor Mouser has the Hexiwear wearable platform products from MikroElektronika. Completely open source and developed in partnership with NXP, the Hexiwear device incorporates a low-power NXP Kinetis K64 microcontroller, Bluetooth low energy (BLE) and wireless connectivity, and six onboard sensors into a compact wearable form factor for developers who need a complete Internet of Things (IoT) toolkit.
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RC servo motors are used in a wide variety of robotic and radio control applications, and are basically a maker’s best friend. They are cheap, easy to get ahold of and relatively reliable for resisting and correcting for external disturbances that interfere with the operation of the device they are powering. However, they are often limited in their ability to produce accurate motion, unlike more robust industrial servos that are capable of highly precise and advanced motion control. Unfortunately that accuracy and precision comes at a cost, often close to $1000 each, that makes them relatively prohibitive for the average maker.
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Kevin Turner’s departure as Microsoft’s chief salesman after 11 years marks the final passing of the Redmond old guard.
Chief operating officer Turner – KT, as he was known – was a chief of the old-school corporate kind; sales, marketing and Microsoft’s stores all reported into Turner.
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Health/Nutrition
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Liverpool and France defender Mamadou Sakho has had a doping case against him dismissed by Uefa.
The 26-year-old served a provisional 30-day suspension after testing positive for a ‘fat burner’ in March.
Sakho admitted taking the substance, but Uefa had to investigate whether it was actually prohibited.
Its control, ethics and disciplinary body dismissed the case after a hearing including experts from World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited laboratories.
“I am happy that this is finally over,” Sakho said. “It’s been a difficult time for me but I knew I had done nothing wrong.
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Security
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A while back my friend Mårten Mickos joined HackerOne as CEO. Around that time we had lunch and he shared with me more about the company. Mårten has an impressive track record, and I could see why he was so passionate about his new gig.
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Defence/Aggression
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The Iraq war was a fiasco waged on the basis of scandalous lies. My son Tom, aged 20, died serving his country in this war. If I didn’t already know it before today, I know it now: Tom died in vain. He and his comrades died brutal deaths in a conflict that did not have to take place. Even now, I watch the reports from Iraq: 250 people blown up last weekend on the streets of Baghdad in this war without end. Is this what our soldiers fought for?
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The long anticipated Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War released Wednesday contains stinging indictments of Britain’s role in the U.S.-led invasion, detailing failures starting with the exaggerated threat posed by Saddam Hussein through the disastrous lack of post-invasion planning. An element conspicuously missing from the report, however, are allegations of systemic abuse by British soldiers — accusations that are currently being considered by a domestic investigative body as well as the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The claims center on alleged violations committed against Iraqis while held in detention by British soldiers between 2003 and 2008. Based on the receipt of a dossier outlining numerous incidents, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in 2014 reopened a preliminary examination into abuse allegations. The same examination, a step below an official investigation that could yield court cases at the Hague, had initially been closed in 2006 for lack of evidence.
Presented to the court by the British firm Public Interest Lawyers and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human rights, the January communication was followed up by a second batch of cases in September of 2015, submitted by PIL. By November of last year, the ICC reported that it had received 1,268 allegations of ill treatment and unlawful killings committed by British forces. Of 259 alleged killings, 47 were said to have occurred when Iraqis were in UK custody.
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Following the damning Chilcot report, much will be said about the decision to go to war in Iraq. But one thing will be missing: the information I leaked in the runup to the war. It won’t get an airing because I was never questioned or asked to participate in the Chilcot inquiry.
Back in early 2003, Tony Blair was keen to secure UN backing for a resolution that would authorise the use of force against Iraq. I was a linguist and analyst at GCHQ when, on 31 Jan 2003, I, along with dozens of others in GCHQ, received an email from a senior official at the National Security Agency. It said the agency was “mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN security council (UNSC) members”, and that it wanted “the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises”.
In other words, the US planned to use intercepted communications of the security council delegates. The focus of the “surge” was principally directed at the six swing nations then on the UNSC: Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan. The Chilcot report has eliminated any doubt that the goal of the war was regime change by military means. But that is what many people already suspected in 2003.
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The enormous toll of Saturday’s bombing in Baghdad has stunned even the war-weary residents of the Iraqi capital.
At the end of a bloody week of attacks in Lebanon, Turkey and Bangladesh, a car bomb ripped through a crowded shopping center in Baghdad, igniting an inferno that raged all weekend.
After days of sifting through the ashes, Iraq’s health ministry announced Tuesday that 250 people were confirmed killed. It was the deadliest car bomb attack since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
At first, Sajad Jiyad, an Iraqi analyst living in Baghdad, felt numb after the attack and had “an intense feeling of déjà vu,” he wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. “Relatives, friends or someone I know have been killed or injured in every year since 2003,” Jiyad says.
On Sunday, Jiyad learned that his friend, Ahmed Dia, was among the burned bodies pulled out of the mall, and his grief over the attack became searingly personal. “He was going to achieve so much, he should not be dead,” Jiyad writes.
Some Iraqi activists have expressed an intense frustration and dismay that the names and stories of victims like Dia are little known outside of Iraq.
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The suicide bombings in Baghdad by Islamic State, timed for maximum violence, are only the latest reminders that the United States should not downplay the group.
Since the wave of Islamic State suicide bombings in May – killing 522 people inside Baghdad, and 148 people inside Syria – American officials have downplayed the suicide bombing strategy as defensive. Brett McGurk, the Special Presidential Envoy in the fight against Islamic State, said the group “returned to suicide bombing” as the area under its control shrinks. The American strategy of focusing primarily on the “big picture” recapture of territory seems to push the suicide bombings to the side. “It’s their last card,” stated a compliant Iraqi spokesperson in response to the attacks.
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President Obama has signaled a willingness to join Russia in going after Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front in Syria, but neocons and other hawks are fighting the policy shift, reports Gareth Porter.
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At the recent St. Petersburg International Economic Conference, President Putin excoriated Western Journalists for endlessly repeating Washington’s lies that are driving the world to nuclear war. He asked Washington’s bought-and-paid-for-whores, the scum who comprise the Western news media: “How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction toward nuclear war?”
Yes, indeed, how is it possible for the Western media to be totally blind? The answer to this question is that Americans live in the system of lies that comprise The Matrix, and media are paid to support the system of lies. The determining questions are: Can Americans escape their captivity in time to save life on earth? Do Americans have what it takes, or are Americans already a proven failed people who cower in ignorance under the threat of implausible “foreign threats”?
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As the West’s elites growl about “Russian aggression” – as they once did about Iraq’s WMD – NATO leaders meet in Poland to plan a costly and dangerous new Cold War, while shunning the few voices of dissent, John V. Walsh warns.
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Formed in the early years of the Cold War, 1949, with the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, UK, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France, by 1952 this post-WWII alliance included Greece and Turkey, and had rejected the Soviet Union’s request to join. In 1956, when West Germany was admitted to NATO membership, the USSR formed the Warsaw Pact in response and the Cold War was then on, full-blown. Missiles and nuclear weapons from each side pointed menacingly at each other, with the United States parking nuclear weapons in five NATO countries (Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Turkey), where they remain to this day. NATO doctrine provides that nuclear weapons will be used if necessary, at will, on behalf of all its members.
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made no secret his heart is set on taking Canadian soldiers to Africa, with perhaps a sideshow in Colombia.
It is part of a grand strategy to burnish his reputation as a gentle agent of change, with the ultimate goal of winning Canada a temporary seat on the UN Security Council.
That may not sound like much of an achievement — permanent members Washington, Beijing, Moscow, London and Paris all wield vetoes and shape global discourse on the council. But the seat in New York would be the crowning glory of Trudeau’s first term in office and proof Canada is back on the world stage — although the truth is Canada has not punched above its weight since a few years after the Second World War.
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The Navy has concluded there is no evidence that famed Navy SEAL Chris Kyle received two of the valor awards he had claimed in his best-selling memoir, including a second Silver Star.
In an unusual move, the service has re-issued the DD-214 discharge paperwork to support the medals that the late Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Chris Kyle received during his 10-year Navy career, finding no records for two of six Bronze Stars with combat ‘V’ and the second Silver Star, two of which he had claimed in “American Sniper.” However, the renowned SEAL sniper had earned the Silver Star and four Bronze Stars, the review confirmed.
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I am going to share with you four devastating emails sent and received by Hillary Clinton on the subject of Libya. You can find these posted at Wikileaks. It is clear in reading these exchanges that, in the glow of the fall of Qaddafi, Hillary embraced the call to spike the football and clearly was planning to use Libya as evidence of her leadership and skill that qualified her to become President.
The attack on our diplomats and CIA officers in Benghazi on 11 September 2012 however, destroyed that dream. The dream became a nightmare and Hillary has scrambled to pretend that she was not the mover and shaker that destabilized Libya and made it a safehaven for ISIS aka radical Islamists.
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Following the tragic deaths of five police officers in Dallas, Texas, during a rally for Alton Sterling and Philando Castile on Thursday night, the Dallas Police Department deployed a small robot designed to investigate and safely discharge explosives.
Officers attached a bomb to the robot ad hoc style — detonating it and killing the sniper while keeping the investigators out of harm’s way.
According to companies who manufacture bomb disposal robots interviewed by The Intercept — none were aware of their bots ever being turned into lethal weapons, though one company acknowledged the robots can be adapted to hold weapons.
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Video filmed in the aftermath of Philando Castile’s fatal shooting has revealed that his car’s two tail-lights appear to have been working – despite police saying he was stopped because one was busted.
Gregory Ford, 42, took multiple videos of Castile’s Oldsmobile Aurora after he arrived on the scene in Falcon Heights, Minnesota within the hour of the fatal shooting taking place.
He had been taking a ride on his motorcycle after finishing work and happened to drive up Larpenteur Avenue.
He told Daily Mail Online: ‘I got there after they had taken him [Castile] away about 9.50pm. There were roughly five other people there with me.’ Castile, 32, later died of multiple
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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FBI director Comey said today that Hillary Clinton running emails containing government information on an unsecured, private server was not as bad as former CIA director Petraeus sharing classified documents with his lover.
But the highest-level NSA whistleblower in history, William Binney – the NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”) – explains why Comey’s statement is nonsense.
By way of background, recall that – when the American press reported that U.S. intelligence services tracked Bin Laden through his satellite phone – he stopping using that type of phone … so we could no longer easily track him.
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A recent decision by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals may not directly reference the Hillary Clinton email fiasco, but the conclusion reached set off irony detectors all over as it arrived the same day FBI director James Comey announced that Clinton’s private email server may have been a stupid idea, but not a criminally stupid one.
There were indications that Clinton’s use of a private email address was an attempt to route around FOIA requests. As her server was being set up, communications from both her staff and the State Department’s noted that an account in her name existed already, but would be subject to FOIA requests.
This has been a problem elsewhere. Several government officials have conducted an inordinate amount of government business using private email accounts or personal devices in hopes of skirting public records requests. The DC Circuit Court’s case deals with a little-known government agency, but an all-too-familiar dodge by public officials.
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Finance
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I believe the permanent injunction sought is so as to restrain the UK government from taking (or purporting to take) such a decision under the royal prerogative and/or making the notification under Article 50(2).
The interim injunction sought is to have an order in place stopping the UK government taking (or purporting to take) a decision under the royal prerogative and/or making the notification under Article 50(2) until the High Court has dealt with the case.
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EFF has joined with partners including MoveOn, CREDO, Daily Kos, and Demand Progress to call on Democratic Party Leader Nancy Pelosi to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) from going to a vote during the “lame duck” session of Congress following the November election.
As we explained in a press conference yesterday, the TPP is simply bad for tech users and innovators: it exports the most onerous parts of U.S. copyright law and prevents the U.S. from improving them in the future, while failing to include the balancing provisions that work for users and innovators, such as fair use. Outside of these copyright provisions, it does nothing to safeguard the free and open Internet, by including phony provisions on net neutrality and encryption, trade secrets provisions that carry no exceptions for journalism or whistleblowing, and a simplistic ban on data localization that enabled the USTR to buy off big tech.
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It was a fallacy that withdrawing from the EU would save us from the corporate power grab symbolised by TTIP. This week we’ve discovered that not only might another massive EU trade deal be imposed on us before we Brexit, but our whole trade strategy could be handed over to big finance, egged on by true believers in the free market within the Tory party.
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We can and must build a radically different trade agenda that serves ordinary working people in the UK and the wider world.
