Contents

GNU/Linux

Distributions

Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

GNU/Linux

2017 And The FUD Still Flows

Well, here it is 2017 and folks are still trotting out the arguments against GNU/Linux they were using fifteen years ago.

Do People Really Use That? 15 Weird Linux Operating System Names

When you see the word …

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Torturing Tech Support Phone Scammers With Linux

  Darn Linux! I have Windows, too, but I obviously don’t use it nearly enough. When I tell people like Paul I run Linux, they can’t get away from me fast enough. Obviously, if I ran Windows more often, they’d want to keep talking with me and I wouldn’t be so lonely.

  I guess that’s my 2017 New Year’s resolution: to run more Windows so I can make lots of friends who are in the business of supplying bogus computer tech support.

  Or maybe I’ll just go on using Linux most of the time, and if I want to make new friends I’ll go have a drink or two at the Drift Inn, where nobody really cares what operating system I like best. One or the other, anyway.

• Desktop

  • Snappy vs. Flatpak: Unified Linux Packaging Systems

    Getting Linux applications to run on servers is not always as easy as it should be, thanks to the myriad software packaging formats that various Linux distributions use. Over the course of 2016, two efforts really ramped up to help solve that challenge in the form of Snappy and Flatpak.

    The promise of both Snappy and Flatpak is to deliver an approach that enables software developers to build software once and then have it bundled in a package that can run on multiple distributions. Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu Linux, is a big advocate of Snappy.

  • $89 Pinebook Linux Laptop To Go On Sale Next Month

    New details about the $89 Linux ARM laptop have emerged, including a tentative shipping date and warranty details.

  • Endless is bringing its cheap, user-friendly Linux PCs to the US

    The dream of a Linux computer for normal humans is relatively dead. Sure, Google put Linux in billions of hands and homes with Android and Chrome OS, but neither OS is very much like the desktop Linux flavors well-meaning open-source developers have been crafting for decades.

  • Endless introduces Linux mini desktop PCs for American market

    For the past few years Endless Computers has been making inexpensive Linux-based computers designed for use in emerging markets. Last summer the company also started working with PC makers to load its Endless OS software on some computers.

    Now Endless is launching its first products designed specifically for the United States.

  • Endless Unveils Mission Mini and Mission One Computers as the Endless Experience Comes to America

  • Endless expands into the U.S. with $129 Mission Mini and $249 Mission One computers

    Computers have become an important part of our world, especially in the classrooms and at home, but while many can afford these devices — often costing hundreds, if not thousands of dollars — there are still those left behind. Endless Mobile was founded five years ago with the mission to make computing universally accessible, creating an operating system initially targeted toward emerging markets.

  • Closer look at the Mission line of mini PCs from Endless Computers

    The Endless Mission One and Mission Mini desktop computers will be available for pre-order in the US starting January 16th.

    They’re both small, fanless desktop computers that ship with Endless OS, a Linux-based operating system that’s designed to be easy to use, and which comes with tools to help kids (or adults) learn to write code.

  • Endless has a mission: Bring its charmingly cheap Mission One computers to the US

    You and I have a nearly limitless array of computer choices, from massive desktops to slim laptops to entire computers build into something the same size as a USB stick. But in emerging markets, the options are much more limited, both in the hardware available and even in the availability of internet access.

    That’s why I liked the Endless Mini desktop PC we reviewed last year. It was a $79 (approximately £54 or AU$110) desktop in a charming spherical red plastic case, running a custom Linux-based OS. More importantly, it included a ton of educational content pre-loaded, making it a useful tool for students, even without reliable or fast internet access.

  • 2016 The Year Of GNU/Linux On Many Desktops

    It’s not as spectacular as I would like but GNU/Linux has been growing steadily and particularly on weekends at home, I presume, all over 2016. Chrome OS GNU/Linux has really taken share globally. Yes, those are global numbers to the right.

• Server

  • The DevOps Engineer Is An Optical Illusion

    Developers aren’t the same as operations staff. Financial analysts aren’t engineers, and salespeople aren’t accountants. Transparent communication, the ability to fail safely, and a structure that drives cross-team cooperation will bring everyone together to support the ultimate outcome: happy customers.

  • Keynote: Backstage with Kubernetes by Chen Goldberg, Google

  • How the Kubernetes Community Drives The Project’s Success

    Kubernetes is a hugely popular open source project, one that is in the top percentile on GitHub and that has spawned more than 3,000 other projects. And although the distributed application cluster technology is incredibly powerful in its own right, that’s not the sole reason for its success.

    “We think it’s not just the technology, we think that what makes it special is the community that builds the technology,” said Chen Goldberg, Director of Engineering, Container Engine and Kubernetes at Google, during her keynote at CloudNativeCon in Seattle last November.

  • Does the Container Ecosystem Need a Map?

    At last month’s KubeCon in Seattle, members of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation put forth a chart depicting the various projects, both commercial and open source, that either individually or collectively contributed to its perception of the “cloud native” ecosystem. You might call it, for lack of a more original phrase, a new stack.

  • 6 Container Themes to Track in 2017

    The container craze will turn four next year. Yes, Linux containers have been around longer than that, but the rise of Docker—first released to the public on March 20, 2013—has sparked the surge of interest we’re riding right now.

    It’s a fascinating adolescent phase, as containers not only roll into production but also get acclimated to enterprise needs and bigger-money investors. Here’s a glance at the major themes that surrounded containers in 2016 and are likely to continue into 2017.

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • FLOSS Weekly 416: FreeDOS

    Jim has been involved in free software / open source software since 1993, when he was still an undergraduate physics student. His first experience was with GNU Emacs, and later he contributed a few patches for GNU Emacs on Apollo/DOMAIN. In 1994, Jim created the FreeDOS Project, and wrote many of the early FreeDOS utilities, extensions, and libraries – including the Cats/Kitten library that provides international language support for many FreeDOS programs. (Cats is short for the Unix Catgets library, and Kitten is an even smaller version of Cats. Get it?)

• Kernel Space

  • Automotive Grade Linux Moves to UCB 3.0

    The Linux Foundation’s Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) project has released version 3.0 of its open source Unified Code Base (UCB) for automotive infotainment development. Unlike AGL’s UCB 2.0, which was released in July, UCB 3.0 is already being used to develop in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) products, some of which will ship in cars this year.

    The AGL is not saying which companies will ship products first, but notes that UCB 3.0 “has several strong supporters and contributors including Toyota, Mazda, Aisin AW, Continental, Denso, Harman, Panasonic, Qualcomm Technologies, Renesas and many others.” More than 40 new companies have joined AGL in the past year, bringing the member total to more than 80. In addition to Toyota and Mazda, AGL automotive manufacturer members include Ford, Honda, Jaguar Land Rover, Mitsubishi Motors, Nissan, Subaru, and as of last month, Suzuki.

  • Daimler Advances Connected Car Technology through Open Source and Automotive Grade Linux

  • CES 2017: Automotive Grade Linux OTA Solution Ready for Renesas R-Car platform

  • Linux 4.10′s ath9k Driver Should Have Lower Latency & Less Bufferbloat

    As part of the ongoing battle with bufferbloat are some improvements to the ath9k WiFi driver with the Linux 4.10 kernel.

    Bufferbloat is the excess buffering of packets resulting in high latency, jitter, and lower network throughput. We’ve been looking forward to some more bufferbloat improvements with the Linux kernel and its network drivers while there were some ath9k improvements I hadn’t noticed until being pointed out this week by a Phoronix reader.

  • ‘Hackable’ hypervisor provides lightweight virtualization for Windows and Linux

    Linux kernel developer Ahmed Samy has released an open source hypervisor project that aims to be “simple and lightweight.” Thus, he presents KSM, an option for Linux and Windows developers to create everything from software sandboxing tools to more full-blown hypervisor applications.

    In a brief announcement on the Linux kernel development email list, Samy stated that KSM’s purpose “is not to run other kernels” (typically the case with hypervisors), “but more of researching (or whatever) the running kernel, some ideas would be sandboxing, debugging perhaps.”

  • KSM: A Hackable x86_64 Hypervisor For Linux/Windows

    Being announced today on the kernel mailing list is the KSM hypervisor, what’s self-described as “a hackable x86-64 hypervisor.”

    KSM is an out-of-tree x86_64 VT-x hypervisor. The developer Ahmed Samy announced of the project, “KSM’s purpose is not to run other kernels, but more of researching (or whatsoever) the running kernel, some ideas would be sandboxing, debugging perhaps.”

  • A New Proposal For Supporting DRM Linux Drivers In User-Space

    The discussion has come up before about supporting Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) drivers in user-space rather than having to be tied within the Linux kernel while that outlook was reignited today with a new patch series wiring in said support.

  • Graphics Stack

    • Intel DRM Driver Patches For Render Decompression On Skylake+

• Applications

  • Inkscape 0.92 released

  • Inkscape 0.92 Released As A Big Update For This Vector Drawing Program

  • Inkscape 0.92 Open-Source SVG Graphics Editor Arrives with Exciting New Features

    Today, January 4, 2016, the Inkscape project proudly announced the release and general availability of the new Inkscape 0.92 stable version of the open-source, free, and multiplatform vector graphics drawing application.

    Coming eleven months after the release of Inkscape 0.91, the new version promises exciting new features like mesh gradients, better CSS3 and SVG2 support, an much improved Pencil tool that now features interactive smoothing, brand-new path effects, as well as support for directly managing all drawing elements via a new Object dialog.

  • GNU Sed 4.3: 10x Faster Regular Expressions, Faster I/O

    For those making use of GNU’s Stream Editor, Sed, for non-interactive command-line text editing there is a new release available.

  • sed-4.3 released [stable]

    [resending, now that the gnu.org URLs are valid]

    This is to announce sed-4.3, a stable release (and my first sed release).

    There have been 195 commits by 10 people in the four years since 4.2.2. And that does not include the 1390 commits to gnulib.

  • Proprietary

    • Applied Expert Systems, Inc.’s CleverView for TCP/IP on Linux

    • Vivaldi 1.7 Web Browser Development Continues, Now Supports Hiding of Extensions

      The Vivaldi devs have kicked off the new year with the third development snapshot of the upcoming Chromium-based Vivaldi 1.7 web browser release, as Ruarí Ødegaard informed us earlier.

      Vivaldi Snapshot 1.7.715.3 comes approximately two weeks after the release of build 1.7.705.3, and while at first it appears to be a small bugfix update that addresses several of the issues reported by users lately, it implements a new feature, namely an option that lets you enjoy a clean Vivaldi interface by hiding all the installed extensions.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How to change the Linux I/O scheduler to fit your needs

    • How does a Linux vulnerability allow attacks on TCP communications?

    • Seven tools that help us develop Weblate

    • New with cme: a GUI to configure Systemd services

    • Introducing ical-archiver to split out old iCalendar entries

    • Clarifications to xz compression article

    • Clear Linux Tests Data Compression Options

    • VMware Workstation 12.5.2 patch for Linux Kernel 4.9

    • 5 Ways to Find a ‘Binary Command’ Description and Location on File System

    • How To Find Installed Applications With Installed Size In Linux

    • How to Install Qgit Viewer in Ubuntu

    • How to install Calculate Linux

    • How to install or upgrade to PHP 7 on CentOS 7 Linux Server

    • Speed up your downloads with Axel command line downloader/accelerator

    • Essentials of OpenStack Administration Part 4: Cloud Design, Software-Defined Networking and Storage

  • Games

    • Steam And Linux On PS4- Traces of AMD’s Bonaire GPU found

      In another attempt by hackers to run steam and Linux on PS4, it hit a dead end: they could not get the PS4’s GPU to display any sort of output or even process any kind of graphics. Much like any dead end, if you need a workaround you research the internet. So, the hackers did the same and found a chink in the armor of GPU script.

    • Steam’s Linux and OpenGL Efforts Forced Microsoft to Take PC Gaming Seriously: Former Valve Employee

      Ex-Valve employee Rich Geldreich — who worked on games such as Portal 2 and Linux versions of Valve’s games based on the original Source Engine — took to his blog to share the impact Valve’s efforts with Linux and OpenGL had on the industry. Particularly in getting Microsoft to support PC gaming better.

      One post on Valve’s Linux blog, entitled ‘Faster Zombies’ is of interest as it showed off what performance Valve was able to get out of its games running Linux and OpenGL, which was faster than using Windows with Direct3D on the same systems. Written by Gabe Newell himself, it resulted in Microsoft paying the company a visit.

    • Valve’s Linux support ‘lit a fire’ under Microsoft execs, says ex-Valve engineer

      In the summer of 2013, Valve made a show of throwing support behind Linux by moving to port its game engine and Steam platform to run on the cult favorite operating system, generating a bit of cautious optimism among game devs.

      PC game makers may recall that Valve even launched its own Linux-focused blog, and shortly after launch it published a post outlining how the company had tweaked Left 4 Dead 2 to the point that it actually ran better on Linux using OpenGL than on Windows 7 using Direct3D. Now, years later, devs may be curious to hear that one of the primary engineers on that project believes it helped encourage Microsoft to bolster its support for Direct3D tech.

      Longtime game engineer Rich Geldreich (who currently works at Unity and occasionally blogs on Gamasutra) was working at Valve on the Steam Linux project in 2013, and this week he published a post to his personal blog reminiscing about what it was like to be there in the room with company chief Gabe Newell helping to write that Left 4 Dead 2 Linux performance post — and how Valve’s big push for Linux influenced the industry in some surprising ways.

    • Beamdog (Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition) are working on another game, testers needed

      It seems Beamdog may be doing a revamp of another title, or possibly even an original title. They have sent word that they need game testers, including Linux gamers.

    • We have 99 keys of IMPOSSIBALL to give away to Linux gamers willing to test it out

      The developer of IMPOSSIBALL [Steam, Official Site] is working to bring the game to Linux, so they have sent us tons of keys to throw at you so you can test it.

      The developer isn’t too familiar with Linux just yet, so they are bringing you all in to help polish it up.

      The beta is open to anyone who already owns it, otherwise you can claim your key below!

    • Eco – Global Survival Game, an incredibly interesting looking game that’s already on Linux

      I was pointed towards ‘Eco – Global Survival Game’ [Steam, Official Site] thanks to a GOL follower and after looking it up, I decided to check it out a little more closely.

      The game was funded thanks to Kickstarter, where it bagged $202,760 towards helping development.

      The good news is that it’s already on Linux. I read reports that early Alpha versions are already up to date for Linux, so I picked up a copy to test it out. I am pleased to personally confirm that it does have a Linux version already.

      I jumped right in on the only server that appeared to be compatible and I was genuinely surprised. The people on it welcomed me and pointed me to the starter guide right away. It’s so damn refreshing to be greeted by friendly people in an online game!

      The game is really quite good-looking in a simple way. They’ve gone for a more cartoon-like visual style than realism, which is done really well. People have compared it to Minecraft, but it’s not “blocky” at all. The gameplay is also vastly different, since you have skills, a social system and so on.

    • Retro-Pixel Castles updated again and will get a new name

    • Rich Geldreich, a former Valve developer, has an interesting blog post about Valve supporting Linux and OpenGL

      I fondly remember reading the Valve blog post about getting Left 4 Dead 2 running faster on Linux than it did on Windows. I remember feeling so happy about everything that was happening. Rich Geldreich was the one feeding the information to Gabe Newell himself (the owner of Valve) who wrote the blog post.

    • The “Faster Zombies!” blog post

      Gabe Newell himself wrote a lot of this post in front of me. From what I could tell, he seemed flabbergasted and annoyed that the team didn’t immediately blog this info once we were solidly running faster in OpenGL vs. D3D. (Of course we should have blogged it ourselves! One of our missions as a team inside of Valve was to build a supportive community around our efforts.) From his perspective, it was big news that we were running faster on Linux vs. Windows. I personally suspect his social network didn’t believe it was possible, and/or there was some deeper strategic business reason for blogging this info ASAP.

    • Steam’s Linux Efforts Were Influential To Microsoft, Other Companies

    • MAME 0.181 Open-Source Arcade Machine Emulator to Support Sega’s Altered Beast

      A new maintenance update of the open-source and multiplatform MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) computer emulator tool landed to kick off 2017, with even more improvements and support for lots of arcade games.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Lumina 1.20 Desktop Released

    Lightweight Qt-based Lumina desktop environment is kickstarting its new year in style with a brand new release. We look at what’s new and improved.

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Plasma 5.8.5 bugfix release in Xenial and Yakkety Backports now

    • KDE Plasma 5.8.5 LTS Lands for Kubuntu 16.04 LTS and 16.10, Here’s How to Update

      The Kubuntu team proudly announced today, January 5, 2017, the general availability of KDE’s Plasma 5.8.5 desktop on the backports repositories of the Kubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) and Kubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating systems.

      This exciting announcement comes almost one month after users were invited to test drive the latest KDE Plasma 5.8.5 LTS desktop environment on their Kubuntu or Ubuntu installations by using the Backports Landing testing repository, as reported right here on Softpedia.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • GTK’s Vulkan Renderer Now Working On Wayland

      The GTK toolkit’s Vulkan renderer continues making quick progress.

      Besides already being faster than their OpenGL renderer, supporting this Vulkan renderer on Windows too, and other improvements, the latest now is that GTK4 with the Vulkan back-end works on Wayland.

    • Librsvg 2.41.0 is released

      This is the first version to have Rust code in it. The public API remains unchanged. Apologies in advance to distros who will have to adjust their build systems for Rust – it’s like taking a one-time vaccine; you’ll be better off in the end for it.

    • GNOME’s SVG Rendering Library Migrating To Rust

      The librsvg library for SVG rendering is up to version 2.41.0 and with this milestone it’s their first release to port some code to Rust while maintaining the same public API.

      The GNOME project’s Librsvg 2.41.0 implements some parts of the library in the Rust programming language rather than C. The developers decided to do this partial Rust migration for better memory safety, nicer built-in abstractions, and easier for unit testing.

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • SystemRescueCd 4.9.1 Rescue & Recovery Live CD Lands in 2017 with Linux 4.8.15

      SystemRescueCd creator François Dupoux is also kicking off the new year with a brand-new release of his popular live system developed for system recovery and rescue operations.

      SystemRescueCd 4.9.1 is the first point release to the 4.9 series, which was initially announced at the end of October 2016, and it ships with new kernels. While the standard one was updated to the long-term supported Linux 4.4.39 kernel for both rescue32 and rescue64 editions, the alternative kernel is now Linux 4.8.15.

    • BusyBox 1.26.1 Swiss Army Knife of Linux Hits the Streets as New Stable Series

      When the BusyBox 1.26.0 unstable release launched last month, just before the Christmas holidays, we told you that it would hit the stable channel as soon as the first point release is announced.

      And it happened! BusyBox 1.26.1 was unveiled on January 2, 2017, and it’s now the newest stable series of the Swiss army knife for embedded systems and GNU/Linux distributions. But don’t get too excited because this release is just a formality to inform OS vendors that they can finally update the BusyBox packages, and it looks like it only adds various tweaks to defconfig and addresses issues with single-applet builds.

    • Solus Devs to Focus on Linux Driver Management and Budgie 11 Desktop for Q1 2017

      Now that they’ve launched the long anticipated first ISO snapshot of the Linux-based Solus operating system, which brought many enhancements and updated technologies, the Solus devs announce the roadmap for 2017.

      After reviewing everything they’ve accomplished in 2016, which appears to have been a great year for them, the development team announces that their efforts will be invested in the development of the Linux Driver Management tool with a focus on Nvidia hybrid laptops, as well as the upcoming Budgie 11 desktop environment.

  • Arch Family

    • Arch Linux Gets First ISO Respin for 2017, Still Powered by Linux Kernel 4.8.13

      Dear all, it’s time for you to get your hands on the first ISO snapshot of the popular Arch Linux operating system for 2017. Yes, you’re reading it right, the Arch Linux 2017.01.01 dual-arch image is now available for download.

  • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • Life, the universe & openSUSE Leap 42.2

      In the wake of a handful of Linux projects pushing ever closer to consumer desktop adoption (think Ubuntu, Mint Cinnamon, Solus, Arch and Chrome OS)… members of the openSUSE Project have announced the next minor version of Leap — a professional Linux distribution for developers, system administrators… oh and yes, users too.

  • Slackware Family

    • Linux Calculated, Faint Shadow of OpenMandriva, Big Bother Absolutely

      Today in Linux news Blogger DarkDuck said that OpenMandriva has become a faint shadow of its namesake. That was despite getting it to work fairly well. Elsewhere, Techphylum offered a brief overview of Calculate Linux and Jack Germain said Absolute Linux was “the equivalent of driving a stick shift automobile with a crank-to-start mechanism.” OMG!Ubuntu! reported on that 13 foot robot, that was said to be the “soldier of the future” somewhere, is programmed using Ubuntu and Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols warned Linux will become more and more a target of hackers.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat needs to get real about the cloud

      Serving enterprise datacenters won’t sustain Red Hat. OpenShift and what it represents may be crucial to the company’s long-term survival

    • CentOS 7.3 (1611) Linux Distro Officially Released for ARM64/AArch64 Machines

      CentOS developer Jim Perrin reports on January 4, 2017, the release and general availability of the CentOS Linux 7.3 (1611) operating system for AArch64/ARM64 machines.

      CentOS Linux 7.3 (1611) is based on the freely distributed sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3. Coming three weeks after Karanbir Singh’s announcement of CentOS Linux 7.3 (1611) on x86_64 (64-bit) hardware, as well as Fabian Arrotin’s release for the CentOS userland 7.3 (1611) on ARMhf platforms, the latest version of the server-oriented operating system can now be used on AArch64 (ARM64) machines, too.

    • Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute Launches Science-as-a-Service and On-Demand Computing Capabilities Based on Red Hat’s Open Technologies

    • Red Hat Launches Latest Version of Red Hat CloudForms, Drives Open Hybrid Cloud Management Across Geographies and Industries

      Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the availability of Red Hat CloudForms 4.2, the latest version of its award-winning open hybrid cloud management solution. IT operations teams can face slow, manual processes to deliver services internally, which may cost time, money and competitiveness. To address these challenges, IT teams can use Red Hat CloudForms to increase service delivery while enabling IT teams to focus on critical, business-impacting issues.

    • Red Hat CloudForms 4.2 Improves Hybrid Cloud Management

      New release of Red Hat’s hybrid cloud management platform provides improved container, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and OpenStack capabilities.

      Red Hat is updating its CloudForms hybrid cloud management platform with the new 4.2 release, providing users with enhanced capabilities. CloudForms enables organization to manage multiple types of cloud deployments including private and public clouds, as well as container-based platforms.

    • Finance

      • Investor’s Watch List: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT), Endeavour Silver Corp. (NYSE:EXK)

      • Investors are Keeping Tabs on Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

      • Red Hat (RHT): Large Deal Indicates 3Q Miss Was Timing Not Demand – William Blair

      • Recent analysts Ratings: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

  • Debian Family

    • My Free Software Activities in December 2016

      My monthly report covers a large part of what I have been doing in the free software world. I write it for my donors (thanks to them!) but also for the wider Debian community because it can give ideas to newcomers and it’s one of the best ways to find volunteers to work with me on projects that matter to me.

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Overcoming Ubuntu Wi-Fi Not Working

          One of the biggest issues I still see cropping up for Ubuntu (and other distributions) are challenges connecting to Wi-Fi networks. This article will provide actionable solutions to overcome common Ubuntu Wi-Fi issues.

        • Open Source Pioneer Mark Shuttleworth Says Smart “Edge’ Devices Spawn Business Models

          Ubuntu, a version of the Linux computer operating system, runs on many of the servers that power cloud computing. Ubuntu pioneer Mark Shuttleworth founded Canonical Ltd. to sell support for Ubuntu, which is open source software that anyone can use for free. Given the popular use of Ubuntu, Mr. Shuttleworth is in good position to […]

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Redesigned Bluetooth Settings Pane Coming Soon to elementary OS Linux Distro

            elementary OS founder and developer Daniel Foré reports today, January 4, 2017, on the upcoming availability of a revamped, native Bluetooth settings pane that’ll land as a drop-in replacement for GNOME Control Center’s one in the Ubuntu-based distro.

            elementary OS always innovates itself and offers its users all brand-new technologies and a beautiful graphical user interface for various tools. Lately, it would appear that the development team has been working on redesigning the Bluetooth settings pane that can be accessed through the built-in Control Panel inherited from the GNOME Stack. After more than 20 revisions, the new Bluetooth settings pane looks pretty sleek.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Linksys router offers Tri-Band mesh networking with Alexa

    Linksys has launched a Linux-based “Velop” mesh networking router with Tri-Band WiFi-ac Wave2, up to 2K sq. ft coverage per router, and Alexa voice support.

    At CES, Belkin’s Linksys subsidiary has jumped into the hot market for mesh networking routers, which aim to improve WiFi coverage, especially in larger homes. The Linksys Velop Whole Home Wi-Fi system joins others in the category including the Eero, Netgear’s Orbi, and Google WiFi.

  • Open spec router SBC offers 5x GbE, wireless, and SATA

    Sinovoip’s “Banana Pi BPI-R2” router SBC gives you 5x GbE, WiFi, BT, 2GB RAM, 8GB eMMC, SATA, and mini-PCIe, plus a quad-core -A7 MediaTek MT7623N.

    The Banana Pi BPI-R2 updates Sinovoip’s earlier BPi-R1 router board, later called the Banana Pi BPI-R1. No pricing or availability information was provided, but full specs and schematics are posted. Like the R1 and other Banana Pi SBCs such as the recent Banana Pi M2 Ultra, this is an open spec board supported by the Banana Pi community. The Banana Pi BPI-R2 runs Android 5.1, OpenWrt, Debian, Ubuntu Linux, including MATE, and Raspbian

  • Raspberry Pi: A closer look at Raspbian PIXEL GNU/Linux

    That’s it for now, but that is not the end of the good news around the Raspberry Pi. There have been some very exciting announcements recently of other well-known Linux distributions being ported to the Pi. In the next post, I will take a look at a couple of those.

  • Ask Nick: Slicing into VPN on a Raspberry Pi

  • Pi To Take Over The Desktop?

    The amazing success of the Raspberry Pi has had many impacts on the computing world and some of them are yet to be felt. The latest move makes the Pi’s OS available for existing desktop machines, and this might have more effect than you imagine.

    For a long time Linux fans have been looking forward to the day when Linux was the dominant OS on the desktop. It seems like a reasonable expectation as Linux is free and it does the job reasonable well. Why pay for something when there is a free version, in more senses than just money? However, the world has so far not succumbed to the tempting offer and Windows is still the dominant OS on the desktop.

  • Phones

    • Tizen

      • Samsung to Unveil Family Hub 2.0 Tizen Refrigerator at CES 2017

        Samsung are due to unveil their latest edition Family Hub 2.0 refrigerator at CES 2017 being held in Las Vegas, Nevada. The updated hub software will be available on 10 refrigerator models, which was previously limited to 4, and improves on the apps its supports as well as how they are Integrated. Samsung has worked with various partners including Grubhub, Nomiku, Glympse, Ring, Spotify, and iHeartRadio.

    • Android

      • 10 open source task management and time tracking applications for Android

      • Panasonic unveils an Android-powered car infotainment system

        Panasonic and Qualcomm have launched an Android-based in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) platform, but as with a similar offering from Google and Fiat Chrysler, it isn’t Android Auto. Rather, the companies are aiming create a smartphone-like Android Nougat system with high-end specs, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820Am automotive processor with Adreno 530 graphics, 680 DSP and a high speed LTE modem. Automakers can them customize it to their own specs and install it as a factory OEM system.

      • GrandPad, the Android tablet for seniors, getting a hardware refresh before April

        Just one day prior to the CES 2017 convention opening its doors on Thursday, tablet maker grandPad said it teamed up with Acer to produce a new custom-built tablet for seniors. The device is slated to launch sometime in the first quarter of 2017 packing two 5-megapixel cameras, Qi wireless charging, and a brighter screen than the previous grandPad model.

      • Samsung’s New Chromebooks Can Transform Into Android Tablets

        Since Google announced plans to make its Chromebooks compatible with Android apps last May, dozens of Chrome-powered laptops from companies like Acer, Asus, and Samsung have started running them. Now that selection is getting a little larger, as Samsung on Wednesday announced two new Chromebooks that will be able to run the same apps as any Android smartphone.

      • Samsung’s leaked Chromebook Plus is built for Android apps

        Samsung is getting ready to release a convertible, stylus-equipped Chromebook, judging by an apparently accidental Best Buy listing. It bears a striking similarity to another leaked model, the 12.5-inch, 1080p ASUS Chromebook that appeared last month on Newegg. Samsung’s device is reportedly called the Chromebook Plus, but there are no specs accompanying the images. However, we can see that it’s a thin, all-metal laptop, probably in the 12- to 13-inch range, equipped with USB-C and an SD card reader.

      • These Are The Top Unlocked Android Phones — For Every Budget — For January 2017

        While they may be costlier at the beginning, unlocked phones actually turn out to be more cost-efficient and offer numerous benefits over factory locked phones. Unlocked phones offer more freedom; users can switch cell phone service providers at any time, are not vulnerable to hidden charges and can easily change their SIM cards when they travel overseas. For those looking to buy an Android phone this year, these are the best unlocked Android phones currently on the market.

      • Android Wear watches ready for prime time? ZTE thinks so

        ZTE, a company best-known for making budget phones, is finally throwing a smartwatch into the ring.

        The Chinese telecommunications equipment company plans to release a smartwatch running Google’s Android Wear software later this year, Lixin Cheng, the chief executive officer of ZTE USA, said in an interview Tuesday before CES officially kicks off. It already has a US carrier partner lined up to sell the watch, which has its own LTE connection and can run independent of a phone, he said.

      • Now Swarovski is making an Android Wear smartwatch to

        Swarovski has previously worked on smartwatches (see the Samsung Gear S strap in the image above and the Huawei Watch For Ladies) but hasn’t yet introduced its own device. The watch was teased at CES 2017 where Swarovski revealed it would use a Qualcomm processor, but more specific details regarding price, availability and hardware haven’t been outlined.

      • Casio’s latest rugged smartwatch runs Android Wear 2.0, debuts in April

        Casio unveiled its first smartwatch last year with the rugged WSD-F10, and now the company is launching an update that adds GPS functionality and Android Wear 2.0. The model is aptly called the WSD-F20, and shares similar features as its predecessor that sees three buttons on the right and MIL-STD-801G rating for protection against the elements, as well as water resistance up to 50 meters (this thing can take a lot of abuse).

      • Casio’s WSD-F20 smartwatch adds GPS functionality, runs Android Wear 2.0

      • Android 7.0 Nougat News: New ‘Screens’ App Simplifies Split-Screen Feature

      • Fiat Chrysler, Google Partner on Android-Based Car Infotainment System

      • Amazon Fire TV 4K televisions to launch in a challenge to Android TV and Roku

      • Honor 6X to receive Android Nougat update in Q2

      • Honor 6X To Receive Android Nougat In Q2 Of 2017

      • Google Begins Rolling Out January Android Security Update for Nexus, Pixel Devices

      • 7 Nokia Android Phones Releasing In 2017: Reports

      • TCL targets Apple and Samsung with new BlackBerry handset running Android

      • Hands-on with BlackBerry’s Android-powered ‘Mercury’ at CES 2017

      • Google Patches 29 Critical Android Vulnerabilities Including Holes in Mediaserver, Qualcomm

      • Android, Debian, and Ubuntu Top Most Vulnerable Products Chart in 2016 [Ed: what about secret patching?]

Free Software/Open Source

• Toyota and Ford Create Automaker Group to Promote Open Source Smartphone Interfaces

  Ford and Toyota have formed a four-automaker consortium to speed up the deployment of open source software for connected in-car systems, according to a report by Bloomberg on Wednesday.

• Strange Appfellows: Ford and Toyota Form Open-Source Software Consortium

• Ford and Toyota release open source tools for in-car apps

• Ford, Toyota back open-source platform for in-car apps

• A consortium forms for “open source” vehicle software

• What storytellers can teach open leaders

• 5 Ways to Be Successful with Open-Source Software: Hadoop Creator Doug Cutting’s Advice for 2017

  Because of my long-standing association with the Apache Software Foundation, I’m often asked the question, “What’s next for open source technology?” My typical response is variations of “I don’t know” to “the possibilities are endless.”

  Over the past year, we’ve seen open source technology make strong inroads into the mainstream of enterprise technology. Who would have thought that my work on Hadoop ten years ago would impact so many industries – from manufacturing to telecom to finance. They have all taken hold of the powers of the open source ecosystem not only to improve the customer experience, become more innovative and grow the bottom line, but also to support work toward the greater good of society through genomic research, precision medicine and programs to stop human trafficking, as just a few examples.

  Below I’ve listed five tips for folks who are curious about how to begin working with open source and what to expect from the ever-changing ecosystem.

• 10 steps to innersource in your organization in 2017

  In recent years, an increasing number of organizations, often non-technology companies, have kept a keen eye on open source. Although they may be unable to use open source to the fullest extent in their products and services, they are interested in bringing the principles of open source within the walls of their organization. This “innersource” concept can provide a number of organizational benefits.

  As a consultant who helps build both internal and external communities in companies, I find the major challenge facing organizations is how to put an innersource program in place, deploy resources effectively, and build growth in the program.

• The 10 Coolest Open Source Products Of 2016

  In 2016, open source products were front-and-center. A number of new offerings in containers, networking, storage and other major areas were among those that debuted during the year.

  During the Red Hat Summit in June – where the theme was “The Power of Participation” – Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst described the open source movement this way: “Our ability to harness and distill the best ideas will determine human progress for the next century … Our future depends on participation.”

  Here are the 10 coolest open-source products we’ve tracked in 2016.

• Open Source is Helping to Drive the Artificial Intelligence Renaissance

  We’re only a few days into 2017, and it’s already clear that one of the biggest tech categories of this year will be artificial intelligence. The good news is that open source AI tools are proliferating and making it easy for organizations to leverage them. AI is also driving acquisitions. As Computerworld is reporting, in the past year, at least 20 artificial intelligence companies have been acquired, according to CB Insights, a market analysis firm.

  MIT Technology Review is out with its five big predictions for AI this year. Here is a bit on what they expect, and some of the open source AI tools that you should know about.