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Three out of four Americans think government corruption is widespread. Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for president in part by claiming he couldn’t be bought. Bernie Sanders almost grabbed the Democratic nomination away from one of the most famous and powerful people on earth by decrying the influence of big money.
Yet by overturning the bribery conviction of Bob McDonnell, the former governor of Virginia, the Supreme Court this week just extended its incredible run of decisions driven by the concern that America has too many restrictions on money in politics.
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Censorship/Free Speech
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The deadly shooting of 32-year-old Philando Castile by a cop during a routine traffic stop in Minnesota on Wednesday just got murkier.
Multiple sources have told The Register that police removed video footage of Castile’s death from Facebook, potentially tampering with evidence.
Castile, his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds, and her four-year-old daughter were pulled over by police in the Falcon Heights suburb of Minneapolis for a broken tail light. Using her cellphone and Facebook Live, Reynolds web-streamed footage of her dying boyfriend after he was shot by a police officer as he reached for his ID in his wallet. The video was mysteriously removed from her Facebook profile as it went viral across the internet.
On Thursday, Facebook said a “technical glitch” caused the recording to be pulled from its social network. However, Reynolds claimed officers seized her phone and took over her Facebook account to delete the evidence.
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A bitter dispute recently erupted in Bollywood over the very hard-handed—and some claim all too often unreasonable—censorship measures implemented by India’s Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). On June 8, the producers of Udta Punjab (2016), a crime drama revolving around drug abuse among teenagers in the northern Indian state of Punjab, filed a petition with the Mumbai High Court against CBFC for demanding 13 cuts to the film before it could be released on June 17. According to local media, the censorship board wanted all references to Punjab removed, including in the title. CBFC chairman Pahlaj Nihalani was quoted in Indian newspapers as saying that although the film’s story and characters were fictitious, “the whole movie is [set in] Punjab and [the producers] have taken [place] names from Punjab. They need to make the cuts and take the [release] certificate.” Prior to going to court, one of the movie’s producers, Anurag Kashyap, on June 6 had tweeted that the CBFC’s stance was “akin to living in North Korea.”
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A picket is underway outside Independent Communications Authority of South Africa’s (Icasa) offices in Sandton as the body is expected to make a ruling on the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) ban on broadcasting violent images at protests.
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SADC Lawyers Association says SABC must not follow in the footsteps of other broadcasters in failing democracies that have been used to prop up unpopular ruling elites.
In a statement issued by SADCLA president Gilerto Caldeira Correia, the association stated that SABC must resist censorship.
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The sound of vuvuzelas rang through the crisp winter air on Thursday as scores of people picketed while waiting for a decision to be made over alleged censorship at the SABC.
The group had hoped that a verdict would be reached by the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) rendering the public broadcaster’s decision to ban the airing of visuals of violent protests invalid.
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The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) is still deliberating on the SABC’s decision not to broadcast the destruction of public property during protests.
Icasa’s complaints and compliance committee held a hearing into the decision two weeks ago. It’s discussing the recommendations behind closed doors.
The complaint about the SABC’s protest ban was brought before the communication regulator by Media Monitoring Africa, the AIR support Public Broadcasting Coalition and the Freedom of Expression Institute.
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Once again, the issue of internet freedom is making headlines in India. After the country snubbed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s plan for free basic connections over concerns it was at odds with the net’s open nature, India’s Supreme Court on Tuesday drew its own red lines, chastising a host of tech giants for failing to block advertisements for fetal sex testing and sex-selective abortions, both of which are illegal.
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Since the early days of the internet, there has been a constant movement of people, from mailing boards to Facebook and Reddit. Eternal September keeps chasing out the best who are then followed by the rest with the process now repeating.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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The House Homeland Security Committee has decided to weigh in on the encryption debate with the release of a report [PDF] entitled “Going Dark, Going Forward.” Despite the use of Comey’s pet term for the increasing deployment of encryption by service providers and device makers, the committee points out backdoors are a terrible way to address the problem.
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It’s about as even-handed as one can expect from a committee that still believes there’s an “honest conversation” to be had about a subject FBI Director James Comey refuses to discuss honestly. It notes that most countries people consider to be free (mainly Western European) have shot down encryption backdoors, even in the wake of terrorist attacks. The countries where governments have demanded backdoors are no one’s idea of civil liberties paradises — like China and Iran. Presented this way, there’s a strong suggestion that the US government shouldn’t come down on the side of countries whose human rights records are, at best, highly questionable. That should help keep the conversation more “honest,” at least.
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A few weeks ago, we wrote about the push by the Russian Duma to pass a massive new surveillance bill that would mandate backdoors to encryption as well as massive data retention requirements for service providers, including saying that they need to store recordings of phone calls. As you may have heard, earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the bill into law. And apparently to prove that he’s serious about all of this, Putin has also signed an executive order telling the FSB (the modern version of the KGB) to make sure it gets encryption keys to unlock everything within the next two weeks.
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Governments across the European Union have finally given the green light to a new deal on how consumer data must be transferred with the United States, ending months of delay caused by concern over US surveillance.
Privacy Shield, the new commercial data transfer pact, was provisionally agreed by the EU and the US in February and will come into effect on Tuesday.
The EU’s top court had struck down the previous data transfer agreement, Safe Harbour, on concerns about intrusive US surveillance – leaving companies, including Google, Facebook and MasterCard, in legal limbo.
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Details of secret warrants used for mass surveillance in the UK and abroad have been revealed for the first time in an official new report.
The Interception of Communications Commissioner’s Office (IOCCO) has published an unprecedented review of mass surveillance carried out via Section 94 of the Telecommunications Act 1984.
The continued use of this relatively old piece of legislation to carry out large-scale spying was first avowed last year, when home secretary Theresa May told MPs that “successive governments have approved the security and intelligence agencies’ access to such communications data from communication service providers” using Section 94 of the Act.
Unlimited power to require telecoms companies to do, or not do, anything, without any limit of time was granted to home secretaries under the law. The warrants are so secret that recipients are not allowed to mention their existence in any way, and they may even be forbidden from keeping copies.
The IOCCO’s report reveals that 15 Section 94 “directions” for mass surveillance were given between 2001 and 2012, and that all of these remain in force. All of them are for traffic data—that is, metadata—and all require “regular feeds of bulk communications data to be disclosed.” Data is held for a year, and then automatically destroyed on a daily basis. Requests for the warrants came from GCHQ and MI5, but not MI6, and were made on the grounds of “national security.”
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Nearly 250 million video surveillance cameras have been installed throughout the world, and chances are you’ve been seen by several of them today. Most people barely notice their presence anymore — on the streets, inside stores, and even within our homes. We accept the fact that we are constantly being recorded because we expect this to have virtually no impact on our lives. But this balance may soon be upended by advancements in facial recognition technology.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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There are cameras everywhere. But when cops start shooting, it’s usually bullets and never footage. The first recordings that ever make their way to the public are those shot by bystanders. Anything else captured during a shooting remains under strict control of law enforcement… even when the recordings don’t belong to law enforcement.
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The ACLU is suing the state of Alabama in an effort to stop two unconstitutional abortion restrictions from taking effect.
The Supreme Court’s decision last week in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt was a monumental victory for women.
For years, extremist politicians around the country have done everything in their power to block a woman from obtaining an abortion, passing law after law designed to close down clinics or to shame, humiliate, and put barriers in the way of a woman trying to access reproductive healthcare services — more than 300 abortion restrictions since 2010 alone.
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EFF staffers will spread the online freedom message at 2600 Magazine’s biennial Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference from July 22 to July 24. The Eleventh HOPE will take place at the historic Hotel Pennsylvania in New York and host numerous presentations on such diverse topics as automobile software hacking, pervasive surveillance, the blockchain, and fostering community.
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Graphic video illustrating gruesome police killings of African-American men in Louisiana and Minnesota has set off promises of a federal investigation, at least in the former case, but many are skeptical that it will lead to any prosecutions.
Police involved in even these high-profile cases of abuse have rarely faced successful indictments, let alone prosecutions.
However, at the federal level, a simple change to the law would make it more likely that abusive cops face punishment for their behavior.
Currently, police abuse is subject largely to one federal statute enacted in 1866: Title 18 U.S. Code, Section 242, which punishes anyone who “willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”
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The race to be the next leader of Britain’s ruling Conservative Party, and hence prime minister of the United Kingdom, was whittled down to two candidates on Thursday: Theresa May, the home secretary, and Andrea Leadsom, deputy energy minister.
As the two lawmakers with the most support from their colleagues, they will now spend the next two months trying to win the votes of the party’s members, a tiny portion of the British electorate thought to number less than 150,000. (In comparison, more than 33.5 million people voted in last month’s referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union.)
While May has been a high-profile member of the government for the past six years, Leadsom is a relative newcomer, who was first elected to Parliament in 2010 after a career in banking.
However, some clues about the kind of campaign Leadsom might run appear to have been accidentally made public on Thursday by a supporter who was spotted on the London underground studying what looked like notes laying out her strategy.
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In the immediate aftermath of the deadly attack on police officers at a protest march in Dallas that left at least five officers dead, social networks were flooded with witness accounts of what happened, in video clips and livestreams, photographs and text updates. The Intercept is assembling pieces of that mosaic here, starting with the accounts below, and will add more as we see them. Input from readers is welcome.
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Before he died, according to the police chief: “The suspect said he was upset about Black Lives Matter. He said he was upset about the recent police shootings. The suspect said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”
The gunman also told officers that he had left improvised explosive devices for them to find. Brown said. “The suspect stated that he was not affiliated with any groups,” the police chief added, “and he stated that he did this alone.”
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Tens of thousands of people every year are sent to jail based on the results of a $2 roadside drug test. Widespread evidence shows that these tests routinely produce false positives. Why are police departments and prosecutors still using them?
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The Houston cases shed light on a disturbing possibility: that wrongful convictions are most often not isolated acts of misconduct by the authorities but systemic breakdowns — among judges and prosecutors, defense lawyers and crime labs.
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We write about lots of nutty court cases around here, and semi-frequently, parties engaged in those lawsuits aren’t always happy about our coverage. Not too long ago, we received a series of emails and phone calls and more from an individual who was involved in some lawsuits that we covered. Without providing too many details at all, the individual in question made a pretty straightforward case that he or she absolutely regretted filing the lawsuits, and provided some additional information about why it had happened, while also noting that the Google searches on this person’s name were now linking to the few news stories that covered the lawsuit, including the court documents that we had posted. It was explained that these search results were making life difficult for this person who was trying to get his or her life back on track and believed that Google searches on the name were making it harder to find a job.
The story was compelling, and we were asked to remove our post as well as the links to the documents, something that we won’t do. However, there was one intriguing bit to the communication, telling us that the court in question had “sealed the case” and asking us to respect that decision. That seemed odd to us. We’ve certainly seen filings sealed. And even some instances where almost all of the details in a docket were done under seal, but the case would still exist. Usually, though, those were cases involving at least a semi-plausible claim of national security. This was a case where someone just regretted filing questionable lawsuits (for a good reason). Even more amazing, after searching through PACER, it appeared that the judge in question did not just seal documents in the case, but made the entire case disappear. This happened for at least three cases. They do not exist in the court’s electronic records system at all. It is as if the cases never happened at all.
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A suburban police officer likely wouldn’t have shot dead a black motorist if he had been white, Minnesota’s governor has said, joining the national debate in the US over how law enforcement treats black people.
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Andrea Leadsom has suggested that she would be a better prime minister than her Conservative leadership contest rival Theresa May because she has children and May does not.
In comments that were strongly denounced by some fellow Tories, Leadsom told the Times in an interview that being a mother was an advantage in the election because it showed that she had a “a very real stake” in the future of the country.
Leadsom, an energy minister who has only emerged within the last week as a serious contender to replace David Cameron, said that she did not want to capitalise on May’s childlessness because to do so would be “really horrible”.
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A controversial Swiss law prohibiting Islamic dress has been used to fine a Muslim convert and a businessman, who protested the ban.
The rule, which came into effect in Ticino on Friday, was voted in by referendum and outlaws face-covering headgear.
Nora Illi and Rachid Nekkaz, who are prominent campaigners for the rights of Muslims, walked in the streets of Locarno in full Islamic dress soon after the rule was introduced.
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Lawyers for Chelsea Manning, the US soldier who covertly provided secret diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, are no longer in the dark about their client’s condition after several days of demanding information from military authorities on reports that Manning had been hospitalized.
Manning, who is six years into a 35-year military prison sentence for revealing state secrets, alarmed her attorneys and outside contacts earlier this week when all contact stopped for at least 36 hours. The total loss of contact came on the heels of unconfirmed media reports that Manning had experienced a health crisis, and lawyers for the soldier railed against the defense department for keeping them in the dark while details of Manning’s medical status apparently leaked.
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Anyone who’s ever gone to the movies is accustomed to watching characters’ instant reaction to tragedy: Tears. Hysteria. Rage.
Diamond Reynolds wasn’t in a movie.
In her Facebook Live posting, viewed by more than 5 million people, she is relatively calm, polite and clearheaded as she speaks into her cellphone seconds after her boyfriend, Philando Castile, had been shot and killed by a Falcon Heights police officer during a traffic stop.
The lack of immediate emotion — the tears would come 10 minutes later while her 4-year-old daughter comforted her — set off a fiery debate on the media’s role in interpreting such an intimate, and unexpected, testimonial.
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Earlier this year, computer science professor and cryptography expert Matt Blaze happened across a Pennsylvania state-owned vehicle attempting to d/b/a a Google Street View… um, SUV. Taking that info, local reporter Dustin Slaughter dug deeper into the origins of that fake Google Street View vehicle.
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Journalist Terri Buhl — who gained a bit of Techdirt infamy by claiming her public tweets couldn’t be republished (which led to wild claims of copyright infringement and defamation) — is still dealing with some legal woes of her own, stemming from the posting of someone else’s actually private information to Facebook.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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We’ve been talking a lot about how the FCC is pushing a new plan that would force cable providers to provide their programming to third-party hardware vendors. The idea is to put an end to the $21 billion in annual rental fees consumers have to pay for often outdated cable boxes and create some competition in the cable box space, resulting in better, cheaper hardware for everyone. Given it’s a hugely profitable monopoly and third-party boxes would be more likely to direct users to competing services, the cable industry has shelled out big bucks for misleading editorials and high test Congressional whining.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Trademarks
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On 5 July 2016, the General Court of the CJEU issued a ruling which suggests that the repute of the McDONALD’S trade mark will usually make it possible to prevent others from registering food or beverage trade marks which combine the prefix ‘Mac’ or ‘Mc’ with the name of a food or beverage.
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The England and Wales Court of Appeal has confirmed that senior courts have jurisdiction to grant an injunction requiring ISPs in the UK to block websites selling counterfeit goods, in a case involving Cartier. The Court also held that ISPs can bear the costs of implementing such orders
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Copyrights
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Among other things, this French law gives approved collecting societies the right to authorise the reproduction and the representation in digital form of out-of-print books, while allowing the authors of those books, or their successors in title, to oppose or put an end to that practice subject to certain conditions.
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This week a new Digital Economy Bill [PDF] has been tabled before the United Kingdom Parliament, tackling a diverse range of topics related to electronic communications infrastructure and services. Two of these give us serious concern, the first being a new regime restricting access to online pornography, and the other an expansion of criminal liability for copyright infringement.
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07.08.16
Posted in America, Deception, Patents at 5:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Reference: Conflict of interest
Summary: How media has reported (or spun) some of the latest observations regarding patent lawsuits and software patents in the United States
THE world of ‘IP’-centric media is complex. It’s complex because one must track the payments of many entities in order to better understand the bias (some payments are not direct). IAM, an EPO mouthpiece, is probably one of the worst in that regard, with WatchTroll (Gene Quinn) as a close second. MIP (Managing Intellectual Property) is actually pretty okay, as funds appear to be derived from endorsements (of firms) and subscriptions.
Presenting new evidence of patents as bubbles, MIP says that “IPOS has approved the first loan application using a patent as collateral, and is opening its financing scheme up to other IP rights.” There is also this new article about ASEAN (Asia) and it looks informative enough.
Now, compare that to the latest output from IAM (more like agenda/advocacy, not news). Watch how IAM, which is partly funded by patent trolls, spins litigation decline in the US (reported the other day) as no reason for “Asian companies and governments” to lament or deemphasize patents. “This accords with a widely held perception that recent changes to the US system have made this the toughest environment in which to be a patent plaintiff in recent memory,” says the author, whose colleague later groomed the Microsoft- and Nokia-fed patent troll, MOSAID (renamed Conversant). In this article, IAM doesn’t disclosure Conversant’s payments to IAM . These are the predators (the Microsoft-connected anti-Android proxies) that are paying IAM, so IAM cannot really criticise them (without risk to funding or metaphorically biting the hand that feeds).
“When money changes hands and there is agenda to push (or sell), fact-checking isn’t much of a priority.”Does anyone still take IAM seriously? When money changes hands and there is agenda to push (or sell), fact-checking isn’t much of a priority. Even the world’s largest patent troll is habitually being groomed there.
Speaking of patent trolls, they very often use software patents and even heavily rely on those. Patent Progress, which typically bemoans patent trolls, changed its tune this week and proceeded to yet more criticism of software patents (second time in a week). As Matt Levy put it yesterday:
Alice Helps Another Company Stop a Patent Troll
[...]
It’s critical to have a way to quickly invalidate bad software patents. Alice and 35 U.S.C. § 101 have been invaluable, as the Capstone case attests. But there are critics who complain about Section 101 and its supposed “incoherence.”
For example, David Kappos, the former head of the USPTO, wants to get rid of Section 101 altogether; but then again, he’s not being sued by patent trolls, is he?
David Kappos is also a lobbyist for large corporations now, putting to shame any remnants of USPTO integrity. The author himself (Levy) is funded by some large corporations (through CCIA), which is how we often explain excessive focus on patent trolls rather than on software patents.
For the record, Techrights never has and never will receive money from corporations. Our only ‘agenda’ or ‘bias’ probably pertains to the interests of software developers (being one myself). █
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Posted in News Roundup at 4:39 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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LinuxQuestions.org (LQ) recently turned 16, which means we can sing the Chuck Berry song “Sweet Little Sixteen” to it. Even better, this means the site is old enough to drive in most states. Hot stuff! And today’s interviewee, Jeremy Garcia, is the founder and still head LQ-er. In this video, he’ll tell you how he once expected to get *maybe* 100 members, and talks about how he would (or wouldn’t) do things differently if he was starting LQ today.
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Desktop
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When you think of Linux, you probably don’t think of Apple or its products. But some Linux users actually prefer to run it on Apple’s MacBook laptops. A MacBook owner recently asked if Linux would run well on his laptop, and he got some interesting responses in the Linux subreddit.
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Server
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Bulgarian software-defined storage maker Storpool adds Cloudstack support and boosted performance, but holds fire on adding enterprise-friendly VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V environments
Software-defined storage – and hyper-converged infrastructure – provider Storpool has added some incremental improvements to its product, such as Cloudstack integration and boosting scalability to 20,000 volumes and snapshots per cluster.
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Scalix, the award-winning Linux email, group calendaring, and messaging company, today announced certification of support for SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 and 12. Close collaboration between the Scalix and SUSE teams resulted in a combined solution that brings advanced, cost-effective collaboration to the highly-reliable, scalable and secure SUSE platform for enterprise-class IT services, whether on premises or in the cloud.
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Canonical has announced a new partnership between them and Pivotal to collaborate on delivering a cloud native platform based on the popular Ubuntu Linux operating system to their customers.
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The Kubernetes community on Wednesday introduced Version 1.3 of its container orchestration software, with support for deploying services across multiple cloud platforms, including hybrid clouds.
Kubernetes 1.3 improves scaling and automation, giving cloud operators the ability to scale services up and down automatically in response to application demand, while doubling the maximum number of nodes per cluster, to 2,000, says Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Product Manager Aparna Sinha in a post on the Kubernetes blog. “Customers no longer need to think about cluster size, and can allow the underlying cluster to respond to demand,” Sinha says.
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Once again the level of manual deployment, be it either with a CI system or as a completely manual approach was very surprising, looking further into this data, we did a breakdown across the main orchestration tools, and looked at which CI tools participants are using in conjunction with the various orchestration tools.
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Kernel Space
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What has 21 million lines of code, 4000 contributors, and more changes per day than most software projects have in months, or even years? The Linux kernel, of course. In this video, Greg Kroah-Hartman provides an inside view of how the largest, fastest software project of all absorbs so many changes while maintaining a high level of quality and stability.
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The Linux Foundation is again hosting its annual LinuxCon conference which will be held on August 22 – 24 in Toronto, Canada offering the opportunity for developers, sys admins, architects and all types and levels of technical talent to gather together at one event for education, collaboration and problem-solving for the Linux platform.
The event offers more than 100 sessions ranging from tutorials to deep technical dives and everything in between and 1,000 Linux community members with which to collaborate.
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The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit advancing professional open source management for mass collaboration today is announcing six new members are joining the organization: Bitnami, CoSoSys, GigaSpaces, Thundersoft, NXT Foundation and INUIT Foundation – University of Rome Tor Vergata.
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Graphics Stack
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Mesa 12.0 has many new features especially when it comes to the advancing of OpenGL 4.x support by the major Intel/Radeon/Nouveau graphics drivers. While enthusiasts/gamers should really be riding Mesa Git for best support, it’s a pity to see the 12.0 release has yet to happen.
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Timothy Arceri sent out the latest version of his Intel Mesa patches for the ARB_enhanced_layouts OpenGL extension. These patches finish up this last GL extension that’s needed by this open-source Intel Linux driver before it can claim OpenGL 4.4 and then 4.5 compliance.
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All modern laptops have a gpu integrated into their processor (the igpu), some models also have a more powerful dedicated gpu (dgpu), this is called switchable graphics.
By default all apps will run on the more energy efficient igpu and the OS can choose to switch to the dgpu when more gpu-power is necessary, trading battery time for graphics performance. On most laptops the default gpu can be changed to the dgpu so that everything will always run on the dgpu.
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Hans de Goede of Red Hat has been tasked with making improvements to Linux’s switchable graphics support, namely for laptops with integrated and discrete GPUs.
For years there’s been various developers working on Linux switchable graphics and features like DRI PRIME, but to this day the support remains a great deal behind what’s offered by Windows and OS X. Hans de Goede is hoping to improve the situation for Fedora, but thanks to Red Hat’s workflow, will benefit upstream Linux projects to help other distributions too.
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It’s not often we get to talk about NVIDIA developers making open-source contributions to Mesa… After all, their contributions to the Nouveau driver tend to be limited just to the Nouveau DRM/KMS kernel driver and even there seeing patches from the green giant tend to be very infrequent. The latest Mesa patches from NVIDIA aren’t even tied to Nouveau but just for wiring up an EGL extension.
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Applications
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The FFmpeg development team have announced recently the release of the first maintenance update for the FFmpeg 3.1 “Laplace” series of the popular open-source and cross-platform multimedia framework.
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Let’s admit it, professional grade video editing is still a weakness of the Linux desktop. The closest thing you can get to professional video editing on Linux is Lightworks, but that’s still closed source.
If you are looking for fully open source video editing software for Linux, there are actually many options, but in my experience, they all lack something or other. There are two video editing tools in particular that I often use on my Linux machine depending on the project: PiTiVi and Blender.
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On a network such as the Internet, mail clients send mails to a mail server which then routes the messages to the correct destinations (other clients). The mail server uses a network application called Mail Transfer Agent (MTA).
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We are proud to announce the new release of Poppins 0.2 beta. This release is a big improvement including new features and bug fixing.
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Oracle has released the first RC development release of the upcoming VirtualBox 5.1.
VirtualBox 5.1 has been migrating the GUI to Qt5, new APIC implementations, more MMIO emulation, improved GUI performance, better Python 3 support, and more.
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Oracle is proud to announce the availability of VirtualBox 5.1 Release Candidate 1.
This release is a major improvement which include a large number of enhancement and bug fixes.
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Today, July 7, 2016, Oracle has had the pleasure of announcing that the first Release Candidate (RC) version of the upcoming VirtualBox 5.1 virtualization software is available for public testing.
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Several years ago I’ve complained about uTidylib not being maintained upstream. Since that time I’ve occasionally pushed some fixes to my GitHub repository with uTidylib code, but without any clear intentions to take it over.
Time has gone and there was still no progress and I started to consider becoming upstream maintainer as well. I quickly got approval from Cory Dodt, who was the original author of this code, unfortunately he is not owner of the PyPI entry and the claim request seems to have no response (if you know how to get in touch with “cntrlr” or how to take over PyPI module please let me know).