• Is Blockchain the Ultimate Open Source Disruptive Technology?

  Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures has been talking a lot about the blockchain recently, so I decided to learn more about it. I read the Marketing the Blockchain e-book, watched The Grand Vision of a Crypto-Tech Economy video and the video keynote of Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne at the Bitcoin 2014 conference, and did some more research on my own. While far from an expert, I do see some interesting similarities to the adoption of open source software. Here’s what I’ve learned — please comment and tell me if I’m wrong:

• Events

  • Embracing Failure and Learning from Our Mistakes with Effective Post Mortems by Ilan Rabinovitch

  • Converting Failure to Success Should Be Part of Your Core Process

    Your reviews are definitely not about blame and punishments, but rather “We need to go back and see why was I able to do that, why did I make that mistake, why did I think that was the right actions to take. Put away the pitchforks, it should never be about the blame.” Rabinovitch reminds us that “Culture is this idea that we’re working together, we’re seeing the problem as the enemy, not each other… Sharing this idea that we’re going to take our learnings back and help each other be more successful in the future”.

• BSD

  • The FreeBSD 64-bit Base System Can Now Be Linked Using LLD

    LLVM’s LLD linker has been making a lot of progress over the past year and now it’s hit the milestone of being able to link the entire FreeBSD/amd64 base system.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Hardware/Modding

    • 9 reasons to certify your products as open source hardware

      The Open Source Hardware Association Certification was created in response to an overwhelming demand for a clearer and more transparent method of identifying and marketing open source hardware products. The purpose of this certification is to provide an easy and straightforward way for producers to indicate that their products meet a uniform and well-defined standard for open source compliance, benefiting both creators and users of these products.

• Programming/Development

  • Hot Functions for IronFunctions

  • Google Develops Experimental Python Runtime In Golang

    Google’s open-source team today announced Grumpy, a Python runtime written in the Go programming language.

    Google makes use of Python extensively and with concurrent workloads not being a strong suit for CPython and other Python runtimes having their own shortcomings, Google decided to develop the “Grumpy” runtime.

  • Grumpy: Go running Python!

    Google runs millions of lines of Python code. The front-end server that drives youtube.com and YouTube’s APIs is primarily written in Python, and it serves millions of requests per second! YouTube’s front-end runs on CPython 2.7, so we’ve put a ton of work into improving the runtime and adapting our application to work optimally within it. These efforts have borne a lot of fruit over the years, but we always run up against the same issue: it’s very difficult to make concurrent workloads perform well on CPython.

• Standards/Consortia

  • HDMI 2.1 Announced: Looking Ahead To Dynamic HDR, 8K@60Hz, Variable Refresh Rate

Leftovers

• Science

  • Why Machine Learning Is Hard to Apply to Networking

    Machine learning is becoming a buzzword—arguably an overused one—among companies that deal with networking. Recent announcements have touted machine learning capabilities at Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and Nokia, for instance.

  • Expect Deeper and Cheaper Machine Learning

    Last March, Google’s computers roundly beat the world-class Go champion Lee Sedol, marking a milestone in artificial intelligence. The winning computer program, created by researchers at Google DeepMind in London, used an artificial neural network that took advantage of what’s known as deep learning, a strategy by which neural networks involving many layers of processing are configured in an automated fashion to solve the problem at hand.

    Unknown to the public at the time was that Google had an ace up its sleeve. You see, the computers Google used to defeat Sedol contained special-purpose hardware—a computer card Google calls its Tensor Processing Unit.

• Health/Nutrition

  • Bluefin tuna sells for £500,000 at Japan auction amid overfishing concerns

    A bluefin tuna has fetched 74.2m yen (£517,000) at the first auction of the year at Tsukiji market in Tokyo, amid warnings that decades of overfishing by Japan and other countries is taking the species to the brink of extinction.

    The 212kg fish, caught off the coast of Oma in northern Japan, was bought by Kiyomura, the operator of the Sushi Zanmai restaurant chain, after its president, Kiyoshi Kimura, outbid rivals for the sixth year in a row.

• Security

  • 50 ways to avoid getting hacked in 2017

    “You don’t need to be coy, Roy”

  • Nextcloud 11 Cloud Server Bolsters Security

    NCC Group, a global expert in cyber security and risk mitigation, reviewed the addition of Nextcloud’s new features and noted they “enrich the security layers with minimum impact on the user” and are developed using industry standard security processes (assessed against ISO27001 clause 14 controls). You can read more and download their independent security assurance online and learn more details about the new features in Nextcloud’s blog on security in Nextcloud 11.

  • Android January Security Update Rolling Out Now

  • Android, Debian Linux and Ubuntu Linux top 2016 list of most vulnerable product charts

  • Data: More vulnerabilities found in Google Android than any other program in 2016 [Ed: what about secret patching?]

  • Report Reveals Android had the Most Security Vulnerabilities in 2016

  • Man Has To Beg LG To Uncripple His ‘Smart’ TV After Ransomware Attack

    We’ve noted repeatedly how “smart” television sets have the same security issues plaguing the rest of the internet of broken things: namely there often isn’t any security to speak of. The net result has been TVs that spy on you by recording in-home audio, and in some cases transmitting that data unencrypted around the internet. But we’ve also noted how these TVs — like the rest of the Internet of Things — can be compromised in a matter of moments by some rather rudimentary hacking, then incorporated into the historically unprecedented DDoS attacks we’re now seeing around the world.

    As an added bonus, your smart TV can now be infected by ransomware, too. Software engineer Darren Cauthon found this out the hard way when he awoke on Christmas Day to find that his family’s LG 50GA6400 had been infected with a version of the Cyber.Police ransomware — aka FLocker, Dogspectus, or Frantic Locker. That particular ransomware posts an image to the screen of the television pretending to originate with the FBI, and claiming that users must pay a $500 penalty to return full functionality to the television.

  • Security updates for Wednesday

  • MongoDB Data Being Held For Ransom

    If you’re using MongoDB, you might want to check to make sure you have it configured properly — or better yet, that you’re running the latest and greatest — to avoid finding it wiped and your data being held for ransom.

    A hacker who goes by the name Harak1r1 is attacking unprotected MongoDB installations, wiping their content and installing a ransom note in place of the the stolen data. The cost to get the data returned is 0.2 bitcoin, which comes to about $203. If that sounds cheap, it isn’t. Not if you’re deploying multiple Mongo databases and they all get hit — which has been happening.

• Defence/Aggression

  • In Syria, Western Media Cheer Al Qaeda

    The Syrian government—a dictatorship known for imprisoning, torturing and disappearing dissidents—is easy to vilify. And over the last five years of Syria’s civil war, it has committed its share of atrocities. But there is more than one side to every story, and US media coverage has mainly reflected one side—that of the rebels—without regard for accuracy or basic context.

    As the Syrian government recaptured East Aleppo from rebels in recent weeks, media outlets from across the political spectrum became rebel mouthpieces, unquestioningly relaying rebel claims while omitting crucial details about who the rebels were.

    Almost always overlooked in the US (and UK) media narrative is the fact that the rebels in East Aleppo were a patchwork of Western- and Gulf-backed jihadist groups dominated by Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra)—Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria—along with its ally, Ahrar al-Sham (Daily Beast, 8/8/16; Foreign Policy, 9/1/16). These groups are explicitly anti-democratic and have been implicated in human rights violations, from mass execution and child beheadings to using caged religious minorities as human shields.

  • Danger in Democrats Demonizing Putin

    With the Clintons’ corporate money machine floundering after a devastating election defeat, Democrats are desperate to find someone to blame and have dangerously settled on Vladimir Putin, writes Norman Solomon.

  • Requiem for a UN ‘Yes Man’

    Even as much of the world bridled at the U.S. pretensions of “unipolar” power, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon toed Washington’s line and further undercut the U.N.’s supposed evenhandedness, writes Joe Lauria.

  • Netanyahu Wants Pardon for IDF Soldier Who Shot Defenseless, Wounded Palestinian in the Head

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday called for the pardon of an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier who had just been convicted of manslaughter for fatally shooting a wounded Palestinian man last year in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

    “Sgt Elor Azaria, 20, shot Abdul Fatah al-Sharif, 21, in the head while he was lying immobile on a road,” as BBC News writes. Al-Sharif was allegedly involved in a knife attack against another Israeli soldier and had already been shot, though he remained alive.

  • Obama’s Deadly Afghan Acquiescence

    From his first days, President Obama showed a lack of guts when confronted by powerful insiders. He backed down even when that meant squandering U.S. soldiers in the futile Afghan War “surges,” says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

  • The U.S. Government Thinks Thousands of Russian Hackers May Be Reading My Blog. They Aren’t.

    After the U.S. government published a report on Russia’s cyber attacks against the U.S. election system, and included a list of computers that were allegedly used by Russian hackers, I became curious if any of these hackers had visited my personal blog. The U.S. report, which boasted of including “technical details regarding the tools and infrastructure used by Russian civilian and military intelligence services,” came with a list of 876 suspicious IP addresses used by the hackers, and these addresses were the clues I needed to, in the end, understand a gaping weakness in the report.

    An IP address is a set of numbers that identifies a computer, or a network of computers, on the internet. Each time someone loads my website, it logs their IP address. So I searched my web server logs for the suspicious IP addresses, and I was shocked to discover over 80,000 web requests from IPs used by the Russian hackers in the last 14 months! Digging further, I found that some of these Russian hackers had even posted comments (mostly innocuous technical questions)! Even today, several days after publication of the report (which used a codename for the Russian attack, Grizzly Steppe), I’m still finding these suspicious IP addresses in my logs — although I would expect the Russians to stop using them after the U.S. government exposed them.

  • Senators Threaten to Cut Worldwide Embassy Security If U.S. Doesn’t Move Its Israeli Embassy to Jerusalem

    A trio of GOP senators have introduced legislation that would cut security, construction, and maintenance funds for U.S. embassies around the world in half until the president moves the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

    In 1995, Congress passed a law requiring the federal government to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all campaigned on relocating the embassy and executing this law. But once in office, every one of them invoked a waiver in the law that allows them to hold off on the move if they deem it necessary to the national security interests of the United States to do so.

    Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would be seen as a green light to some Israeli government officials, such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who seek to make Jerusalem the undivided capital of the state of Israel. That, in turn, would preclude the Palestinians from establishing a state that includes East Jerusalem. Most international observers believe that this would render the two-state solution impossible and thus be damaging to peace.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • SEE IT: CNN apologizes to Julian Assange after commentator calls him ‘a pedophile’

    CNN issued an apology after one of its paid commentators called WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange “a pedophile” during a live broadcast Wednesday morning.

    Phil Mudd, a counterterrorism analyst for the network, slipped out the incorrect accusation while discussing Assange’s controversial anti-secrecy site on the network’s “New Day” show.

    “I think there’s an effort to protect WikiLeaks (and) a pedophile who lives in the Ecuadorian embassy in London — this guy is not credible,” Mudd said, referring to Assange.

  • Ex-CIA spokesman: Trump believes Julian Assange over the CIA

    A former Pentagon and CIA spokesman on Wednesday slammed Donald Trump for giving credit to WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange and warned that America will be less safe when the President-elect takes office later this month.
    “Let’s stare this reality square in the face: PEOTUS is pro-Putin and believes Julian Assange over the @CIA. On Jan. 20 we will be less safe,” tweeted George Little, who served under former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama.

  • Sarah Palin Apologizes to Julian Assange for Comparing Him to Terrorists

    Late Tuesday night, former Alaska Governor turned 2008 Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin made a rare apology on her Facebook page, the intended audience of which was Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Over six years ago in December 2010, Palin took to her Facebook page to castigate Assange for publishing her emails, which were obtained illegally by hackers, even going so far as to compare him to terrorists. Having changed her tune in light of the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta, Palin did an about-face, going back to Facebook to issue an olive branch to the controversial Wikileaks founder.

  • In a U-turn, some Republicans now see WikiLeaks’ Assange in positive light

    WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, once considered a traitor by conservatives, is suddenly finding some love in important corners of the Republican Party.

    Assange, who sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London in 2012 and has remained there since, gave a high-profile interview Tuesday night to Sean Hannity, the conservative Fox News commentator. The accolades then started pouring in.

    Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008, took back her previous suggestions that the U.S. military should hunt down and kill Assange, whose group published tens of thousands of secret U.S. war and diplomatic documents in 2010.

  • The FBI Never Asked For Access To Hacked Computer Servers

    The FBI did not examine the servers of the Democratic National Committee before issuing a report attributing the sweeping cyberintrusion to Russia-backed hackers, BuzzFeed News has learned.

    Six months after the FBI first said it was investigating the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s computer network, the bureau has still not requested access to the hacked servers, a DNC spokesman said. No US government entity has run an independent forensic analysis on the system, one US intelligence official told BuzzFeed News.

    “The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI’s Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC’s computer servers,” Eric Walker, the DNC’s deputy communications director, told BuzzFeed News in an email.

  • Trump and Julian Assange, an Unlikely Pair, Unite to Sow Hacking Doubts

    Just a year ago, they might have seemed the oddest of couples. But now President-elect Donald J. Trump and Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, have formed a united front against the conclusion of American intelligence agencies that Russian intelligence used hacked emails to interfere in the presidential election.

    Mr. Assange, long reviled by many Republicans as an anarchist lawbreaker out to damage the United States, has won new respect from conservatives who appreciated his site’s release of Democratic emails widely perceived to have hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign. And Mr. Trump has been eager to undercut the conclusion of the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and other agencies that those emails were provided to WikiLeaks courtesy of Russian government hackers.

  • New Analysis of Swedish Police Report Confirms Julian Assange’s Version in Sweden’s case

    Author and investigative reporter Celia Farber has prepared for publication in The Indicter, an updated analysis of the Swedish Assange case. The in-depth analysis concludes that the police reports confirm Julian Assange’s testimony, as given to the prosecutor in her questioning conducted at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. It has also been established that the crucial allegations against Mr Julian Assange, as have appeared in the Swedish and international media, in fact were constructed by the police and were not what the complainants really said or wished to achieve.

    It has been discovered that it was the police, or the prosecutor’s office, which unlawfully and/or unethically leaked the “allegations” to the evening paper “Expressen”, which is clearly known for its declared NATO sympathies. Regrettably, but also predictably, this was an opportunity for Western mainstream media to create a scandal around the founder of WikiLeaks. Likewise, it was an occasion used by the MSM to insidiously attack the organization that had partly exposed the corruption of the governments they represent, and partly surpassed them in journalistic efficacy and objectivity.

    But it was more than purely vendetta-time; it was a well-articulated campaign which started that day in August 2010 when –according to the Snowden documents– the US government asked the countries participating in the military occupation of Afghanistan under US command to prosecute Julian Assange. Sweden obeyed; others cooperated.

    Nevertheless, the Afghan Logs and the Iraq Logs exposed by WikiLeaks remained published. The WikiLeaks founder did not surrender. The Assange case, already politically in its origins, turned into a spiral of increasing geopolitical dimensions.

    Our position has always been that the above-described political aspect has always been present in the ‘Assange case’ and we could hardly be –in principle– interested in furthering a discussion on details pertaining the intimacy of Mr Assange or of other people around the constructed ‘legal case’.

    However, we regard this analysis of Ms Celia Farber –A Swedish-born and America-based journalist familiar with the intricacies of the Swedish culture and language– as important material, which we hope will help to end the overblown discussion on the ‘suspicions’ or ‘allegations’ against Mr Assange. These allegations have constituted the essence of the artificial debate that the Swedish prosecutors periodically orchestrate, through press releases or erratic press conferences of the type “we have nothing new to communicate”.

    We have also published – in the same spirit of clarification– the statement of Mr Julian Assange given to the Swedish prosecutor during the interview in London. In the context of this new analysis by Celia Farber, we also recommend the reading of “The answer given by Julian Assange to the Swedish prosecutor in the London questioning of 14-15 November 2016.”

  • Donald Trump backs Julian Assange over Russia hacking claim

  • US obtained evidence that Russia leaked emails, say officials

    The officials declined to describe the intelligence obtained about the involvement of a third-party in passing on leaked material to WikiLeaks, saying they did not want to reveal how the US government had obtained the information.

    In an interview with Fox News, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said he did not receive emails stolen from the DNC and top Hillary Clinton aide John Podesta from “a state party.” Assange did not rule out the possibility that he got the material from a third party.

    Trump on Wednesday sided with Assange and again questioned the US intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia tried to help his candidacy and hurt Clinton’s.

  • CIA Director Brennan Casts Doubt on Assange’s Credibility

    WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange insists that Russia was not his source for hacked election-related emails, but CIA Director John Brennan isn’t so sure.

    During a PBS NewsHour interview, Brennan said that those who doubt the connection between Russia and the hacking of Democratic Party email accounts should withhold judgment until they read the forthcoming intelligence report.

    He also said that Assange is “not exactly a bastion of truth and integrity.”

  • Assange Is Vastly More Reliable Than The Elite U.S. Media

    In January 2011, the people of Tunisia effectuated an uprising which led to the ouster of Ben Ali, who had ruled the country for 23 years. Many Tunisians were well aware that the regime was autocratic and corrupt, but they were provided additional gory details about its decadent opulence by none other than WikiLeaks, the organization whose founder and editor is currently being slimed by self-important U.S. liberals. In the aftermath of the revolution, WikiLeaks was widely hailed for its role in supplying previously-concealed information to Tunisian dissidents, and with that Assange cemented for himself a place in the pantheon of great journalistic trailblazers.

  • Sarah Palin Now Thinks Julian Assange Is A Really Nifty Guy

    While many support the idea of Wikileaks, many now worry that the organization’s supposed goal of total transparency often plays second fiddle to Julian Assange’s ego and the group’s often inconsistent behavior. But whatever you think of Assange as a human being, it’s important to remember that the group wouldn’t be necessary if the established media actually did its job. Groups like Wikileaks are just symptoms of a broader disease: the larger media’s shift to banal infotainment, and the failure of these giant media conglomerates to hold companies and governments accountable to the truth.

    That said, it’s becoming downright comedic to watch Assange, Wikileaks and whistleblowers become increasingly vilified or deified — depending entirely on what’s being said, who it’s being said about, or what color-coded partisan jumpsuit you’re wearing.

    For example, Assange was a hero to Democrats after exposing government misdeeds during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but was demonized incessantly in the wake of the DNC hack (to the point where the actual data revealed was thoroughly ignored). Similarly, Assange was derided by Republicans as the very worst sort of scoundrel for the better part of the last decade, a position that has, well, softened in the wake of the Clinton campaign-crippling DNC hack. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, for now, right?

    In fact Assange has bizarrely become a temporary folk hero to many of the same folks that wanted his head on a pike just a few months ago. Sarah Palin, for example, in 2010 got very close to advocating that Assange be hunted down and killed, likening him to an “anti-American operative with blood on his hands.” That position was forged, in part, after Wikileaks leaked Palin’s Yahoo e-mails back in 2008 after a hacker gained access to the Alaskan government documents Palin had been storing on a private server.

    [...]

    And while this positional flip flop on a certain front is incredibly entertaining in a David Lynch sort of way, transparency and truth don’t work that way. While leaking organizations and whistleblowers themselves are certainly fallible, the truths they reveal are non-negotiable, and don’t care about partisan patty cake. In other words, these same folks suddenly lavishing praise on whistleblowers now because it’s tactically convenient, will be back arguing for assassination by drone strike the moment the next whistleblower reveals truths they’d prefer remain hidden.

  • Julian Assange’s claim that there was no Russian involvement in WikiLeaks emails

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

  • Record-breaking extreme weather in Australia in 2016 devastates ecosystems

    Australia’s weather was extreme in 2016, driven by humankind’s burning of fossil fuels as well as a strong El Niño, according to the Bureau of Meteorology’s annual climate statement.

    That extreme weather led to devastated ecosystems both on land and in the sea, with unprecedented bushfires in regions that don’t usually burn, the worst coral bleaching on record, and has been attributed as the cause of damage to vast tracts of crucial kelp forests, oyster farms and salmon stocks across southern Australia.

  • Rick Perry’s Texas Giveaways

    The soon-to-be U.S. energy secretary doled out billions in grants and tax incentives for corporations while governor of Texas. One $30 million grant went to an energy group that turned out to be a phantom.

  • Endangered Species Under GOP? Climate Change Information on the Web

    James Rowen, a longtime Wisconsin journalist and environmental blogger, recently discovered a stark remaking of a state Department of Natural Resources web page on climate change and the Great Lakes.

    Until December, the page, dating from the Democratic administration of former Gov. James Doyle, had this headline — “Climate Change and Wisconsin’s Great Lakes” — and a clear description of the state of the science, including this line reflecting the latest federal and international research assessments: “Earth’s climate is changing. Human activities that increase heat-trapping (“green house”) gases are the main cause.”

    The page described a variety of possible impacts on the lakes and concluded, “The good news is that we can all work to slow climate change and lessen its effects.” Nine hyperlinks led readers to other resources.

  • James Delingpole article calling ocean acidification ‘alarmism’ cleared by press watchdog

    A magazine article claiming “marine life has nothing whatsoever to fear from ocean acidification” has been deemed neither misleading nor inaccurate by the UK’s press regulator.

    The feature, written by journalist and climate-change sceptic James Delingpole, appeared in the Spectator under the headline “Ocean acidification: yet another wobbly pillar of climate alarmism”.

    Seawater is becoming more acidic as the oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, where rising concentrations are the cause of global warming. Many scientists are concerned about the impact of acidification on marine life.

• Finance

  • Margrethe Vestager’s top 10 cases in 2017

    Standing too long under the spotlights can get uncomfortable and this year Margrethe Vestager may begin to feel the heat.

    The European commissioner for competition shot to international fame in 2015 with back-to-back charges against Google and Gazprom. In 2016 she cemented her reputation as the world’s foremost corporate policewoman with the stunning order that Apple reimburse some €13 billion of alleged illegal state aid to Ireland’s taxman.

  • CETA Costs Jobs, Worsens Inequality, Social Tensions: EU Committee

    The trade deal that Canada and the EU signed in October will cause a loss of jobs and threaten to increase already high social tensions in Europe, a European Parliament committee has concluded.

    The Committee on Employment and Social Affairs voted against CETA in December, meaning it is recommending that the European Parliament vote down the deal. It’s one of many committees that have to vote on a recommendation to parliament.

    The full EU parliament is slated to vote on CETA in early February.

  • Great: Now Wall Street Is Funding Speculative Corporate Sovereignty Claims For A Share Of The Spoils

    Techdirt first wrote about corporate sovereignty four years ago — although we only came up with that name about a year later. Since then, a hitherto obscure aspect of trade deals has become one of the most contentious issues in international relations. Indeed, the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) measures in both TPP and TTIP played an important part in galvanizing resistance to these so-called “trade” deals, and thus in their defeat, at least for the moment (never say “never”.)

    [...]

    This is a crucially-important point about corporate sovereignty: governments never win ISDS cases; at best, they just don’t lose them. All the upside is with the corporates that bring the claim, and all the downside with nations that are defending their actions and regulations. The new wave of third-party funding will accentuate that skewed nature, and make corporate sovereignty even more of a scourge than it is today, regardless of whether it is ever included again in any new deal.

  • Venezuela on the Brink

    The crisis engulfing Venezuela appears to have reached the point of no return. Inflation is heading for 1000% while shortages of food and other essentials are now widespread. It has prompted many to speculate that it is just a matter of time before President Maduro is forced from office and Chavism is consigned to the dustbin of history.

  • Treasury Nominee Steve Mnuchin’s Bank Accused of “Widespread Misconduct” in Leaked Memo

    OneWest Bank, which Donald Trump’s nominee for treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, ran from 2009 to 2015, repeatedly broke California’s foreclosure laws during that period, according to a previously undisclosed 2013 memo from top prosecutors in the state attorney general’s office.

    The memo obtained by The Intercept alleges that OneWest rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes by violating notice and waiting period statutes, illegally backdated key documents, and effectively gamed foreclosure auctions.

    In the memo, the leaders of the state attorney general’s Consumer Law Section said they had “uncovered evidence suggestive of widespread misconduct” in a yearlong investigation. In a detailed 22-page request, they identified over a thousand legal violations in the small subsection of OneWest loans they were able to examine, and they recommended that Attorney General Kamala Harris file a civil enforcement action against the Pasadena-based bank. They even wrote up a sample legal complaint, seeking injunctive relief and millions of dollars in penalties.

  • For Head of SEC, Trump Taps Another Fox to Guard Wall Street Henhouse

    Wall Street lawyer Jay Clayton, who defended big banks against regulators during the financial crisis, is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the federal agency charged with policing Wall Street.

    Clayton, a partner with the New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, is Trump’s nominee for chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In that role, the Washington Post reports, Clayton “would play a key role in Trump’s efforts to usher in a period of deregulation, including undoing parts of 2010′s financial reform legislation, known as the Dodd-Frank Act.”

  • UK’s lack of negotiating experience may lead to ‘very hard Brexit’

    Britain’s four-decade membership of the EU has left it lacking experience in international negotiations, which will hamper it in trade talks and may lead to “a very hard Brexit”, Norway’s prime minister has said.

    “We do feel that sometimes when we are discussing with Britain, that their speed is limited by the fact that it is such a long time since they have negotiated” on their own, Erna Solberg told Reuters at a meeting of Bavaria’s centre-right CSU party in Germany.

    Solberg said she hoped the UK would be able to negotiate an agreement that kept it close to the EU, but it would not be easy. “I fear a very hard Brexit, but I hope we will find a better solution.”

    The remarks reinforce those made by Sir Ivan Rogers, who resigned as Britain’s EU ambassador this week.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Trump’s Neo-Fascism will be built on Neo-Fascism of Obama and Democrat Party

    Late on the evening of December 23, when the attention of the public was fixed on the consumerist excesses of the holiday season, President Obama signed into law the Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Like the other NDAAs that President Obama signed into law during his administration, this one further strengthened the repressive capacities of the state.

    Buried deep in the provisions of the NDAA was language from a bill introduced by Sen. Rob Portman ostensibly to protect the public from the effects of “foreign propaganda.” As previously reported by Black Agenda Report, the bill, originally introduced last March, was passed by the Senate on December 8 as the “Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act” and then inserted into the NDAA.

  • The Dark Side of Obama’s Legacy

    The administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama tilted too far in the direction of the military, which already plays far too large a role in the policy process and the intelligence cycle. Strategic intelligence has suffered from the Pentagon’s domination of a process that is now geared primarily to support the warfighter in an era of permanent war. The strategic intelligence failures during the Obama administration include the absence of warning regarding events in Crimea and the Ukraine; the “Arab Spring;” the emergence of the Islamic State; and Russian recklessness in Syria.

  • Donald Trump’s Debt to Willie Horton

    A precursor of Donald Trump’s race-messaging campaign can be found in George H.W. Bush’s exploitation of the Willie Horton case in 1988, an ugly reminder of America’s racist heritage, writes JP Sottile.

  • Risks of Trump’s ‘Winning’ Obsession

    Donald Trump’s more pragmatic approach to foreign policy may be an improvement over the recent ideological obsessions but his own obsession with “winning” could cause trouble, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

  • Never Trust a Man without a Waistcoat

    Contrary to the usual mainstream media inaccuracy, Sir Ivan Rogers has not resigned from the FCO as he was a Treasury civil servant. The clue is in the phrase “resigned on principle”. FCO people are not big on principles.

  • NAACP Sit-In at Sen. Sessions’ Office Puts AG Pick’s Worrisome History in Crosshairs

    Since his nomination in November, Sessions has been criticized by advocacy groups as “one more way the Trump administration shows its racist, xenophobic, homophobic, and misogynist colors,” and his nomination described as “a direct attack against” the nation’s minorities. Democratic lawmakers are also gearing up to show their opposition to Sessions’ leading the Justice Department.

    Outlining its opposition to Sessions, the NAACP in an earlier statement pointed to the senator’s “record on voting rights that is unreliable at best and hostile at worse; a failing record on other civil rights; a record of racially offensive remarks and behavior; and dismal record on criminal justice reform issues.”

    Speaking to CNN from Sessions’ office on Tuesday, Brooks said the senator should withdraw his name from the nomination or be prepared to arrest the group.

    Explaining the motivations for the action, Brooks said that “in the midst of rampant voter suppression, this nominee has failed to acknowledge the reality of voter suppression while pretending to believe in the myth of voter fraud, and we need at the helm of the Department of Justice somebody who acknowledges the reality of voter suppression, someone who is going to stand at the side of people who need the defense of the attorney general, and a Justice Department that works for everyone.”

  • WashPost Is Richly Rewarded for False News About Russia Threat While Public Is Deceived

    In the past six weeks, the Washington Post published two blockbuster stories about the Russian threat that went viral: one on how Russia is behind a massive explosion of “fake news,” the other on how it invaded the U.S. electric grid. Both articles were fundamentally false. Each now bears a humiliating editor’s note grudgingly acknowledging that the core claims of the story were fiction: The first note was posted a full two weeks later to the top of the original article; the other was buried the following day at the bottom.

  • Civil rights activists arrested protesting Trump’s Attorney General pick

    Police in Alabama arrested six civil rights activists staging a sit-in at Senator Jeff Sessions’ office on Tuesday to protest his nomination for U.S. Attorney General, criticizing his record on voting rights and race relations.

    Sessions, 70, has a history of controversial positions on race, immigration and criminal justice reform.

    Members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had vowed to occupy Sessions’ Mobile, Alabama office until the conservative Republican lawmaker either withdrew as a candidate or they were arrested.

    In the end, Cornell Brooks, president and CEO of the NAACP, and Stephen Green, national director of the youth division of the NAACP, were among those arrested, according to a post on the Twitter page of the civil rights organization.

  • Year of the cock

    It’s not the first time that PEOTUS Trump has been compared to a fowl in China. Back in mid-November, he literally became the pheasant-elect as photos of him juxtaposed to a golden pheasant (Wikipedia article in Chinese) went viral on the Chinese internet.

  • End of the World, Progressive Article Edition

    For those who would like to become a progressive columnist in the world of Trump, here’s a guide for your first and every subsequent article…

    [...]

    First of all, points for the “bang and whimper” cliche, followed by the happy bullsh*t about how wonderful America was last month as described by phony Hamilton the musical lyrics. I bet the show’s cast could make values, morals, compassion, tolerance, decency, common purpose, and identity rhyme.

    Dude, we are a helluva people! Exceptional!

    Because prior to the election results we weren’t a nation founded on a slave economy, which 250 years later still has its cops imprison and murder Blacks, who doesn’t have the highest incarceration rate in the world, mostly for small amounts of weed that has been long legalized in other western nations. Our compassion is set to full, except if you are different than me in your race, religion, or views on guns, gays or abortions. Of course we don’t really do much for women, and unlike say India, Israel, the UK, Burma, and a whole mess of other places, have never had a female chief executive.

    Yeah, whatever, all that.

    And lovely, that bit about American becoming an international pariah. Could happen. Luckily the world has overlooked so far that we are the only nation to have used atomic weapons (twice, on civilians), stayed at war, spied and overthrown governments in their countries pretty steadily for 70 years, set the Middle Easton on fire over fake WMDs, drone kill wherever we like, torture people, and run an offshore penal colony right out of Les Miserables. Man, Trump, amiright?

  • WaPo Spreading Own Falsehoods Shows Real Power of Fake News

    The putative scourge of “fake news” has been one of the most pervasive post-election media narratives. The general thrust goes like this: A torrent of fake news swept the internet, damaging Hillary Clinton and possibly leading to a Donald Trump victory.

    A primary problem with this convenient-to-some narrative is that “fake news” has yet to be clearly defined by anyone. Vaguely conceptualized as misleading or outright fabricated stories, it can mean anything—as FAIR has noted previously (12/1/16)—from outlets that align with “Russian viewpoints” to foreign spam.

    [...]

    After FAIR and others pointed out the error, Rampell’s article was changed, but this episode shows how quickly an entirely bogus premise—that Russia had hacked, or even attempted to hack, an American public utility—can spread without an ounce of skepticism. At the time her column was published, the only “evidence” of an “attempted” Russian hack was some malware code that could have been used by anybody. Rampell, likely influenced by the initial erroneous reporting by her colleagues, made an assumption that this was evidence of an “attempted hack,” a false assumption debunked by the Post itself (1/2/16) two hours after she published. In all cases, everything is rounded up to the most sensational, most Cold War–panic inducing conclusion. “Mistakes” rarely, if ever, happen in favor of less hysteria.

  • Beyond Anti-Trump

    Let’s be careful about the phrase “anti-Trump coalition.” The phrase leaves the door open for everything being about the Big Bad Donald and for progressives to get sucked/suckered once again into the ruling class politics of the Democrats. We need to take on the unelected deep state dictatorships of money, class, race, empire, militarism, sexism, and ecocide – the reigning oppression structures that have ruled under Barack Obama as under previous presidents. As the activist-artist Brian Carlson recently wrote me from Buenos Aires, Donald Trump is the latest “bobble head doll on the dashboard of real [U.S.] power.” The thin-skinned tyrant Trump is the most terrifying and noxious such doll yet, perhaps, but the point stands.

    And dreary corporate-Democratic presidents like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Obama are no small part of the explanation for the ever more right-wing Republican presidencies of the long neoliberal era. Their serial populism-manipulating betrayals of the working-class majority in service to the wealthy Few open the door for Republicans to sweep in and take over for a term or two (2001-2009) or three (1981-1993). (Please see my forthcoming Truthdig essay “Obama’s Neoliberal Legacy”) for a discussion of how Obama begat Trump.)

  • Anti-Trump Coalition Shows Cracks

    Somewhat surprisingly, a genuine grassroots, broad-based movement has emerged to oppose the incoming Trump administration, but perhaps less surprisingly – given the American left’s self-marginalizing tendencies – the nascent efforts may already be descending into sectarianism, finger-pointing and divisive identity-based politics.

  • Battlelines Drawn as GOP Readies ‘To Make America Sick Again’

    Republicans, “beside themselves” with excitement over their new power in Congress and, in less than three weeks, the White House, announced on Wednesday their plans for a swift attack on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare.