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After a typically long period of deliberation, I finally decided to buy myself a proper GPS tracker for recording my MTB rides. I have had a GPS tracker/mapper on my phone for some time now, but with the possibility for ranging further a field on a potential bike-packing trip in future, I did not want to rely on my mobile phone. I also wanted to get a wireless HRM that would work with the GPS tracker so that I could understand how hard I was working on my various routes.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Hi folks! So in the last couple of days a significant issue in all Fedora releases has come to our attention, affecting (so far) several systems that use the Intel ‘Skylake’ hardware platform. Systems that appear to be affected so far – at least with some system firmware versions – include: Lenovo Thinkpad T460, Lenovo Thinkpad x260, Lenovo Yoga 260, ASUS Zenbook UX305CA, Asus Zenbook UX303UB, Samsung Notebook 9. [...] microcode load fails and hangs the system.
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Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved to be a slight challenge. Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it again. It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up an hardened Android installation from the Tor project blog on a device I had access to. It is a old mobile phone with a broken microphone The initial idea had been to just install CyanogenMod on it, but did not quite find time to start on it until a few days ago.
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Games
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I feel bad for the Battlestation: Harbinger developer, as I think it’s a pretty nice name but another developer has coined the “Battlestation” term so they have to change their name. They will also be doing a free update soon.
The other developer is at least being nice about it and isn’t trying to sue them, so that’s something at least.
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A little bit of gaming history just got the MIT license treatment. Habitat from Lucasfilm Games is now available under the MIT license on github.
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So far the Linux port quality seems to be great and I’ve been having a really good time with what I’ve played so far.
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Proper fighting games is something we lack, so it’s really great to see that Vanguard Princess is coming to Linux!
It’s a two on two battle system, so that alone has me interested to see how it plays out.
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Parkitect is a very cool Early Access theme park building sim and the latest alpha is now available with Linux support.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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KDE’s server inventory is a mixed bag. We have a few physical machines that were donated to us. There’s some sponsored colocation. We also rent a couple of big machines from Hetzner, divvy them up into smaller containers with lxc and host services there. Today, I can announce that we’re adding droplets from DigitalOcean to that bag.
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But we don’t have to end this way! As in a marathon, after a period of slower running, we can get a second wind, take a drink of some energy-fueling stuff, and put on a burst of speed to finish in style! Please share on twitter, G+, Facebook and on your own blogs, and let’s finish our KDE summer fundraiser in a generous way. The Randa Meetings were a huge success, and Qt.con is coming up.
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Another way features become priorities is what Rempt calls the “organic” method. Over time, the general dissatisfaction or demand for a feature increases, until a consensus is reached that it needs to be improved or rewritten. “Right now,” Rempt says, “we’re getting people who ask whether it isn’t time to start improving the brush engines again, [so] next year, it might be time to spend some really focused time on them again.”
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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No! DO NOT WANT! It’s bad enough having Gtk 2 and Gtk 3 (thankfully Gtk 1 is long gone), and you want me to have to litter my system with even more Gtk-sized turds… Please, no.
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Red Hat Family
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Softpedia has been informed today, June 7, 2016, by NethServer developer Alessio Fattorini about some of the features coming to the NethServer 7 server-oriented open-source operating system.
It’s been more than one month since the third and last Alpha build of the NethServer 7 distribution has hit the streets, and users were asking for a new development build. As such, Alessio Fattorini and his team of skillful developers have been working hard all this time to bring you a Beta version of NethServer 7, which will be based on the CentOS 7 series of server-oriented distros.
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JBoss EAP 7 has recently been fully Java EE 7 certified. For most developers this essentially represents serious commitment from Red Hat towards commercial support for Java EE 7. As many of us know, WildFly (the upstream community project for JBoss EAP) was one of the earliest Java EE application servers to get certified against Java EE 7. There are already numerous publicly known adoption stories for Java EE 7 on WildFly. However, a lack of Red Hat commercial support for WildFly had been a show-stopper for many – particularly very large enterprises. JBoss EAP removes this hurdle and is bound to be a further boost to Java EE 7 adoption. In my view JBoss has ranked for many years as one of the best Java EE implementations and with significant adoption. That said, one of the most valuable characteristics of Java EE is the rich implementation choices it offers (and hence the freedom from vendor lock-in).
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Red Hat Summit 2016 has come and gone, leaving behind several interesting announcements that should be of interest to readers of Virtualization Review. I’m not going to try to analyze all of them here; instead, I’m going to look at just one area: Red Hat and containers.
Red Hat talks about the use of containers in several ways, including: a discussion of how they help in a DevOps environment; how they make it more easily possible to decompose applications into microservices then deploy them quickly; and how a containerized approach makes it possible for enterprises to modernize their environments by moving workloads from legacy platforms, one microservice at a time.
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The OP@L initiative will deliver offerings built on Lenovo’s infrastructure that will run Red Hat’s NFV and OpenStack software.
Lenovo is teaming up with Red Hat as it looks to build tightly integrated and open systems for the telecommunications industry, and is looking at network virtualization as a key part of the effort.
At the recent Red Hat Summit, Lenovo officials unveiled its Open Platform@Lenovo (OP@L) to create open infrastructure that will run Red Hat’s software stack for network-functions virtualization (NFV), an emerging technology that is playing a key role in telco initiatives to create more agile, programmable and scalable networks to address changing customer demands.
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Virtualization environments are getting more complex and susceptible to security risks. Here are some risk mitigation strategies, outlined in a session at the annual Red Hat Summit.
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BPM and DevOps have embraced the same goals from different sides of the organization. Now, Red Hat is trying to close the gap between developers and business process creation.
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Finance
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Fedora
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Love Fedora? Want to work with Fedora full-time to help support and grow the Fedora community? Red Hat’s Open Source and Standards (OSAS) team is hiring a Fedora Community Outreach and Impact Lead to do just that.
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The Fedora Linux community is preparing something that most of us have been waiting for so long, something that should have been implemented in most GNU/Linux distros a long time ago.
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The nearly finished Fedora Media Writer is looking to take on a greater role with Fedora 25 in making it easier to write Fedora images out to USB sticks.
A new feature proposal is looking to make Fedora Media Writer a primary downloadable with Fedora 25. Fedora Media Writer is the almost-finished rewrite of Fedora’s Live USB Creator. The new media writer program has a better interface, is now written in C++, and should work out much better than liveusb-creator.
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Debian Family
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Debian (and consequently Ubuntu) contains a range of extraordinarily useful monitoring packages.
I’ve been maintaining several of them at a basic level but as more of my time is taken up by free Real-Time Communications software, I haven’t been able to follow the latest upstream releases for all of the other packages I maintain. The versions we are distributing now still serve their purpose well, but as some people would like newer versions, I don’t want to stand in the way.
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Six members of the Debian Perl team met in Zurich over the weekend from May 19 to May 22 to continue the development around perl for Stretch and to work on QA across 3000+ packages.
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Debian Linux founder Ian Murdock, who died late last year in strange circumstances, killed himself, according to an autopsy report obtained this week.
On the evening of December 28, the 42-year-old fired off a string of increasingly incoherent tweets, claiming he had been beaten up by police officers near his home on Green Street, San Francisco, and was threatening to kill himself. Fearing he was going to take his own life, his friends on the internet called the city’s police department, who sent round a cop to check on him.
Peering through a window, the officer could see the open-source guru lying face down on his stairs. The cop kicked down the locked front door, and found Murdock naked and lifeless with electrical cord around his neck. He was confirmed dead at 7.40pm.
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The autopsy reports have confirmed that Debian founder Ian Murdock, who died last year, committed suicide. Dr. Amy Hart, assistant medical examiner who signed the report, said the death was suicide by hanging. He also noted that Docker employee suffered from “alcohol abuse with withdrawal seizures and Asperger’s syndrome.”
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Today, July 7, 2016, Canonical has announced that its Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) operating system will reach end of life (EOL) in three weeks from the moment of writing this article, on July 28, 2016.
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Ubuntu e-mail client Dekko is shaping up pretty damn nicely for its future desktop début.
Dekko developer Dan Chapman shared some images of a new, converged Dekko for the desktop on Google+, under the title “An all new Dekko is coming!”.
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The buzzword convergence has been bandied about a lot in relation to Ubuntu. That’s because the plan is to have one single Ubuntu that works the same way across phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, TVs, kiosks, and refrigerators. It’s an exciting idea that some other software environments have also aimed at, but so far have not been able to deliver on.
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Ubuntu 16.04 was released a couple months ago and with it came a lot of interesting changes.
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On August 4, 2016, Canonical will announce the fifth and last point release of its long-term supported Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) operating system, Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS.
Today, July 7, 2016, the company behind one of the widely used GNU/Linux distributions has announced that Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS (Trusty Tahr) will offer users the latest Linux kernel and graphics stacks from the current LTS (Long Term Support) version of the operating system, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
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Mycroft, the company behind the Mycroft AI open source intelligent personal assistant for GNU/Linux operating systems, has published a story recently on how they are using Ubuntu Linux and Snaps to deliver their software Mycroft devices.
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The big news in the Linux world this week is that Ubuntu will drop support for 32-bit processors. Here’s what the change means for the channel. (Hint: Hardware now matters less than ever.)
In late June, Ubuntu developer Dimitri John Ledkov suggested on the Ubuntu mailing list that Ubuntu should no longer support PCs with 32-bit processors. His proposal was to end such support by the time of the Ubuntu 18.04 release, which is planned for April 2018. Other major Linux distributions have already ceased 32-bit support.
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The variety of ways people have found to cram the palm-sized Raspberry Pi computer inside a handheld device are some of my favorite Pi projects. But those projects are usually expensive, and some even require a 3D printer. The PocketC.H.I.P. isn’t nearly as powerful as a Pi, but it’s still the handheld machine I’ve wanted for a long time. Plus, it’s just $50.
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X-ES announced an “XPedite5850” COM Express Basic Type 5 module that runs Linux on an NXP QorIQ T4240 SoC with 12 e6500 PowerPC cores.
Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES) regularly taps NXP (formerly Freescale) QorIQ system-on-chips for its Xpedite SBCs and modules, both the newer ARM-based variety, as in the XPedite6401 and XPedite6370 (QorIQ LS1043A or LS2088A) and the PowerPC-based Xpedite 6101 (QorIQ T2081, T1042, or T1022). The new XPedite5850 COM Express module uses NXP’s highest-end Power Architecture chip, the QorIQ T4240, and appears to be the first COM Express module based on the SoC.
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Gumstix released a customizable carrier board for its tiny OMAP4430-based DuoVero COMs, featuring touchscreen and Raspberry Pi style CSI-2 camera support.
Gumstix has launched an open-source “Garret 50C” carrier board for its dual-core DuoVero computer-on-module family, the company’s higher-end alternative to its single-core Overo COMs. The board was designed with the company’s online Geppetto DIY design and quick-turn prototype manufacturing service, which customers can use to customize the board.
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The best known smart bulb setups (such as the Philips Hue and the Belkin Wemo) are based on Zigbee, a low-energy, low-bandwidth protocol that operates on various unlicensed radio bands. The problem with Zigbee is that basically no home routers or mobile devices have a Zigbee radio, so to communicate with them you need an additional device (usually called a hub or bridge) that can speak Zigbee and also hook up to your existing home network. Requests are sent to the hub (either directly if you’re on the same network, or via some external control server if you’re on a different network) and it sends appropriate Zigbee commands to the bulbs.
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Backup anxiety syndrome is not a real medical condition, but as a photographer, you might be familiar with the main symptom all too well: the constant worry about keeping your photos safe, especially when you are traveling. So what can you do to alleviate this debilitating condition? Besides the obvious, but far from practical, solution of lugging your laptop around as a glorified backup device, you have two options: splurge on something like WD My Passport Wireless Pro or build a backup device yourself. Going with the former option seems like a no-brainer: a simple financial transaction gives you a decent, albeit expensive, backup solution. So why bother wasting time and effort on reinventing the wheel and building a DIY backup device from scratch? Because it’s neither difficult nor time-consuming.
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Phones
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Android
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Earlier this year I was in an elevator with Rich Miner, the Android co-founder who has been a general partner with Google Ventures since the corporate venture capital group was formed in 2009. We talked about our kids, and the difficulty in finding quality educational apps and other kid-focused Internet services that weren’t primarily either: (a) Babysitters; and/or (b) Ad delivery devices.
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Nokia is finally making smartphones, except not really. The company announced a few months ago that it will indeed get back into the mobile game, setting its sights on Android. But the Nokia we used to know and love will not actually make the phones that its diehard fans have been asking for. Nokia will license its brand to its Asian partners, which will then create Nokia handsets.
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Up until now, Android One phones were mainly targeted at emerging markets, such as India and Turkey. Japanese manufacturer Sharp, however, decided to change that by announcing the awkwardly named 507SH, the first Android One phone to make its way to the Land of the Rising Sun.
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Today we release all of our own source code as Free/Open Source Software.
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A new open source PaaS, Tsuru, is out to ease the application deployment process by reducing it to little more than a Git push command.
The workflow for Tsuru, according to its documentation, consists of writing an app, backing it with resources like databases or caching, and deploying it to production with Git. Tsuru handles the rest, including crating up the apps in Docker containers and managing their workloads. Its creators claim it can be deployed both locally and on services like AWS, DigitalOcean, or Apache CloudStack.
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Mouser Electronics, Inc. is now offering Hexiwear wearable platform products from MikroElektronika. Completely open source and developed in partnership with NXP, the Hexiwear device incorporates a low-power NXP Kinetis K64 microcontroller, Bluetooth® low energy (BLE) and wireless connectivity, and six onboard sensors into a compact wearable form factor for developers who need a complete Internet of Things (IoT) toolkit. With Hexiwear’s low-power yet versatile hardware, compatible smartphone and iOS apps, and cloud connectivity, developers can prototype and build devices such as cloud-connected edge nodes, wearable devices, or complex controllers for industrial IoT applications.
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Are you wondering how to get involved in an open source project? Maybe this episode from the Mondern Web podcast will give you some ideas.
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Events
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I’ll be at Texas LinuxFest in Austin, Texas this weekend. Friday, July 8 is the big day for open source imaging: first a morning Photo Walk led by Pat David, from 9-11, after which Pat, an active GIMP contributor and the driving force behind the PIXLS.US website and discussion forums, gives a talk on “Open Source Photography Tools”. Then after lunch I’ll give a GIMP tutorial. We may also have a Graphics Hackathon/Q&A session to discuss all the open-source graphics tools in the last slot of the day, but that part is still tentative. I’m hoping we can get some good discussion especially among the people who go on the photo walk.
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Web Browsers
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Mozilla
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Mozilla works on uplifting privacy settings of the Tor browser project to the Firefox web browser to provide privacy conscious users with additional privacy-related options.
While the Tor browser is based on Firefox ESR, it is modified with additional privacy and security settings to protect users of the browser while using the program.
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The Rust team is happy to announce the latest version of Rust, 1.10. Rust is a systems programming language focused on safety, speed, and concurrency.
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Version 1.10 of the Rust programming language is now available.
Rust 1.10 brings the -C panic=abort flag as their most-requested feature for yielding 10% smaller binaries and about 10% faster compilation time. Rust 1.10 also brings the new cdylib crate type for compiling Rust as a dynamic library to be embedded in another language. Rust 1.10 also has build system changes to allow it to be built with Rust 1.9 and that trend will continue to be supported for future releases.
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According to a contract seen by Recode, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer struck a deal with Mozilla in 2014 specifying annual payments of $375 million to the browser creator in exchange for Yahoo’s search engine appearing in the default position on Firefox. That $375 million price tag will be paid out every year until 2019 one way or another—even if Mozilla doesn’t like the company that buys Yahoo and decides to walk away.
Of course, if Mozilla decides it likes whichever company buys the embattled search giant, then payments continue as before and the new owner of Yahoo’s search engine retains the default position on the browser.
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Under terms of a contract that has been seen by Recode, whoever acquires Yahoo might have to pay Mozilla annual payments of $375 million through 2019 if it does not think the buyer is one it wants to work with and walks away.
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Mozilla has a way of popping up with unexpected projects that it opens up for community development, and it has now unveiled a project called the Context Graph. The effort is focused on the answer to this question: “What if web browsers were immediately useful instead of demanding input when you launched them?”
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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CMS
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Healthcare
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Belgian, British and German advocates of open source in healthcare want to join efforts, hoping to raise interest, and to strengthen the network of software healthcare specialists. A conference is tentatively being planned in London (UK) early next year.
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Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)
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ONLYOFFICE celebrates its 6th birthday today and we have big exciting news for our open source community! We have updated the ONLYOFFICE server source code making our web-office more feature-rich and easier to install. But first things first.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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Join the FSF and friends Friday, July 8th, from 12pm to 3pm EDT (16:00 to 19:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory.
Participate in supporting the Free Software Directory by adding new entries and updating existing ones. We will be on IRC in the #fsf channel on freenode.
Tens of thousands of people visit directory.fsf.org each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions, to providing detailed info about version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing info that has been carefully checked by FSF staff and trained volunteers.
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Public Services/Government
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France’s national computer science institute, Inria, has unveiled its Software Heritage archive. The project aims to “collect, organise, preserve, and make accessible all the source code for all available software”.
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Bulgaria has signed into law a new rule that will require all software developed for, and used by, the government to be open source.
Bozhidar Bozhanov, a software engineer who has been advising the deputy prime minister, blogged that the Electronic Governance Act has been amended to state that “all software written for the government [is] to be open source and developed as such in a public repository”.
Bozhanov continued: “That does not mean that the whole country is moving to Linux and LibreOffice, neither does it mean the government demands that Microsoft and Oracle give the source to their products.
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Bulgaria’s Parliament recently passed legislation mandating open source software to bolster security, as well as to increase competition with commercially coded software.
Amendments to the Electronic Governance Act require that all software written for the government be Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)-compliant. The new provisions reportedly took effect this week.
Software developer Bozhidar Bozhanov, advisor to one of Bulgaria’s four deputy prime ministers, orchestrated the new law.
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This move is supposed to improve government transparency, give citizens a tangible return on their tax dollars, and improve the quality and security of sometimes-shoddy bespoke government software. The law was seen as a win by advocates of open source software, but it also means Bulgaria must face the double edge of open sourcing.
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The European Commission will reward software and services that have been proven to be shared and reused in the public sector and which have a potential for wider reuse in Europe.
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The government of Italy will stop highlighting the importance of an open, interoperable ICT architecture. The government will no longer require the Agency for the Digitalisation of the Public Sector (Agenzia per l’Italia Digitale, AGID) to assess public administration’s ICT plans, and is also scrapping publication and maintenance of a list of open ICT standards that are to be used by public administrations.
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Programming/Development
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Static analysis was introduced to the software engineering process for many important reasons. Developers use static analysis tools as part of the development and component testing process. The key aspect of static analysis is that the code (or another artifact) is not executed or run, but the tool itself is executed, and the input data to the tool provides us with the source code we are interested in. Static analysis started with compilers and derived technologies that are well established in the software development world. Each technology applicable for static analysis can choose between several alternatives, set up its own rules, and benefit from using them. What is most surprising to me is that even with a huge set of tools and possibilities, static analysis is not properly used and disregarded in most projects.
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The new features in LiveCode 8 are intended to empower a new audience of app makers. Some of these include nine pre-made widgets, 46 new extensions, the all new LiveCode Builder language, a 3.5x performance boost, Script Only stacks for better version control and working in teams, LiveCode for HTML5 and a new Feature Exchange for community funding of new features, among others.
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While we’ve had some reservations in the past about the FTC’s guidelines on endorsements and testimonials in the online arena, our concerns have tended to be about the grey areas of the law. The way that reviews for books, music and games often work falls into this grey area, with products and media handed out for review, and the disclosure guidelines the FTC laid out seem overly intrusive. Whatever our reservations about those guidelines, however, the goal of preventing the surreptitious pimping of a product or service by a trusted source that has direct connections with it was laudable.
Which brings us to two YouTube personalities, TmarTn and Syndicate Project, whose real names are Trevor Martin and Tom Cassell. These two have spent a great deal of time urging their followers to use the CSGO Lotto website while, at best, barely disclosing the site’s sponsorship, and never even coming close to acknowledging that they are executives of the company behind the site.
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Microsoft
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The best, by which I mean worst, part of the e-mail is that it gets the lingo wrong. “Drank” does not mean “drink.” “Drank” means “cough syrup;” specifically, cough syrup containing codeine and promethazine that is consumed recreationally. Opioids like codeine are routinely abused to get high, and, when combined with the antihistamine promethazine, can produce feelings of euphoria.
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Kevin Turner, Microsoft chief operating officer for the past 11 years, is moving to Citadel Securities, where he will be chief executive officer. He will also be vice chairman of Citadel, the parent company.
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Health/Nutrition
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Despite opposition from consumer advocacy groups, a controversial bill on the labeling of genetically modified (GM or GMO) food passed a cloture vote in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, even as critics warned the legislation is needlessly complicated and bends to the agriculture lobby interests.
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Where a hospital is located and who owns it make a big difference in how many of its doctors take meals, consulting and promotional payments from pharmaceutical and medical device companies, a new ProPublica analysis shows.
A higher percentage of doctors affiliated with hospitals in the South have received such payments than doctors in other regions of the country, our analysis found. And a greater share of doctors at for-profit hospitals have taken them than at nonprofit and government facilities.
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Today, The Dig dives into water. Pun totally intended. I’ve received a lot of questions about applying investigative reporting techniques to figuring out whether your water is safe — the stuff in your taps, the stuff in your rivers, the stuff at the beach. Flint, Michigan, has made us all want to be water sleuths.
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E-cigarettes or vaporizers have surged in popularity in recent years, especially among teenagers. But the tobacco-alternative comes with an unexpected health risk: the devices can explode and cause severe burns, according to a slew of lawsuits filed against manufacturers.
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Scientists can distinguish between a viral and a bacterial infection by assaying just seven human genes, according to a study published this week (July 6) in Science Translational Medicine. A clinical test based on these findings would enable doctors to more appropriately prescribe antibiotics, which are ineffective against viruses.
This May, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that doctors prescribe antibiotics when they’re not needed in around 30 percent of cases examined. Overuse of these drugs may promote more widespread antibiotic resistance.
To address the problem, scientists at Stanford University looked at more than 1,000 patient blood samples to identify gene activation signatures associated with either bacterial or viral infections.
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The year 2003 was a game changer when two Pennsylvania State Correction facilities were shut down and relocated to a new facility, the State Correctional Institute at Fayette (SCI Fayette), outside the town LaBelle, which was built directly on top of an old coal mine and adjacent to a fly ash dump – fly ash is “the powdery residue left over from coal combustion” – Kevin Williams reports for Al Jazeera. After thirteen years of operation and many health problems, nothing is being done to combat the effects of the toxic waste site known as the old coal mine. As Williams notes in his article, “‘Poisonous Lands’: Pennsylvania Prison Built Next to Toxic Dump,” prisoners and townsfolk alike are being harmed by the debris.
Prisons being built on toxic lands are nothing new, but the adverse health effects are not just harming the prisoners. The local townsfolk and the correction officers are also being affected by the state’s choice to cut costs and save money. Although the scale of impact seems to be contained to only this relatively small area, the actuality is that as consumers we are creating this problem. The coal mine site has higher contaminant recordings than the federal and state standards of lead, mercury, arsenic, etc. (Williams, 2016). These contaminants are causing the individuals to develop cancer at a statistically significant rate higher than the general populous. The individuals in this area are experiencing medical issues involving skin, eye, throat, and nose irritation.
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Security
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On June 9, the GNU wget project released version 1.18 of its famous file downloading package, following a report from security researcher Dawid Golunski and SecuriTeam.
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Remember how we managed to raise €1 million to demonstrate security and freedom aren’t opposites? For the next two weeks now (until July 8, 2016), you can decide which project you think should be the first to receive a code review as part of the FOSSA pilot project.
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Today, July 7, 2016, the Samba development team has announced the immediate availability for download of the Samba 4.4.5, 4.3.11, and 4.2.14 maintenance updates.
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A major acquisition deal has been announced by Avast in which they will purchase AVG after an all-cash deal of $1.3 billion. The two firms are a known name in the digital security world and have been in existence for more than 20 years.
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Firms supplying essential services, e.g. for energy, transport, banking and health, or digital ones, such as search engines and cloud services, will have to improve their ability to withstand cyber-attacks under the first EU-wide rules on cybersecurity, approved by MEPs on Wednesday.
Setting common cybersecurity standards and stepping up cooperation among EU countries will help firms to protect themselves, and also help prevent attacks on EU countries’ interconnected infrastructure, say MEPs.
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The European Union approved its first rules on cybersecurity, forcing businesses to strengthen defenses and companies such as Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. to report attacks.
The European Parliament endorsed legislation that will impose security and reporting obligations on service operators in industries such as banking, energy, transport and health and on digital operators like search engines and online marketplaces. The law, voted through on Wednesday in Strasbourg, France, also requires EU national governments to cooperate among themselves in the field of network security.