    Repealing the ACA, said Vice President-elect Mike Pence after meeting with House Republicans, will be the incoming administration’s “first order of business,” with a goal of getting legislation to President-elect Donald Trump by Feb. 20. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) also spoke at the news conference, and said that the program, which allowed over 20 million Americans to gain health insurance coverage, “is a story of broken promise after broken promise after broken promise.”

    The Senate on Wednesday also voted “to take the first official step toward repealing President Barack Obama’s signature health care law,” as CNN reports. The chamber “voted 51-48 Wednesday to begin debating a budget that, once approved, will prevent Democrats from using a filibuster to block future Republican legislation to scuttle the healthcare law,” the Associated Press adds.

  • New McCarthyism Targets Trump

    Official Washington’s New McCarthyism is painting President-elect Trump as almost a “traitor” for seeking détente with Russia, a moment when peace-oriented Americans face a complex choice, says John V. Walsh.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Activist who aided Amos Yee’s bid for political asylum in USA being reported to Department of Homeland Security

    Melissa Chen, a US-based Singaporean civil activist involved in Amos Yee’s asylum bid said in her Facebook that she has been reported to the United States’ (US) Department of Homeland Security for the ‘crime’ of abetting the teen blogger seeking refuge in that country. They are hoping the activist would be deported.

    [...]

    In the exchange between them they discussed making arrangements for Amos’ bid for political asylum in the United States of America. Amos was therefore compelled to tell the truth. Amos is unlikely to be released from detention until a hearing is convened.

    Amos has said that the he has no intention of returning to Singapore as he does not want to do National Service.

  • New Chinese Law on Cybersecurity Will Increase Censorship & Data Surveillance

    The Chinese government passed a new set of regulations that will tighten existing policies on censorship and data surveillance. From June 1 and onward, outflow of any kind of personal and important data will be restricted and censored by key information infrastructure operators (KILO).

    Network operators and internet service providers also fall under the newly proposed regulatory regime, and as a result are obligated to impose new security and data protection systems.

  • Confirmed Horrible Person James Woods Continues Being Horrible In ‘Winning’ Awful Lawsuit To Unmask Deceased Online Critic

    So… Hollywood actor James Woods continues to make it clear that he’s a complete and total asshole. As you may or may not recall, last year, Woods sued an anonymous Twitter user who went by the name Abe List, for mocking Woods on twitter. Specifically, List called Woods “clownboy” and later tweeted: “cocaine addict James Woods still sniffing and spouting.” Woods sued Abe List claiming that the “cocaine addict” statement was defamatory, and (the important part) demanding the name and identity of Abe List. The fact that Woods, himself, has a long (long, long, long) history of spouting off similarly incendiary claims to people on Twitter apparently wasn’t important.

  • Google Apparently No Longer Humoring Court Orders To Delist Defamatory Content

    That timing seems to coincide with Paul Alan Levy/Public Citizen’s intervention in a case where an order to delist traced back to a dentist unhappy with an online review. The eventual delisting by Google came as the result of a bogus lawsuit — filed with or without the knowledge of the dentist Mitul Patel — against a bogus defendant. The fake “Matthew Chan” signed a document agreeing to remove his review and the court ordered Google to take it down.

  • Putin’s Adviser Says Russia Must Be Ready To Disconnect Itself From The Global Internet

    Klimenko’s comments were made before the US announced its response to claims of Russian interference in the presidential election process. His analysis of “tectonic shifts” in US-Russia relations now looks rather prescient, although US threats to hack back made it a relatively easy prediction. And even though his call for Russia to ensure its critical infrastructure cannot be “turned off” by anyone — in particular by the US — may be grandstanding to a certain extent, it is not infeasible.

    The Chinese have consciously made their own segment of the Internet quite independent, with strict controls on how data enters or leaves the country. Techdirt reported earlier that Russia was increasingly looking to China for both inspiration and technological assistance; maybe Klimenko’s comments are another sign of an alignment between the two countries in the digital realm.

  • Facebook Censors Art Historian’s Photo Of Neptune’s Statue-Penis

  • Facebook under fire after it censors ‘explicitly sexual’ statue of Neptune

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • NSA’s top cyber-defender leaves after reorganization

    Curtis Dukes, the NSA official who headed up its cyber-defenders, the famed Information Assurance Directorate, has left the agency — a few months after IAD was merged with the offensive, eavesdropping side of the house, the Signals Intelligence Directorate.

  • NSA Director to Head Up CIS Controls Group

  • Someone bid $9,000 worth of bitcoin for supposed NSA exploits

    In August, a group of supposed hackers calling themselves the Shadow Brokers leaked a trove of outdated NSA-linked cyber-weapons and encouraged observers to bid on software exploits they had stolen. On Wednesday, someone paid the group $9,000 worth of bitcoin, based on publicly visible transaction records. The mysterious payment represents the single largest deposit made to a bitcoin wallet previously listed by the Shadow Brokers.

    While the aforementioned bitcoin wallet had seen past activity in the form of small deposits ranging from just a few cents to several hundreds of dollars, Wednesday’s payment is by far the largest contribution. Bitcoin is an anonymous digital currency that is sold, traded, accepted and tracked online.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Even Leonard Peltier’s Prosecutor Calls for Clemency

    The former prosecutor of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier joins thousands calling for clemency saying it is “in the best interests of justice.”

    The former Iowa United States attorney in charge of the widely-condemned prosecution and conviction of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier wrote to President Obama saying granting clemency to the 72-year-old, considered by many the longest-held political prisoner in the U.S., would be “in the best interests of justice.”

  • Defense Department Oversight Finds More Evidence Of Retaliation Against Whistleblowers

    More evidence has surfaced showing the US government really doesn’t care for whistleblowers. A Defense Department Inspector General’s report [PDF] obtained by MuckRock contains details of Air Force supervisors turning against a civilian employee who reported time card abuse.

  • Inside the Scorpion: a Journalist’s Ordeal in Egypt’s Most Notorious Prison

    To interview a jihadi is one thing, to live among jihadis quite another. To share their prison cells and their jail trucks on the way to a dictatorship’s trials is both a journalist’s dream and a journalist’s nightmare. Which makes Mohamed Fahmy a unique figure: in a prison bus, he hears his fellow inmates rejoicing at the beheading of a captured journalist in Syria. “They won’t let us out,” a voice shouts at Fahmy in Egypt’s ghastly Tora prison complex. “We haven’t seen the sun for weeks.” And he hears the rhythmic voices of prisoners reciting the Koran.

    Fahmy, who is an Egyptian with Canadian citizenship, is the Al Jazeera English TV reporter who spent almost two years in his native country’s ferocious prison system, as a guest of President al-Sisi, locked up with two colleagues for being a pro-Muslim Brotherhood “terrorist”, fabricating news and endangering the “security” of the state.

  • Planes and ships hampering road transport’s climate efforts

    The extent to which transport is falling behind in reducing its CO2 emissions is highlighted in a new report by the Dutch consultancy CE Delft. It shows that emission reductions from land-based transport are still significantly behind what they need to be, and nearly half of the forecast reductions are set to be wiped out by the growth in emissions from aviation and shipping.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Trademarks

    • Chicago Field Museum Decides To Embrace Cross-Promotion Instead Of Trademark Protectionism With Brewery

      When it comes to trademark issues, we tend to keep our pages filled with stories about disputes, bullying, and over-protectionism. While we try to highlight good-actors on matters of trademark, those stories are too few and far between for our tastes. With that in mind, why not start off the new year with one such example?

      Toppling Goliath is a brewery in Iowa with a number of regular and seasonal beers. One of those is PseudoSue, an ale with a label that features a roaring Tyrannosaurus rex. Anyone from the Chicago area is likely already thinking of our beloved Field Museum and the enormous T. rex fossil skeleton of Sue, who the museum tends to dress up like some kind of prehistoric barbie doll whenever one of our local sports teams has themselves a particularly good season. The museum has a trademark registration for Sue that covers all kinds of mechandise and initially reacted as readers of this site will have come to expect.

  • Copyrights

    • RIAA Still Pushing Its Bogus Message Of A ‘Value Gap’ And ‘Fair Compensation’

      The “value gap” is a completely made up concept by the RIAA and friends, arguing that internet platforms aren’t paying the record labels (not the artists) enough. It’s based on a series of out and out lies, including the simply false claim that artists make more from vinyl record sales than from online streaming.

      The “value gap” is the RIAA cherry picking misleading numbers to argue that internet platforms aren’t paying them enough. Note that they don’t make any effort to improve what they’re doing — they’re just demanding more money from platforms… just because.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Fail0verflow Demos Linux & Steam Running on PlayStation 4 Firmware 4.05 at 33C3

  2016 ended in big style for hackers and security researchers from all over the world, who gathered together at the well-known Chaos Communication Congress (33c3) annual event organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) of Germany

• Linux 2017: With great power comes great responsibility

  Even the one exception, the end-user, is moving to Linux. Android is now the most popular end-user opearating system. In addition, Chromebooks are becoming more popular. Indeed, even traditional Linux desktops such as Fedora, openSUSE, Mint, and Ubuntu are finally gaining traction. Heck, my TechRepublic Linux buddy Jack Wallen even predicts that “Linux [desktop] market share will finally breach the 5-percent mark”.

• Desktop

  • Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

    This is a team that values the same things I do. The interface is clean and refined. The pre-installed application selection is minimal and each one feels like a perfect piece of the system.

    The main drawback of Elementary to me is that it’s built on top of Ubuntu LTS. As time goes on all the packages get further from the current versions published upstream. I’d much rather a regular release like Fedora (6 months) or a rolling release like Arch.

  • Kreative Mediabook Pro A156 Open Source Laptop Running ARTISTX 2.0 (video)

    For more information on the new Kreative Mediabook Pro jump over to the Kickstarter website for details and to make a pledge from $460 by following the link below.

  • Your stupidest mistake when running Linux?

    Linux has much to offer any computer user, but we’re all human and everybody makes mistakes. A user in a recent thread on the Linux subreddit asked folks what their dumbest mistake was when using Linux, and he got some funny answers.

• Server

  • eBay builds its own tool to integrate Kubernetes and OpenStack

    Intent on keeping its developers happy, the e-commerce company has developed a framework for deploying containers on its large-scale OpenStack cloud.

  • Guide to the Open Cloud: The State of Micro OSes

    What are micro operating systems and why should individuals and organizations focused on the cloud care about them? In the cloud, performance, elasticity, and security are all paramount. A lean operating system that facilitates simple server workloads and allows for containers to run optimally can serve each of these purposes. Unlike standard desktop or server operating systems, the micro OS has a narrow, targeted focus on server workloads and optimizing containers while eschewing the applications and graphical subsystems that cause bloat and latency.

    In fact, these tiny platforms are often called “container operating systems.” Containers are key to the modern data center and central to many smart cloud deployments. According to Cloud Foundry’s report “Containers in 2016,” 53 percent of organizations are either investigating or using containers in development and production. The micro OS can function as optimal bedrock for technology stacks incorporating tools such as Docker and Kubernetes.

  • In-Memory Computing for HPC

    To achieve high performance, modern computer systems rely on two basic methodologies to scale resources. Each design attempts to bring more processors (cores) and memory to the user. A scale-up design that allows multiple cores to share a large global pool of memory is the most flexible and allows large data sets to take advantage of full in-memory computing. A scale-out design distributes data sets across the memory on separate host systems in a computing cluster. Although the scale-out cluster often has a lower hardware acquisition cost, the scale-up in-memory system provides a much better total cost of ownership (TCO) based on the following advantages:

• Kernel Space

  • The State Of TPM2 Support On Linux, Better Support Coming

    With Microsoft having begun to mandate TPM2 (Trusted Platform Module 2) support be present in all platforms for newer versions of Windows, these chips are going to become a lot more common to laptops and desktops. Thus veteran kernel developer James Bottomley is looking closely at the current and future support for TPM2 on Linux.

  • Graphics Stack

    • Radeon FreeSync 2 Rolled Out With HDR & More

    • VC4 Gallium3D Thread Switching Work, Reviewing On-Disk Shader Cache

    • FP64 Support Finally Lands In Mesa Git For Intel Haswell

  • Benchmarks

    • AMDGPU vs. Radeon GCN 1.0/1.1 Benchmarks With Linux 4.10

      With the Linux 4.10 kernel there remains experimental Kconfig switches for being able to build the Linux kernel with GCN 1.0 “Southern Islands” and GCN 1.1 “Sea Islands” support in the newer AMDGPU DRM driver rather than the mature Radeon DRM driver. For your viewing pleasure today are benchmarks of a few GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs when testing the Linux 4.10 Git kernel with Radeon DRM and then the experimental AMDGPU DRM driver while both kernel drivers were tested in conjunction with the same Mesa 13.1-dev snapshot as of this week.

• Applications

  • 7 Awesome Open Source Analytics Software For Linux and Unix-like Systems

    Google Analytics is the most widely used cloud-based web analytics service. However, your data is locked into Google Eco-system. If you want 100% data ownership, try the following open source web analytics software to get information about the number of visitors to your website and the number of page views. The information is useful for market research and understanding popularity trends on your website.

  • Cutelyst 1.2.0 released

    Cutelyst the C++/Qt web framework has a new release.

  • Ubuntu Podcast App Podbird Celebrates Birthday With New Release

    Ubuntu podcast app Podbird has marked its 2nd birthday with an all-new release.

    Podbird 0.8 is said to bring a number of “major improvements” to the fore, chief among them the ability to queue podcasts so that they play one after another.

    Elsewhere, the update sees the episodes page gain a “downloaded” tab, which groups together all previously downloaded episodes (and any in progress) from one page, and a new setting allows cached podcast artwork to be refreshed.

  • digest 0.6.11

    A new minor release with version number 0.6.11 of the digest package is now on CRAN and in Debian.

  • By Jove! It’s a lightweight alternative to Vim

    Some people like Vim as a text editor, and other people like Emacs. Having such different opinions are the way of the UNIX world.

    I’m an Emacs user through and through. Sure, I spent a few obligatory years in my early days of UNIX using Vim, but once I learned Emacs properly, there was no going back. The thing about Vi(m) is that it’s on nearly every UNIX box because it’s been around forever, and it’s pretty small. It’s the obvious choice for a default editor that people can use in a pinch.

  • DVDStyler 3.0.3 Free DVD Authoring Tool Disables Copy Option on Non-MPEG2 Videos

    It looks like many open-source software developers kicked off 2017 with new releases of their applications. DVDStyler, the cross-platform, free, and open-source DVD authoring tool was updated to version 3.0.3.

    DVDStyler is quite a popular application amongst nostalgics who still adore to watch movies or create their own with the DVD-Video format. Besides the fact that it makes it possible for these DVD-Video enthusiasts to create professional-looking DVDs, DVDStyler works on all major platforms, including GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows.

  • darktable 2.2.1 Open-Source RAW Image Editor Adds Support for Canon EOS M5

    On Christmas Day 2016, the developers of the popular, open-source and multiplatform darktable RAW image editor proudly unveiled the major 2.2 release, which just got its first point release the other day.

    Yes, you’re reading it right, darktable 2.2.1 is already here, one week after the release of the 2.2 series, which brought countless improvements, but it’s a small maintenance update adding a couple of new features, such as the ability to display a dialog window that informs the user when locking of the library and database fails.

  • LFTP 4.7.5 Linux CLI FTP Client Recognizes Apache Listings with ISO Date & Time

    LFTP, the free, open-source, and sophisticated command-line file transfer program (FTP) supporting a wide range of network protocols, including FTP, SFTP, HTTP, FISH, and Torrent, was updated on the first day of 2017 to version 4.7.5.

    LFTP 4.7.5 arrives one and a half months after the release of version 4.7.4 on November 16, 2016, and promises to add detection of Apache listings with ISO date and time to the HTTP protocol support, implements a new setting for logging, namely log:prefix-{recv,send,note,error}, and improves the help manual and documentation a bit.

  • Opera 12 Clone Otter Browser Beta 12 Improves KDE Plasma 5 and Unity Integration

    Lots of open-source software developers were busy to announce new versions of their applications on GNU/Linux distributions on the first day of 2017, and today we’d like to tell you a little bit about the latest release of the Otter Browser.

    For those unfamiliar with Otter Browser, it’s a cross-platform and open-source clone of the old-school Opera 12.x web browser series beloved by most of you out there. The project’s aim is to recreate the best aspects of Opera 12′s user interface using the newest Qt 5 technologies, and works on Linux, macOS and Windows platforms.

  • Portainer – An Easiest Way To Manage Docker

    Portainer is a lightweight, cross-platform, and open source management UI for Docker. Portainer provides a detailed overview of Docker and allows you to manage containers, images, networks and volumes via simple web-abed dashboard. It was originally the fork of Docker UI. However, the developer has rewritten pretty much all of the Docker UI original code now. Also, he changed the UX completely and added some more functionality in the recent version. As of now, It caught the user attention tremendously and it has now had over 1 million downloads and counting! It will support GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, and Mac OS X.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Buuf – Art work design Icon Theme For Linux

    • TripleO QuickStart functionality and recent commit Merge “move the undercloud deploy role to quickstart-extras for composability”

    • How To Install KDE Connect Indicator on Ubuntu

    • How To Create ISO Image Back from Bootable USB Drive Easily

    • How to Mount CephFS on CentOS 7

    • Smith Charts for All

    • How to Customize Bash Colors and Content in Linux Terminal Prompt

  • Games

    • Marek Publishes RadeonSI Patches To Help Witcher 2 On Linux

      In addition to working on sharply improving the performance of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided when using the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver, Marek Olšák has published some patches for improving The Witcher 2 with the open-source AMD driver stack.

      The Witcher 2 has been out for Linux since 2014 while coming now is a workaround for Witcher 2 having some black transitions when using the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver.

    • StarMade, the spaceship building sandbox has updated graphics

    • The Planetary Annihilation: TITANS free ‘Legion’ expansion from modders is now officially released

    • Solaroids: Prologue is coming to Linux thanks to FNA

      The developer of Solaroids: Prologue [Official Site] tweeted out to let everyone know that the indie arcade/action shooter will be coming to Linux. The developer is using FNA for the port and doing it themselves.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Version 1.2.0 Released

    Happy New Year! 2016 was a really big year for Lumina with the release of version 1.0.0, TrueOS adopting Lumina as it’s only supported desktop environment, the newfound availability of Lumina in many Linux distributions, and so much more. By the same token, 2017 is already shaping up to be another big year for Lumina with things like the new window manager on the horizon. So let’s start this year on the right foot with another release!

  • Lumina 1.2 Desktop Lets You Transform It into an Xfce, MATE, OSX or Windows UI

    Ken Moore, the creator of the TrueOS BSD-based distribution that was formerly known as PC-BSD, kicks off 2017 with a new stable release of his lightweight Lumina desktop environment.

    Primarily an enhancement release, Lumina 1.2.0 desktop environment is here a little over two months after the release of version 1.1.0, and promises to bring a whole lot of goodies, including new plugins, a brand-new utility, as well as various under-the-hood improvements that users might find useful if they use Lumina on their OS.

  • Lumina 1.2 Desktop Environment Released

    A new release of Lumina is now available to ring in 2017, the BSD-first Qt-powered open-source desktop environment.

    With today’s Lumina 1.2 desktop environment, the libLuminaUtils.so library is no longer used/needed, the internal Lumina Theme engine has been separated from all utilities, there are new panel and menu plug-ins and a new Lumina Archiver utility as a Qt5 front to Tar. The new plug-ins are an audio player, JSON menu, and a lock desktop menu plugin for locking the current session.

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • KDE’s Kirigami 2.0 Framework for Convergent UIs Enters Beta with New Features

      2017 kicked off for KDE user with the first Beta release of the upcoming Kirigami 2.0 UI framework for building convergent user interfaces that work on mobile and desktop platforms, as announced by Thomas Pfeiffer.

      While the first public preview of the Kirigami UI framework hit the streets at the beginning of August 2016, and reached the 1.1 milestone two months later, at the end of September, it looks like the Beta of the major 2.0 release is ready for developers interesting in test driving it to produce convergent UIs.

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • 4MLinux 20.2 Distro Out Now with Linux Kernel 4.4.39, New Broadcom Wi-Fi Drivers

      4MLinux developer Zbigniew Konojacki is yet another GNU/Linux distribution maintainer that kicked off 2017 in style, with the release of the second maintenance update to the 4MLinux 20 operating system.

      That’s right, 4MLinux 20.2 has landed, as the latest and most advanced ISO respin of the 4MLinux 20.0 stable series of the independently-developed Linux distro, shipping with the long-term supported Linux 4.4.39 kernel, as well as up-to-date software applications and the proprietary Broadcom Wi-Fi driver called “wl driver.”

      “This is a minor maintenance release in the 4MLinux STABLE channel. The release ships with the Linux kernel 4.4.39,” said Zbigniew Konojacki in the release announcement. “This is the first 4MLinux live CD that includes the Broadcom proprietary WiFi driver (aka ‘wl driver’).”

  • Gentoo Family

    • Calculate Linux Explained

  • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • From DaVinci to The Avengers: Building Collective Genius

      The 25th anniversary of Linux was a big milestone celebrated by many of us at LinuxCon events throughout the year, and it was a theme throughout many of the presentations. Thomas Di Giacomo, Chief Technology Officer at SUSE started his LinuxCon Europe keynote with a brief clip in the style of Mr. Robot where in 2016 even Evil Corp has gone open source and we have won. He says that “open source is seen as a technology savior. That’s why companies have been embracing it, because they have to, to remain viable.”

    • Keynote: From DaVinci to The Avengers by Dr. Thomas Di Giacomo, Chief Technology Officer, SUSE The Linux Foundation

  • Slackware Family

    • Absolute Linux Caters to the Slackware Crowd

      Absolute Linux is a distro that raises the question: Is it really worth the bother?

      Any version of this Slackware-based Linux OS is just that — a really big bother — unless you love Unix-like systems that give you total control. It likely would be especially bothersome for less experienced users and for folks comfortable with Debian distros such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint and such.

      Some Slackware-based distros are easier than others to use — but the text-based installation and mostly manual operating routine makes using Absolute Linux a challenge. Once you get beyond the configuration steps, you still face a considerable learning curve to keep it running smoothly.

      Clearly, I am not overly impressed with the Absolute flavor of Slackware Linux. I see it as the equivalent of driving a stick shift automobile with a crank-to-start mechanism instead of an automatic model with keyless ignition. That said, once you have the engine purring, it drives fast and furious along the highway.

      I like to offer unique computing options in these weekly Linux Picks and Pans reviews, so I set my comfort zone aside and rolled up my sleeves to get my hands a little scraped reaching under Absolute Linux’s hood.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat’s OpenShift Dedicated on Google Cloud Platform To Speed Use of Containers, ‘Cloud-Native’ Apps

      With 2017 predicted to be the year of the conatiner, Red Hat is now shipping OpenShift Dedicated on Google Cloud Platform. With the launch, Red Hat’s OpenShift container orchestration platform will let customers avoid tedious administrative and operational management tasks.

    • Analyst: What Red Hat needs in its next CFO

      After the sudden resignation of Raleigh-based Red Hat’s chief financial officer, Frank Calderoni, the open-source software developer’s stock fell nearly 15 percent.

    • Finance

      • What Will The New Year Bring For Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)? Sell-Side Update

      • Rail Splitter Capital Management LLC Sells 46,936 Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (RHT)

      • Latest Trade: The Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB publ sells partial stakes of Red Hat Inc. (RHT)

      • Portfolio Darling: Institutions Continue To Hold The Majority of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

      • analysts Recommendations: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Fedora

      • Jona Azizaj: How Do You Fedora?

        Jona Azizaj is currently pursuing a bachelor degree in Business Informatics at the University of Tirana. She is also on the board of Open Labs Hackerspace. Open Labs Hackerspace promotes free/libre open source culture in Albania. She is also a co-organizer of Open Source Conference Albania (OSCAL). Azizaj is part of the Fedora Project and the first Fedora Ambassador in Albania.

        The first time Azizaj heard about Linux was when she went to university. “At first I used Ubuntu because that’s what our teachers suggested, but after OSCAL I switched to Fedora just to see if it met my needs,” Azizaj says. “I was really satisfied with Fedora as an operating system and the community. That’s why I am still using it.” She has been using Linux for the last four years.

      • Tools I use daily

        I use Fedora as my primary Operating System. I am currently running Fedora 25 in all my boxes except one home server, which runs Fedora 24. In the data center, I have CentOS on the bare-metal, and Fedora in the VM(s). The very same goes for any quick VM that I create over Fedora Infra Cloud.

      • Post-Holiday Update

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Debian-Based Neptune 4.5.3 Linux OS Rebases the Graphics Stack on Mesa 13.0.2

        The Neptune team was proud to announce the release of Neptune 4.5.3 on the first day of the year, which appears to be a minor maintenance update bringing various updated applications and a newer Linux kernel version.

        Neptune is a GNU/Linux distribution developed for desktop computers and fully based on the Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 “Wheezy” operating system and KDE Plasma 5. Neptune 4.5 is currently the latest stable release of the Linux OS, but from time to time, it gets up-to-date ISO snapshots featuring recent technologies and updated packages.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Watch This Terrifying 13ft Robot Walk, Thanks To Ubuntu [Ed: many say it's fake]

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Ubuntu-Based Exton|OS Distro Now Ships with MATE 1.16 Desktop & Linux Kernel 4.9

            Our dearest Arne Exton ended 2016 in big style with the release of a new build of his Ubuntu-based Exton|OS computer operating system running the latest MATE desktop environment and Linux 4.9 kernel.

            Exton|OS Build 161231 launched on December 31, 2016, based on the stable Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) operating system and MATE 1.16 desktop environment. However, the most exciting thing about the new release is the implementation of a custom and fully patched Linux kernel 4.9.0-11-exton build.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Table compares 90 hacker-friendly single board computers

    Table compares 90 hacker-friendly single board computers

  • Top 5 Videos from Embedded Linux Conference and OpenIoT Summit 2016

    In 2017, The Linux Foundation’s Embedded Linux Conference marks its 12th year as the premier vendor-neutral technical conference for companies and developers using Linux in embedded products.

    Now co-located with OpenIoT Summit, ELC promises to be the best place for embedded and application developers, product vendors, kernel and systems developers as well systems architects and firmware developers to learn, share and advance the technical work required for embedded Linux and IoT.

  • Intel’s Kaby Lake arrives on COM Express Compact at up to 3.9GHz

    Congatec unveiled the first COM based on Intel’s 7th Gen “Kaby Lake” Core CPUs, offering faster performance, speedy Optane memory support, and 10-bit video.

  • Phones

    • Tizen

      • Smartphone App: Zopper shopping app now available in Tizen Store

        A FREE shopping app called Zopper has been released in the Tizen Store. This app allows you to shop for electronics and see what it retails for. First, you enter your city in India and then your area that you are located in – it asks this so you can only see the products in / near the area you are in. Zopper sells lots of products including smartphones , power banks , tablets , smartwatches , smartphone accessories , smart TVs , gaming tools , sound gadgets , ACs , fans , washing machines , water purifiers , induction ovens , gas stoves , mixer grinders , micro-ovens , laptops , hard drives , MMC , monitors , keyboard , mouse , laptop accessories , trimmers , hair dryers , bi- cycles , D-SLRs , binoculars , VR boxes , light bulbs etc.

    • Android

      • Swarovski will debut an Android Wear ‘smartwatch for women’ in March

        Swarovski will soon join the smartwatch market thanks to a partnership with Qualcomm and Google — but we won’t learn more until the “smartwatch for her” is unveiled at Baselworld 2017 in Switzerland.

        Qualcomm and Swarovski offered a teaser of the announcement at CES 2017, and what we know at this point is that the smartwatch will pack a Qualcomm processor. While it’s Swarovski’s first smartwatch, the company has collaborated with Misfit and Huawei in the past on devices such as the Huawei Watch Ladies. It looks like Swarovski will continue to target women with the watch, as it does with most of its products.

      • These slick shades pack the power of Android for AR

        At Qualcomm’s CES press conference on Tuesday, Osterhout Design Group showed off a pair of smart glasses running on Android and powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 835 powerhouse chip — the kind of processing power that usually runs a high-end phone like a Samsung Galaxy S7 or Google Pixel.

      • Honor announces the Honor 6X with dual cameras, Kirin 655 SoC, and Android 6.0 for $249

        Are you a “cost-conscious yet uncompromising Internet-minded millennial?” If so, this is your lucky day, because Huawei’s Honor sub-brand says it knows how you think. It understands the “double or nothing motto that millennials live and breathe.” Finally, someone gets it! These are all things Honor has said in its PR today as it announced the global launch of the Honor 6X. It only costs $249, and I assume you can buy it even if you’re not a “young and bold consumer.” I myself am old and cautious.

      • Dish unveils a 4K Android TV streaming box with Netflix, Sling TV, and local channels

        The rumors of a set-top box designed to combine Dish’s Sling TV service, Netflix, and over-the-air television were true. Today, Dish officially announced the AirTV Player, an Android TV streaming device that the company is pitching as “a single platform” for on-demand streaming, internet TV, and over-the-air local channels.

      • Sony Xperia X Becomes First Non-Google Smartphone To Upgrade To Android 7.1.1 Nougat, But Not All Units

      • Rugged Samsung Galaxy S7 Active Spotted In Benchmark With Android 7.0 Nougat On Board: Update Imminent?

      • 6 Android New Year’s Resolutions to start 2017 off right

      • iPhone 8, Samsung Galaxy S8, Nokia’s Android Phones, and Other Mobiles We’re Looking Forward to in 2017

      • New Android-infecting malware brew hijacks devices. Why, you ask? Your router

      • This Android-infecting Trojan malware uses your phone to attack your router

      • Battery maker Samsung SDI wants to make safety a priority

      • The Best 6 Android Games Of 2016: It Is Not Too Late To Have It

      • Google and Fiat-Chrysler will show off Android-as-a-car-OS concept

      • LeEco wants you to ride its Android-powered smart bicycles

        LeEco, the Chinese company whose recent push into the U.S. has been met with excitement, trepidation and more than a little skepticism, is launching a pair of smart bicycles at CES 2017, powered by the company’s own Android 6.0-based BikeOS.

Free Software/Open Source

• Open Source Software’s Top Five Challenges for 2017

  It’s a new year, and open source software is more popular than ever. But the open source community is also confronting a new set of challenges. Here’s what open source programmers and companies will need to do to keep thriving in 2017.

• Open Source: 2017′s impetus

  Contrary to popular belief, open source is neither a company nor a product. It is a way of innovating and collaborating to create ground breaking ideas. Today’s most innovative technologies, from the Internet of Things (IoT) to machine learning, are all being driven by open source. All across Asia Pacific, we’re seeing exceptionally strong growth in the open source movement, as the open source ecosystem increasingly plays a key role in offering customers broader choice.

  Open source has the potential to impact people from all strata of society, and significantly enrich the way we live. Growing from just a coding method to a value philosophy, open source is currently being used to drive innovation and solve big national questions in emerging economies across the region. For example, open source has greatly benefited the development of smart city initiatives, such as Singapore’s Smart Nation vision. Without open source, these projects will become beholden to proprietary technology which can potentially hold back progress.

  Aside from that, we have also witnessed many organizations in Singapore being receptive to the idea of embarking on a digital transformation journey by using new ways of developing, delivering and integrating applications as a response to digital disruptions we are seeing across industries.

• Can Automation Simplify Open Source for the Enterprise?

  An open source environment has long been enticing in theory to the enterprise but rather difficult to implement in practice.

  The idea of compiling your own data environment from legions of low-cost, interoperable components is indeed compelling, particularly when support is lacking from a proprietary vendor. But integration issues and the fairly substantial in-house expertise required to support an open environment are not to be dismissed.

  But that might not be the case for much longer. Along with the increased prevalence of open source solutions in the IT market today, there is also an accelerated trend toward greater automation and intelligent management that just might remove many of the headaches that accompany open architectures.

• DronePan: An app that captures panorama views with your aircraft

  DronePan is a mobile-based autopilot app for DJI drones that automates the process of shooting aerial imagery for spherical panoramas. Users fly their aircraft to the desired panorama location and then launch DronePan, which temporarily takes control of the aircraft heading and camera angle. After a simple tap or two, DronePan begins shooting 15 to 25 photos automatically with the proper overlap required for an aerial spherical panorama. When the panorama is complete, users resume manual control and can fly to other locations to shoot more panoramas.

  DronePan started as an experiment in early 2015, and it has since gone through countless iterations based on constant testing by the now 30,000-strong user base. It is compatible with most DJI drones, and the most recent project added support for the newly released and ultra-portable drone known as the DJI Mavic.

• OpenAi and Alphabet Open Up New Artificial Intelligence Tools

  DeepMind, Alphabet’s artificial intelligence group, announced announced recently that it is open sourcing DeepMind Lab, its 3D gameified platform for agent-based AI research.

• Events

  • What You’ll Learn at Cloud Native/Kubernetes 101 Roadshow: Pacific Northwest!

  • ForgeRock to Demo Identity Management and Automotive Grade Linux Connected Car Implementation During CES 2017

• Web Browsers

  • Microsoft’s browsers may have hit rock bottom

    Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge browsers may be near the bottom of their unprecedented crash in user share, measurements published Sunday show.

    Analytics vendor Net Applications reported that the user share of IE and Edge — an estimate of the proportion of the world’s personal computer owners who ran those browsers — dropped by seven-tenths of a percentage point in December, falling to a combined 26.2%.

    That seven-tenths of a point decline was notable because it was less than half that of the browsers’ average monthly reductions over the last 12, six and three months, which were 1.9, 1.8 and 1.5 points, respectively. The slowly-shrinking averages over the three different spans supported the idea that IE and Edge may be reaching rock bottom.

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla Welcomes Ashley Boyd, VP of Advocacy

      Ashley was most recently Vice President & Chief Field Officer for MomsRising, a national grassroots organization in the U.S. As a founding staff member, she was instrumental in building MomsRising into an organization of one million grassroots supporters, 200 partner organizations and over 20 funding partners.

    • Mozilla Gets Strong Early Marks for Firefox Focus Privacy Protection

      Are you concerned about the amount of tracking you seem to experience online? Mozilla knows that a lot of people are, and we recently reported on a potential solution to the issue for iPhone users. Mozilla has launched a browser for iOS users that offers security features that block unwanted trackers.The new browser, called Firefox Focus, secures the users’ privacy by blocking web trackers, including analytics, social, and advertising trackers.