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SECURITY OUTFIT Symantec has warned customers that security flaws in the firm’s systems outed by Google’s Project Zero last month won’t be fixed until mid-July.
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Defence/Aggression
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Eleven years ago today, three suicide bombers attacked the London subway and a bus and killed 51 people. Almost immediately, it was obvious that retaliation for Britain’s invasion and destruction of Iraq was a major motive for the attackers.
Two of them said exactly that in videotapes they left behind: the attacks “will continue and pick up strengths till you pull your soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq . . . . until we feel security, you will be targets.” Then, less than a year later, a secret report from British military and intelligence chiefs concluded that “the war in Iraq contributed to the radicalisation of the July 7 London bombers and is likely to continue to provoke extremism among British Muslims.” The secret report, leaked to the Observer, added: “Iraq is likely to be an important motivating factor for some time to come in the radicalisation of British Muslims and for those extremists who view attacks against the UK as legitimate.”
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Before addressing the issues raised in the Iraq Inquiry report, I would like to remember and honour the 179 British servicemen and women killed and the thousands maimed and injured during the Iraq war, and their families as well as the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq launched by the US and British governments 13 years ago.
Yesterday I had a private meeting with some of the families of the British dead as I have continued to do over the past dozen years.
It is always a humbling experience to witness the resolve and resilience of these families and their unwavering commitment to seek truth and justice for those that they lost in Iraq.
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The Ukrainian intelligence service at the center of the inquiry into who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is accused by a top U.N. official of blocking a probe into Ukrainian government torture, reports Robert Parry.
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Almost as if it were planned, former U.S. President George W. Bush rang in his 70th birthday on Wednesday with a remarkable gift: a reminder of his seemingly eternal impunity for war crimes committed in Iraq and beyond.
The long-awaited publication of the Chilcot Inquiry—the UK government’s investigation into the lead-up to and execution of the Iraq War—amounted to a searing indictment of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, accusing him of deceiving the public and British Parliament about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and following the United States blindly into an “illegal” war.
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Donald Trump praises Saddam Hussein these days. “He was a bad guy, really bad guy. But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good,” Trump said on Tuesday. Last fall, Trump said that the world would be “100 percent” better if Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi were still in power.
But you know when Trump was really angry at Saddam? Back in the early 1990s, when Trump—deep in debt and piling on loans in the midst of a recession—blamed the Iraqi leader for his business woes.
In August 1990, Trump couldn’t break even on his Taj Mahal casino hotel and the Trump Shuttle airline—but it wasn’t his fault. “Nobody projected that oil prices would go through the roof because of some madman in the Middle East,” Trump said, according to Newsday. “This just adds to and makes the recession worse.”
Trump owed his creditors $245 million for the Trump Shuttle, and he had had missed a $1.1 million interest payment. The airline merged with another company in 1992.
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After almost a decade of waiting, the Chilcot report is finally being released today promising to uncover the real reasons for the UK’s disastrous decision to invade Iraq. While British political elites are dealing with the aftermath of this political bombshell, the media and population are once again demanding answers for this costly and unnecessary war.
Perhaps the most salacious expectation is the possibility that top leaders such as Tony Blair could be brought up on charges as a “war criminal”. For many families of the fallen and citizens in general, it is an opportunity to hold politicians to account for the real casualties of their policies. When it comes to tens to hundreds of thousands of death at home and abroad, electoral defeat is simply not punishment enough.
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Barack Obama has delayed his planned troop withdrawal in Afghanistan, meaning there will now be 8,400 US forces in the country when he leaves office in January.
The US president’s most recent estimate for that figure was 5,500. In 2012, he promised that the war would be over by 2014.
In a surprise White House statement on Wednesday, Obama warned that a “precarious” security situation in Afghanistan could yet provide support to terrorists some 15 years after the September 11 attacks that first led to western military intervention.
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On June 21, 2015 the London-based Guardian newspaper published an article describing the testimony of a soldier who says he deserted the army after his unit was given an order to kill activists whose names appeared on two lists. He reported seeing one list given to his Military Police unit that formed part of the Xatruch task force, and a second for a Military Police unit that formed part of the National Force of Interinstitutional Security (FUSINA) task force. The second contained the name of Lenca indigenous leader Berta Caceres, murdered on March 3, 2016.
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Here is an interview I did yesterday about the long-awaited Chilcot
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It’s been more than a year since I first tried to connect with the retired four-star general and ex–CIA director—and no luck yet. On a recent evening, as the sky was turning from a crisp ice blue into a host of Easter-egg hues, I missed him again. Led from a curtained “backstage” area where he had retreated after a midtown Manhattan event, Petraeus moved briskly to a staff-only room, then into a tightly packed elevator, and momentarily out onto the street before being quickly ushered into a waiting late-model, black Mercedes S550.
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Thursday’s suspected militant attack on Bangladesh’s biggest congregation to celebrate Eid was possibly aimed at a liberal cleric who has led a public campaign against Islamist radicals in the country, police said.
Maulana Farid-uddin Masud, the chief cleric of the main mosque in Kishoregunj town that was attacked, collected more than 100,000 signatures, including from leading Islamic scholars and intellectuals, against a recent wave of extremist attacks in the country targeting atheists, religious minorities.
Masud had described radical Islamists as pursuing “empty Islam” and said those perpetrating violence in the name of the faith would “go to hell”.
“We believe he was the target,” Tofazzal Hossain, assistant superintendent of police in Kishoregunj, told Hindustan Times.
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The death toll from the horrific recent Iraq bombings has risen over 250. If Blair had not been absolutely determined to attack Iraq on the basis of a knowing lie about WMD, they would be alive now, along with millions of other dead. ISIS would never have taken control of territory in Iraq and Syria. Al Qaeda would never have grown from an organisation of a few hundred to one of tens of thousands. We would not have a completely destabilised Middle East and a massive refugee crisis.
Do not expect a full truth and a full accounting from the Chilcot panel of establishment trusties today. Remember who they are.
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Blair is still a creature of absolute self-serving slime. His attempt yesterday to justify the invasion of Iraq as an effort to prevent a 9/11 on British soil is dishonest in every way. Blair knew full well that Iraq had nothing at all to do with 9/11 – that was his still friends and financiers the Saudi elite. The intelligence advice in advance of the invasion he received was unequivocal that it would increase the threat to the UK, and it directly caused the attacks of 7/7.
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Remember, there was a leaked memo from the head of British intelligence that the intelligence justifying the Iraqi Invasion was “fixed” or orchestrated to produce the justification for the invasion, a war crime under the Nuremberg standard established by the United States. Chilcot’s job was to make this fact go away or assume less importance and to protect the Butler Inquiry’s orchestrated verdict that, despite the word of the head of British intelligence, the intelligence was not fixed.
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The Russian president was meeting with foreign journalists at the conclusion of the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 17th, when he left no one in any doubt that the world is headed down a course which could lead to nuclear war.
Putin railed against the journalists for their “tall tales” in blindly repeating lies and misinformation provided to them by the United States on its anti-ballistic missile systems being constructed in Eastern Europe. He pointed out that since the Iran nuclear deal, the claim the system is to protect against Iranian missiles has been exposed as a lie.
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Transparency/Investigative Reporting
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You probably heard that Jim Comey testified to the House Oversight Committee for over four hours today. You’ll see far less coverage of the second panel in that hearing, the testimony of Inspector Generals Steve Linick (from State) and Charles McCullough (from the IC).
In addition to OGR Chair Jason Chaffetz suggesting the committee convene a secrecy committee akin to the one Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan convened back in the 1990s (which would be very exciting), McCullough revealed something rather startling regarding a letter he sent to Congress back in January (this was first reported by Fox). The letter was his official notice to Congress that some of the information in Hillary’s emails was claimed by an agency he didn’t name to be Special Access.
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I write this post reluctantly, because I really wish the Hillary investigations would be good and over. But I don’t think they are.
After having watched five and a half hours of the Clinton investigation hearing today, I’ve got new clarity about what the FBI has been doing for the last year. That leads me to believe that this week’s announcement that DOJ will not charge Clinton is simply a pause in the Clinton investigation(s). I believe an investigation will resume shortly (if one is not already ongoing), though that resumed investigation will also end with no charges — for different reasons than this week’s declination.
First, understand how this all came about. After the existence of Hillary’s server became known, State’s IG Steve Linick started an investigation into it, largely focused on whether Hillary (and other Secretaries of State) complied with Federal Records Act obligations. In parallel, as intelligence agencies came to complain about State’s redactions of emails released in FOIA response, the Intelligence Committee Inspector General Charles McCullough intervened in the redaction process and referred Clinton to the FBI regarding whether any classified information had been improperly handed. As reported, State will now resume investigating the classification habits of Hillary and her aides, which will likely lead to several of them losing clearance.
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Comey, a Republican appointed as FBI director by President Obama, crossed all three of those lines. Very few commentators noted that Comey shouldn’t have said anything at all, and how unusual it was that he did. One exception was Benjamin Wittes, editor in chief of the Lawfare blog and a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.
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Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) once claimed that he “never voted for a [government] shutdown and never will.” But Issa is so angry the FBI recommended Hillary Clinton not be indicted for using a private server for her email that he suggested on Wednesday that he is rethinking his promise. He proposed that now might be a good time for the Republican leadership to shut down the federal government, in protest of what he called “an imperial president” who will not “enforce criminal charges against a criminal.”
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Presto! Instant blanket exemption from disclosure at both federal and state level. The FBI takes care to point out which Florida Sunshine Law exemption local agencies can use to withhold documents from requesters.
There’s significant public interest in these documents, especially those related to EMS/police response to emergency calls. This obviously conflicts with the FBI’s determination that its ongoing investigation — which now apparently contains every document created by every responding law enforcement agency in Florida — should preempt any and all requests for documents via Florida open records laws.
Not for nothing have there been several efforts mounted to alter blanket exemptions like the one the FBI is using to insert itself into local level records requests. Unfortunately, it’s very likely the FBI’s wielding of this “open investigation” exemption will be granted deference by the federal court currently presiding over an open records lawsuit between the Orlando Sentinel and the City of Orlando, even though this fight never should have included a federal agency conducting its own concurrent investigation of the mass shooting.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature
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Ever since the hydraulic fracturing boom began in the mid-2000s, Wisconsin has been a leader in mining the silica sand the fracking industry uses in a watery mix with other chemicals to extract oil and gas trapped in shale rock. And similar to fracking, some have long worried that sand mining harms the environment and public health, polluting air and water.
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Reconstruction of climate events long before the Ice Ages shows that failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could eventually lead to temperatures rising by up to 10 degrees.
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At the start of June, Chris Faulkner, Chief Executive Officer of Breitling Energy, was a high-flying shale company executive and media darling, often interviewed on CNN, Fox Business News and even the BBC. During his most recent appearance on CNN on June 2nd, he weighed in on the financial prospects for drillers who survive low oil prices despite the spate of bankruptcies sweeping the shale industry.
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The history of the fossil fuel industry can feel like it is told in complicated deals the public isn’t meant to understand. This is what is happening in Sweden. The government-owned energy company, Vattenfall, is demanding the sale of its coal mines and power plants based in Germany to a Czech company, EPH. The deal includes some of Germany’s largest coal mines – and three of the top 10 most polluting coal plants in Europe. They are going to a deeply unattractive buyer – EPH, a company hell-bent on burning as much coal as possible.
In the next couple of weeks, Swedish prime minister, Stefan Löfven, is facing a stark choice. On one hand, he could approve the sale of the most climate-destroying assets in Europe, breaking his own election promises in the process. Or, he could promote a transition to keep coal in the ground – and support a liveable climate – in an unprecedented decision by a government to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Coal is the most polluting of all fossil fuels, and lignite or ‘brown coal’ is the most polluting type of coal and the greatest threat to EU climate goals.
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Democrats need to get serious about climate change—and time is running out for them to do so.
Environmentalists see the upcoming full Democratic Platform Committee meeting in Orlando as a final opportunity to ensure the party takes meaningful action on climate change over the next four years.
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Finance
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The Commission’s proposal on provisional application of the Canada-EU trade agreement (CETA) violates EU law.
The EU can only provisionally apply those parts of the international agreement over which it has exclusive powers. However, in today’s proposal, the Commission is seeking to provisionally apply CETA in its entirety. This violates the founding treaties of the EU.
The Commission has already shown it is not sure it has the power to do this, by asking EU judges to rule on the division of power in the EU-Singapore Free Trade deal. This judgement is expected later this year or early next year.