      Mozilla is taking the stance that many users are losing control of their digital lives and seeing their privacy compromised. Now, early reviews of Firefox Focus are rolling in, and they are quite positive.

    • Jamey Sharp On Whether You Should Translate Your Code To Rust

      Often times whenever mentioning a new security vulnerability in any piece of open-source/Linux software, it generally gets brought up in our forums “they should write that software in Rust” or similar comments about how XYZ project should see a rewrite in Rust for its memory-safety features. But is it really worthwhile porting your codebase to Rust?

      Jamey Sharp, the long-time open-source developer known for his X.Org contributions and recently developing Corrode as a way to translate C code into Rust code, has written a lengthy blog post about the subject of whether it’s worth it to translate — and hopefully with somewhat automated assistance of Corrode — push your project into Rustlang.

• Public Services/Government

  • GDS pushes open source code to software stage

    Programme will involve selecting code to develop to software in effort to promote reusability

    The Government Digital Service (GDS) has begun to shift its work on open source towards producing more software rather than simply releasing code.

    [...]

    The Government recently stepped up its involvement in the international open source community in signing up to the Paris Declaration as part of the Open Government Partnership. This commits it to promoting the transparency and accountability of the relevant code and algorithms “wherever possible and appropriate”.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Are ‘open source’ seeds necessary for a resilient food system?

    Frank Morton has been breeding lettuce since the 1980s. His company offers 114 varieties, among them Outredgeous, which last year became the first plant that NASA astronauts grew and ate in space.

    For nearly 20 years, Morton’s work was limited only by his imagination and by how many kinds of lettuce he could get his hands on.

    But in the early 2000s, he started noticing more lettuces were patented, meaning he would not be able to use them for breeding. The patents weren’t just for types of lettuce, but specific traits such as resistance to a disease, a particular shade of red or green, or curliness of the leaf.

  • Open Hardware/Modding

    • RooBee One Open Source SLA/DLP 3D Printer

      Aldric Negrier, a Portuguese Maker and owner of RepRap Algarve, has unveiled a new SLA/DLP 3D printer he has created in the form of the RooBee One.

      Watch the demonstration video below to learn more about the new 3D printer which has been constructed using an aluminium frame that offers an adjustable build volume from 80 x 60 x 200 mm up to a maximum 150 x 105 x 200mm

• Standards/Consortia

  • ZigBee’s Dotdot language is the latest bid for IoT harmony

    As consumers watch another wave of home IoT devices emerge from CES this week, they’ll still be waiting for one technology that can make all those products work together.

    The ZigBee Alliance, a group of more than 400 companies that make things with the ZigBee wireless protocol, made a bid to provide that unifying technology right before the annual consumer electronics gathering kicks off.

    On Tuesday, ZigBee announced Dotdot, which it calls a universal language for IoT. Even though ZigBee is best known as an open wireless communications protocol used in many home IoT products, Dotdot is intended for use with any wireless technology. It defines things like how devices tell each other what they are and what they can do, which is important for making different objects around a home do things together.

Leftovers

• Family Sues Apple for Not Making Thing It Patented

  A lawsuit filed against Apple this week argues that, by not actually making a product that it patented, the company is partly responsible for an automobile accident. According to Jalopnik, James and Bethany Modisette are suing the tech company after a car crash two years ago that killed one of their daughters and injured the rest of the family. The driver of the car who hit them had been using Apple’s FaceTime video chat at the time.

  The patent in question was first applied for in 2008, and describes “a lock-out mechanism to prevent operation of one or more functions of handheld computing devices by drivers when operating vehicles,” such as texting or video chatting.

• Apple’s FaceTime blamed for girl’s highway crash death in new lawsuit

  Apple, maker of the ever-popular iPhone, is being sued on allegations that its FaceTime app contributed to the highway death of a 5-year-old girl named Moriah Modisette. In Denton County, Texas, on Christmas Eve 2014, a man smashed into the Modisette family’s Toyota Camry as it stopped in traffic on southbound Interstate 35W. Police say that the driver was using the FaceTime application and never saw the brake lights ahead of him. In addition to the tragedy, father James, mother Bethany, and daughter Isabella all suffered non-fatal injuries during the crash two years ago.

• A Christmas Wish (List) Gone Wrong

  My wife’s family are nice people. They’ve kind of gotten used to me hanging around. It’s been over a quarter century, I guess you can eventually get used to anything.

  My sister-in-law, DR, and her family always get me a gift at Christmas. It’s usually something practical and clearly well-intended, if not something I’d pick out for myself.

  This year, DR’s seven-year-old twins are really excited about the present I’m getting this year. It’s a big box. It’s heavy. And they tell me I’m going to love it. They’re quite sure of this. I’ve had a few more Christmases than those two, so I’m not quite as excited. But they’ve gone into this frenzy of anticipation, so I let them help me rip the paper off.

• Hardware

  • Intel Rolls Out Kaby Lake Desktop CPUs, Linux Results Later

    While there is a range of Windows-based reviews for the Core i7 7700K on the web this morning, unfortunately, no Linux results yet… Intel’s PR hasn’t been too helpful when it comes to Linux

• Health/Nutrition

  • Japan Copes with the Disappearing Eel

    One hot evening last July, I visited the Michelin-starred unagi, or eel, restaurant Nodaiwa, which sits in a quiet basement beneath Tokyo’s glamorous Ginza shopping district. Next door is the world’s most famous sushi restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro, which was the subject of a documentary from 2012 called “Jiro Dreams of Sushi.” The restaurant is now so famous that a sign, written in English, sits outside its entrance, asking visitors not to take photographs.

    In recent years, less benign developments have forced Nodaiwa to place a sign at its entrance as well. Whenever I visit, I count myself lucky to find the following message written on it, in Japanese: “Today we have natural Japanese eel.”

• Security

  • Android, Debian & Ubuntu Top List Of CVE Vulnerabilities In 2016[Ed: while Microsoft lies]

    On a CVE basis for the number of distinct vulnerabilities, Android is ranked as having the most vulnerability of any piece of software for 2016 followed by Debian and Ubuntu Linux while coming in behind them is the Adobe Flash Player.

    The CVEDetails.com tracking service has compiled a list of software with the most active CVEs. The list isn’t limited to just operating systems but all software with Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures.

  • Using systemd for more secure services in Fedora

    The AF_PACKET local privilege escalation (also known as CVE-2016-8655) has been fixed by most distributions at this point; stable kernels addressing the problem were released on December 10. But, as a discussion on the fedora-devel mailing list shows, systemd now provides options that could help mitigate CVE-2016-8655 and, more importantly, other vulnerabilities that remain undiscovered or have yet to be introduced. The genesis for the discussion was a blog post from Lennart Poettering about the RestrictAddressFamilies directive, but recent systemd versions have other sandboxing features that could be used to head off the next vulnerability.

    Fedora project leader Matthew Miller noted the blog post and wondered if the RestrictAddressFamilies directive could be more widely applied in Fedora. That directive allows administrators to restrict access to the network address families a service can use. For example, most services do not require the raw packet access that AF_PACKET provides, so turning off access to that will harden those services to some extent. But Miller was also curious if there were other systemd security features that the distribution should be taking advantage of.

  • Tuesday’s security updates

  • Musl 1.1.16 Released, Fixes CVE Integer Overflow, s390x Support

    A new version of the musl libc standard library is available for those interested in this lightweight alternative to glibc and others.

    Musl 1.1.16 was released to fix CVE-2016-8859, an under-allocation bug in regexec with an integer overflow. Besides this CVE, Musl 1.1.16 improves overflow handling as part of it and has also made other noteworthy bug fixes.

  • musl 1.1.16 release

  • Looks like you have a bad case of embedded libraries

    A long time ago pretty much every application and library carried around its own copy of zlib. zlib is a library that does really fast and really good compression and decompression. If you’re storing data or transmitting data, it’s very likely this library is in use. It’s easy to use and is public domain. It’s no surprise it became the industry standard.

  • Deprecation of Insecure Algorithms and Protocols in RHEL 6.9

    Cryptographic protocols and algorithms have a limited lifetime—much like everything else in technology. Algorithms that provide cryptographic hashes and encryption as well as cryptographic protocols have a lifetime after which they are considered either too risky to use or plain insecure. In this post, we will describe the changes planned for the 6.9 release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, which is already on Production Phase 2.

  • lecture: Million Dollar Dissidents and the Rest of Us [Ed: video]

    In August 2016, Apple issued updates to iOS and macOS that patched three zero-day vulnerabilities that were being exploited in the wild to remotely install persistent malcode on a target’s device if they tapped on a specially crafted link. We linked the vulnerabilities and malcode to US-owned, Israel-based NSO Group, a government-exclusive surveillance vendor described by one of its founders as “a complete ghost”.

    Apple’s updates were the latest chapter in a yearlong investigation by Citizen Lab into a UAE-based threat actor targeting critics of the UAE at home and around the world. In this talk, we will explain how Citizen Lab discovered and tracked this threat actor, and uncovered the first publicly-reported iOS remote jailbreak used in the wild for mobile espionage. Using the NSO case, we will detail some of the tools and techniques we use to track these groups, and how they try to avoid detection and scrutiny. This investigation is Citizen Lab’s latest expose into the abuse of commercial “lawful intercept” malcode.

  • Class Breaks

    There’s a concept from computer security known as a class break. It’s a particular security vulnerability that breaks not just one system, but an entire class of systems. Examples might be a vulnerability in a particular operating system that allows an attacker to take remote control of every computer that runs on that system’s software. Or a vulnerability in Internet-enabled digital video recorders and webcams that allow an attacker to recruit those devices into a massive botnet.

    It’s a particular way computer systems can fail, exacerbated by the characteristics of computers and software. It only takes one smart person to figure out how to attack the system. Once he does that, he can write software that automates his attack. He can do it over the Internet, so he doesn’t have to be near his victim. He can automate his attack so it works while he sleeps. And then he can pass the ability to someone­ — or to lots of people — ­without the skill. This changes the nature of security failures, and completely upends how we need to defend against them.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Far-right Israeli minister plans bill to annex one of biggest settlements

    The far-right Israeli education minister, Naftali Bennett, has vowed to introduce a bill this month to formally annex Maale Adumim, one of Israel’s largest settlement blocks in the occupied Palestinian territories.

    In remarks made at a museum in the city of 40,000 located outside Jerusalem, Bennett said: “After being here for 50 years, the time has come to end military rule.”

    The hardline leader of the Jewish Home party also made clear that he saw the annexation of Maale Adumim as a first step in annexing all of “area C”, the part of the occupied territories still under full Israeli control.

    “For this reason,” said Bennett, “by the end of the month, we will submit the bill for applying [Israeli] law to Judea and Samaria [the name used by Israelis for the occupied territories] and will embark on a new path. We will present to the cabinet a bill for applying Israeli law in Maale Adumim.”

  • Whether Or Not You Believe Russia Interfered In The Election, We Should All Be Worried About Escalation Based On Secret Info

    So, we just wrote about Obama administration’s tepid response to claims that Russians “interfered” with the Presidential election. In that post, we noted our concerns about the fact that we seem to be escalating a situation based on claims where we’re not allowed to see any of the actual evidence. I’ve seen a bunch of people arguing that anyone who won’t automatically accept that Russia interfered in the election should be dubbed either Putin supporters or, at the very least, “useful idiots” but we should be very, very careful about where this leads. I certainly think that there’s a tremendous possibility that Russian forces did intend to interfere with our election, but I’d certainly like to see some actual evidence — and the “evidence” provided so far shows no such thing.

    And this should scare you. Not because it means that anyone is lying, but because it’s setting the stage for very dangerous things. If we’re setting the precedent that the US government can escalate situations based on purely secret knowledge, what’s to stop them from doing so over and over again? Put another way: for those who dislike Trump, but are happy about the White House calling out and sanctioning Russia, how will you feel when President Trump makes similar claims about some other country (perhaps one blocking a new Trump hotel?), and proceeds to issue US government sanctions on that country — but without releasing any actual evidence of wrongdoing beyond “government agencies say they did bad things.” Won’t that be concerning too?

    Matt Taibbi, over at Rolling Stone, has an excellent article comparing this to when we started the war in Iraq — noting the similarities, in that the government (and the press) kept insisting that because certain government agencies said something (“Iraq has WMDs”), it must be true…

  • Leaked audio: Obama wanted ISIS to grow

    As President Obama reflects on his legacy, a recording of Secretary of State John Kerry conversing with leaders of Syrian opposition groups is casting more light on his approach to ISIS, indicating his administration believed that allowing the Islamic State to grow would serve the White House’s objective of ousting Syrian President Bashar Assad.

  • Russian government hackers do not appear to have targeted Vermont utility, say people close to investigation

    As federal officials investigate suspicious Internet activity found last week on a Vermont utility computer, they are finding evidence that the incident is not linked to any Russian government effort to target or hack the utility, according to experts and officials close to the investigation.

    An employee at Burlington Electric Department was checking his Yahoo email account Friday and triggered an alert indicating that his computer had connected to a suspicious IP address associated by authorities with the Russian hacking operation that infiltrated the Democratic Party. Officials told the company that traffic with this particular address is found elsewhere in the country and is not unique to Burlington Electric, suggesting the company wasn’t being targeted by the Russians. Indeed, officials say it is possible that the traffic is benign, since this particular IP address is not always connected to malicious activity.

  • Washington Post Falsely Claims Russia Hacked Vermont Utility, Because OMG RUSSIANS!

    When a mainstream press that isn’t always good at what it does meets technology it doesn’t understand, the end result is often frustrating, if not comedic. Hacking is certainly no exception, given it’s a realm where perpetrators are difficult to identify, hard proof is often impossible to come by, and hackers worth their salt either leave false footprints — or no footprints at all. Throw in a press that’s incapable of identifying and avoiding its own nationalism, and often all-too-gullible to intelligence industry influence, and you’ve got a fairly solid recipe for dysfunction when it comes to hacking-related news coverage.

    Some of the resulting coverage has been highly entertaining — such as CNN using a screen shot from the popular game Fallout 4 in a story about hacking and hoping nobody would notice. Other examples have been decidedly more troubling, such as the Washington Post’s epic face plant over the holiday break.

• Finance

  • Finland trials basic income for unemployed

    Finland has become the first country in Europe to pay its unemployed citizens a basic monthly income, amounting to €560 (£477/US$587), in a unique social experiment that is hoped to cut government red tape, reduce poverty and boost employment.

    Olli Kangas from the Finnish government agency KELA, which is responsible for the country’s social benefits, said on Monday that the two-year trial with 2,000 randomly picked citizens receiving unemployment benefits began on 1 January.

  • Trump Still Falsely Taking Credit For Sprint Jobs He Had Nothing To Do With

    Last month, we noted how Donald Trump proudly implied he was single-handedly responsible for Japan’s Softbank bringing 50,000 jobs and $50 billion in investment to the United States. The problem, of course, is that it’s not clear those numbers are entirely real, and there’s absolutely no evidence suggesting they had anything to do with Donald Trump. The jobs were first unveiled back in October as part of a somewhat ambiguous $100 billion global investment investment fund between Softbank and Saudi Arabia aimed at boosting technology spending worldwide.

  • Ambassador to EU quits and warns staff over ‘muddled thinking’

    Britain’s ambassador to the European Union Sir Ivan Rogers dealt a blow to the UK’s Brexit negotiations by quitting and urging his fellow British civil servants in Brussels to assert their independence by challenging “ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking”.

    Sir Ivan Rogers said, in an email explaining his reasons for his abrupt departure to the UK’s Brussels diplomatic staff at UKRep, that he was leaving now to give time for his successor to take charge of the lengthy negotiations process which starts in March. But he also made it clear that he had been frustrated by politicians who disliked his warnings about the potential pitfalls in the Brexit process.

    He also revealed that the basic structure of the UK Brexit negotiating team had not yet been resolved, let alone a negotiating strategy.

  • The meaning of Brexit

    “Brexit means Brexit” has quickly passed from a convenient political slogan to something approaching a national joke.

    Any discussion of the meaning of Brexit is haunted by what is now a stock catchphrase.

    Like a game show host, one only has to ask what Brexit means to get the Pavlovian, chucklesome response of “Brexit means Brexit”.

  • The resignation of Sir Ivan Rogers

    The announcement today of the resignation of Sir Ivan Rogers as the UK’s ambassador to the EU is significant.

    Coming just weeks before the planned Article 50 notification, the resignation is a setback on any sensible view.

    During the run up to the notification, when the government (we are told) is finalising its negotiation strategy, the UK is likely not to have a lead negotiator in place in Brussels, let alone one helping shape the Brexit strategy.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • WikiLeaks’ Assange: Our Source Is Not the Russian Gov’t — They Are Trying to Delegitimize Trump

    In an interview with Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, WikLeaks founder Julian Assange doubled down on a claim he had made last month on Hannity’s radio show, which was the Russian government nor any state party of Russia were the source of hacks that exposed thousands of confidential Democratic Party emails.

    “We can say – we have said repeatedly over the last two months, our source is not the Russian government and it is not the state party,” Assange said.

  • Congressman Goodlatte Decides To Refill The Swamp By Gutting Congressional Ethics Office… But Drops It After Bad Publicity

    Well, we’re into a new year, and the promised “swamp draining” in Washington DC continues to move in the other direction. Rep. Bob Goodlatte (whose name you may remember from the fact that he’s leading the charge on copyright reform (but who has a history of being terrible on copyright), or perhaps from the fact that he’s also bad on surveillance) has made the surprise move of completely gutting the Office of Congressional Ethics, and basically taking away its independence from Congress.

  • Ex-MI6 boss warns over electronic voting risk

    The former head of MI6 has warned against adopting electronic voting systems owing to fears about international cyber warfare.

    Sir John Sawers told the BBC that casting a ballot with pencil and paper was “actually much more secure”.

    He warned: “The more things that go online, the more susceptible you are to cyber attacks.”

    But campaigners for electronic voting said there was “no evidence” it was more open to fraud.

    Electronic voting allows people to make their choices via a computer or smartphone, instead of people having to go to a polling station.

  • Ford’s US Expansion Is a Victory for Trump’s Trolling Tactics

    President-elect Trump and green jobs advocates rarely find themselves on the same side. Today is an exception. All it seems to have taken was a little trolling.

    Ford Motor Company said this morning that it’s spending $700 million to expand its Flat Rock, Michigan, plant to develop a new generation of electric and autonomous vehicles. The expansion will add 700 production jobs, according to the company’s official announcement.

  • Schumer: Trump ‘really dumb’ for attacking intelligence agencies

    New Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump is “being really dumb” by taking on the Intelligence Community and its assessments on Russia’s cyber activities.

    “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

    “So even for a practical supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.”

  • House GOP scraps plan to gut ethics watchdog after emergency meeting

    House Republicans abruptly withdrew a proposal to weaken an independent ethics watchdog on Tuesday, in a rocky start to the new Congress.

    The 115th session hadn’t even formally gaveled in before House GOP leaders held an emergency conference meeting to discuss blowback against the party’s vote to gut the chamber’s independent ethics watchdog.

    The reversal of course came hours after President-elect Donald Trump issued a series of tweets questioning the timing of the changes, which would put the independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) under oversight of the House Ethics Committee.

    Even before Trump weighed in, a barrage of negative headlines and public outcry made it difficult for Republicans to stand by the measure, especially given that the Republican president-elect had campaigned on a promise to “drain the swamp” of Washington, D.C., of corruption.

    “We shot ourselves in the foot,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) told reporters after the conference meeting.

  • Welcome to the One-Party State

    Republicans control the House, Senate, and presidency. It’s time we start calling this what it is.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • New year, same old censorship issues for Facebook

    Just a couple of days into the new year, Facebook has already apologized for censorship — it blocked a photo of a nude statue of Neptune, the sea god.

    It was a mistake for the social network to tell an Italian art historian that the image of the statue was “explicitly sexual” and “excessively shows the body or unnecessarily concentrates on body parts,” the company said in a statement to Mashable.

  • Tackle Internet censorship directly — not through antitrust law

    Sewlyn Duke’s recent op-ed for The Hill, “Antitrust should be used to break up partisan tech giants like Facebook, Google,” addresses the serious problem of how a few privately owned internet companies have unprecedented control over the distribution of information.

    As Jeffrey Rosen has noted, “lawyers at Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twit­ter have more power over who can speak and who can be heard than any president, judge, or monarch.”

    However, using antitrust laws to address this would be ineffective and likely illegal without new legislation.

  • Facebook Is Sorry for Taking Down a Photo of a Nude Neptune Statue

    Facebook has apologized for mistakenly blocking a photo of a famous statue for being “sexually explicit.”

    The social media giant flagged a photograph of a 16th-century statue of the sea god Neptune in the Italian city of Bologna, Mashable reported. The picture of the sculpture—which was created in the 1560s—was featured on the Facebook page of local writer and art historian Elisa Barbari called “Stories, curiosities and view of Bologna.”

  • Delete Everything! Torch Your Facebook Account and Walk Away

    Hoo, boy. It’s a world-eating tech company that arguably threatens a free press and a democratic society in the U.S. and wants to fly laser drones over developing countries. Run by a founder who is at turns both ruthless and clueless in a way that would be funny if it weren’t also terrifying. Gave shit-poster supporter Palmer Luckey $2 billion. Many, very bad media companies wouldn’t exist without it. Jokes about it being the place where all your racist classmates from high school hang out are well-trodden territory, but, you know, also true? Changing the color of your profile pic to support [FILL IN THE BLANK]. “Maybe” attending events. Trending topics. Untagging yourself.

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • Mark Zuckerberg’s 2017 plan to visit all US states hints at political ambitions

    Mark Zuckerberg has given more weight to the idea that he could move into politics with the announcement of a statesmanly personal challenge for 2017.

    In previous years the Facebook CEO has learned Mandarin, pledged to run at least a mile each day and built a virtual assistant called Jarvis to control his home. This year he wants to have visited and met people in every state in the US. He’s already visited about 20 states, which means he has to travel to about 30 states by the end of the year.

    “After a tumultuous last year, my hope for this challenge is to get out and talk to more people about how they’re living, working and thinking about the future,” he said in a Facebook post announcing the challenge.

    “For decades, technology and globalization have made us more productive and connected. This has created many benefits, but for a lot of people it has also made life more challenging. This has contributed to a greater sense of division than I have felt in my lifetime. We need to find a way to change the game so it works for everyone.”

  • The Real Name Fallacy

    People often say that online behavior would improve if every comment system forced people to use their real names. It sounds like it should be true – surely nobody would say mean things if they faced consequences for their actions?

    Yet the balance of experimental evidence over the past thirty years suggests that this is not the case. Not only would removing anonymity fail to consistently improve online community behavior – forcing real names in online communities could also increase discrimination and worsen harassment.

    We need to change our entire approach to the question. Our concerns about anonymity are overly-simplistic; system design can’t solve social problems without actual social change.

  • Facebook buys data on users’ offline habits for better ads

    At this point, it’s well-known that Facebook is as much an advertising company as it is a social network. The company is probably second only to Google in the data it collects on users, but the info we all share on the Facebook site just isn’t enough. A report from ProPublica published this week digs into the vast network of third-party data that Facebook can purchase to fill out what it knows about its users. The fact that Facebook is buying data on its users isn’t new — the company first signed a deal with data broker Datalogix in 2012 — but ProPublica’s report nonetheless contains a lot of info on the visibility Facebook may have into your life.

    Currently, Facebook works with six data partners in the US: Acxiom, Epsilon, Experian, Oracle Data Cloud, TransUnion and WPP. For the most part, these providers deal in financial info; ProPublica notes that the categories coming from these sources include things like “total liquid investible assets $1-$24,999,” “People in households that have an estimated household income of between $100K and $125K and “Individuals that are frequent transactor at lower cost department or dollar stores.” Specifically, the report notes that this data is focused on Facebook users’ offline behavior, not just what they do online.

  • Build your own NSA [Ed: video]

    When thinking about surveillance, everyone worries about government agencies like the NSA and big corporations like Google and Facebook. But actually there are hundreds of companies that have also discovered data collection as a revenue source. We decided to do an experiment: Using simple social engineering techniques, we tried to get the most personal you may have in your procession.

    When thinking about surveillance, everyone worries about government agencies like the NSA and big corporations like Google and Facebook. But actually there are hundreds of companies that have also discovered data collection as a revenue source. Companies which are quite big, with thousands of employees but names you maybe never heard of. They all try to get their hands on your personal data, often with illegal methods. Most of them keep their data to themselves, some exchange it, but a few sell it to anyone who’s willing to pay.

  • Malcolm Gladwell’s Ridiculous Attack On Ed Snowden Based On Weird Prejudice About How A Whistleblower Should Look

    There was a time when I was a fan of Malcolm Gladwell. He’s an astoundingly good story teller, and a great writer. But he’s also got a pretty long history of… just being wrong. Over the years, Gladwell’s willingness to go for the good story over the facts has become increasingly clear. Famously, Steven Pinker ripped Gladwell’s serial problems many years ago, but it hasn’t really stopped Gladwell since then. If you’ve ever quoted “the 10,000 hour rule” or suggested that someone can become an expert in something if they just spend 10,000 hours doing it, you’ve been fooled by Gladwell. Even the guy whose one study Gladwell based the idea on loudly debunked the claim, and just this past year put out his own book that is basically trying to rectify the false beliefs that have spread around the globe from people believing Gladwell’s incorrect spin.

    So, suffice it to say I was already skeptical of Gladwell’s recent piece attacking Ed Snowden as not being a “real” whistleblower. But the piece is much, much worse than even I expected. The short, Gladwellian-style summary of it might be: real whistleblowers have to look the part, and they need to be part of an Ivy League elite, with clear, noble reasons behind what they did. Here’s how Gladwell describes Daniel Ellsberg, the guy who leaked the Pentagon Papers, and to whom Gladwell has given his stamp of approval as a “Real Whistleblower™”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • UN expert on extreme poverty and human rights to visit Saudi Arabia

    United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, will undertake an official visit to Saudi Arabia from 8 to 19 January 2017 to consider the Saudi Government’s efforts to eradicate poverty and how such efforts relate to its international human rights obligations.

    “Saudi Arabia is a rich country in many respects, but as in all countries, challenges relating to poverty still exist,” noted the independent expert designated by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor, report and advise on extreme poverty and human rights.

  • The Unbelievers: Muslims who leave Islam

    When Sadia left her faith at 15, she faced abandonment, now she lives a life completely detached from her childhood. Jessica Langton reports

  • Most imams in France (and Belgium) forbid greetings at Christmas and New Year

    Most imams in France (and Belgium) forbid the faithful from celebrating Christmas and the New Year and call on Muslims not to extend holidays greetings. This is what French imam Hocine Drouiche wrote on his Facebook page. He is one of the most open-minded French Muslim clerics opposed to extremism. A tireless promoter and supporter of dialogue between different faiths, he condemns those who repeat the “mantra” that Islam is a religion of peace but then consider expressing season’s greetings “as an insult” because “this is not our religion.”

    For him, the Islam professed by these imams, who are the majority in France, in Belgium, and in many other countries, “is not a true Islam of peace and shared life”. Qurʾānic schools in the West are places that extol political Islam based on jihad and hatred of the “enemies.” Fortunately, there are also “open-minded Muslims, who greet you with a big smile and wish you a Happy New Year.”

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • CloudFlare Gets Caught Out By 2016 Leap Second

    The leap second caused CloudFlare’s RRDNS software to “panic,” but the error was quickly identified

    The extra leap second added on to the end of 2016 may not have had an effect on most people, but it did catch out a few web companies who failed to factor it in.

    Web services and security firm CloudFlare was one such example. A small number of its servers went down at midnight UTC on New Year’s Day due to an error in its RRDNS software, a domain name service (DNS) proxy that was written to help scale CloudFlare’s DNS infrastructure, which limited web access for some of its customers.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Our Unfortunate Annual Tradition: A Look At What Should Have Entered The Public Domain, But Didn’t

      Each year, at the beginning of January, we have the unfortunate job of highlighting the works that were supposed to be entering the public domain on January 1st, but didn’t (in the US at least) thanks to retroactive copyright term extension. As we’ve noted, copyright term extension makes absolutely no sense if you understand the supposed purpose of copyright. Remember, the idea behind copyright is that it is supposed to be an important incentive to get people to create a work. And the deal is that in exchange for creating the work, the copyright holder (who may not be the creator…) is given an exclusive monopoly on certain elements of that work for a set period of time, after which it goes into the public domain. That means that any work created under an old regime had enough incentive to be created. Retroactively extending the copyright makes no sense. The work was already created. It needs no greater incentive. The only thing it serves to do is to take away works from the public domain that the public was promised in exchange for the original copyright holder’s monopoly. It’s a disgrace.

    • Rightscorp Rings In The New Year By Vowing To Find New Ways To Lose Money In 2017

      Rightscorp is doing some aggressive whistling in the dark. The company that thought it could tackle piracy with threatening letters, threatening robocalls, and suing ISPs for contributory infringement has been bleeding money since its inception.

      By the middle of 2015, Rightscorp’s letter-writing campaign to torrenters had led to nothing resembling a viable business model.

    • Research: Piracy ‘Warnings’ Fail to Boost Box Office Revenues

      A new academic study shows that graduated response policies against file-sharers fail to boost box office revenues. The empirical research, which looked at the effects in various countries including the United States, suggests that these anti-piracy measures are not as effective as the movie studios had hoped.

Summary: Nokia’s saber-rattling (and now lawsuits) against Apple are a worrying sign of what’s to come, impacting Android OEMs as well as Apple, which is why the post-Microsoft Nokia is dangerous

TAKING advantage of USPTO-granted patents (for the most part), Nokia started a patent war against Apple just before Christmas [1, 2] and many journalists/pundits were already on holiday, so they did not have a chance to comment. Maybe this was Nokia’s intention as the timing of the press release was at the very least suspicious. Few were even around to cover the followup action, for instance, this complaint that got covered by Matthias Verbergt who said “Nokia Corp. said Thursday [two days before Christmas] it has filed additional complaints against Apple Inc., alleging the iPhone maker has infringed 40 of its patents.” Florian Müller said “Nokia suing Apple over 40 patents in 11 countries” (yes eleven!).

“Nokia is a European company, so there is a concern here that US culture of litigation is spreading to Europe already (the UPC would make a trolling culture even more prevalent if it ever became a reality).”When Nokia/trolls pick on the industry of mobile phones everybody loses, not just Apple. Android too tends to be affected, sooner if not later (than Apple). Nokia is a European company, so there is a concern here that US culture of litigation is spreading to Europe already (the UPC would make a trolling culture even more prevalent if it ever became a reality).

Florian Müller told me that “during the Apple v. Nokia antitrust lawsuit in California” some interesting information is likely to surface. “With Conversant,” he explained, “formerly known as Mosaid, being one of the defendants, I guess MSFT’s involvement will be at issue and MSFT witnesses will be deposed.”

As a reminder, MOSAID received patents from Nokia, at Microsoft’s instruction. This may become very relevant a piece of evidence at a trial/antitrust probe.

“Android too tends to be affected, sooner if not later (than Apple).”“Nokia Is Playing With Fire With Its Patent Infringement Case Against Apple,” one report explained, and another said “Apple and Nokia Could Each Score Victories as Their Patent Battle Unfolds” (usually only the lawyers win in such scenarios). Android sites rightly treat this as Android news because if Apple loses, then expect Nokia to go after Android OEMs too. The latest developments were barely (if at all) covered by the media, probably just as Nokia had hoped. There are now several articles about this in English alone, but if it didn’t happen shortly before Christmas, we’d expect hundreds of reports if not thousands. Matt Levy wrote a poem about this and today (Boxing Day) Müller said that “Nokia’s litigation tactics and privateering ways are, without a doubt, vexatious. So I couldn’t disagree with Apple if it made the case that it’s just not reasonably acceptable for Apple to have to do “business as usual” with a Nokia subsidiary under the present circumstances.”

“Apple should invoke Alice,” Benjamin Henrion (FFII) wrote, “especially for H264 compression algorithms where captive patent courts still allows them…”

Henrion, a Belgian, is well aware of Nokia’s history of patent aggression — a subject we have been covering here since 2007. Take note of this news from Belgium that speaks of “85% tax deduction for qualifying income from patents, copyrighted software, breeders rights, orphan drugs and data or market exclusivity” (sounds like Patent Boxes, but not exactly the same).

“Henrion, a Belgian, is well aware of Nokia’s history of patent aggression — a subject we have been covering here since 2007.”Apple should definitely move to invalidate Nokia’s patents. All patents (there are 40 of them) should be susceptible to criticism, as examiners are not perfect and there are no flawless examinations. Incidentally, Patently-O has just written about “The “Right” to Challenge a Patent” in an antitrust context. “In his recent article,” it says, “Antitrust Economist (and lawyer) Erik Hovenkamp argues that the “right to challenge a patent” should also be an important consideration in antitrust analysis. Hovenkamp defines these “challenge rights” as “the (statutory) rights of third parties to challenge patents as invalid or uninfringed.” Antitrust comes into play when a license or settlement agreement includes challenge restraints that would contractually prevent the exercise of the challenge rights.”

Sounds very much applicable to the case above and as we have said from the very start, we hope that Apple will demolish those patents of Nokia, which might otherwise be asserted against Android OEMs (if this hasn’t been done in out-of-court settlements already). █

Nokia suing everyone… except Microsoft.

Summary: Few days before Christmas Nokia decides that the backlash from the media would be minimal enough to finally show its true colours and rear its ugly head again, putting a tax on phones that actually sell (unlike Nokia’s)

VERY LATE LAST NIGHT (as late as 2 AM) we wrote about a story which Nokia probably hoped the media would not notice/cover all that much (hence the timing/date in the year). Nokia is a patent troll now. “Meanwhile,” as this article puts it, “Apple has accused Nokia of using the ‘tactics of a patent troll’.” It’s not just about Apple as Nokia will go after Android OEMs next (if it hasn’t already).

It’s the ‘Microsoft effect’. The company likes turning other (usually vulnerable) companies into a pile of patents, weaponised against Microsoft’s rivals. There are many examples of that which we’ve covered here over the years.

“It’s the ‘Microsoft effect’. The company likes turning other (usually vulnerable) companies into a pile of patents, weaponised against Microsoft’s rivals.”We have already found about a hundred reports about this in English, in spite of Christmas absence of many reporters (even from large British publishers, US publishers and several people at IDG [1, 2]). The Finnish English-speaking media touches the subject and Wall Street media puts it behind a paywall. Tripp Mickle and Matthias Verbergt say that “Apple Inc. and Nokia Corp. ​filed competing lawsuits over intellectual property used in the iPhone and other Apple products.”

Worth seeing in this case is what Apple finds out about the network of trolls (typically shrouded in secrecy). With evidence admissible by the courts about the patent trolls of Nokia and Microsoft we can improve our information here (growingly extensive and occasionally praised by people who come here in order to understand cryptic trolls.). Florian Müller says “First court hearings in the new Nokia v. Apple dispute will most probably take place in Munich in a few months. I’ll probably go and listen.”

“We believe that the date of the press release was designed (or intended) to dodge negative press coverage.”He also quotes Apple’s spokesperson as saying that Nokia “is now using the tactics of a patent troll to attempt to extort money from Apple…”

He is “not mincing words anymore,” Müller adds, and someone from Finland agrees with him. Finns do not blindly support Nokia. We speak to some Finns who are extremely upset at Nokia. It’s a national embarrassment to some.

As for IAM, it thinks it’s favourable to have patent lawsuit from a troll-like Nokia, but it lacks a vital
disclosure; Nokia’s patent troll MOSAID (now called “Conversant”) has paid IAM, which recently did a lot of puff pieces for it. Maybe that’s just IAM’s business model…

IAM says “Apple is against patent owners doing what they want with their patents to maximise their value.”

Whose value? And to whose advantage? And at whose expense?

“Not sure how that helps R&D,” IAM says, but Benjamin Henrion has already responded to them by saying “that helps P&L [patents and litigation], not R&D.”

We believe that the date of the press release was designed (or intended) to dodge negative press coverage. █

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • 2017: The year Linux will reach 5% market share

    Ah, 2016. A year many of us would like to forget as quickly as possible. One way to make that happen is to hit the ground running in 2017. This is exactly what I believe open source will do.

    I can hear it already.

    “Doesn’t every open source pundit declare the coming year will be the years of Linux?”

    Certainly they do, and that won’t change from year to year. And 2017 will not see me backing down from such claim. However, I do believe the writing has become ever more clear on that massive wall of IT.

    Linux is a crucial player on almost every level now. How will that change in 2017? Will it ebb or flow? Let’s gaze into that crystal ball that I absolutely do not have and see what there is to see or not see. Some of these prognostications will tiptoe toward madness, while others will have you immediately nodding your head in agreement.

    Are you ready? Here we go.

  • How Linux got to be Linux: Test driving 1993-2003 distros

    A unique trait of open source is that it’s never truly EOL (End of Life). The disc images mostly remain online, and their licenses don’t expire, so going back and installing an old version of Linux in a virtual machine and getting a precise picture of what progress Linux has made over the years is relatively simple.

    We begin our journey with Slackware 1.01, posted to the comp.os.linux.announce newsgroup well over 20 years ago.

  • Download free Christmas Tux 2016 wallpaper for Linux

    A fan of Linux has created a beautiful Christmas Tux 2016 wallpaper that you can download for free. You can also get a couple of other Christmas Tux wallpapers from previous years, as well as some other gorgeous wallpapers from his wallpaper archive page.

• Server

  • IBM OpenWhisk Serverless Platform Now Generally Available

    IBM is pushing forward with its OpenWhisk platform, which enables what is commonly referred to today as a ‘serverless’ or event-driven approach to computing. IBM first opened up OpenWhisk as a beta in February and is now making the platform generally available.

• Kernel Space

  • OPAL Self-Encrypting Drive Support For Linux Steps Closer

    An Intel developer has sent out the latest version of his patches for implementing the Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) protocol support for the Linux kernel.

    The Opal storage specification sets a cross-vendor standard for self-encrypting drives and is the work of the Trusted Computing Group’s storage workgroup. Scott Bauer of Intel sent out his third version of these patches for implementing Opal for self-encrypting devices. The driver has support for storing the locking range password as well as activating a device from a SED’s default-inactive state.

  • Dell EMC to Join Open Source OpenSDS Project to Advance Storage Interoperability, Contribute Code

  • Ubuntu releases IoT consumer report, Qualcomm wants in on Google’s Android Things, and Dell EMC joins OpenSDS—SD Times news digest: Dec. 19, 2016

  • Dell EMC Joins The Linux Foundation in Focusing on Software-Defined Storage

    The folks at EMC always knew a thing or two about storage, and now that they are part of Dell EMC, new storage frontiers are taking shape. The Linux Foundation has just welcomed Dell EMC to the OpenSDS Project, which is focused on the very promising software-defined storage arena.

    The OpenSDS community is forming to address software-defined storage integration challenges with the goal of driving enterprise adoption of open standards. The Linux Foundation functions as the steward. As part of its support for the open source project, Dell EMC is also contributing its first project to OpenSDS, the CoprHD SouthBound SDK (SB SDK), to help promote storage interoperability and compatibility. The SB SDK allows developers to build drivers and other tools with the assurance that they will be compatible with a wide variety of enterprise-class storage products.

  • Dell EMC joins The Linux Foundation’s OpenSDS Project

  • SDN Vendor PLUMgrid is No More; Some Assets Acquired by VMware

    The first time I wrote on PLUMgrid was June 2013, when the company emerged from stealth with $10.7 million in funding and a dream to enable the Software Defined Networking (SDN) market. Three and a half years later, that dreams is dead as Plumgrid is gone with some of its assets and employees joining VMware.

  • Linux & Open Source News Of The Week — “Biggest Ever” Linux Kernel 4.9, Ubuntu Bug, And Mint 18.1

  • Graphics Stack

    • Nintendo’s Switch Game Console Is Vulkan & OpenGL Conformant

      Since Nintendo’s Switch game console launch powered by the NVIDIA Tegra we have suspected they were making use of Vulkan as the graphics API, particularly with Nintendo joining The Khronos Group, now it’s been pretty much firmed up.

      The Nintendo Switch has been certified as a Vulkan 1.0 conformant implementation by The Khronos Group. Over on Khronos.org is now public confirmation with the Nintendo Switch currently being listed as the newest certified Vulkan product. The OS is listed as “Nintendo OS” and it passes the Vulkan 1.0.1.0 CTS.

    • AMD’s ROCm 1.4 Now Available With OpenCL Support

      The Radeon Open Compute platform has been updated and quietly released prior to the weekend. The ROCm 1.4 release comes with preliminary OpenCL support.

    • Libav Now Supports VA-API HEVC Accelerated Decoding

    • Reworked Touchpad Acceleration For Libinput: No Longer Terrible

      Peter Hutterer has an early Christmas present for users of libinput on mobile devices with touchpads: much-improved touchpad acceleration.

      The Red Hat input developer explained, “This patchset is a cleanup and revamp of the touchpad acceleration code. It doesn’t give us perfect acceleration, but it goes from the current rather abysimal state to one that should at least be good enough most of the time…he first 10 patches separate the touchpad code from the mouse acceleration code and switch it to use mm/s as base velocity unit (rather than the current 1000dpi-mouse-equivalency units). 11 is the main change that changes the acceleration pattern, mostly to start accelerating at a lot higher finger speed (found mostly by trial and error).”

    • VC4 Stepping Closer To Feature Parity With Original Raspberry Pi Driver

      The open-source VC4 driver stack with DRM/KMS driver and Gallium3D driver for the Raspberry Pi hardware continues stepping closer to feature parity with the original binary blob graphics driver, particularly when it comes to mode-setting related functionality.

      Broadcom developer Eric Anholt wrote a new blog post today concerning the latest improvements on the VC4 front. Recent highlights include pulling the VEC SDTV support into the Linux 4.10 kernel on top of the other VC4 DRM 4.10 changes, DSI panel support is finally working after nine months of development, and more. The DSI driver along with related work should come for Linux 4.11 along with other improvements. Work is also ongoing for getting the HDMI audio code working as well as VC4 driver interoperability with media decoding.

    • AMD Publishes “Polaris 12″ Support For AMDGPU+RadeonSI Linux Driver

      Patches were published today for supporting “Polaris 12″ graphics cards within the AMDGPU DRM kernel driver on Linux.

    • libinput touchpad pointer acceleration analysis

      A long-standing criticism of libinput is it’s touchpad acceleration code, oscillating somewhere between “terrible”, “this is bad and you should feel bad” and “I can’t complain because I keep missing the bloody send button”. I finally found the time and some more laptops to sit down and figure out what’s going on.

    • xf86-input-synaptics is not a Synaptics, Inc. driver

      This is a common source of confusion: the legacy X.Org driver for touchpads is called xf86-input-synaptics but it is not a driver written by Synaptics, Inc. (the company).

  • Benchmarks

    • The Power Efficiency From A Radeon HD 4890 Through The RX 480 & R9 Fury

      This past weekend I published a number of year-end 2016 AMD Linux benchmarks on a wide-range of AMD GPUs going back many generations while using the Linux 4.9 kernel on Ubuntu along with the Mesa 13.1-development code for having the newest open-source Gallium3D drivers. Those results were very interesting and go check them out now if you haven’t done so already. For this article is a sub-set of those tests carried out again while monitoring the AC power consumption, GPU temperature, and CPU utilization while also automatically calculating the performance-per-Watt.

    • Btrfs Mount Option Benchmarks With The Linux 4.9 Kernel

      Following last week’s Btrfs / EXT4 / XFS / F2FS benchmarks using the Linux 4.6 through 4.9 kernels, some requests came in for doing some fresh Btrfs mount option comparison benchmarks. Thus for your viewing pleasure ahead of the holidays are some Btrfs mount option tests with the Linux 4.9 kernel.

• Applications

  • Tor 0.2.9 Rolls Out with New Shared-Randomness Protocol, Single Onion Services

  • What’s new in Tor 0.2.9.8?

    Today, we’ve released the first stable version of the 0.2.9.x series, bringing exciting new features to Tor. The series has seen 1406 commits from 32 different contributors. Please, see the ChangeLog for more details about what has been done.

    This post will outline three features (among many other things) that we are quite proud of and want to describe in more detail.

  • NetworkManager 1.6 to Support Discovery and Configuration of Web Proxy Settings

    While most of us are currently preparing to upgrade our GNU/Linux distributions to the recently released NetworkManager 1.4.4 stable build, the development team continues to work on the next major version, NetworkManager 1.6.

  • The Last Beta of Kodi 17 “Krypton” Media Center Is Ready for Christmas Testing

    Today, December 19, 2017, Martijn Kaijser of the Kodi development team had the great pleasure of announcing the release of the seventh and last Beta build of the upcoming Kodi 17 “Krypton” media center.

  • GnuCash 2.6.15 Open-Source Accounting Software Arrives with 30 Improvements

    The GnuCash development team announced the release of GnuCash 2.6.15, the newest and most advanced stable version of the open-source and cross-platform accounting software and financial management suite.

  • Recent Linux App Updates Round-Up

    A number of nifty Linux apps we’ve written about previously have shared some updates over the past few days.

    Rather than write about each of them individually we thought we’d round-up them up into one quick-fire, easy-to-digest post.

  • 9 Best Text Editors For Linux And Programming | 2017

    The year 2017 is about to arrive. Just in case you’re looking for some powerful text editor for Linux to kickstart programming new year, you’re at the right place. While the debate of the best programming editors for Linux won’t end anytime soon, there are many editors that bring an impressive set of features. While Vim, Emacs, and Nano are older and dependable players in the game, Atom, Brackets, and Sublime Text are relatively newer text editors.

  • Proprietary

    • The Long Road to Adobe Flash Player 24 for Linux

    • Adobe Releases Flash Player 24 for Linux Four Years After the Last Major Update

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How to Use Tar Command Effectively in Linux For Good Backup Solution

    • Essentials of OpenStack Administration Part 3: Existing Cloud Solutions

    • Lightweight Docker Images in 5 Steps

    • RPM packages from syslog-ng Git HEAD

    • Expanding a software RAID on Debian by migrationg to new large hard disks

    • Learn Python Fundamentals

    • How to Set Grub to Remember Your Last Selected Entry

    • Comparing OpenStack Neutron ML2+OVS and OVN – Control Plane

    • What is the global cost of Autoconf?

    • How to use the subtree git merge strategy

    • Understanding Docker Networking Drivers and their use cases

    • Isenkram updated with a lot more hardware-package mappings

    • Upgrading GlusterFS from Wheezy to Stretch

    • How to upgrade the kernel in Linux Mint 18.1 from 4.4 to 4.8

  • Wine or Emulation

    • Wine 1.8.6 Stable Release Supports Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 & AMD Radeon HD 6480G

      Today, December 19, 2016, a new stable release of the Wine 1.8 free, open-source and cross-platform implementation of Windows on Unix arrived for GNU/Linux and macOS platforms, versioned 1.8.6.

    • Wine 1.8.6 Released

  • Games

    • Editorial: The Nintendo Switch will use Vulkan, why that doesn’t suddenly mean more Linux ports

      The news doing the rounds right now is that the Nintendo Switch, the new gaming device from Nintendo, will use Vulkan. People are getting rather excited and thinking it will mean more Linux ports, but right now it won’t.

      For one thing, the Switch hasn’t even been released yet and it remains to be seen if it’s even successful. It seems obvious, but people aren’t even thinking about that.

      The second most important thing to remember is that this is a brand new API, it’s not proven itself just yet and not that many developers are actually using it. It’s been out for nearly a year and so far on Linux only two games use Vulkan.

      For the record: Using an open API is amazing for the success of the API. I think this is a great thing for it, but I don’t want people to be unrealistic about what this means for Linux gaming. I also want to state for clarity I am not being negative here, but trying to help people be realistic for now.

    • Civ VI Steam forum mods banning users for expressing Linux support

      < Aspyr Media is currently working on the feasibility of porting Civ VI to Linux. They are the same great company that gave us the Linux port for Civ V. Note: This is also discussed in this Steam group. The Steam topic in question is about Linux support, wherein we, the Linux community have been expressing interest and support of the possibly upcoming Linux release by Aspyr. We've also been talking about technical challenges, APIs, as well as things we'd like to see in a port. /blockquote>

    • Free, open source: Games that use machine learning to boost autism attention spans

      Autistic spectrum disorders, or ASDs, impose huge costs, both human and economic, on sufferers, their families, and the community.

      The human toll, in terms of care and impaired relationships, is almost impossible to quantify. Looking at the US alone, the economic expenditure last year was estimated at about $268bn.

      The exact causes of the pathology are still unknown, and there is no medical solution except for early and intensive education, which can at least reduce the symptoms.

      “However, families often can’t access or afford tailored education for their autistic children, due to the inadequacy of state funding, and the lack of private instructors and trained people,” Turkish computer scientist and edtech entrepreneur Zafer Elcik tells ZDNet.

    • Bundle Stars Winter Sale Offers Big Discounts on Top Linux Games

      It’s December, which means the Steam Holiday sale is now only a few days away. But y’know what? Forget about that! Thanks to Bundle Stars you can snag some seriously festive Steam deals on some top Linux games right this tinsel-totin’ second.

    • Motorsport Manager updated with a 2D race mode for lower-end computers

      This new mode swaps out the 3D rendering engine for the races themselves, with a simpler view so that computers with lower specifications can enjoy the game some more. It doesn’t replace the 3D of course, it’s entirely optional.

    • EGOSOFT planning two new space simulation games, ‘X Rebirth VR Edition’ using Vulkan and also X4

      They say they will release X Rebirth VR Edition sometime in the first half of 2017. Hopefully by then the HTC Vive will actually have the Linux support nailed down.

    • SPINGUN, a two button arcade shooter that seriously surprised me

    • Pizza Crash, a prototype game about delivering pizza which shows promise

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • KDE Partition Manager 3.0.0 Supports LVM on LUKS and LUKS on LVM Configurations

      Long-time KDE developer Andrius Štikonas had the great pleasure of announcing this past weekend the release and general availability of a new, major milestone of the KDE Partition Manager open-source partition editor tool for KDE Plasma desktops.

    • KDE Announces SystemdGenie, a Graphical Tool for Managing Systemd and User Units

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • GNOME Recipes Serves Up Some New Designs

    • GNOME Wants To Help You Cook With GNOME Recipes

      While Matthias Clasen is usually busy working on GTK+, improving GNOME Wayland support, and other core engineering tasks, recently he’s been working on a new GNOME application: GNOME Recipes.

      GNOME Recipes is a recipe viewer for the GNOME desktop. It’s not just a UI to some web-based recipe service, but currently they are collecting their own recipes — via BugZilla in fact. But there is also a request to use WikiBooks recipes as a source for a more diverse selection of recipes and in many different languages.

    • Another look at GNOME recipes

      Most importantly, as you can see in these screenshots, we have received some contributed recipes. Thanks to everybody who has sent us one! If you haven’t yet, please do. You may win a prize, if we can work out the logistics

    • This week in GTK+ – 29

      In this last week, the master branch of GTK+ has seen 20 commits, with 883 lines added and 2740 lines removed.

• Distributions

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 delivers production-ready OpenStack for enterprise, service provider clouds

      Open source offerings provider Red Hat announced Thursday availability of its scalable and agile cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution, Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10. Based on the upstream OpenStack ‘Newton’ release, Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 drives new features that increase system-wide scalability, ease infrastructure management, and improve orchestration, while also enhancing network performance and platform security.

    • Finance

      • 2 Stocks Analyst-Opinion Need Close Watch: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT), Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKAM)

      • Red Hat: Cloud Still a Cloud Over The Stock, Says MKM

      • Red Hat Inc. (RHT) to Release Earnings on Wednesday

    • Fedora

      • Email clients in Fedora

        Email is used by the vast majority of Internet users. Although increasingly users access their mailboxes through web browsers, desktop client applications are still popular. Their biggest advantage is desktop integration. They can send notifications about incoming messages, work offline, call other helper apps, and more. What are the most popular desktop clients you can find in Fedora?

      • How to get funding for your new users group?

      • DNF 2.0.0 and DNF-PLUGINS-CORE 1.0.0 has been released

        DNF-2.0 has been released! The next major version release of DNF brings many user experience improvements such as better dependency problem reporting messages, weak dependencies shown in transaction summary, more intuitive help usage invoking and others. Repoquery plugin has been moved into DNF itself.

      • Initial analysis session

      • Wheee, another addition.

        I’m thrilled to announce that Jeremy Cline has joined the Fedora Engineering team, effective today. Like our other recent immigrant, Randy Barlow, Jeremy was previously a member of Red Hat’s Pulp team.

      • Fedora @ LISA 2016 Wrap-Up

      • When Do Drive-By Documentation Contributors Start to Matter?

  • Debian Family

    • 10 years of Debian

      Today marks the 10-year anniversary of my first contribution to Debian GNU/Linux.

      I will not recount the full history here but my first experience with Debian was a happy accident. I had sent off for a 5-CD set of Red Hat from The Linux Emporium only to discover I lacked the required 12MB of RAM. Annoyed, I reached for the Debian “potato” CD that was included gratis in my order due to it being outdated at the time…

    • Derivatives

      • Tails 2.10 Anonymous LiveCD Lands January 24, Tails 2.9.1 Switches to DuckDuckGo

        The development team behind the Debian-based Tails amnesic incognito live system announced the release of the Tails 2.9.1 anonymous Live CD, which ships with the latest Tor technologies.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • 12 Months, 12 Images: This Was Ubuntu in 2016

          There were a number of big Ubuntu news stories in 2016, as you’re already aware. But a number of smaller events and milestones throughout the year help to put the Linux distribution’s year into a broader context.

• Devices/Embedded

  • RPi based industrial computer offers modular DIO and fieldbus

    The rugged Kunbus “Revolution Pi” runs on a Raspberry Pi Compute Module, and offers variable power and customizable DIO and gateway modules.

    While we await the arrival of the quad-core, Cortex-A53 Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3, German embedded manufacturer Kunbus has released an industrial computer based on the original computer-on-module spin on the single-core Raspberry Pi. The rugged Kunbus Revolution Pi, which complies with the EN61131-2 electrical standard for programmable controllers, is highly customizable, and ofers bridging between different modules.

  • Aaeon shows its first Apollo Lake COM

    Aaeon’s “COM-APLC6” is a COM Express Compact Type 6 module with an Apollo Lake SoC and 2x SATA, 3x PCIe, 10x USB, 2x MIPI-CSI, and dual display support.

    After announcing Intel Apollo Lake based products including a 3.5-inch SBC (GENE-APL5), a thin Mini-ITX SBC (EMB-APL1), and a Pico-ITX SBC (PICO-APL1), Aaeon has now unveiled its first COM based on the SoC family. The 95 x 95mm COM-APLC6 joins other Apollo Lake COM Express Compact Type 6 modules such as the Advantech SOM-6869, among many others.

  • Phones

    • Tizen

      • SmartPhone App: News Express available in Tizen Store

        Another good news app News Express, short and crisp news from a native app, by MrijuanaInc Studio Pvt. Ltd. launch in Tizen Store today. Read your new in Hindi or English languages. Various news categories available:

      • Smartphone Game: Color Switch makes it way to the Tizen Store

    • Android

      • NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV to come in 2 sizes, new controller

      • ZUK Edge Is Official With Android 7.0, 6GB Of RAM & SD821

        The ZUK Edge was one of the most leaked smartphones in the last couple of weeks, and the company has just announced the device. The ZUK Edge is ZUK’s all-new flagship, and it’s exactly what we were expecting, the rumors and leaks were spot on. This smartphone comes with really thin bezels all around, it comes with an 86.4% screen-to-body ratio, and its specifications are truly high-end. The ZUK Edge also sports a really narrow frame, and it looks really sleek overall.

      • Build your own secure Pine 64 Android TV for less than $50

        The best Android TV used to be the Nvidia Shield that can be purchased for $199, but it has been out of stock for a very long time. There is now a pro version of Nvidia Shield that’s priced at $299. Beyond these two that are out of stock, there aren’t that many official Android TV products on the market.

      • Huge leak reveals Nokia P Android phone design

        Nokia has confirmed that it will be launching Android smartphones in 2017 and it’s expected to do so as soon as February.

        There may be a little more meat on the bones of Nokia’s plans thanks to a leak coming out of China, claiming to be the flagship handset, the Nokia P.

        Before we progress, just remember to take this with a pinch of salt: although we’ve seen the vast majority of phone leaks surface from origins in China recently, it’s also difficult to decipher the authenticity of such leaks.

      • Flagship Nokia Android Phone Rumoured to Pack Snapdragon 835 SoC, 6GB of RAM; Images Leaked

      • Android 7.0 Nougat starts rolling out for the Xperia X and X Compact

      • Android Nougat News: Moto X Play Running on ‘Android 7.1.1 Nougat’ Spotted on GFXBench [Video]

      • Mysplash is an Unsplash client for Android

      • Best Android TV box 2016: The 7 best Android TV devices for Kodi content

      • Xiaomi Mi Box: Switch to 1080p for dramatically better performance

      • This is very likely NVIDIA’s 2017 refresh of the SHIELD Android TV, which may come in two sizes

      • Root of the Problem? Tordow Malware 2.0 Goes After Top Android Permissions

      • Lenovo Yoga Book: An Android tablet like none other

      • Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 9.7 With Android 7.0 Benchmark Spotted

      • Android Nougat Fingerprint Gestures Will Be Added to Nexus 6P, Moto G4, Samsung Galaxy S7 [RUMORS]

      • Canadian LG G5s Receiving Android 7.0 Nougat Update

      • Nexus 5X, 6P devices on Android Beta Program now receiving OTA for final 7.1.1 release

      • Sony Xperia X, Xperia X Compact Now Receiving Android 7.0 Nougat Update

      • LG G Pad III 10.1 LTE Is Official, Comes With A Kickstand

        LG is still one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world, despite the fact their sales haven’t exactly been great lately. The LG G5 flagship haven’t been selling that well this year, and it will be interesting to see what will the LG G6 have to offer. The announcement of LG’s new flagship is still a couple of months away, but the phone will be introduced in the first half of next year. While we’re waiting for that to happen, LG has announced their new tablet offering, the LG G Pad III 10.1 LTE which actually leaked a couple of hours ago, read on.

      • London fintech firm Curve brings new interface, features and services to Android

      • Nokia Android Phones 2017 Release Date, Specs, Price, Latest News & Update: Waterproof Units Equipped With Go-Pro-Like Cameras?

      • Xiaomi Mi 5, Mi 4c, Mi 4s and Mi Note to receive Android 7.0 Nougat in China

      • Weekend poll: When is the last time you bought an Android tablet?

      • How to Free Up Storage Space on Your Android Phone

      • Android Nougat 7.1.1 Promotes Gender Equality; Brings PIXEL Features

      • Xiaomi Android 7.0 Nougat Update for Mi Note, Mi Max, Mi 4c, Mi 4s, Others Coming Soon

Free Software/Open Source

• An Open Source Driving Agent from comma.ai

  Last week, we open sourced an advanced driver assistance system in order to help accelerate the future of self driving cars and provide a platform anyone can build on top of. We released both openpilot, driving agent research software, and NEO, a robotics platform capable of running openpilot, under the MIT license.

• How Praekelt.org and Open Source Provide Critical Services to Enable Social Change

  Praekelt.org runs exclusively on open source software, and the majority of their services are deployed on Ubuntu Linux servers. Recently, they launched a few services on the latest stable Debian release.

  The organization uses Apache Mesos to manage large clusters for their maternal health applications. “All applications on these clusters are distributed in Docker containers and are managed by Mesophere’s Marathon. To provision the machines we use Puppet. Our language of choice for all of our services is Python,” according to Simon de Haan, chief engineer atPraekelt.org and Ambika Samarthya-Howard, head of communications.

• Five open source skills you’ll need in 2017 | Top skills IT pros will need to conquer the open source platform

  With more organisations opting to either use open source software or open up their platforms, most IT pros will be versed in basic open source practices. However, like most things in tech, the required skills can be subject to change.

  According to The Linux Foundation, a huge 87 percent of managers say it’s difficult to find open source talent, with 79 percent of mangers increasing incentives to retain their current open source employees.

  Computerworld UK spoke with CBT Nuggets trainer and open source expert Shawn Powers to discuss skills IT pros will need to conquer the open source platform in 2017.

• Give back this holiday: Language input needed for literacy project

  Educational software programs like gCompis, Tux Math, Childsplay and KDE Edu may be familiar to free desktop users. This software is used by organizations such as Reglue, Partimus and KidsOnComputers who are bring educational opportunities to underprivileged children the world over. Even what you might consider to be business-focused software can make the world a better place, as we see with CouchDB who played a crucial role in the fight against the Ebola outbreak two years ago.

• Kickstarter’s Engineering Team Begins to Open Source Crowdfunding Platform’s Android & iOS Apps

• Events

  • Top 5 Linux Foundation Webinars of 2016

  • Open Source 101: Special One-day Conference From All Things Open

    For many undergraduates, or those just testing the open source waters, that’s just what the doctor ordered. Big-boy enterprise conferences like ATO, Open Source Summit and OSCON might be a bit of overkill for those taking their first open source baby steps. Before delving deep into the nuts and bolts of Kubernetes and Hyperledger, it might be prudent to understand the basics first, which is the plan for Open Source 101.

  • [Older] Five Key Takeaways from KubeCon 2016

• Web Browsers

  • Chrome

    • Google Upstreams Chrome on iOS Source Code In Chromium

      Google developers today pushed a bunch of their Chrome on iOS code into the upstream Chromium Git repository.

      Over the course of 11 commits, Google appears to have upstreamed much of their Chrome iOS source-code into Chromium.

• SaaS/Back End

  • Survey Reveals Big Data Reaching Maturity, But Governance Fears Loom

    During its formative stage, the Big Data trend–sorting and sifting large data sets with new tools in pursuit of surfacing meaningful angles on stored information–remained an enterprise-only story, but now businesses of all sizes are evaluating tools that can help them glean meaningful insights from the data they store. As we’ve noted, the open source Hadoop project has been one of the big drivers of this trend, and has given rise to commercial companies that offer custom Hadoop distributions, support, training and more.

• Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Real-time useful geospatial map data ‘surfaced’ by eeGeo

    The eeGeo platform delivers a 3D representation of the world in which information, content, services and data visualisation can be presented in a visually attractive way that encourages discovery, interaction.

    In line with the firm’s JavaScript support (still first-class, no second tier messing around), eeGeo is launching a series of open APIs to help developers integrate and build 3D maps for a more engaging browsing experience.

  • Facebook 2016 Open-Source Year in Review (Infographic) [Ed: openwashing of nasty, proprietary mass surveillance apparatus]

  • Microsoft Bolsters Performance of SQL Server Database on Linux[Ed: This headline is a lie. There is no "SQL Server Database on Linux". It runs on DrawBridge (Windows).]

• BSD

  • FreeBSD-Based OPNsense 17.1 Operating System for Firewalls & Routers Enters Beta

    The OPNsense project had the great pleasure of announcing the release of the first Beta images of the upcoming OPNsense 17.1 operating system developed for firewalls and routers.

  • OpenSSH 7.4 released

    OpenSSH 7.4 has just been released. It will be available from the
    mirrors listed at http://www.openssh.com/ shortly.

    OpenSSH is a 100% complete SSH protocol 2.0 implementation and
    includes sftp client and server support. OpenSSH also includes
    transitional support for the legacy SSH 1.3 and 1.5 protocols
    that may be enabled at compile-time.

    Once again, we would like to thank the OpenSSH community for their
    continued support of the project, especially those who contributed
    code or patches, reported bugs, tested snapshots or donated to the
    project. More information on donations may be found at:

    http://www.openssh.com/donations.html

  • OpenSSH 7.4 released!

  • OpenSSH 7.4 Removes Server Support for the SSH-1 Protocol, Adds New Features

    OpenSSH 7.4 has been released today, December 19, 2016, as the latest and most advanced stable release of the open-source and portable 100% complete SSH protocol 2.0 implementation used on Linux, BSD, and other Unix-like platforms.

    OpenSSH 7.4 is here four and a half months after the release of OpenSSH 7.3, and it promises to be primarily a bugfix release that addresses many of the security issues discovered since OpenSSH 7.3. But first, it looks like this version includes various under-the-hood changes that may affect existing configurations.

    For example, it removes support for the the SSH version 1 protocol as SSH2 is a more secure, efficient, and portable version of SSH (Secure Shell), which delivers SSH-encrypted SFTP functionality. It also removes 3des-cbc from the client’s default proposal, as well as support for pre-authentication compression.

• Public Services/Government

  • DISA looks to open source to squash cyber bugs, reorganizes its data centers

    As part of the response to two massive data breaches involving systems at the Office of Personnel Management, the federal government decided to put the Defense Department in charge of building a new information technology backbone to house and process all of the data involved in security clearance investigations, one that would be safer from foreign attacks.

    As one way to achieve that goal, the Defense Information Systems Agency, the lead agency in charge of the IT development, is considering opening up the National Background Investigation System’s underlying source code to the general public as soon as it’s fully baked. The theory is that it’s far better for white-hat hackers to find and help squash security bugs before the new system comes online than for bad-guy hackers to discover and make use of them to steal yet another batch of data.

    Maj. Gen. Sarah Zabel, DISA’s vice director, said the idea was first proposed to her agency by the Defense Digital Service.

  • Smart Citizens roll out sensor network in Barcelona

    The roll out of the sensor network is part of a “beta pilot” marking the start of the Making Sense project. This project is partly funded by the EU under the Horizon 2020 programme and runs from 2015 till 2017. It aims to “explore how open source software, open source hardware, digital maker practices and open design can be effectively used by local communities to fabricate their own sensing tools, make sense of their environments, and address pressing environmental problems in air, water, soil and sound pollution.”

  • GDS says its open source code guidance needs to be more joined up

    Writing in a blogpost, Anna Shipman, a technical architect and open source lead at GDS, said that making code open – all new code written in government must be open by default – was “vital” to government’s plans to change the way it works.

    “By making our code open and reusable we increase collaboration across teams, helping make departments more joined up, and can work together to reduce duplication of effort and make commonly used code more robust,” she said.

    However, she acknowledged that the service’s guidance on open source code “is not as joined up as it could be” and that more work needed to be done to encourage good practice and make it easy for teams to collaborate.

    Shipman said she would be working to clarify the guidance and fill in any gaps, as well as addressing other barriers identified in user research.

• Licensing/Legal

  • 3 Common Open Source IP Compliance Failures and How to Avoid Them

    Companies or organizations that don’t have a strong open source compliance program often suffer from errors and limitations in processes throughout the software development cycle that can lead to open source compliance failures.

    In part 3 of this series, we covered some of the risks that a company can face from license failures, including an injunction that prevents a company from shipping a product; support or customer service headaches; significant re-engineering; and more.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • OECD STI Outlook 2016: open science is next frontier

    Beyond open data, open science is now the next frontier. This is one of the main conclusions of the ‘Science, Technology and Innovation Outlook 2016′, published earlier this month by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

    “Open data access practices are increasingly widespread,” the authors of the report claim. “Encouraging the sharing and re-use of research data could generate more value for public money. Science is also becoming a less institutionalised endeavour, with citizens conducting their own research alongside the scientific community. However, deep changes in academic culture will be necessary to realise the full potential of a more open science.”

  • Open education is about improving lives, not taking tests

    Early in the book Couros says, “Sometimes it scares me to think that we have taken the most human profession, teaching, and have reduced it to simply letters and numbers,” Couros says early in the book. “We place such an emphasis on these scores, because of political mandates and the way teachers and schools are evaluated today, that it seems we’ve forgotten why our profession exists: to change—improve—lives.”

    In other words education has lost it’s “Why?”—and that is central to its mission.

    Immediately I saw the parallels to The Open Organization. Central to the open organization is a completely different model of organization. Conventional organizations are top-down, while open organizations are bottom-up. In conventional “What we do” and “How we do it” are most important. But in the bottom-up open organization “Why we do it” is most important, and this emotional connection between and among the members of the open organization motivates the community and drives innovation.