Instead of waiting for this important Court ruling, the Commission is hastily pushing for a decision that may be contrary to what the ECJ decides.
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But it is just another day at the office for the 1%. They own the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government. As Chris Hedges frequently stresses: “We’ve undergone a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion. And it’s over. We’ve lost, and they’ve won.”
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But, as usual, things are more complicated. We should hope that, in one respect, Britain’s exit from the EU will create a kind of dependence that did not exist while it was still a member of the union.
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Sovereign debt – the debt of national governments – has ballooned from $80 trillion to $100 trillion just since 2008. Squeezed governments have been driven to radical austerity measures, privatizing public assets, slashing public services, and downsizing work forces in a futile attempt to balance national budgets. But the debt overhang just continues to grow.
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The most disappointing consequence of Brexit for foreigners living in the UK has become the unexpected rise of xenophobia. According to the behavior of locals, the EU open door policy has completely failed. Brits have made it clear that foreigners are not welcome. Not only immigrants from conflict areas, but people from Poland and Baltic States face insults or even physical violence, hear offensive words and the call to pack their bags and leave.
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Britain supports EU free trade deal with Canada despite Brexit: Freeland
Britain has assured Canada it will push for speedy ratification of the mammoth free trade deal with the European Union, despite its intention to leave the 28-country bloc, says International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland.
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There has been much controversy over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – a plurilateral trade agreement involving a dozen nations from throughout the Pacific Rim – and its impact upon the environment, biodiversity, and climate change.
The secretive treaty negotiations involve Australia and New Zealand; countries from South East Asia such as Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Japan; the South American nations of Peru and Chile; and the members of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Canada, Mexico and the United States. There was an agreement reached between the parties in October 2015. The participants asserted: ‘We expect this historic agreement to promote economic growth, support higher-paying jobs; enhance innovation, productivity and competitiveness; raise living standards; reduce poverty in our countries; and to promote transparency, good governance, and strong labor and environmental protections.’ The final texts of the agreement were published in November 2015.
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Iris Milano could hardly sleep after she got the news that her family would be kicked out of their two-bedroom apartment in San Jose.
“You’re always thinking and worrying. It’s something that is always with me,” said Milano, 47, a skin-care technician who lives with her husband and 14-year-old son in an apartment protected by rent control in the northern California city. “We are being forced to move. This is our home.”
Milano, who is originally from Venezuela and has lived in the area for 13 years, is one of roughly 670 tenants who are being displaced from their homes in what local housing advocates believe to be Silicon Valley’s largest-ever mass eviction of rent-controlled tenants.
The 216-unit complex called the Reserve Apartments that is being demolished to make way for a development of market-rate housing – located five miles away from Apple’s headquarters, 14 miles away from Google and 20 miles away from Facebook – is the latest example of rising income inequality in a region home to many of the world’s wealthiest technology companies.
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Consumer confidence has seen its sharpest drop in 21 years after the UK vote to leave the EU, a survey suggests.
The market research firm GfK conducted a one-off online survey of 2,000 people after the result was known.
Its confidence index fell by eight points to minus nine, a drop not since seen December 1994.
Less confident consumers tend to curb their spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of the UK economy.
It is also one measure watched by the Bank of England when deciding its next move on interest rates. Governor Mark Carney has already warned the UK’s economic outlook is “challenging” following the decision to leave the EU.
The Gfk survey also suggested that 60% of consumers expect the general economic situation to worsen over the next year, compared with 46% in June. Just 20% expect it to improve, down from 27% last month.
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Texas populist Jim Hightower will present the Democratic Party platform committee with a Bernie Sanders-sponsored amendment to the draft platform when it meets in Orlando this Friday and Saturday. It will read:
It is the policy of the Democratic Party that the Trans-Pacific Partnership should not get a vote in the lame duck session of Congress and beyond.
This should be a no-brainer. All of the Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination were opposed to the TPP trade deal, as of course is Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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This is a crucial time for Dr. Jill Stein. It’s a test of whether she can move her presidential campaign from the fringes into the mainstream of an election that she says “has tossed out the rule book.”
“We are here to keep the revolution going,” Stein, the prospective Green Party presidential candidate, told me in a telephone interview Tuesday. “Bernie [Sanders] supporters are grieving over the loss of the campaign, of their hard work, their vision, but they are remobilizing. Our events are absolutely mobbed with Bernie supporters.”
We spoke in the morning, before FBI Director James Comey threw yet another twist into the presidential race by announcing that while the bureau would not recommend criminal charges in the Hillary Clinton email affair, she had been “extremely careless” with her use of a personal email address and a private server for sensitive communications.
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Bernie Sanders’ next signature rally may take place in Philadelphia—the night before the Democratic National Convention.
The Vermont senator’s campaign has applied for a permit to hold an event that will reportedly host between 15,000 to 40,000 people on July 24 at Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park. It is one of 10 such pro-Sanders events requesting permission from the Philadelphia mayor’s office, the Burlington Free Press reports.
Sanders spokesperson Michael Briggs said last month that the senator was planning to deliver a “victory statement” in Philadelphia, but said on Wednesday that plans for the rally are still being finalized.
The campaign is gearing up for the convention, where Sanders has promised to bring a floor fight over the Democratic National Committee (DNC) platform after a slew of his proposals—including banning fracking and blocking U.S. Congress from voting on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)—were overruled or watered down during previous negotiations.
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On May 17, Donald Trump announced an arrangement with the Republican National Committee (RNC) that will allow individuals to donate almost $500,000 each to a joint fundraising committee between Trump, the RNC and 11 state Republican parties. In 2012, Mitt Romney’s joint fundraising committee could only raise $135,000 from each individual. What happened in the last four years to make these numbers so much higher?
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It seems like a nightmare, but it is reality: The Democratic Party has chosen a criminal as its presidential candidate. And the liberals said that Reagan wore teflon!
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Censorship/Free Speech
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The United States touts its commitment to free speech but American discourse has degenerated into self-absorbed info-tainment and trivia, ignoring many of the most pressing issues of the day, writes Michael Brenner.
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It’s no secret that Apple does not want you to monkey around with your device’s innards or to take it anywhere but to its own stores for repairs. The company has continually screwed around with the screws that keep its hardware together in an effort to prevent DIYers and non-Apple-approved repair shops from opening its devices.
Now, Apple can’t legally prevent anyone from utilizing third parties for repairs, as explained in this Motherboard article by Jason Koebler. A 40-year-old piece of legislation states companies can’t void warranties simply because the devices have been opened.
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Over the past two months, the public broadcaster has been embroiled in unconstitutional pronouncements aimed at compromising and more importantly censoring information intended for public consumption.
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‘I would recommend that Knesset TV not broadcast her words as a matter of principle,’ Zionist Union’s Herzog. MK Freige: Herzog a ‘useful idiot’ for Netanyahu and the right.
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Hearing: Blasphemy Laws and Censorship by States and Non-State Actors: Examining Global Threats to Freedom of Expression
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Reddit’s World News moderators have censored a story about a German woman who didn’t report her rape due of fear of inciting “racism against refugees” while allowing the posting of a story about a young girl lying about about a refugee sex attack.
The story of the German activist and leader of left wing German youth movement Solid lying about the identities of the men who raped her was reported on by The Washington Times. The article was removed from /r/WorldNews under the belief that it did not constitute worldwide news and was marked as “local news”.
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The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) of the People’s Republic of China announced a rule that meant all games had to be pre-approved by SAPPRFT before going live.
SAPPRFT has also allowed a three month grace period in which existing games must be submitted and post-approved.
However, one games developers grievances have been shared around the internet as his game was denied for having English words in it.
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The UK government is on a mission to protect the young of the country from the dark recesses of the web. And by the darker recesses, what is really meant is porn. The main ISPs have long been required to block access to known piracy sites, but porn is also a concern — for politicians, at least.
As part of its bid to sanitize and censor the web, Sky — from the Murdoch stables — is, as of today, enabling adult content filtering by default for all new customers: Sky Broadband Shield. The company wants to “help families protect their children from inappropriate content”, and in a previous experiment discovered — unsurprisingly — that content filtering was used by more people if it was automatically enabled.
The government has proposed that all money-making porn sites that operate in the UK need to have an age verification system in place, and in many ways Sky’s scheme is just an extension of the idea. Sky’s approach, however, the reverse of similar systems used by other ISPs, Rather than asking customers if they want to enable the content filter, the question is flipped on its head so they are asked if they want to disable the option.
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The aftermath of the police shooting of Philando Castile, 32, was broadcast to the world when his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds used Facebook Live to document the traffic stop turned fatal in St. Paul, Minnesota. Castile’s death is the latest of a string of police-involved shootings of African Americans, but it’s also part of a growing trend: live-streaming violent events. And social media companies are now being scrutinized for how they handle them.
Reynolds filmed for 10 minutes, starting just seconds after Castile was shot and slumped over in the driver’s seat, until her phone died. “The only thing y’all didn’t see is when he was shot,” she said during a subsequent Facebook Live broadcast Thursday.
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Privacy Shield—the much maligned replacement to the Safe Harbour deal between the European Union and the US—looks set to be approved by national representatives on Friday, Ars understands.
The scheme, which will allow the transfer of personal data from the EU to the US despite privacy and data protection concerns, has faced an uphill battle. Brussels officials who negotiated the deal on behalf of the EU have been desperate to push it through in the face of criticism from the European Data Protection Supervisor, national data protection authorities, and the European Parliament, in order to give some legal certainty to companies that rely on transatlantic data flows.
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I saw the evocative Time Magazine cover from March 2011 (it has been widely used with credits) and it got me thinking. We have long known that Google collects information on its search and Android users. It is a longstanding joke that Android is a thinly disguised advertising delivery mechanism – why else would Google give it away? Hope you enjoy this weekend, tin-foil hat read.
Truth is, it is much bigger than Google. It is Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, search engines, and hundreds of more so-called free apps — loyalty programmes especially — that have the sole purpose of gathering information about you. It is also your government/s, telco, newspaper subscription, gym membership, medical records, Uber, cab bookings, banks, and so many more. Some use it to generate advertising revenue, some to present tailored offers to you, some sell it, some put it into massive collaborative data lakes like Adobe or Oracle Marketing clouds, etc.
Double-Click admitted in 2012 that at that time it shared its tracking with 105 companies. Ghostery, a tracking blocker, says now over 2000 trackers know your every Web move. It is not unusual for it to find 30 to 50 trackers per page – especially on high volume sites.
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Alex Gibney has made a living making movies about topics that people don’t want to talk about publicly.
He was nominated for an Oscar for his look at the downfall of Enron (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”), won an Oscar for a movie about the US’s torture and interrogation practices during the war in Afghanistan (“Taxi to the Dark Side”), and recently gave us a peek into the Church of Scientology (“Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief”).
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We’ve been talking for several years now about how modern “smart cars” don’t adhere to particularly smart security practices. Nissan recently opened Leaf owners to remote attack via a nasty vulnerability in the car’s app. The Mitsubishi Outlander was similarly unveiled to be relatively trivial to hack. And last year, hackers showed just how easy it was to manipulate and disable a new Jeep Cherokee running Fiat Chrysler’s UConnect platform.
Most of these attacks involve the intruder worming so deeply into a vehicle’s systems that they’re in some cases able to actually control most if not all of the car systems from anywhere on the planet. So as you might imagine, simply unlocking the doors and starting the engine while in or near the car isn’t proving too difficult for many hackers.
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Fifteen secretive orders are in force allowing British spy agencies to collect large volumes of communications data, it has been revealed.
The measures were issued by Home and Foreign Secretaries on behalf of MI5 and GCHQ using a little-known legal provision between 2001 and 2016.
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Administration officials also wrongly blamed encryption for terrorist attacks in Paris, San Bernardino, and Brussels, before evidence even emerged about terrorists’ online behaviors.
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At the end of June, Russia’s upper and lower houses of parliament approved the “Yarovaya laws,” a controversial package of legislative amendments that Edward Snowden has called “an unworkable, unjustifiable violation of rights.” Named for its co-author, State Duma MP Irina Yarovaya, the package will undermine the core principles of Russian criminal law.
The section of the bill that amends the Criminal Code is nonsensical and brazenly repressive, even compared to other recent retrograde legislation. It makes “failure to report a crime” a criminal offense; any individual who becomes aware of “reliable information” about plans to carry out an act of terrorism, armed mutiny, or any of a dozen other crimes and does not notify the authorities will face up to a year in prison.
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Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the German ruling coalition’s parliamentary groups to immediately amend a proposed law on the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence service, in order to prevent the BND from spying on journalists.