  • Open Hardware/Modding

    • SiFive Is Setting Silicon Free with Open-Source Chips

      Moore’s Law is dead…just not in the way everyone thinks. Technological advances keep allowing chips to scale, but the economics are another story – particularly for smaller companies that can’t afford chips in the volumes that the big chipmakers would like from their customers.

      The solution, according to San Francisco-based startup, SiFive, is open-source hardware, specifically an architecture developed by the company’s founders called RISC-V (pronounced “risk-five”). Done right SiFive, which was awarded Startup of the Year at the 2016 Creativity in Electronics (ACE) Awards, believes that RISC-V will do for the hardware industry what Linux has done for software.

• Programming/Development

  • Announcing git-cinnabar 0.4.0 release candidate 2

Leftovers

• Apple’s not very good, really quite poor 2016

  As they drift off for their one- or two-day vacations shortly, will Apple’s senior executives be patting themselves on the back? Or will they be slapping themselves on the forehead?

  Apple’s 2016 was garlanded with the usual hype, but not somehow with the usual excitement.

  Perhaps you’re excited by profits. Most real people, however, simply want to witness, feel and enjoy something that, to them, feels both new and exciting.

• Health/Nutrition

  • Superbacteria seep through Finland’s borders

    The last few years have seen more cases of antibiotic-resistant superbacteria infections in Finland. Even special strains of antibiotics that are saved for difficult cases may not necessarily have an effect on the so-called superbugs.

• Security

  • Securing Linux with kernel hardening features

    New kernel hardening features can protect against the bugs that are most typically exploited by malware hackers — even if the bug has yet to be detected.

    The task of securing Linux systems is so mind-bogglingly complex and involves so many layers of technology that it can easily overwhelm developers. However, there are some fairly straightforward protections you can use at the very core: the kernel. These hardening techniques help developers guard against the bugs that haven’t yet been detected.

  • Google Releases Test Set to Check Cryptographic Library Security

    Google has released a set of tests that developers can use to check some open source cryptographic libraries for known security vulnerabilities.

    The company has named the set of tests Project Wycheproof, after a mountain in Australia, which has the distinction of being the world’s smallest registered mountain.

  • Project Wycheproof

  • Google is beefing up security by offering tools to check cryptography libraries

  • Google releases Project Wycheproof: Security tests to check cryptographic libraries for known attacks

  • Google’s Project Wycheproof is a set of security tests for identifying cryptographic vulnerabilities

  • Google project has small name but tackles big security issue

  • Google open-sources test suite to find crypto bugs

  • Google Unveils Cryptographic Library Test Suite Wycheproof

  • Google launches Project Wychewood security toolkit

  • Google releases ‘Project Wycheproof’ to prevent known attacks on cryptographic software libraries

  • Google’s Project Wycheproof Checks Cryptographic Security

  • Does “real” security matter?

  • Monday’s security updates

  • Zero-Day Exploits Affect Desktop Linux

    Running Linux on the desktop has long been the favorite mode for many security-aware organizations like Facebook and Google. Many considered Linux a more secure environment compared to commercial operating systems, especially once it was hardened with third-party products. However, recent history shows that zero-day exploits can happen to these platforms.

  • This is your captain speaking… or is it?

    Vulnerabilities in Panasonic in-flight entertainment systems create a possible mechanism for attackers to control in-flight displays, PA systems and lighting, say researchers.

    Ruben Santamarta, principal security consultant at IOActive, said it had found vulnerabilities in Panasonic Avionic In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) systems that it claims could allow hackers to “hijack” passengers’ in-flight displays and, in some instances, potentially access their credit card information. The research revealed it would also theoretically be possible that such a vulnerability could present an entry point to the wider network, including the aircraft controls domain.

  • Ham Radio Deluxe Support hacked my computer

    I called the support line and asked them to explain what they were doing, and they informed me that I was blacklisted and the file they directed me to download blocked the software on my computer from running. TWO DAYS LATER, THEY CONTACTED ME AND STATED THEY WOULD UNLOCK MY SOFTWARE IF I REMOVED THE REVIEW I POSTED.

    I have a right to my opinion, and they have the right to refuse me service. However, knowingly and maliciously planting a file on my computer that caused it to malfunction is a cyber crime. At their direction, I downloaded what amounts to a trojan horse virus and lost the use of my software. I’ve filed complaints with the State of Florida and with the US Government, both of whom take these matters seriously. I’m also in the process of contacting all of their retailers to share this story. Meanwhile my software is dead and I’m out the money I’ve spend on the original version and upgrades.

    When a company attempts to stifle a customer who posted a negative review, you have to ask yourself what is really going on. With the mixed reviews I’ve seen, I can’t be the only one they’ve done this to. Whether you love HRD or you’re not so crazy about it, do you believe that this is the kind of company you want to give your hard-earned money to?

• Defence/Aggression

  • [Older] Why Is Sweden Giving the “Alternative Nobel Prize” to Syria’s ‘White Helmets’?

    Sweden did not succeed in getting Bob Dylan to come to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Nevertheless as a consolation the “White Helmets” did arrive to get the Right Livelihood Award.

    This article examines a likely geopolitical rationale that the Swedish elites had for selecting that organization. Facts suggest a congruence between the stances of those elites on Syria and the declared political aims of the organization White Helmets. The reviewing of the institutions involved in the award-decision and process can also result relevant in pondering the reason for the event. Finally, to inquire into the role of Carl Bildt, as member of the board of directors in the institution ultimately deciding, is interesting against the backdrop of his opposition regarding the participation of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden in previous international events organized by the same institutions –all of them under the umbrella of the Swedish Foreign Office.

  • Truck hits Berlin Christmas market, one dead: reports

    German media reported on Monday that a truck had ploughed into a Christmas market in central Berlin, killing at least one person and injuring several others, according to local media.

    Reports said the truck drove into the Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz in central Berlin’s main shopping district. There was no immediate word on who was responsible, but the newspaper Berliner Morgenpost — whose offices are located on the square — said police suspected it was a terrorist attack.

  • Berlin Crash Is Suspected to Be a Terror Attack, Police Say

    The Berlin police said early Tuesday that the killing of at least 12 people and the wounding of dozens more when a truck plowed through a Christmas market on Monday night was “a suspected terrorist attack.”

    In a statement, the police added that they were working swiftly and with “necessary care” in the investigation.

    The truck jumped the sidewalk about 8 p.m. near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, whose jagged spire, a reminder of the bombings during World War II, is one of the most symbolic sites in Berlin.

  • Russian official found dead from gunshot wounds in Moscow

    THE head of a Russian foreign ministry department has been shot dead in Moscow, according to local media.

    The government has not yet confirmed the reports.

    A man’s body was found in an apartment with a gunshot wound to the head, REN TV reported.

    Two shells were found along with a gun under the sink in the kitchen, a source told the news outlet. They claimed the wife of the man was also in the apartment.

    Paramedics were filmed carrying a man wearing a white shirt into an ambulance.

    The news comes on a dramatic day after nine were killed by a truck driving into a Berlin Christmas market and a Turkish off-duty police officer pulled out a gun at an art exhibition in Ankara and killed Russia’s ambassador to the country, shouting: “Don’t forget Aleppo, don’t forget Syria!”

  • ISIS claims responsibility for Berlin Christmas market attack

    ISIS has claimed responsibility for the deadly Christmas market truck crash in Berlin, a report says.

    The Iraqi Popular Mobilization Force tweeted that the terror group was taking credit for the incident, which left at least 12 people dead and more than 50 injured at major public market Monday.

    Using encrypted technology, the group said they found several jihadist Twitter accounts that had been claiming responsibility for the alleged attack, according to the Washington Times.

  • Three more charged over Nice truck attack

    Six people have already been charged so far over alleged links to the 31-year-old killer

    A French anti-terrorist judge has charged three more men suspected of helping to arm the Islamist radical who crushed 86 people to death with a truck in Nice, a judicial source said Saturday.

    The three, who were among 11 arrested on Monday in Nice and the western city of Nantes, were remanded into custody on Friday, said the source. The other eight have been released.

    The three, aged 24, 31 and 36, were charged in relation to a terrorist plot.

    The arrests come five months after Tunisian extremist Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel ploughed a 19-tonne truck into a crowd on the Nice seafront, further traumatising a country reeling from a series of jihadist attacks.

  • Police escort FPI members during raid on Santa hats in Surabaya malls

    The Surabaya Police escorted Islam Defenders Front (FPI) members on Sunday as they raided shopping malls in the East Java capital to check whether outlets had ordered employees to wear Christmas attire such as Santa hats.

    For promotional purposes, many companies ask their employees to wear holiday season paraphernalia, including Santa hats, when serving customers ahead of Christmas and New Year celebrations. Recently, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) issued an edict banning companies from forcing staff to wear such items, deeming it haram.

  • Russian ambassador dead: Video shows assassin shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ after shooting Andrey Karlov

    Video has emerged of the moments after a gunman shot dead the Russian ambassador to Turkey in Ankara.

    Andrey Karlov was several minutes into a speech at the embassy-sponsored exhibition in the capital when a man wearing a suit and tie shouted “Allahu akbar” and fired at least eight shots, according to an AP photographer in the audience.

    It was reported that the gunman shouted in Turkish: “Don’t forget Aleppo. Don’t forget Syria.”

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

  • The dirty deplorables: Who’s who on Donald Trump’s team and how they’ll destroy the environment

    What do Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees and advisers think about climate change and other sustainability issues? As you would expect, it’s not looking good for those of us concerned about a habitable climate and livable cities. Trump is putting together a climate-denying cabal of extreme right-wingers and corporate sympathizers likely to roll back environmental protections, halt smart-growth efforts and undo progress toward environmental justice.

    We’ll keep tabs on the most relevant nominees and appointees here, continuing as they make their way through the confirmation process, so check back for updates.

  • The United States of Climate Change Denial

    Donald Trump has promised to unleash an energy revolution by extracting billions of dollars in untapped fossil fuels and gutting incentives to invest in renewable energy. With the nominations of Rex Tillerson, Scott Pruitt, Ryan Zinke, and Rick Perry to his Cabinet, the President-elect is poised to do more damage to America’s environmental legacy—and future—than any other leader in recent memory.

    Despite Trump’s untraditional approach to choosing Cabinet officials, nothing about their nomination is accidental. Each of them offers a range of qualifications and connections that, together, form a unified front against climate progress, human health, and energy security.

  • Finland’s future – Even darker winters with temperatures like Hungary?

    Hot summers, warm winters and plenty of rain, this is the future Finland may face if unbridled climate change continues, says a study by the Finnish Meteorological Institute FMI. If the emissions of greenhouse gases continue unchecked, by the end of the century the climate of central Finland could be as warm as it is today in Hungary.

  • Indonesia’s forestry ministry takes Greenpeace to court over freedom of information request

    The Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry is going to court over a successful freedom of information request by Greenpeace, setting the stage for a protracted legal battle over a form of data NGOs say they need if they are to play a monitoring role in the world’s third-largest democracy.

    Greenpeace Indonesia on Oct. 24 won its yearlong suit submitted to the Central Information Commission (KIP) against the ministry demanding access to seven different geospatial maps of Indonesia, including those showing oil palm, timber, and mining concessions as well as the archipelago country’s land cover.

    The group argued its case under the 2008 Freedom of Public Information Law, which established the KIP. “This is exciting news for us,” Greenpeace’s Kiki Taufik said immediately after the ruling came down. “The commission has made the right decision.”

• Finance

  • IMF chief Lagarde found guilty of negligence by French court over payout to businessman

    The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, has been found guilty of negligence by a Paris court over a huge payout she approved to a business tycoon while serving as French finance minister in 2008.

    Despite the guilty finding, the Court of Justice of the Republic did not issue any sentence for the IMF chief.

    The official denies the negligence charges, and her lawyers will now look into appealing the court ruling, Reuters reported.

    The decision not to hand down a punishment was made considering Lagarde’s good reputation and international standing, Reuters reported, citing the main judge, Martine Ract Madoux. She added that “the context of the global financial crisis in which Madame Lagarde found herself” was “taken into account.”

  • When you thought trade deals could not get any worse — enter Wall Street

    What connects two proposed gold mines, one in the high-altitude wetlands of Colombia and one in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania?

    Both mines would require huge quantities of cyanide and threaten watersheds used by millions of people for drinking water. One would damage a unique, legally protected ecosystem and the other would destroy an ancient, UNESCO-nominated settlement. Both have been opposed by scientific bodies, protested by tens of thousands of people, and restricted by domestic courts.

    And in both cases, the Canadian mining corporations behind the projects (Eco Oro in Colombia and Gabriel Resources in Romania) have responded to the mining denials by using trade and investment deals to sue the governments in private tribunals. In fact, Eco Oro just launched its case last week. Using this backdoor process called “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS), the corporations can demand up to billions of dollars from the taxpayers in both countries. These ISDS claims are possible due to far-reaching rights that trade and investment deals grant to corporations.

    But there is another common element driving both cases: big money from Wall Street.

  • Brazil passes the mother of all austerity plans

    Imagine setting your budget today for every year through 2036. This week, the world’s ninth-largest economy made just such a decision.

    The Brazilian Senate on Tuesday approved a constitutional amendment to freeze social spending by the Brazilian government for 20 years — allowing it to rise only in tandem with inflation. The government says such a dramatic measure is necessary to get the country’s recession-bound economy back on track and gain control over public debt, which has grown sharply in recent years.

    With tough fiscal measures such as the amendment, “everyone will be able to project the numbers,” Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles said in an interview in June with the Financial Times. “A lot of the uncertainty is coming down.”

  • We’re about to sign a deal with Canada that’s just as bad as TTIP and could increase inequality across the whole of Europe

    CETA is an EU-Canada trade deal just like the controversial EU-US deal TTIP. It was secretly negotiated over five years, locks in the privatisation of public services and will permit corporations across the North America to sue European governments in a private justice system. Brexit may not happen for at least two years, but CETA will be voted on in February – if it passes, it will immediately apply to the UK.

    Inequality is grist to the mill for far-right populists, yet the European Commission and members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are failing to learn the lessons of Brexit and the rise of Nigel Farage and Donald Trump. Instead, it’s big business as usual, and continued support for policies that generate inequality and, in turn, fuel the xenophobic right.

  • Apple given favorable treatment on tax? No way, insists Ireland

    On Monday, the Irish government said in its challenge against the European Commission—which ruled that Apple should pay Ireland €13 billion (£11.1 billion) in back taxes—that it “does not do deals with taxpayers,” adding that the country “did not give favourable tax treatment to Apple.”

    The commission’s antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, said in August: “Member states cannot give tax benefits to selected companies—this is illegal under EU state aid rules.” But Ireland’s finance ministry countered that “the full amount of tax was paid in this case and no state aid was provided.”

  • If the U.S. Won’t Pay Its Teachers, China Will

    Cindy Mi leans forward on a couch in her sun-filled Beijing office to explain how she first got interested in education. She loved English so much as a child that she spent her lunch money on books and magazines to practice. By 15, she was good enough that she began to tutor other students. At 17, she dropped out of high school to start a language-instruction company with her uncle.

    Today, Mi is 33 and founder of a startup that aims to give Chinese kids the kind of education American children receive in top U.S. schools. Called VIPKid, the company matches Chinese students aged five to 12 with predominantly North American instructors to study English, math, science and other subjects. Classes take place online, typically for two or three 25-minute sessions each week.

  • Trump’s anti-education Education Secretary owes millions in election fraud fines

    Betsy DeVos is the self-described neo-Calvinist and wife of the heir to the Amway fortune who’s devoted her life to fighting against public education through a system of vouchers that allow for public funding of religious schools; in accord with the trumpian maxim of “a fox for every henhouse,” she has been selected to serve as Trump’s Education Secretary.

    In 2006, All Children Matter, DeVos’s anti-education PAC asked the Ohio Elections Commission whether it could transfer unlimited funds to its Ohio subsidiary, and were firmly told that the most they could transfer was $10,000 — a ruling DeVos ignored, transfering $870,000 to the Ohio affiliate. This resulted in the bipartisan commission fining DeVos $5.2m, a ruling upheld by an Ohio court.

    DeVos ducked out of the fines by shutting down the Ohio subsidiary and claiming that neither she nor her PAC were liable for its debts, including the whopping $5.2M fine.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Five reasons why we don’t have a free and independent press in the UK and what we can do about it

    While most of us don’t trust journalists, many of us are still under the illusion that we have a free and independent press. The truth is we don’t. Here’s five reasons why we should be very sceptical of the information we read in the corporate media and why there is hope for the future.
    1) The billionaires that own the press set the agenda

    Who owns the media shapes what stories are covered and how they are written about. The UK media has a very concentrated ownership structure, with six billionaires owning and/or having a majority of voting shares in most of the national newspapers.

  • BREAKING: FBI Ordered to Unseal Warrant Used to Get Clinton Emails During Weiner Probe

    A federal judge has ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation to unseal at least a portion of search warrant it obtained after finding emails pertinent to the Hillary Clinton investigation during the Bureau’s Anthony Weiner probe.

    The FBI’s planned disclosure is directly related to an effort by well-known attorney Los Angeles attorney E. Randol Schoenberg, who filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Justice that sought the “immediate disclosure of the FBI search warrant for the e-mails of Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.”

  • Fact-checking the integrity of the vote in 2016

    Faith in elections goes to the core of the American idea of democracy. That faith has been challenged before, but this year, the attacks came from many directions.

    There were repeated allegations of voter fraud, which for the most part turned out to be false. The government warned that Russia tried to influence the election through hacking and strategic document dumps. And fake news reports about the presidential candidates circulated on the Internet and via Facebook.

  • Kent County to profit $10K from halted Michigan recount

    Kent County could profit as much as $10,000 from a halted recount of ballots cast in the Nov. 8 presidential election.

    The recount was halted by a federal judge after Kent County had completed two full days of reviewing thousands of paper ballots by hand.

  • Pennsylvania’s voting system is one of the worst

    In May 2006, Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, Ohio, launched an e-voting system, producing a nationally notorious election disaster in which every technical and management system failed. One of the largest election jurisdictions in the nation, the county used DRE touchscreens similar to Allegheny County’s.

    When the election tabulation database grew beyond what it was designed to handle — a flaw concealed by the manufacturer — it silently began dropping votes and other data, without notifying officials. An accurate recount was possible, however, because Ohio had required paper printouts of voters’ e-ballots. Recounts showed that some previously announced winners actually had lost. The hidden software problem did not extinguish anyone’s voting rights only because there was a paper trail.

    Experts in election technology have pointed out that most Pennsylvania counties — including Allegheny — use e-voting systems that have been outlawed by most states. The chief reason? The omission of voter-approved paper printouts that can be recounted and that allow for audits to check on the accuracy of the electronic machines. Even when voting systems are aged and vulnerable to hacking or tampering, durable paper ballots combined with quality-assurance audits can ensure trustworthy results.

  • Trump private security force ‘playing with fire’

    President-elect Donald Trump has continued employing a private security and intelligence team at his victory rallies, and he is expected to keep at least some members of the team after he becomes president, according to people familiar with the plans.

    The arrangement represents a major break from tradition. All modern presidents and presidents-elect have entrusted their personal security entirely to the Secret Service, and their event security mostly to local law enforcement, according to presidential security experts and Secret Service sources.

    But Trump — who puts a premium on loyalty and has demonstrated great interest in having forceful security at his events — has opted to maintain an aggressive and unprecedented private security force, led by Keith Schiller, a retired New York City cop and Navy veteran who started working for Trump in 1999 as a part-time bodyguard, eventually rising to become his head of security.

  • IBM workers protest against co-operation with Trump

    Employees of IBM have launched a petition against the statement made by the company’s chief executive Ginni Rometty to US president-elect Donald Trump in which she detailed various services the company could sell to the government.

    According to the Intercept, IBM had also initially refused to rule out creating a registry of Muslims in the US, something that it has ruled out now.

    The IBM protest is being led by cybersecurity engineer Daniel Hanley. He said he was shocked after reading Rometty’s letter which was published on an internal IBM blog along with a personal note from the chief executive to the company’s global staff.

  • Trump wins electoral college amid nationwide protests

    The US electoral college has certified Donald Trump as the 45th president, despite a last-ditch effort to deny him the White House.

    Six weeks after winning the polls, the Republican cruised past the 270 votes needed to formalise his victory.

    After the result, Mr Trump promised to “work hard to unite our country and be the president of all Americans”.

    Electors had been flooded with emails and phone calls urging them not to support the billionaire.

    But despite longshot liberal hopes of a revolt by Republican electors, only two – from Texas – ended up voting against him.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Turkey blocks Tor’s anonymity network

    Turkey’s President Erdogan and the ruling AKP party are increasingly bent on silencing online dissent, and that now affects you even if you’re smart enough to evade typical censorship methods. Watchdog group Turkey Blocks has confirmed that Turkey is blocking the Tor anonymity network’s direct access mode for most users. You can still use a bridge mode for now, but there are hints that internet providers might be hurting performance even then. The restrictions come alongside a recent government ban on virtual private network services.

  • Tor blocked in Turkey as government cracks down on VPN use

    The Turkey Blocks internet censorship watchdog has identified and verified that restrictions on the Tor anonymity network and Tor Browser are now in effect throughout Turkey. Our study indicates that service providers have successfully complied with a government order to ban VPN services.

  • Facebook patent hints at an automated solution for fake news

    Facebook may have said that it’s stepping up its fight against fake news in the past few weeks, but there are signs that it might have had a way to tackle this problem sooner. A recently published USPTO filing from 2015 reveals that Facebook has applied for a patent on technology that would automate the process of removing “objectionable content.” It’s ostensibly for eliminating hate speech, porn and other material that Facebook has objected to for years, but the system could easily be applied to bogus stories as well.

    The approach would supplement user-based content flagging with machine learning. The automatic system would generate a score for content based on the likelihood that it’s objectionable, helping human moderators decide which material to cut. It’d look at the number of users objecting to content, for example, as well as the age of the account making a complaint (to discourage harassment and trolling). The AI-like code would study valid flags and learn to make more informed decisions about objectionable content.

  • Google is threatening to throw me off Google+, but won’t tell me why

    Naturally, I assumed this was just the Russians trying to gain access to my hugely valuable store of e-mails, and ignored the message. However, the next time I logged on to my Google+ account, there was a further warning that Google was seriously thinking about throwing me off the service, and so I had better watch my step.

    Since I am not in the habit of posting “unwanted promotional or commercial content, or engaging in unwanted or mass solicitation” on Google+, this left me somewhat perplexed. I searched everywhere for some way of contacting the Google+ violation department, or whatever it’s called, but could find nothing other than a couple of pages offering “Tips for creating Google+ content” and one about “Limited access and profile suspensions.” The absence of any way to contact Google seemed strange: after all, before I could stop doing what I shouldn’t be doing, I needed to know what exactly that was.

    Although I was unable to find any official way of obtaining information on alleged violations, I did find a Google+ Help community. After I joined, I asked how I could find out what I had done to incur the wrath of the great god Google, and this led to a useful thread.

  • Facebook fake news: Germany threatens new law with €500,000 fine attached

    Germany’s coalition government is threatening to bring in legislation early next year that would see Facebook and other social media firms fined up to €500,000 (£420,000) for “publishing” fake news.

    “Market dominating platforms like Facebook will be legally required to build a legal protection office in Germany that is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” parliamentary chair of the Social Democratic Party Thomas Oppermann told Der Spiegel, which was translated on Deutsche Welle.

    “If, after appropriate examination, Facebook does not delete the offending message within 24 hours, it should expect individual fines of up to 500,000 euros,” Oppermann said. The subject of a fake news story would be able to demand a correction published with similar prominence, he added.

  • MPs suggest introducing web blocking to tackle suicide rates in UK

    MPs have suggested restricting access to sites which encourage self-harm or give detailed advice on methods for committing suicide as a means of tackling the “unacceptable” level of suicide in the nation.

    MPs have warned government that it has failed to do enough to tackle the UK’s suicide rates. Suicide is the leading cause of death for men under 49, and also the leading cause of death for people aged between 16 and 24.

    Over 6,100 deaths in the UK in 2015 were registered as suicides, though the actual number may be higher. While MPs placed much blame at the feet of government, they claimed there was also much to be done by internet providers and social media companies too.

  • France plans internet ombudsman to safeguard free speech

    France is considering appointing an official internet ombudsman to regulate complaints about online material in order to prevent excessive censorship and preserve free speech.

    A bill establishing a “content qualification assessment procedure” has been tabled in the French senate and the initiative was debated last week at a high level meeting attended by senators and judges as well as policy officers from Google and Twitter.

    The aim is to provide a simple procedure that will support firms operating online who are uncertain of their legal liabilities and to prevent over-zealous removal or censorship of material merely because it is the subject of a complaint. It could be copied by other European jurisdictions.

    Dan Shefets, a Danish lawyer who works in Paris has developed the proposal with the French senator Nathalie Goulet, said: “The problem which an internet ombudsman addresses applies to all countries in Europe [because] member states have to work with the e-commerce directive.

  • Proposed bill would block porn from computers sold in South Carolina, somehow

    South Carolina representative Bill Chumley has proposed a bill that would make it slightly more difficult for people in his state to watch porn. The bill would require manufacturers to install “digital blocking capabilities” on their computers that would ban access to internet porn, The Charlotte Observer reports.

  • South Carolina will debate bill to block porn on new computers

    A South Carolina politician is hoping to stop computer owners in his state from viewing pornography.

    State Rep. Bill Chumley, a Republican from Spartanburg, told his hometown newspaper that his Human Trafficking Prevention Act would require manufacturers or sellers of computers or other devices that access the Internet to install digital blocks to prevent the viewing of obscene content. Blocking websites that facilitate prostitution would also be required, he said.

    If a purchaser wants the filter lifted, he or she has to pay $20 to have it taken out—provided the person is over the age of 18.

  • The Call To Censor Bad News Isn’t New, Doesn’t Make Sense, And Should Frighten You A Great Deal

    The American citizen currently enjoys greater access to information than any average person in human history. But you wouldn’t know that from reading The New York Times, Buzzfeed or any other of the many outlets busying themselves calling for the administration, in concert with corporations, to censor fake news stories.

  • Arts Academy Under Attack: Police Questionings, Censorship and a Blow to Academic Freedom

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • Cuts to open source monitoring tool could impact MoD intelligence, warn MPs

    BBC Monitoring is one of the few open source information gathering agencies, which has a global reach through its partnership with its US counterpart, Open Source Enterprise (OSE). BBC Monitoring covers 25% of the world and OSE the remaining 75%.

  • How to check if your VPN is leaking private data

    A virtual private network is a great way to keep your internet usage secure and private whether at home or on public Wi-Fi. But just how private is your activity over a VPN? How do you know if the VPN is doing its job or if you’re unwittingly leaking information to those trying to pry into your activities?

    One simple way to see if the VPN is working is to search for what is my IP on Google. At the top of the search results, Google will report back your current public Internet Protocol (IP) address. If you’re on a VPN, it should show the VPN’s IP. If it doesn’t, you know you have a problem.

  • U.S. Investigators Blame Autopilot in Facebook’s Big Drone Crash

    The wing on Facebook Inc.’s experimental high-altitude drone broke last summer in Arizona after the massive aircraft hit an updraft and its autopilot overcompensated seconds before touchdown on its maiden flight, a U.S. investigation has concluded.

    The end section of the right wing snapped off as the plane’s computerized flight controls made abrupt maneuvers to keep it on course, breaking the carbon-fiber structure, the National Transportation Safety Board said in conclusions posted online Friday.

    There were no injuries or damage other than to the drone.

  • Twitter Cuts Off Firehose Access To DHS Fusion Centers

    Earlier this year, Twitter pulled the plug on some of Dataminr’s customers, specifically the intelligence agencies it was selling its firehose access to. Twitter made it clear Dataminr’s access to every public tweet wasn’t to be repurposed into a government surveillance tool.

    That being said, everything swept up by Dataminr was public. There was no access to direct messages or tweets sent from private accounts. And Twitter seemingly is doing nothing to prevent Dataminr from selling this same access to the FBI, an agency that’s far more an intelligence agency than a law enforcement agency these days — one that thinks it should be allowed to do everything the CIA does, if not more.

  • Britain urged to increase cyber security in financial services

    Britain’s intelligence agencies need to do more to help regulators to protect the financial services industry from cyber crime, the head of an influential parliamentary committee said on Monday.

    Andrew Tyrie, a lawmaker in the ruling Conservative Party, said parliament’s Treasury Committee was concerned about the “opaque lines of accountability”, particularly between regulators and intelligence agencies.

  • GCHQ urged to ramp up security to protect Britain’s financial industry from escalating cybercrime

  • GCHQ must do more to protect UK banks from hack attacks, say MPs

  • Tyrie demands clarity on cybercrime

  • GCHQ asked to step up action against cyber-attack threat to financial services

    More action may be needed to protect the financial services industry from a devastating cyber-attack, the head of the Treasure select committee has suggested.

  • Edward Snowden, The NSA And Civil Liberties: Is Our Privacy Still Being Violated By The Federal Government And Its Intelligence agencies?

    Thanks to Edward Snowden, the ongoing debate between those who want to ensure the United States can gather any intelligence it needs to protect itself from terrorism and those who are concerned about civil liberties exploded into the public arena three years ago. As reported by NBC News, Snowden released a vast treasure trove of highly classified documents regarding the surveillance activities then being carried out by the NSA. But have these revelations really changed anything regarding privacy issues?

    In the immediate aftermath of Snowden’s release of these documents, many politicians and legal experts came forward to demand that the NSA be reformed. Following the leaks, President Obama assembled experts to evaluate the situation. In December of that year, the group published a report in which they recommended a number of significant reforms – such as halting the U.S. government’s gathering of bulk telephone data and limiting the extent of surveillance carried out on foreign leaders.

  • In Trump, beleaguered intelligence community faces a new challenge: A disparaging boss

    It’s been a bruising few years for America’s spies.

    Revelations about torture by the CIA and sweeping electronic spying on the part of the NSA have hurt their public image, casting them as aggressive or nosy rather than — as they tend to see themselves — quiet patriots forced to work in obscurity to protect the nation.

    Officials say falling morale has affected the agencies’ ability to hold on to employees — often highly skilled analysts and technicians who could earn many times as much money in the private sector.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Why General Motors is asking the Supreme Court to say it’s only 7 years old — not 108

    When a company reorganizes itself through a bankruptcy, is it the same company? And if so, is it liable for alleged wrongdoing committed by the previous version of itself?

    These are questions raised by General Motors’ efforts to dodge hundreds of lawsuits related to a potentially fatal ignition-switch flaw in millions of its older sedans. After receiving a stinging defeat in a federal appellate court this past summer, the automaker is now making a Hail Mary pass to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to convince judges that it has reincarnated into a seven-year-old car company free of liabilities from its previous life.

    With potentially billions of dollars’ worth of personal and financial injury claims at stake, the Detroit automaker’s lawyers argue that allowing these lawsuits to go through would undermine an important aspect of corporate bankruptcy: giving assurance to the buyers of troubled companies that they aren’t also buying a whole bunch of unexpected legal headaches.

  • Stupid law of the week: South Carolina wants anti-porno chips in PCs that cost $20 to disable

    Lawmakers in South Carolina are mulling over banning the sale of computers, tablets and phones unless they have a device that automatically blocks pornography from popping up on-screen.

    The Human Trafficking Prevention Act amendment, introduced by State Representative Bill Chumley (R‑Spartanburg), calls for manufacturers and resellers to be fined if they sell an internet-connected product in the US state without a filter capable of stopping smut from appearing by default. The proposed stiff rules, drawn up late last week, follow a crackdown in the state on human trafficking in 2015.

  • Disgusted by White Land Theft, Millionaire Gives Home to Tribe

    The $4 million property will turn into a prayer house for Indigenous youth to have a ‘safe space’ where they can get in touch with their roots, history and language.

    Expressing “disgust” for the historic land-theft perpetrated on Indigenous peoples in the United States, an eccentric Manhattan millionaire has decided to transfer his $4 million home back to the Lenape Tribe, the original inhabitants of Mannahatta – or land of many hills.

    Jean-Louis Goldwater Bourgeois, 76, the son of late sculptor Louise Bourgeois, is currently in the process of transferring the deed of his West Village home to Anthony Jay Van Dunk, the chief of the 5,000-member Ramapough Indians, who are part of the Lenape Nation. They met in 2011, introduced by a common acquaintance after Bourgeois had expressed his desire to return the land.

  • ‘This isn’t Paris. It’s only men here’ – Inside the French Muslim no-go zones where women aren’t welcome

    A quiet Paris bar where men play cards and bet on horses has become the unlikely focus of a national row over alleged no-go zones for women in predominantly Muslim areas.

    The bar in the impoverished north-eastern suburb of Sevran is accused of being one of many in France where women are effectively banned.

    The neighbourhood, near Charles de Gaulle airport, is notorious as one of France’s leading exporters of jihadists.

    “Au Jockey Club” is clearly a male preserve — there were no women when The Telegraph visited — but it serves alcohol and feels more akin to a high street bookmaker than a den of Islamists. Licensed as a betting shop, its mainly French Arab patrons gazed intently at giant screens showing the races at Deauville.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • European authorities crack down on zero-rating ISPs, defending net neutrality

    Telecom authority PTS is cracking down on the European ISP Telia for having unmetered traffic to Facebook and Spotify while metering other traffic, in violation of net neutrality. Earlier this year, the ISP launched a marketing scheme where accessing Facebook and Spotify didn’t count against your Internet traffic cap, causing net neutrality concerns. While the authority hasn’t made a final decision, sources say it will tell Telia to end the practice in no uncertain terms.

    In May this year, Swedish ISP Telia attracted global attention by blatantly violating Net Neutrality in zero-rating Facebook, later adding a selection of music streaming services (Spotify among them) to its zero-rating offer.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Groundless threats – Nvidia v Hardware Labs

    This judgment concerned the Defendant’s application for strike out/summary judgment of the Claimant’s claim to groundless threats, the Claimant’s application to stay their groundless threats claim pending an EU IPO decision, and the Defendant’s application for transfer to IPEC or the Shorter Trials Scheme.

    The groundless threats question turned on the location of a threat to sue. More specifically, can a letter sent in English from a Germany company to a US parent company regarding infringement of an EU trade mark constitute a threat to bring trade mark infringement proceedings in England and Wales?

  • Trademarks

    • Dunks And Drunks: Jagermeister Blocks Milwaukee Bucks Logo Trademark Application

      Just when you think you’ve seen it all in silly trademark filings, along comes a liquor company to block the trademark application for the logo of an NBA basketball team. Jagermeister, a liquor I haven’t thought about since my college days because I’m a grownup that drinks grownup drinks, has decided that the logo for the Milwaukee Bucks is too similar to its own logo and must be stopped.

    • Lee v. Tam and A Basket of Deplorable People

      In the case, the Department of Justice and USPTO are appealing the Federal Circuit’s determination that the disparagement provision of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. 1052(a) is facially invalid as in conflict with the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. The provision at issue provides for the PTO’s refusal to register marks that consist of “matter which may disparage . . . persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt, or disrepute.” Mr. Tam’s band name – THE SLANTS – was refused under this provision.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • Linux 2016 – The Year of the Hard Shift

    I’m just going to come out and say it. This thing is being rushed because my thoughts are not exactly careening from stream-to-stream. I am so burned out waiting for the moment when Linux finally catches up with the rest of the tech industry.

    I know there are a lot of you out there right now, don’t deny it, who are saying “Well, welcome to Linux! You’ve finally got your citizenship!” That’s not good enough, nor will it ever be good enough for me–not even close. I apologize right away if it offends anyone’s sensibilities. But there are days when I feel like I’m the only one who sees what’s happening.

  • Lenovo’s funky Yoga Book laptop will get a Chrome OS option next year

    The Yoga Book is definitely one of the most interesting and divisive laptop designs to come out in a while – users either love or hate its touchscreen/keyboard deck hook. To a digital artist its integrated “Create Pad” is a godsend, but a mechanical keyboard fan probably sees its integrated haptic key layout as sacrilege. Either way, you’ll soon have more options if you want to check out that unique hardware: a Lenovo executive told a Tom’s guide reporter that the Yoga Book would be sold in a Chrome OS model in 2017.

• Server

  • Diversity Scholarship Series: My Programming Journey – Becoming a Kubernetes Maintainer

    On December 14, 2015, I got my first Pull Request merged. What a great feeling! I admit it was really small (a removal of 6 chars from a Makefile), but it was a big step personally to realize that the Kubernetes maintainers wanted my contributions. From January-March, I focused on getting the Kubernetes source code to cross-compile ARM binaries and release them automatically. Kubernetes v1.2.0 was the first release that shipped with “official” Google-built ARM binaries.

  • Docker Move Brings Universal Container Operations A Step Closer

    Docker has contributed a component of Docker Engine, Containerd, to the community; it will provide a key element of a universal runtime.

    Getting to a standard, shared runtime environment in which containers from different suppliers run predictably took a step closer to reality this week as Docker opened up a key feature of its Docker Engine, containerd.

  • Why Native Docker Orchestration is the Best Orchestration

    Why is this going to be an interesting talk and why should you care? asks Mike Goelzer of Docker in his LinuxCon North America presentation. The answer is that simple, robust, integrated container orchestration is key to successful containers management, and Goelzer believes that the native Docker orchestration, called Swarm, is the best orchestration. Goelzer gives a high-level overview of Swarm, and his colleague Victor Vieux goes into detail on the internals.

  • From 1 to N Docker Hosts: Getting Started with Docker Clustering

• Kernel Space

  • Synaptics Input Being Better Enhanced With Linux 4.10

    The input driver updates for Linux 4.10 are most exciting for those with laptops having newer Synaptics technology.

    With Linux 4.6 came the Synaptics RMI4 support while in 4.10 it’s being much improved. The Synaptics RMI4 with Linux 4.10 now has support for SMBus controllers, firmware update support, sensor tuning, and PS/2 guest support. Synaptics RMI4 is used by many newer touchpads and touch-screens.

  • Thwarting Unknown Bugs: Hardening Features in the Mainline Linux Kernel

  • Hardening the Kernel to Protect Against Attackers

    The task of securing Linux systems is so mind-bogglingly complex and involves so many layers of technology that it can easily overwhelm developers. However, there are some fairly straightforward protections you can use at the very core: the kernel. These hardening techniques help developers guard against the bugs that haven’t yet been detected.

    “Hardening is about making bugs more difficult to exploit,” explained Mark Rutland, a kernel developer at ARM Ltd, at the recent Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2016 in Berlin. There will always be dangerous bugs that manage to evade the notice of kernel developers, he added. “We do not yet know which particular bugs exist in the next kernel, and we probably won’t for five years,” he said, referring to Kees Cook’s recent analysis of kernel bug lifetimes.

  • The KVM & Xen Changes For Linux 4.10: Includes Intel GVT Work

    Earlier in the week the KVM and Xen updates were sent in for the Linux 4.10 kernel to add to the list of changes so far for Linux 4.10.

    On the KVM front within the x86 space there is now support for hiding nested VMX features from guest, nested VMX can now run Microsoft Hyper-V in a guest, there is support for more AVX512 extensions, and there is infrastructure support for virtual Intel GPUs.

  • Graphics Stack

    • NVIDIA 375.25 Driver available for Linux

    • AMD’s Display Core difficulties

      Back in 2007, the announcement that AMD intended to reverse its longstanding position and create an upstream driver for its graphics processors was joyfully received by Linux users worldwide. As 2017 approaches, an attempt by AMD to merge a driver for an upcoming graphics chip has been rejected by the kernel’s graphics subsystem maintainer — a decision that engendered rather less joy. A look at this discussion reveals a pattern seen many times before; the positions and decisions taken can seem arbitrary to the wider world but they are not without their reasons and will, hopefully, lead to a better kernel in the long run.

    • NVIDIA Linux Video Game Tearing Fix

    • VK9 Hits Its Sixth Milestone For Direct3D 9 Over Vulkan

  • Benchmarks

    • 10-Way AMD GPU Comparison For Team Fortress 2 With RadeonSI Mesa 13.1-dev

      In case you didn’t hear, last week a nine year old Mesa bug was fixed that ended up causing stability issues for RadeonSI and was one of the reasons Valve’s Team Fortress 2 game wasn’t running stable on the open-source AMD driver in quite a while. With Mesa Git now running Team Fortress 2 on RadeonSI without any stability problems, here are fresh benchmarks of that game when using Mesa 13.1-dev and Linux 4.9.

      As mentioned in a few other articles already, a big year-end RadeonSI OpenGL performance comparison on many different graphics cards will be published in the days ahead. But given Team Fortress 2 back to running nicely on RadeonSI without stability concerns, I decided to run fresh benchmarks on ten different GCN graphics cards to show the performance difference.

    • EXT4, Btrfs, XFS & F2FS On Linux 4.6 Through 4.9

      For those curious how various Linux file-systems have evolved since Linux 4.6, here are some fresh benchmarks of the Btrfs, EXT4, F2FS, and XFS file-systems being tested on Linux 4.6 vs. 4.7 vs. 4.8 vs. 4.9 with a solid-state drive for looking at any performance changes.

• Applications

  • 5 Best Screen Recorder Apps For Linux

    There can be so many reasons when you need to record your screen. When I started using Linux, I used to record my screen whenever I had any problem and upload it to Linux communities. Today I sometimes record my screen for demonstration purposes in my tutorials. Similarly, you can record your screen in Linux. In this article, I’m going to mention 5 Best screen recording app for Linux. So let’s get started!

  • NetworkManager 1.6 Is Inching Along With New Feature Work

    NetworkManager 1.5.3 was released this week as the new development release with a lot of feature work in stepping towards NetworkManager 1.6 in 2017.

  • News: FileZilla – the free FTP solution

  • Use Focuswriter for a distraction-free writing experience on Fedora

    Focuswriter also has many options to tweak and change how your writing experience looks. You can create, modify and use multiple different themes, tweaking display options such as fonts, background colours, background images, the colour of the foreground, opacity of the foreground, text colour, text size and line spacing.

  • Trying out Mosh – the Mobile Shell

    Mosh is great for logging into remote shells, but you will still need to use OpenSSH for scp and sftp you will still, as Mosh is optimised for character (and not binary) transport. Which is perfectly fine.

  • My Top 5 Alternatives to Xterm [Ed: a little older]

  • 5 Linux Browsers You Probably Haven’t Heard Of

    While you might be fine sticking with the default browser for your Linux distribution, very often one browser isn’t enough. The default browser might be crashing all the time, or you simply might need more. For such cases you’d better know what the alternatives are.

    For instance, I always have dozens, if not hundreds, of tabs open – for my own projects, for clients’ projects, personal research, etc., and all this in one browser becomes way too much. Also, when I upload files, the browser (usually) remembers the last directory used and opens it directly. This way the next time I upload files from the same directory, I don’t have to search for the directory. All this makes it comfortable to use multiple browsers with different tabs in each of them.

  • INN 2.6.1

    This is a bug-fix and minor feature release over INN 2.6.0. The biggest change is adding support for the new COMPRESS extension. It also fixes various bugs around state changes when negotiating various compression or integrity layers and fixes some issues with nnrpd’s validation of newly-posted messages. (Messages with Received and Posted headers are no longer rejected; messages with all-whitespace headers now are.) This release also supports OpenSSL 1.1.0 and fixes an nntpsend bug under systemd.

  • 9 Open Source/Commercial Software for Data Center Infrastructure Management

    When a company grows its demand in computing resources grows as well. It works as for regular companies as for providers, including those renting out dedicated servers. When the total number of racks exceed 10 you’ll start facing issues.

    How to inventory servers and spares? How to maintain a data center in a good health, locating and fixing potential threats on time. How to find the rack with broken equipment? How to prepare physical machines to work? Carrying out these tasks manually will take too much time otherwise will require having a huge team of administrators in your IT-department.

  • Proprietary

    • Adobe Flash Player 24 Update Download Available for GNU/Linux System

    • Adobe unifies its Flash plugin releases with version 24

      Adobe has silently been developing an updated version of their NPAPI based Linux Flash Player plugin for a while.

      Remember, NPAPI is the plugin protocol used in Mozilla compatible browsers, for which Adobe was supposedly not releasing any new developments. Instead they only incorporated security fixes to their stone-age version 11 of the Linux player during the past years.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Differences Between Linux and Windows Hosting

    • sshpass: An Excellent Tool for Non-Interactive SSH Login – Never Use on Production Server

    • Distributing Python Packages Part I: Creating a Python Package

    • Meson ♥ xmlrpc-c

    • Add Rainbow Colors to Linux Command Output in Slow Motion

    • How to install PHP 7.1 as PHP-FPM & FastCGI for ISPConfig 3.1 on Debian 8 (Jessie)

    • How To Install Flowblade Video Editor in Ubuntu

    • How to Perform Syntax Checking Debugging Mode in Shell Scripts

    • Beginner’s Guide for Flowblade Video Editor

    • Installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.3 Guide

    • Improve Network Performance with openDataplane and Open Fast Path on Ubuntu 16.04

    • How To Create USB Bootable Easily in Ubuntu

    • How to build a Ceph Distributed Storage Cluster on CentOS 7

    • How to Enable Two-Factor Authentication on Dropbox

    • How To Install Krita 3.1 from Snap Package in Ubuntu

    • Installation of CentOS 7.3 Guide

    • How to Install ownCloud 9.1 with Nginx and MariaDB on CentOS 7

    • On reversing btrees in job interviews

    • Distributing Python Packages Part II: Submitting to PyPI

    • How to Install and use Nano Text Editor

    • The inode->i_version counter in Linux

    • How to create auxiliary build jobs in Travis-CI matrix

    • Display a list of available operating systems on Vultr in pretty JSON

    • Provision Dockerized hosts on Vultr with Docker Machine from Linux Mint 18.1, Ubuntu 16.04

    • Installing Steam on Fedora 25 Linux

    • How to Install Microsoft Office 2013 in Linux

    • RDO Newton (packstack) Set up for three Nodes (Controller+Network+Compute) ML2&OVS&VXLAN on CentOS 7.3

    • Install / Enable Packman Repository on openSUSE 13.1, 13.2 & openSUSE Leap 42.1 & 42.2 [Ed: just updated]

    • How to set up MySQL Cluster on Ubuntu

    • Building an Email Server on Ubuntu Linux, Part 3

    • Install Kodi, VLC and multimedia libraries on Fedora 25 Linux

    • How to share folders between guest and host in VirtualBox

    • How to access your Google Drive account using overGrive

    • Install the Latest Eclipse Java IDE on Debian 8 and Ubuntu 16.04 Linux

  • Wine or Emulation

    • Wine 2.0-rc2 release with 20 bugs fixed

  • Games

    • Open-Source Warsow Game Development Appears To End

      Warsow had been an open-source, cross-platform first-person shooter video game in development since 2005, but unfortunately it appears work on it has ended.

    • Off Grid is an adventure, satire and stealth game and it’s coming to Linux

      Off Grid [Official Site] sounds pretty interesting! An adventure, satire and stealth game that follows real-world events surrounding data privacy.

    • 1,000+ Linux games on Steam, Godot’s new 3D renderer, and more gaming news

    • Valve Wants To Improve AMDGPU Linux Driver For VR To Avoid Motion Sickness

      A developer at Valve has issued a request for comments on a proposal to implement high priority scheduling in the AMDGPU kernel driver in order to benefit their Linux VR efforts.

    • The Latest Talos Principle Vulkan RADV & OpenGL RadeonSI With Mesa 13.1-dev

      This week I posted many Dota 2 7.00 benchmarks with different AMD graphics cards while testing Mesa 13.1-dev + Linux 4.9 with both the RADV Vulkan driver and RadeonSI OpenGL driver. Here are some tests of the latest The Talos Principle build while comparing those OpenGL and Vulkan numbers.

      This past week Croteam pushed their Vulkan enhancements to stable rather than being in public beta, so that plus the latest Mesa 13.1-dev code makes for some fun OpenGL vs. Vulkan benchmarking as we get close to the end of 2016. The Talos Principle test profile was also recently updated.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • What’s the Best Lightweight Linux Desktop Environment for you ?

    If you have old Windows XP PC or a netbook? Don’t throw away your old PC just yet and you can revive it with a lightweight Linux Desktop Environments.

    How ? Distributions are consuming more resources majorly on GUI (Graphical User Interface), when you are having old hardware first you have to decide the desktop environment then distribution. Some Linux users would prefer a more lean & slim environment.

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Kdenlive 16.12 released

    • Plasma 5.9 Wallpaper “Canopee”

      It’s that time of the release cycle! Plasma 5.9 is getting a new wallpaper, “Canopee”, French for canopy. Like the last wallpaper, Bismuth, we are again shipping with a 4K version.

    • Looking Forward

      We have just released Krita 3.1, but we are already deep into coding again! We will continue releasing bug fix versions of Krita 3.1.x until it’s time to release 3.2 (or maybe 4.0…). And, as with 2.9, some bug fix releases might even contain new features, if they’re small and safe enough. But we’ll also start making development builds soon, and there’s also the daily build for Windows.

    • Made with Krita 2016 — the Krita Artbook

    • [Krita] Interview with Jabari Dumisani

      Actually I was looking for some GIMP update news online, ended up on a Blender 3D forum and heard about Krita from one of the posts, never hearing of it before. I nosed around, followed the trail to the .org website, and the rest was history. Krita and I have been buddies ever since.

    • Cutelyst 1.1.2 released

      Cutelyst the C++/Qt Web Framework just got a new release.

      Yesterday I was going to do the 1.1.0 release, after running tests, and being happy with current state I wrote this blog post, but before I publish I went to http://www.cutelyst.org CMS (CMlyst) to paste the same post, and I got hit by a bug I had on 1.0.0, which at time I thought it was a bug in CMlyst, so decided to investigate and found a few other bugs with our WSGI not properly changing the current directory and not replacing the + sign with an ‘ ‘ space when parsing formdata, which was the main bug. So did the fixes tagged as 1.1.1 and today found that automatically setting Content-Length wasn’t working when the View rendered nothing.

    • KDE Applications 16.12.0 just out!

    • Marble in your CMake or qmake based project, now more easy

    • How input works – Keyboard input

    • Now Dock v0.5

    • Comparing Krita packaging size

      Every time a new version of Krita is released I see somewhere a post where someone lists the output of their distribtion package manager and complains about the number of dependencies and the installation size. In the past dependencies used to be a huge problem where the connections between the packages causes a chains of dependencies at which end you e.g. needed install a MySQL server.

• Distributions

  • Bluestar Linux: A Beautiful Take on KDE and a User-Friendly Arch-Based Distribution

    Have you ever wanted a combination of Arch Linux and KDE but always seemed to get stumped at the Arch Linux portion of the combination? If that’s you, your days of being left out in the Arch Linux/KDE cold are over. Why? Bluestar Linux.

    This new(ish) kid on the block allows you to enjoy Arch Linux without having to jump through all the usual hoops of setting the distribution up manually, plus it offers a rather unique take on KDE, one that had me instantly nodding my head in agreement with their layout. In fact, what Bluestar did with KDE makes so much sense, it has me wondering why this isn’t the default layout of the “K” Desktop Environment (more on this in a bit).

  • Budgie 10.2.9 Released

    We’re happy to announce the release of Budgie 10.2.9. This is solely a bug fix release, tackling some niggling issues before our focus shifts to development of Budgie 11.

  • This Week In Solus – Install #40

    On the last This Week in Solus, I highlighted our roadmap, which includes our upcoming ISO snapshot. This ISO snapshot will feature the latest kernel, which at the time of this writing, is looking like 4.9. Additionally, since the writing of TWIS #39, we have landed an upgraded libinput and xorg libinput driver, thus those will see inclusion in the ISO as well.

  • I’m extremely pleased that +Solus​ and Ubuntu MATE are deepening our collaboration

  • Arch Family

    • Manjaro Deepin 16.10.3 and various other updates comes in

  • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • OpenSUSE Leap 42.2 – Forrest Gimp

      I do have to admit I’ve been waiting for openSUSE to release 42.2. Even though the much anticipated Leap version did not stun me, I still have a secret love for openSUSE, deep deep down, as it was my first proper distro, and it has always shown that level of professionalism you don’t get elsewhere. Lately, it’s been flaking, but still.

      Anyhow, let’s try to rekindle the emotion. OpenSUSE 42.2, also named Leap, is here, and currently, it comes as a mighty DVD-size ISO. Live editions ought to follow soon, but for me, it was time to bleed the network bandwidth. Testbed? The notorious if recently somewhat redeemed Lenovo G50 machine.

  • Slackware Family

    • New Slackware-current Live ISOs with latest Plasma

      I am ready with a new batch of packages for Plasma 5 and to showcase that in a Slackware Live Edition, I stamped a new version on ‘liveslak‘.
      Version 1.1.5 is ready, again containing only minor tweaks compared to the previous release. I made a set of ISO images for several variants of the 64bit and 32bit versions of Slackware Live Edition based on liveslak 1.1.5 and using Slackware-current dated “Thu Dec 1 08:49:20 UTC 2016“. These ISO images have been uploaded and are available on the primary server ‘bear‘. You will find ISO images for a full Slackware, Plasma5, MATE and Cinnamon (yes, I did one this time!) variants and the 700MB small XFCE variant.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 targets private cloud

      Red Hat just announced that it is making Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 available. This release is based upon the OpenStack ‘Newton’ release and is designed to increase system-wide scalability, simplify management and improve workload orchestration. It will also enhance both network performance and security.

      Additionally, Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 introduces a new software life cycle, with optional support up to 5 years.

    • Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 Extends Cloud Support

      While new releases of OpenStack debut every six months, organizations tend to want to run stable cloud deployments for longer period of time. As such, Red Hat is now providing its users with up to five years of support for its OpenStack Cloud Platform.
      Red Hat announced the official release of its OpenStack Platform 10 on December 15, providing users with the option for up to five years of support. The new Red Hat OpenStack Platform 10 release is based on the upstream open-source OpenStack Newton milestone that debuted on October 6.

    • Red Hat Pursues Microsoft SQL Server on Linux Partners, Customers

      Red Hat (RHT) is opening its arms to Microsoft SQL Server partners and customers, inviting those ecosystems to test the database on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The move comes roughly one month after Microsoft launched a SQL Server on Linux public preview. General availability is expected in mid-2017.

    • [CentOS-announce] Release for CentOS Linux 7 (1611) on x86_64

    • systemd 231 in Centos 7 thx to Facebook

      So Centos7 currently has systemd version 219 installed which was released on 2015-02-16 (see NEWS).

      This is a huge problem, as we miss a lot of very important functions related to journald, networkd, machinectl, systemd-nspawn and so on.

    • Finance

      • Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Shares Sold by Hudson Bay Capital Management LP

      • Gaining Traction? Stock Update on Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 25 Gnome review – A way to land

        All right. Brace yourselves. It’s Fedora time. Throughout 2016, a gloomy year for the likes of us, Linux users, Fedora has been a friendly companion. It made me like and use Gnome again, plus it offered a pleasant, vibrant, practical desktop experience that nicely filled the gap left by Ubuntu. Almost like a dental crown.

        We also learned how to pimp it, and I have a whole bunch of surprises laid out ahead of us, including yet more elegant tweaking and taming, reviews on other hardware, some revolutionary usability tricks, and still more. But all that will happen in the future. Now, we should focus on Fedora 25, and see how it stacks against its predecessor, as well as the entire Linux ecosystem. No pressure.

      • Fedora 25 Release Party Beijing Report

        Last week we hold the Fedora 25 Release Party Beijing. As I am a little busy, Tonghui volunteered to be the event owner. I co-organise as coordinator and logistics.

        Since it’s near winter vacation of schools, as soon as Fedora 25 released, we decide to make this happen early December. Otherwise there will hardly any student attending. So I insists to hold in the university no later than Dec 17th. So this finally happened on Dec 10th.

      • Linux-modder’s Tech Corner

        Attending Ambassadors, Fedora Contributors included: Corey Sheldon (linuxmodder), Nick Bebout (nb), Mike DePaulo (mikedep333), Beth Lynn (bethlynn), Matthew Miller (mattdm), Stephen Gallagher (sgallagh). Having a rather nice spread of the Fedora Community among us made for a very productive display and sidebar chats amongst ourselves and the Redhat / Centos Table folks we were with. Among us were several conference talk attendees and even a GPG Signing Party (as a BoF).

  • Debian Family

    • Freexian’s report about Debian Long Term Support, November 2016

      Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS.

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu spotted during AMD Instinct announcement

        • Ubuntu Unity 8 snap – edge r283

        • Ubuntu Unity 8 update

        • Get 50% off Linux Foundation training and certification

          It’s been a great year for Ubuntu. More and more cloud users are turning to Ubuntu for their needs on public clouds. On the private cloud side you can find us on most production deployments of OpenStack, and we’re bringing you the latest bits of Kubernetes and other exciting cloud technologies, like fresh Docker packages. That’s a ton of new technology, it can be challenging to keep on top of things!

        • Flavours and Variants

          • SemiCode OS takes Ubuntu to next level

            While Canonical is keeping on expanding its presence in the world of open source, SemiCode OS has just emerged to take its Ubuntu to the next level. The platform uses Ubuntu 14.04 to deliver an advanced computing experience.

            SemiCode OS is designed as the Linux for programmers and web developers. As a replacement for Windows and macOS, the new operating system includes GNOME desktop environment. It also comes preloaded with IDEs of some popular programming languages.

            To nurture non-coders with some primary coding skills, the initial beta version of SemiCode OS has Scratch IDE. There are tools such as Slack and Git to support development teams.

          • Linux Mint 18.1 Cinnamon and MATE Released

            Clement Lefebvre today released Linux Mint 18.1 LTS in the Cinnamon and MATE flavors for 32 and 64-bit machines. Beta users can upgrade through the Update Manager, but 18.0 users will have to wait for until the end of the month. Today’s release brought several updated components as well as new features.

            Linux Mint 18.1 features MATE 1.16 bringing additional GTK3 ports including the notification daemon, session manager, and MATE terminal. The Cinnamon version got a new screensaver application that looks and works much better. One can control multimedia from the screensaver screen without unlocking it, it can display the battery power level, and any missed notifications. Notifications can now have an accompanying sound if desired and panels can be set on the vertical. The sound applet can now control more than one device at a time and the keyboard applet can support more than one layout for the same language.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Christmas-music-carousel-snap – with the Raspberry PiGlow!

    As part of our festive competition to build a seasonal snap on your RaspberryPi…we made an attempt ourselves!

  • Phones

    • Tizen

      • Vimeo coming soon to Samsung’s Tizen-powered TVs.

        Vimeo, a long-time competitor to YouTube, has today made the transition from small screen touchscreen to the big screen with new apps that have been developed for all the major viewing platforms Apple TV, Android TV, and also an HTML5 app for Samsung’s Tizen-based Smart TVs.

        This hasn’t been a simple case of up-scaling the smartphone app, but instead performing a complete “rebuild of the Vimeo TV experience”, that offers you the ability to customise it to your specific needs.

      • Smartphone Game: Little Birds Match is now Available Tizen Store

    • Android

      • The apparent end of CyanogenMod [Ed: Behind paywall until this week]

        The world is full of successful corporations built with free software and, as a general rule, the free-software community has benefited from the existence of those companies. But the intersection of corporate interest and free software can be a risky place where economic interests may be pursued to the detriment of the underlying software and its community. Arguably, that is what has happened with the CyanogenMod project, which is now faced with finding a new home and, probably, a new name.

        CyanogenMod is an alternative build of the Android operating system; it got its start in 2009. It quickly grew to become the most popular of the Android “mods”, with a substantial community of contributors and support for a wide range of devices. Early users appreciated its extensive configurability, user-interface improvements, lack of dubious vendor add-on software, and occasionally, privacy improvements. For many users, CyanogenMod was a clear upgrade from whatever version of Android originally shipped on their devices.

        In 2013, CyanogenMod founder Steve Kondik obtained some venture capital and started Cyanogen Inc. as a vehicle to further develop the CyanogenMod distribution. The initial focus was on providing a better Android to handset manufacturers, who would choose to ship it instead of stock Android from Google. There was a scattering of initial successes, including the OnePlus One handset, but the list of devices shipping with CyanogenMod never did get that long.

        Recently there have been signs of trouble at Cyanogen; these include layoffs in July and, most recently, the news that Steve Kondik has left the company. Cyanogen Inc. will now proceed without its founder and, seemingly, with relatively little interest in the CyanogenMod distribution, which, arguably, has lost much of the prominence it once had. Devices running CyanogenMod were once easily found at free-software gatherings; now they are somewhat scarce. Anecdotally, it would seem that far fewer people care about the continued existence of CyanogenMod than did a few years ago.

      • Qualcomm To Bolster Android Things Efforts

        When Google announced that they planned to leverage the open and adaptable nature of Android to bring some much-needed order and unity to the wild west that is the internet of things, it didn’t take a genius, or even an insider, to know that nobody, not even Google, could do something like that alone. Thus, the wait began to see who all would come out of the woodwork to help bring Android Things into mainstream success. Industry watchers didn’t have to wait very long; the day after the official announcement of the Android Things IoT platform, processor maker and longtime Android platform Qualcomm has come forward as the first partner for Android Things.

      • 12 Android Apps You Should Have (But Probably Don’t)

        The Google Play store has more than 2.4 million apps available, but most of us have a lot of the same apps on our smartphones or tablets. That is, after all, how those apps end up on the “most popular apps” lists.

        For this slideshow, we went looking for hidden gems. It highlights 12 great Android apps that you won’t find on any “10 most popular apps” list. However, many of these apps have won awards, received rave reviews and earned excellent ratings from users. These are apps you might have otherwise overlooked, but that you should really consider downloading.

      • Google’s search-savvy keyboard comes to Android

      • Samsung Galaxy S7, S7 Edge Android 7.1.1 Nougat Update Imminent, S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge Plus And Note 5 To Follow

      • Google Launches Android Chrome WebVR Support

      • Moto G4, Moto G4 Plus Android 7 Nougat Update Now Available in US; Moto G5, Moto G5 Plus 2017 Launching?

      • 10 Things To Know About Android Things – Google’s Latest IoT Device OS

      • Android Pay supports 31 new banks and credit unions

      • Curve comes to Android

        Today we’re delighted to announce the release of Curve 1.0 on Android! We’ve launched on Android with a brand new interface and a host of great features that current Curve users have been enjoying since we launched on iOS earlier this year, and we’re excited to bring it to Android users.

      • Capcom to bring entire Mega Man NES series to Android

        Capcom has announced that it will bring its entire collection of 8-bit Mega Man games to Android. Mega Man 1 through to Mega Man 6 will be launched in Japan on January 6, however there’s no news on whether Capcom will give them a wider release.

      • BlackBerry stops making phones, licenses the BlackBerry name to TCL for Android phones

        The BlackBerry smartphone is dead: Long live the BlackBerry smartphone.

        A week after it officially pulled out of the smartphone market, BlackBerry has agreed to license its brand to handset manufacturer TCL.

        The Chinese company will make and market future BlackBerry handsets worldwide except for India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, where BlackBerry has already struck local licensing deals.

        This is hardly new territory for TCL, which manufactured BlackBerry’s last two handsets, the Android-based DTEK50 and DTEK60.

        BlackBerry has taken a more direct route out of the handset manufacturing business than Nokia, another of the marquee phone brands of the early years of this century. When Nokia sold its smartphone business to Microsoft, it also gave that company the right to use the Nokia brand for a transitional period. When Nokia got its name back earlier this year, it promptly granted a 10-year license to HMD Global, a Finnish company, to use its name on new phones.

      • ‘Ok Google’ now works in Android Auto

      • Android Auto listens for your ‘OK Google’

      • 16 Android tips and tricks you shouldn’t miss from 2016

      • Android device updates: OnePlus pushes out updates, Samsung tries to kill off the Note7

      • Amazon’s $50 Android Smartphone Is Back Following Malware Scare

Free Software/Open Source

• Haiku OS Makes Progress In Booting With UEFI

  The BeOS-compatible Haiku operating system continues working on a big feature not present during the original BeOS days: UEFI.

  A few weeks back we wrote about Haiku OS working on UEFI support and in the time since they’ve made steady progress on supporting this standard. Haiku with QEMU can now boot all the way to the desktop using UEFI. But when it comes to using real hardware, such as a MacBook Air, Haiku can boot with UEFI but then freezes when hitting the desktop. But before they can figure out that situation, they need to add serial debugging support to be able to figure out what’s happening.

  In addition to serial debugging support, they are also planning to expand the disk system support and other enhancements to its UEFI support. They are optimistic they may have UEFI booting in working shape for their upcoming OS beta release.

• Events

  • OpenSource 101 Coming to Raleigh, N.C.

    There’s a new open source conference coming to Silicon Valley East. OpenSource 101 will be a single day event held Saturday February 4, 2017 on the campus of North Carolina State University in Raleigh. The event is being hosted by All Things Open, the organization behind the four-year-old All Things Open conference that’s held every October in downtown Raleigh.

    While All Things Open is one of the largest open source conferences in the country — this year’s event was attended by 2,400 — OpenSource 101 will be downsized by design, with attendance precapped at 500. That’s probably due to seating limitations at the university’s McKimmon Center where the event will take place. According to an email sent Wednesday, OpenSource 101 grew out of “the incredible demand we’ve seen for 101/Introductory level open source education” at this year’s ATO, where an introductory track was called “101.”

• SaaS/Back End

  • Top 7 Videos from ApacheCon and Apache Big Data 2016

    It’s been two years since The Linux Foundation forged a partnership with the Apache Software Foundation to become the producer of their official ASF events. This year, ApacheCon and Apache Big Data continued to grow and gain momentum as the place to share knowledge, ideas, best practices and creativity with the rest of the Apache open source community.

• Databases

  • MariaDB Releases an Open Source Columnar Storage Engine

    MariaDB Corporation, is launching MariaDB ColumnStore 1.0, an open source columnar storage engine that unites transaction and analytic processing to deliver seamless big data analytics.

    “Providing a single SQL front end for both your OLTP and analytics is valuable and important,” said David Thompson, VP of engineering at MariaDB.

  • MariaDB ColumnStore Adds Simultaneous Analytics, Transactional Processing

    MariaDB has released into general availability ColumnStore 1.0, a storage engine allows users to run analytics and transactional processes simultaneously with a single front end on the MariaDB 10.1 database.

    While the open source community pushed back against the licensing model of MariaDB’s MaxScale database proxy, ColumnStore is open source, licensed under GPLv2.

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • LibreOffice 5.3 to Launch with a Microsoft Office-like Ribbon UI

    “LibreOffice is working on a pretty significant overhaul of its interface that would have the productivity suite adopt a new toolbar design similar to the Microsoft Office Ribbon UI.”

    At this point, LibreOffice’s new Ribbon-inspired UI is still in the works, but it’s already available in experimental version 5.3 and anyone can see how it looks using the steps below.

• Funding

  • Databricks Sparks Growth with $60M Series C

    Apache Spark has become a core element of the modern data analytics stack

    Databricks announced on December 15 that it has raised $60 million in Series C funding to help grow it commercial aspirations in support of the open-source Apache Spark project. To date, Databricks has raised a total of $107.5 million in funding since the company was first created in 2013.

• BSD

  • watt time is left

    So Apple no longer knows how to make a battery meter. The good news is OpenBSD is still here for all your desktop needs. How does its battery meter work?

    The simplest interface to get battery status info is to run apm. This gives us both percentage and an estimate of time remaining.

• Licensing/Legal

  • Oracle finally targets Java non-payers – six years after plucking Sun

    Oracle is massively ramping up audits of Java customers it claims are in breach of its licences – six years after it bought Sun Microsystems.

    A growing number of Oracle customers and partners have been approached by Larry Ellison’s firm, which claims they are out of compliance on Java.

    Oracle bought Java with Sun Microsystems in 2010 but only now is its License Management Services (LMS) division chasing down people for payment, we are told by people familiar with the matter.

    The database giant is understood to have hired 20 individuals globally this year, whose sole job is the pursuit of businesses in breach of their Java licences.