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Civil Rights/Policing
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You would think that “the law” is obviously part of the public domain. It seems particularly crazy to think that any part of the law itself might be covered by copyright, or (worse) locked up behind some sort of paywall where you cannot read it. Carl Malamud has spent many years working to make sure the law is freely accessible… and he’s been sued a bunch of times and is still in the middle of many lawsuits, including one from the State of Georgia for publishing its official annotated code (the state claims the annotations are covered by copyright).
But there’s another area that he’s fought over for many years: the idea that standards that are “incorporated by reference” into the law should also be public. The issue is that many lawmakers, when creating regulations will often cite private industry “standards” as part of the regulations. So, things like building codes may cite standards for, say, sheet metal and air conditioning that were put together by the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors National Association (SMACNA), and say that buildings need to follow SMACNA’s standards. And those standards may be great — but if you can’t actually read the standards, how can you obey the law. At one point SMACNA went after Malamud for publishing its standards. And while they eventually backed down, others are still in court against Malamud — including the American Society for Testing & Materials (ASTM), whose case against Malamud is set to go to trial in the fall.
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On the morning of August 28, 2014, two days after the end of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, Sohaib Zahda hopped into a shared taxi in Hebron that was going to Ramallah, where he had a job interview.
Thirty-three-year-old Zahda, who owns a paintball company, is an unlikely terrorist. An avid cyclist who speaks Arabic, Italian, French, and English, he is a member of Youth Against Settlements, a nonviolent organization that protests against Israeli settlers who live in and around Hebron. He is opposed to Hamas firing rockets into Israel. He likes to tell visitors his grandfather had Jewish friends in Hebron in the 1920s.
Hebron and Ramallah are about 25 miles apart. To get between them, Palestinians must pass through the “container checkpoint,” manned by Israeli soldiers on a road that connects the southern West Bank to its central and northern cities. At the checkpoint — named for a shipping container once located at the barrier — Palestinian pedestrians queue up to get their IDs checked, while cars wait for inspection and for soldiers to wave them through. When Zahda’s taxi drove up, masked Israeli soldiers stopped the vehicle, asked him to get out, and then handcuffed him.
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“I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions,” Thomas Jefferson wrote. “Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. … [They] must advance … and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”
Jefferson authored the Declaration of Independence 240 years ago on July 4. Today, we often congratulate ourselves for serving as the model of democracy for the rest of the world, yet our country has perhaps never been so polarized, so divided and so dysfunctional. More and more Americans have a vague and increasing sense that our government is simply incapable of addressing basic challenges like immigration, guns, entitlements, trade, climate and environment, privacy and security, the federal budget, spiraling inequality, money in politics … or even a health emergency like the Zika virus. It is no longer hyperbole to say that American democracy is broken.
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It’s no accident that Trump’s social media feeds keep using neo-Nazi imagery; he’s actively courting hate.
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Pattakos’ mild urging that a Scene writer “get their reporting pants on” is akin to shouting “Fire!” in a crowded forest… and then walking away while it burns? Because the defendants claimed this single article adversely affected its settlement attempts, the court has decided this lawyer should be punished for doing something lawyers do every day — and something that is apparently permitted by the rules governing attorney conduct.
But the opening of the same decision condemning Pattakos’ behavior opens with a recitation of the events leading up to this decision, which includes a period of three years (February 2012-January 2015) where the defendants made zero effort to make counteroffers to the plaintiff’s settlement demands. It appears the defendants truly believed the jury would side with it and allow it to escape litigation without having to pay a settlement and are now looking for someone to blame because it ended up paying out $400,000 to the plaintiff and opposing counsel.
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So, four hours of narcotics agents milling around, trying to find an excuse to search a residence without a warrant. And nothing to show for it but claims that the appellant sometimes sold pseudoephedrine to one of the people who answered the knock and talk, a bag of opened OTC drug packages, and a white, non-illicit powder.
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Remember David Nosal? He was the former Korn/Ferry executive looking to set up his own competing firm, but one that mainly relied on Korn/Ferry’s big database of people. As part of that process, after he left the company to head out on his own, he had some former colleagues who were planning to join him log into their Korn/Ferry accounts to access information. Then after those employees left, they got another former colleague to share her password so they could continue to log in. He was charged with violating the criminal portion of the CFAA, under the theory that convincing his former colleagues to gather info for him was a terms of service violation — and that meant he had “exceeded authorized access” under the statute. This became a key case in determining whether merely violating a terms of service could be considered criminal hacking under the CFAA. Thankfully, back in 2012, the 9th Circuit rejected such a broad ruling of the CFAA, pointing out that such an interpretation would “unintentionally turn ordinary citizens into criminals” and that couldn’t be the intent from Congress. This was a huge win that helped limit some of the worst abuses of the CFAA.
However, the US government was not yet done with Nosal. It then filed new CFAA charges against him, not over the original information sharing, but rather for getting that last colleague to share her password with Nosal. The feds argued that this fell under the other prong of the CFAA, that it was a version of accessing a computer system “without authorization” (as opposed to exceeding authorization). Unfortunately, the 9th circuit appeals court has ruled that merely sharing a password can be a CFAA violation.
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One of the nation’s most powerful appeals courts ruled Wednesday that sharing passwords can be a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a catch-all “hacking” law that has been widely used to prosecute behavior that bears no resemblance to hacking.
In this particular instance, the conviction of David Nosal, a former employee of Korn/Ferry International research firm, was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, who said that Nosal’s use of a former coworker’s password to access one of the firm’s databases was an “unauthorized” use of a computer system under the CFAA.
The decision is a nightmare scenario for civil liberties groups, who say that such a broad interpretation of the CFAA means that millions of Americans are unwittingly violating federal law by sharing accounts on things like Netflix, HBO, Spotify, and Facebook. Stephen Reinhardt, the dissenting judge in the case, noted that the decision “threatens to criminalize all sorts of innocuous conduct engaged in daily by ordinary citizens.”
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Gov. Mark Dayton of Minnesota on Thursday asked the Department of Justice to investigate the killing of a black motorist shot by a white police officer. Philando Castile’s dying moments were live-streamed on Facebook, and the incident prompted a comment from President Barack Obama.
Dayton said he wanted an “immediate independent federal investigation into this matter.” The governor suggested that racism was to blame for the killing of Castile, a 32-year-old school cafeteria manager, who was shot at least four times by a police officer after being pulled over for a broken taillight in Falcon Heights.
“Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver and the passengers, were white?,” Dayton told a news conference Thursday. “I don’t think it would have. So I’m forced to confront, and I think all of us in Minnesota are forced to confront, that this kind of racism exists.”
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Five Dallas police officers have been killed and six wounded by gunmen during protests against the shooting of black men by police, authorities say.
Three people are in custody and one man who was in a stand-off with police shot himself dead, US media have reported.
Gunfire broke out at around 20:45 local time on Thursday (01:45 GMT Friday) as demonstrators marched through the city.
The protests were sparked by the deaths of Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana.
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If unaccountalbe police brutality continues, will American citizens come to the conclusion that cops are criminal thugs of great danger to the public and must be shot down on sight before they murder again?
The goon thugs have done a good job of proving that Amerians would be far safer in the absence of police who during 8 years of the iraqi War killed more Americans than we lost troops in combat.
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On February 17th, 2016, French Parliament voted to extend the nation’s state of emergency for three months.
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Donald Trump may be backing off elements of his proposed temporary ban on all Muslim immigration to the United States, but in the meantime his original proposal has become way more popular than he is, according to many national polls.
Trump most recently said he was calling for a temporary ban on immigration from “areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States”– rather than all Muslims from anywhere.
But Trump’s poll numbers have been dropping lately; the Huffington Post’s aggregate of polling data shows that Trump has a 35 percent favorability rating, down from 37 percent in late May. Meanwhile, Reuters/Ipsos’s rolling five-day poll as of July 1 showed that 46 percent of Americans favor temporarily banning all Muslims from entering the country, up from 40 percent in late May.
An NBC News-SurveyMonkey poll conducted shortly after the deadly shooting in Orlando showed that 50 percent of Americans strongly or somewhat supported the ban, while 46 percent opposed it.
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As my colleague Liliana Segura noted on Twitter this morning, the documented killing of black Americans by police officers has become so routine that it is hard for even the racists who seek to justify the slaughter in online comment threads to keep up.
[...]
That’s why the first reports on the killing of Philando Castile, a 32-year-old cafeteria supervisor at a Montessori School in St. Paul, Minnesota, who was shot while reaching for his license during a traffic stop on Wednesday night, included a comment from a Facebook spokesman. The aftermath of the shooting, as Castile bled to death in the front seat of a car, was streamed live on the social network from the phone of Castile’s distraught girlfriend.
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On Wednesday, the world woke to a scene that is all too familiar in America: A black man, Alton Sterling, was shot and killed by the police (an alarm tragically repeated again on Thursday). A cellphone video shows Sterling pinned to the ground beneath two police officers when he is shot several times at point-blank range.
Protesters immediately gathered outside the convenience store where Sterling was killed. Outrage has mounted online; his death has been called a murder, an assassination, and a lynching. The Department of Justice announced that they would open a civil rights investigation into the case.
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Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards called for a federal civil rights investigation on Tuesday into what was at that point the latest fatal police shooting of a black man in the United States.
But in May, Edwards signed a bill into law that makes targeting a police officer a hate crime. Passage of such bills at the state level is a top priority of a national organization called Blue Lives Matter, which was formed in response to the Black Lives Matter movement .
Alton Sterling, 37, was shot in the chest at point-blank range by Baton Rouge police early Tuesday morning; it was captured on video by witnesses. Philando Castile, 32, was shot after police stopped his car outside St. Paul, Minn.; his girlfriend livestreamed his death on Facebook.
But it is the civil rights of police officers that Edwards was concerned about in May, as if theirs were being routinely violated.
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We’re out of words. Two more black men – Alton Sterling, Philando Castile – murdered by police. Two more sorrowful hashtags, two more bloody videos, two more sets of weeping families, two more outraged cities and many more in spirit, two more barrages of tragic parallel stories: They were good guys, they were doing nothing wrong but being black, their awful deaths prove, one more awful time, that whiteness is blindness, and cops are America’s terrorists, and black people are tired and hurting – but, alone amidst a well-armed population, not allowed to have guns. We have been here so long that Malcom X spoke of it 55 years ago, and he’s still right. We’re out of words. Here are his.
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Internet Policy/Net Neutrality
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For years T-Mobile has been making some welcome changes to U.S. wireless service, implementing everything from free data while roaming internationally, to rollover data plans that let you keep unused data. T-Mobile’s strange, new tactic of treating consumers well has paid incredible dividends for the company, which has been adding significantly more postpaid wireless subscribers per quarter than any other major carrier. Between the elimination of consumer pain points and its foul-mouthed CEO, T-Mobile’s been a welcome change for the sector (just ignore its attack on the EFF and failure to support net neutrality).
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DRM
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Despite dedicated resistance by tens of thousands of Web users and civil society groups, Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee has allowed Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) to move to the next phase of development within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Today the Medicines Patent Pool announced the signing of nine new sub-licensing agreements for the generic manufacturing of key HIV and hepatitis C treatments.
According to the MPP press release, it signed licences with Aurobindo (India), Desano (China), Emcure (India), Hetero Labs (India), Laurus Labs (India), Lupin (India) and a new partner, Zydus Cadila (India).
Aurobindo signed two new sub-licences for lopinavir and ritonavir (both HIV treatments) for Africa. Desano, a Chinese manufacturer and Emcure also signed licences for those treatments.
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Next week, the French Senate is due to consider a bill on biodiversity for the third time. That bill, which could be modifying several legislations, might allow for the sharing and selling by non-governmental organisations of seeds in the public domain to non-commercial buyers, which is so far not permitted under the current French legislation, according to sources.
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Trademarks
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Can operators of physical marketplaces be considered “intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe an intellectual property right”, so that “rightholders are in a position to apply for an injunction” against them, pursuant to the third sentence in Article 11 of the Enforcement Directive? Put it otherwise: how does the landmark decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in L’Oréal v eBay [noted here, here, and here] apply in an offline context?
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Copyrights
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The UK’s current copyright legislation is set for an overhaul, thanks to the introduction of the Digital Economy bill. This bill has been focused on implementing harsher sentences for online piracy.
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This recommendation followed a debate that resulted in a plan devised by the UK Government to increase the maximum prison sentence in such cases five-fold. If this bill is passed in the current form, the online pirates will face a maximum prison of ten years.
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