• Programming/Development

  • nanotime 0.0.1: New package for Nanosecond Resolution Time for R

• Standards/Consortia

  • OpenID for authentication

    I’ve just registered on “yet another web site”, which meant another scramble for a username that’s not already in use, another randomly-generated and highly-unmemorable password, and another email address provided for account recovery in the event that it all goes wrong. Along with my flying car and jetpack, I’d rather hoped the 21st century would bring a better way of managing my identity on the internet; in 2005 it did just that with the release of the OpenID standard for distributed authentication. Sadly, OpenID has remained a fringe player in this field.

Leftovers

• The Guardian view on Moomintroll: a hero for our time

  Few authors have managed to convey an open-hearted domesticity as well as Tove Jansson – Moominmamma is patron spirit of Christmas hospitality – but the idyll of Moomin Valley is surrounded by wilderness and constantly threatened by flood and fire, comet and the wandering Groke. Moomintroll wakes alone from hibernation and wanders in a sunless world of snow. “If only there was anyone here I knew from before!” he thinks, “someone who wasn’t full of secrets, but was altogether ordinary…”. But he must make his way through a strange, enchanted world without his old friends.

• Science

  • Are we cleared to land?

    Airport runways play a major role in safe navigation. Pilots and air traffic controllers use the runway to guide planes for safe departures and arrivals, but few people realize how much work and preparation it takes to ensure passenger safety.

    The Aeronautical Survey Program administered through NOAA provides the highly accurate position, height, and orientation information needed for safe air navigation. NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey has performed aeronautical surveys since the 1920s. The surveys provide critical information about airport features, obstructions, and aids to navigation.

• Health/Nutrition

  • End of federal Flint water investigation brings more questions than answers

    The closure of Congress’ year-long Flint water investigation has drawn very different reactions from both sides of the issue.

    Letters dated Friday, Dec. 16, from U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, indicated that the investigation had closed. Letters blamed both state officials and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for not detecting Flint water problems soon enough or taking proper action once problems were identified.

    Some Republicans, such as Gov. Rick Snyder, believe the investigation was thorough and resulted in proposed policy change.

  • House panel closes probe into Flint water crisis

    The House Oversight Committee Friday closed its investigation into the Flint, Mich., drinking water crisis, concluding that a “failure of government at all levels” caused and exacerbated the catastrophe.

    Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) closed the 11-month probe with a pair of letters to the chairmen of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Appropriations Committee, summarizing the findings that pertain to each of their jurisdictions.

    “The documents and testimony show a series of failures at all levels of government caused, and then exacerbated, the water crisis. The committee found significant problems at Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), and unacceptable delays in the Environmental Protection Agency’s response to the crisis,” Chaffetz wrote to Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.).

  • Antibiotic resistance will hit a terrible tipping point in 2017

    A major menace looms over us. In 2017, many more people could begin dying from common bacterial infections. As resistance to antibiotics booms, diseases from gonorrhoea to urinary tract infections are becoming untreatable – a situation that looks set to get worse as the world reaches a new tipping point next year.

    “We are about to reach the point where more antibiotics will be consumed by farm animals worldwide than by humans,” says Mark Woolhouse, at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

    This will mean more resistant bacteria, which could be a big threat. The livestock industry has long played down any risk to human health caused by using antibiotics in farming, but the danger is now accepted, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

  • The US plans to ban smoking in public housing — but will it work?

    April Simpson has been living in the Queensbridge Houses, a public housing development in Queens, New York, her whole life. “From day one. I was born here,” she says, proudly.

    When she walks among the iconic six-story, red-brick buildings, passersby say hi to her and kiss her on the cheek. Everyone seems to know her. Simpson, a charismatic 54-year-old with buzzed short hair and a broad smile, is the Queensbridge tenants’ association president. She’s also a smoker. But come 2017, under a new federal rule, she won’t be allowed to light up one of her Newport cigarettes inside the housing development where she lives.

    Simpson is in favor of the smoking ban, but she also thinks it will be “extremely hard” to enforce. “You just can’t say, ‘You can’t smoke anymore’ to a person who’s been smoking for 20 years or even 10 years,” she says. “It’s like putting a lollipop in front of child and saying, ‘You can’t have it’ without giving them alternatives.”

• Security

  • Security advisories for Friday

  • My Yahoo Account Was Hacked! Now What?

  • Mailpile: Too Cool for PGP

    It’s almost become a rite of passage for security folks: work in the trenches, build a reputation, climb the ivory tower, write a detailed epiphany about why you’ve given up on PGP. Suggest we all buy an iPhone and use Signal, start giving people phone numbers instead of e-mail addresses…

    Wait, what?

    Please take a moment to go ask any young woman if she thinks giving random strangers her phone number will improve her security. I’ll wait.

  • Reliably Exploiting Apport in Ubuntu

  • It’s Been a Bad Week for Linux as Several Security Flaws Surface [Ed: This is sensationalism; those were not prevalent/severe bugs]

    Two security researchers published details this week about several security flaws that allow attackers to execute code on affected machines and take over devices.

    These security flaws affect Linux distros such as Fedora and Ubuntu, and two of these exploits are zero-days, meaning there’s no patch to prevent attacks.

  • Redux: compromising Linux using… SNES Ricoh 5A22 processor opcodes?!

• Defence/Aggression

  • China Makes New Move in South China Sea Fight

    China has placed weapons on all seven artificial islands it built in the South China Sea, a new report Thursday indicates.

    Images from the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, a U.S. think tank, show the apparent “significant” military buildup.

    “China appears to have built significant point-defense capabilities, in the form of large anti-aircraft guns and probable close-in weapons systems (CIWS), at each of its outposts in the Spratly Islands,” according to the report from AMTI, a subsidiary of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

    The reports adds that these “emplacements show that Beijing is serious about defense of its artificial islands in case of an armed contingency in the South China Sea. … They would be the last line of defense against cruise missiles launched by the United States or others.”

  • War In The South China Sea

    Seizing a vessel on the high seas is an act of war. If China does not promptly return the vessel, USA can take punitive actions including attacking Chinese naval vessels in the area. This could rapidly escalate. China has been claiming most of the South China Sea as their territory. How far will they push this?

  • Pentagon: Chinese ship captures U.S. underwater drone from sea

    A U.S. Navy underwater drone operating in international waters was captured by a Chinese warship in the South China Sea, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement on Friday.

    The drone is not armed and is used for gathering weather and temperature data. The incident occurred Thursday.

  • Chinese warship seizes US underwater drone in international waters

    The Chinese navy has seized an underwater drone in plain sight of the American sailors who had deployed it in international waters, in a seemingly brazen message to the incoming Trump administration.

    According to a US defence official, the unmanned glider had come to the surface of the water in the South China Sea and was about to be retrieved by the USNS Bowditch, an oceanographic and surveillance ship, when a Chinese naval vessel that had been shadowing the Bowditch put a small boat in the water.

    Chinese sailors in the small boat came alongside the drone and grabbed it despite the radioed protests from the Bowditch that it was US property in international waters. The incident happened about 100 miles north-west of the Philippines’ port of Subic Bay.

  • Theresa May refuses to follow US in ending bomb sales to Saudi Arabia despite schools, hospitals and wedding parties being hit in Yemen

    Prime Minister Theresa May has rejected a call for the UK to stop selling weapons to Saudi Arabia – following the US’s decision to restrict arms sales to the autocracy.

    The US announced it would stop a shipment of precision-guided munitions to the country following evidence of “systematic, endemic problems in Saudi Arabia’s targeting”.

  • Aleppo

    The Morning Star has today come under massive criticism for hailing the near total recapture of Aleppo by pro-Government forces as a “liberation.” I would agree that the situation calls for more nuance. However a feeling of relief that the fighting that has ravaged Aleppo for four years is coming to a close, must form part of any sane reaction. If we are not allowed to feel relief at that, presumably it means that we must have wanted al-Nusra and various other jihadist militias to win the hot war. What do we think Syria would look like after that?

    I am no fan of the Assad regime. It is not a genuine democracy and it has a very poor human rights record. If Assad had been toppled by his own people in the Arab spring and replaced by something more akin to a liberal democracy, which kept the Assad regime’s religious toleration, protection of minorities and comparatively good record on women’s rights, and added to it political freedom, a functioning justice system and end to human rights abuse, nobody would have been happier than I. Indeed I strongly suspect I have in the past done much more to campaign against human rights abuse in Syria than the mainstream media stenographers who all decry the fall of rebel Aleppo now.

    But sadly liberal democracy, human rights and women’s rights are not in any sense what the jihadist militias the West is backing are fighting for.

  • Russian gas project splits Swedish politicians in Gotland

    Local parties in Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea, are split over renting harbour facilities for the Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

    Representatives from Gotland and from Karlhamn, a municipality in southern Sweden that is also considering to rent port facilities, are to meet Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallstroem and defence minister Peter Hultqvist on Tuesday (13 December).

  • Swedish towns told to ‘make preparations regarding the threat of war and conflict’ with Russia

    Sweden’s towns and villages have been ordered to make preparations for a possible military attack in the latest sign of the country’s growing anxiety at its newly belligerent Russian neighbour.

    The country’s Civil Contingency Agency (MSB) last week sent a letter to local authorities across the country asking them to maintain operations centres in underground bunkers, ensure that a system of emergency sirens is in place, and to be open to cooperating on war exercises with the Swedish Armed Forces.

  • UK ‘secretly selling arms to Saudi Arabia and elsewhere under opaque licencing system’

    The UK is secretly selling arms to Saudi Arabia and other countries under an opaque type of export licence, it has been reported.

    The military and defence industry is a major player in the UK economy, worth about £7.7bn a year.

    But many of the countries buying British arms are run by governments with dubious human rights records, even though the destinations of such exports are supposed to meet human rights standards.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Bianca Jagger

    Masoud Golsorkhi How did you first come across WikiLeaks?
    Bianca Jagger I first read about WikiLeaks about two years ago. I was shocked and revolted when I watched the “Collateral Murder” video, which was released to the world last April. It shows the killing of innocent civilians, including two Reuters journalists, by US soldiers in Iraq in the July 2007 attack of Baghdad. The video is shot from a US helicopter, and the soldiers are laughing while shooting at the people on the ground, as though it is a computer game. When a van drives up to pick up the wounded and the dead, the soldiers laugh and continue to shoot, gravely wounding two children in the van. Before WikiLeaks released the video, Reuters had been trying to obtain the footage under the Freedom of Information Act, but the US military refused to release it, claiming that the journalists were killed in crossfire between the army and militants.

    [...]

    MG What led you to get involved in Julian Assange’s prosecution?
    BJ Having grown up under a dictatorship in Nicaragua, I am very sensitive to any attempts to weaken our democracies. Although I do not agree with everything WikiLeaks has done, I feel compelled to defend freedom of speech, freedom of the press and due process. I have voiced my support for Julian Assange because I suspect that what is on trial here is not just him, but freedom of speech itself. I fear that Mr. Assange is being punished for releasing information that reveals the misuse of power by the US and other governments. He is on trial for holding governments to account.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

  • Study Finds Oil Palm Certification Plays Limited Role in Curbing Fires

    Oil palm is in everything. From food to cosmetics to fuel, oil palm plays an integral role in our lives as the most popular and versatile vegetable oil product on the market. It is consumed and used by most people without giving it a second thought. Yet, oil palm cultivation is a large contributor to environmental and social problems, especially in places like Indonesia, where the business of oil palm cultivation has become the second largest export over the last decade.

    Oil palm agriculture comes with other problems as well, including malpractice issues such as oil plantations not consulting local communities before using land, people being displaced, and unsafe working conditions. Better regulation for the palm oil industry could help promote sustainable oil palm and agricultural practices. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil is currently the only organization able to certify that palm oil has been harvested and prepared in a sustainable manner.

  • WWF and Greenpeace break with Indonesia’s pulp and paper giant

    The construction of a 3km canal in Indonesia has led Greenpeace and WWF to suspend its partnership with one of Indonesia’s biggest pulp and paper companies.

    Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper (Rapp), a subsidiary of Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (April), dug the canal through thick peat forest on the island of Pedang, just off the east coast of Sumatra.

    In doing so, April not only flouted its own sustainability standards but went against government regulations and a letter of instruction issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry last year asking companies to block existing canals.

  • The Oil Mystery Behind Saudi Arabia’s Production Cut

    Saudi Arabia surprised the world by helping to engineer an unexpectedly strong agreement from OPEC members to cut production by 1.2 million barrels per day, followed by additional cuts from non-OPEC members. While the two agreements incorporate cuts from a wide range of oil producers, Saudi Arabia will do much of the heavy lifting, cutting nearly 500,000 barrels per day and even promising to go further than that should the markets warrant steeper reductions.

  • We Need to Accept That Oil Is a Dying Industry

    The future is not good for oil, no matter which way you look at it.

    A new OPEC deal designed to return the global oil industry to profitability will fail to prevent its ongoing march toward trillion dollar debt defaults, according to a new report published by a Washington group of senior global banking executives.

    But the report also warns that the rise of renewable energy and climate policy agreements will rapidly make oil obsolete, whatever OPEC does in efforts to prolong its market share.

    The six-month supply deal brokered with non-OPEC members, including Russia, could slash global oil stockpiles by 139 million barrels. The move is a transparent effort to kick prices back up in a weakening oil market where low prices have led industry profits to haemorrhage.

    The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), whose members include major producers from Saudi Arabia to Venezuela, have been hit particularly badly by the weak oil market. In 2014, OPEC had a collective surplus of $238 billion. By 2015, as prices continued to plummet, so did profits, and OPEC faced a deficit of $100 billion.

  • World Energy Hits a Turning Point: Solar That’s Cheaper Than Wind

    A transformation is happening in global energy markets that’s worth noting as 2016 comes to an end: Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity.

    This has happened in isolated projects in the past: an especially competitive auction in the Middle East, for example, resulting in record-cheap solar costs. But now unsubsidized solar is beginning to outcompete coal and natural gas on a larger scale, and notably, new solar projects in emerging markets are costing less to build than wind projects, according to fresh data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

    The chart below shows the average cost of new wind and solar from 58 emerging-market economies, including China, India, and Brazil. While solar was bound to fall below wind eventually, given its steeper price declines, few predicted it would happen this soon.

  • High Tide Bulletin: Winter 2016

    When you may experience higher than normal tides from December 2016 through February 2017.

  • Please Write to Your MPs Asking Them To Support Fossil Fuel Divestment

    We must do everything in our power to accelerate that move away from fossil fuels. Once the business world gets the message that investing in fossil fuels is not just a bad idea, but potentially disastrous, the shift to renewable energy will happen rapidly, regardless of what Trump does.

    Here in the UK, there’s an opportunity to encourage a key group of decision makers to tell their pension fund to divest from fossil fuels: MPs. In fact, there’s an entire campaign to encourage them. If you are a UK citizen, I would like to urge you to contact your MP asking them to support this campaign.

  • Oil company withdraws application for New Mexico pipeline

    The Bureau of Land Management says an oil company with plans to build a pipeline in New Mexico capable of moving 50,000 barrels of crude oil a day has withdrawn its application for the project.

• Finance

  • The Inside Story of Apple’s $14 Billion Tax Bill

    “The Maxforce” is the European Union team that ordered Ireland to collect billions of euros in back taxes from Apple Inc., rattled the Irish government, and spurred changes to international tax law. You’d think it might have earned the name by applying maximum force while investigating alleged financial shenanigans. It didn’t. It’s just led by a guy named Max.

    A European Commission official gave the nickname to the Task Force on Tax Planning Practices in honor of its chief, Max Lienemeyer, a lanky, laid-back German attorney who rose to prominence vetting plans to shore up struggling banks during Europe’s debt crisis. Since its launch in 2013, the Maxforce has looked at the tax status of hundreds of companies across Europe, including a deal Starbucks Corp. had in the Netherlands, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV’s agreement with Luxembourg, and — its largest case — Apple in Ireland.

  • ‘For Whites, Fewer Jobs’: NYT Chart Divides and Deceives

    Eduardo Porter used his column (New York Times, 12/13/16) to point out that Donald Trump got support from many whites who felt that they were being left behind. While there is evidence to support this view, one item in the piece may have misled readers.

    The column includes a table showing the change in employment since the start of the recession for white, African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans. While the latter three groups all had increases in employment of at least 2 million, employment for whites fell by almost 1 million.

    This can be misleading, since the main reason for the difference is that the number of working-age whites actually fell during this period, while the number of working-age people in these other groups rose. The Census Bureau reported that there were 125.2 million non-Hispanic whites between the ages of 18 and 64 in 2010. In 2015, this number was down to 122.9 million.

  • Daily Kos Founder Gleefully Celebrates Coal Miners Losing Health Insurance

    Daily Kos publisher and Vox Media co-founder Markos “Kos” Moulitsas, an influential voice in liberal politics, published a blog post (Daily Kos, 12/12/16) that captures just how terribly leading Democratic pundits are taking Hillary Clinton’s unexpected defeat. In the wake of this loss, some of the more hardcore Clinton partisans have chosen, in lieu of self-examination and internal criticism, to simply lash out at the voters they failed to win over.

    [...]

    Missing from this equation is that US democracy, and working people’s relationship to it, are not pristine and incorruptible. The influence of money in politics, especially post–Citizens United, is tremendous. As The Intercept’s Lee Fang warned nine months before the election, the billionaire Koch brothers have spent years working from the grassroots up to turn the Rust Belt red.

    Billionaire-backed Rust Belt Republican governors, as The Atlantic notes, worked for decades to undermine the Democratic Party’s primary voter turnout mechanism—unions. In addition to their evergreen exploitation of white racism, billionaire-backed Fox News fed voters misleading stories about Clinton wanting to “put coal miners out of work.” (Clinton announcing at a West Virginia town meeting, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” didn’t help.)

  • NPR Guest Warns Against Living Wages With Fantasies of $16 Apples

    To comment on Donald Trump’s naming retired Marine Gen. John Kelly as his Department of Homeland Security secretary, NPR‘s Morning Edition (12/9/16) brought on George W. Bush’s Homeland Security chief, Michael Chertoff.

    A more independent observer might have brought up Kelly’s oversight of the US’s Guantánamo internment camp, where he has defended the force-feeding of hunger-strikers, a procedure condemned by human rights groups as torture.

  • Fast Food Automation, an Old Idea, Gets New Life to Bash Fight for 15

    But there’s no reason to think these experiments wouldn’t have happened without Fight for 15. Indeed, as mentioned above, these announcements predate Fight for 15, and have been “announced” in some form or another several times.

    Does this mean McDonald’s isn’t rolling out kiosk technology in earnest? Of course not; corporations are always looking for new technologies to reduce labor costs. But would this roll-out somehow not occur if workers struggling to stay above the poverty line hadn’t taken to the streets to demand a living wage? Predictably, this is not a question Lee feels a need to explore, much less answer.

  • Demonetisation, Indian state and world

    I dunno if people heard or didn’t hear about the demonetisation of INR 500 and INR 1000 which happened in India on 8th November 2016 with new currency designed in India of INR 2000 and INR 500.

    [...]

    Each of these theories/myths/facts has been contested. Every day we are seeing and reading reports of people being caught with new currency in absurd numbers while RBI , our central bank and Lender of Last Resort has had to play multiple roles such as policing along with the country’s Income Tax Department as well as pumping in new notes of the NEW INR 2000/- and INR 500/- into ATM’s and Bank branches around the country.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Detroit to get new voting machines as city clerk blames state, human error

    Five weeks after a national scandal involving broken Detroit voting machines and ineffective poll workers, state Elections Director Chris Thomas said Wednesday evening that the city will get all new voting machines in time for the 2017 mayoral and City Council elections.

    But broken machines were not the biggest problem Detroit endured election night. Citing a memo he just received, Thomas said there were dozens of other problems that occurred Nov. 8.

    “I got an e-mail yesterday from Wayne County showing me what the issues were on (Detroit) polling places and precincts, and quite frankly, it was somewhat shocking,” he said.

  • Supervisor says some Detroit poll workers not capable of doing the job

    Janice Winfrey should have called a news conference last January and said Detroit could not run its 2016 elections effectively without people stepping up to replace aging, incapable poll workers.

    Had she done that, the Detroit city clerk, who was widely praised for transforming the department when she ousted former Clerk Jackie Currie in 2005, would not be facing a firestorm of criticism over mishandled voter ballots and malfunctioning machines.

    She also wouldn’t have had some precincts where capable veterans worked alongside some people who could not read, weren’t properly trained, weren’t mobile and didn’t know how to use new electronic polling books that long ago replaced paper sheets, one veteran polling supervisor who has worked the polls for 30 years asserted Thursday.

  • Coup: North Carolina Republicans convene a special session to strip incoming Democratic governor of executive powers

    Thomas writes, “Shortly after closing a post-election special session to fund relief for counties afflicted by flooding from Hurricane Matthew or mountain wildfires, North Carolina GOP legislative leaders announced a second special session to begin the same day with an open agenda. The docket was filled with 21 House bills, some of which stripped Democratic Governor Elect Roy Cooper of substantial control over the executive branch. This is a coup attempt, an effort to undermine the results of a highly scrutinized election.”

  • Special Session Part II: “This Is as Serious as It Gets in North Carolina”

    The House and Senate convened for the second special session of the day, and the fourth of the year, at 2 p.m. The House rules set a filing deadline of 7 p.m. for new bills to be filed (later amended to 7:30), while the Senate set a deadline of 3 p.m.

    Here is the running list of bills filed. They include: a dog breeding bills, a bunch of education bills, a (very good) anti-racial profiling bill, and a few bills taking aim at the controversial I-77 toll.

    Here’s a big one: HB 17 requires Senate confirmation of Cooper cabinet appointees, among other UNC-related issues.

  • My Priorities for the Next Four Years

    Like many, I was surprised and shocked by the election of Donald Trump as president. I believe his ideas, temperament, and inexperience represent a grave threat to our country and world. Suddenly, all the things I had planned to work on seemed trivial in comparison. Although Internet security and privacy are not the most important policy areas at risk, I believe he — and, more importantly, his cabinet, administration, and Congress — will have devastating effects in that area, both in the US and around the world.

  • Trump adviser says science gets “a lot of things wrong”

    The term “anti-science” gets thrown around too loosely. Even though people are generally not opposed to the institution of science, most of us will stick to the positions of our cultural team when politics rub up against science. While science may be an effort to objectively evaluate the workings of the cosmos, human behavior is not.

    Some arguments, however, come pretty close to a general antipathy toward science. On Wednesday, Trump transition team advisor Anthony Scaramucci made one of those arguments in a CNN appearance.

    Scaramucci runs an investment firm, hosts Fox Business News’ “Wall Street Week” program, and has written books like The Little Book of Hedge Funds: What You Need to Know About Hedge Funds but the Managers Won’t Tell You. He is part of the Executive Committee for President-elect Trump’s transition—a group that includes Peter Thiel and Trump’s children, among others.

  • Electors won’t get intelligence briefing: report

    Voters in the Electoral College will not receive an intelligence briefing about Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election, according to a new report.

    Sources told NPR the electors would not receive any national intelligence before they cast ballots this Monday.

    Fifty-four of the 232 Democratic electors had signed a letter asking for a briefing before the Electoral College’s vote, according to reports.

    The letter asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for information on what role, if any, Russia had in helping elect Donald Trump.

  • FBI and CIA now agree that Russia hacked to help Trump win [Ed: they don’t need evidence, only agenda]

  • Washington Post automatically inserts Trump fact-checks into Twitter

    In an apparent first for any American news outlet, the Washington Post released a Chrome plug-in on Friday designed to fact-check posts from a single Twitter account. Can you guess which one?

    The new “RealDonaldContext” plug-in for the Google Chrome browser, released by WaPo reporter Philip Bump, adds fact-check summaries to selected posts by President-elect Donald Trump. Users will need to click a post in The Donald’s Twitter feed to see any fact-check information from the Washington Post, which appears as a gray text box beneath the tweet.

  • {Older] Foreign Donors Begin Pulling Out From Clinton Foundation

    Clinton Foundation scandals emerged as a major blow to Hillary Clinton’s campaign this past election, as emails released by WikiLeaks and from FOIA requests revealed pay-to-play schemes and overt conflicts of interest between the Foundation and Clinton’s State Department. Though the Clintons and their supporters staunchly defended the Foundation, pointing to the charitable work it produced to defend any criticisms, such claims of corruption were proven correct.

  • Detroit vote: 95 poll books late, 5 still missing

    Detroit’s election paperwork was in such disarray that the Wayne County Board of Canvassers almost missed its two-week deadline to certify the presidential election.

    Ninty-five poll books, lists of people who cast ballots, were delivered late to the board. Five of those precincts never did turn in a poll book, according to a memo from the Wayne County Clerk’s Office to state election officials.

    “We had to delay the start of the meeting,” said Krista Hartounian, chairwoman of the Board of Canvassers. “Staff was still working as we called the meeting to order.”

  • You Opened the Box…

    Attempts to overturn the results of our election, or to delegitimize a president before he even takes office, are attempts to overturn the system of transfer of power that has served America since its earliest days. There is no measure of exaggeration here; Americans are questioning the results of the election because roughly half don’t like the guy who won.

    Somehow things are… special this year. In most elections, a good-sized group of us see our candidate lose, grumble, and move on to some degree. I don’t think Trump will be a good president, but I also do not think he will burn civil rights to the ground, destroy life on the planet, sell Alaska back to Russia, or invade China with Omarosa some drunk weekend.

  • NYT’s False Choice for Democrats: Move to the Right or Divide by Race

    So what are the two sides of this debate heatedly suggesting we do? On the one hand, we have Democrats who say the party has to focus on “winning back white voters of modest means.” How do you do that? “Focusing more on rural America,” says Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “Be more open to pursuing moderate and conservative voters,” suggests Rep. Gwen Graham (D.-Fla.). Not “ceding too much territory to Republicans in whiter, more conservative areas,” say “some Democrats”—exemplified by Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, who notes that “we got our ass kicked in a lot of these rural pockets.”

    Vice President Joe Biden is said to be in camp that wants Democrats to do more “to reach white working-class voters,” telling CNN (12/11/16): “I mean, these are good people, man! These aren’t racists. These aren’t sexists.”

    On the other hand, you have Democrats who argue that “the party must tailor a platform and strategy that explicitly appealed to younger and nonwhite voters on issues like policing, climate change and immigration.” Pollster Cornell Belcher says “this mythical unicorn white swing voter” is “a shrinking, increasingly resistant market.” “Demographically, the Electoral College is heading in the right direction,” insists former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer.

    So a strategy that goes after rural, whiter, more conservative voters—presumably by being more conservative—vs. a strategy of counting on demographics to deliver victory to a party focused on social and environmental issues.

  • The Electoral College: A Civics Lesson

    We have and have had for 224 years an Electoral College system. The popular vote is not and has never been how we elect a president.

    This is the 6th time in U.S. history the candidate chosen has lost the popular vote, nothing new. The country has muddled on, with some of those presidents being better than others.

    In addition, because of the electoral college system, candidates campaign for electoral votes, not the popular vote. That is the basis for their strategizing how to allot their limited time and resources.

    So, for example, knowing he had little chance to win Democratic strongholds California and New York, Trump did not campaign extensively there even though they are big states. That’s how Clinton won the popular vote, because her campaign aimed at those (big) states where she thought she would win the electoral vote. The size of the popular vote garnered is more a reflection of the way the system works than it is a gauge of popularity.

  • Pirate Party UK now hosts two councillors

    Pirate Party UK now hosts two councillors. Kev Young, an Independent councillor on the Parton Parish council in Cumbria has joined the Pirate Party UK and was successful in being immediately co-opted back on to the council after standing down.

  • Venezuela Brings Toys to Poor Kids, Gets Called ‘Grinch’ on CNN

    Turning facts on their head, CNN transformed the Venezuelan government’s act of helping the poor into the complete opposite.

    In the article “Venezuelan President Called a ‘Grinch’ After Government Toy Seizure” (12/11/16), CNN reporters Rafael Romo and Jorge Luis Pérez liken President Nicolás Maduro to a dastardly Grinch who is stealing toys from under children’s Christmas trees — while he is doing precisely the contrary.

    On Sunday, December 11, the Venezuelan government confiscated nearly 4 million toys from the country’s largest toy company. Venezuela’s consumer protection agency said the company was hoarding the toys and planning to sell them at inflated prices in order to maximize profits during the Christmas season. The head of the consumer protection agency charged that executives at the toy company, Kreisel-Venezuela, “don’t care about our children’s right to have a merry Christmas.”

  • Rather Than Exposing Propaganda, WaPo Shows How It’s Done

    As the Hillary Clinton campaign slogged toward victory in the long primary campaign against Sen. Bernie Sanders, word came from WikiLeaks that it had scored a trove of hacked emails to and from the Democratic National Committee. Among other things, they proved that DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, along with their organizations, had been working hand-in-glove to skew the primaries in Clinton’s favor.

    The day before the party’s convention opened in Philadelphia on July 24, Wasserman-Schultz had to resign her post or face a floor revolt. Sanders delegates were so angry at what they were learning from WikiLeaks about the sabotage of their candidate that hundreds walked out on the second day of the convention, tossing away their delegate credentials over the security fence and vowing never to support Clinton.

    In short order, the DNC and the Obama administration-led intelligence establishment began claiming, with no hard evidence, that the source of WikiLeaks’ explosive emails was “the Russians.” While denied by WikiLeaks, it was a charge that Clinton made ad nauseum on the campaign trail and in her three televised debates with Trump, using it as an all-purpose excuse for tough questions about her self-dealing as secretary of State, her lucrative off-the-record speeches to Wall Street bankers, or the DNC’s thumb on the scale in the primaries.

  • Credibility Tips for Journalists

    The working journalists of America sh*t the bed with their election coverage this year.

    For the most part, the media as a whole fetishized the Clinton candidacy (first woman ever! most experienced candidate ever! dynasty!) and treated Trump as an oaf when they weren’t calling him Hitler and parading any person who wished to accuse him of something before the cameras. That pattern continues now, though the accusations have changed from sexual harassment to near-treason on behalf of Putin.

    Alongside this circus were scum stories on all facets of the campaign attributed to… no one. “Sources close to the campaign said,” or “Officials who could not be identified” and so forth. It almost gave the impression reporters were just making stuff up. Alongside that were many media outlets that simply reprinted others’ stories, so that a piece of journalistic garbage flew around the Internet without anyone asking any questions or verifying the contents.

  • Campuses Don’t Need Affirmative Action for Trumpism

    Nicholas Kristof comes off as a decent man, self-effacing, earnest. But when he’s not engaging in high-brow poverty tourism, or calling for the US to bomb Libya and Syria in the name of saving lives, he’s browbeating the excesses of perceived liberal bias on college campuses, pushing back against what he views as “liberal intolerance” in academia.

    His latest iteration, “The Dangers of Echo Chambers on Campus” (New York Times, 12/10/16), dropped on Sunday and, like the version from last May (New York Times, 5/28/16), it evoked the specter of political correctness run amok…

  • Trump and Social Media: Welcome to the New World

    The latest online thrust by Trump has been a series of tweets directed personally against a reporter who said the president-elect claimed without evidence his popular vote total suffered because of extensive voter fraud. Jeff Zeleny, CNN’s chief Washington correspondent, said Trump was a “sore winner,” adding the president-elect had “zero evidence” to back his claim he won the popular vote. Commentators agreed with Zeleny, saying Trump’s ego couldn’t accept the insult of losing the popular vote.

    Trump responded with a series of tweets and retweets condemning Zeleny. All of the tweets saw “likes” in the tens of thousands, and endless websites excerpted and embedded them out to an even larger audience. Just another episode in the Trump reality show, right?

  • Hypocrisy of Russia-Did-It Stories Is Hard to Stomach

    It is, of course, worth knowing what involvement any other country might have had in the US election, but elite media’s consumption with the Russia-did-it storyline so far is discouraging to say the least.

    The Intercept‘s Sam Biddle (12/14/16) has a breakdown of what public evidence there is that Russia was behind hacks of DNC email accounts. He concludes that while it’s plausible that Russians or even Russia was involved, it’s a very long way from proven, different agencies dispute it, all the sources we’re reading are anonymous and the assessments themselves are secret.

  • Michael Moore: NC offers ‘a coming attraction’ of how GOP will govern

    Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore says this week’s power grab by North Carolina Republicans is a preview of how the GOP will exercise power nationally in the coming weeks.

    In an interview with MSNBC’s “All in with Chris Hayes” on Friday night, Moore said the developments in North Carolina demonstrate that the GOP no longer feels restrained by longstanding political customs.

    “It’s a good coming attraction to how the Republicans are going to use power in the next — not few years — few weeks and months,” he said.

  • Trump Chooses Hard-Liner as Ambassador to Israel

    President-elect Donald J. Trump on Thursday named David M. Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer aligned with the Israeli far right, as his nominee for ambassador to Israel, elevating a campaign adviser who has questioned the need for a two-state solution and has likened left-leaning Jews in America to the Jews who aided the Nazis in the Holocaust.

    Mr. Friedman, whose outspoken views stand in stark contrast to decades of American policy toward Israel, did not wait long on Thursday to signal his intention to upend the American approach. In a statement from the Trump transition team announcing his nomination, he said he looked forward to doing the job “from the U.S. embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Will Europe stand for freedom or submission? Ask Wilders

    The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book “A New Shoah”, that researched the personal stories of Israel’s terror victims, published by Encounter and of “J’Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel” published by Mantua Books.. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary.
    More from the author ►

    The lowest point in Geert Wilders’ life in hiding was when he was forced to live in a state prison, the Zeist, after the killing of Theo van Gogh. Wilders lost his freedom and since then, for ten years, he lives under police protection 24/7. Wilders could go to a restaurant with his wife, but the police would check it first. When they go to the cinema, they enter through the back door. Now a Dutch court has found him guilty of “discrimination” for having called to close the Netherlands to Muslim migrants.

    [...]

    If he had criticized Christianity or Judaism, they would not have banned him in the UK.

  • Clinton mega donor George Soros leads line-up of liberal billionaires who are funding Facebook’s fake news fact checker

    Billionaire Clinton donor George Soros is among a line-up of wealthy liberal figures who will fund Facebook’s fake news fact checker.

    The 86-year-old Hungarian financier’s Open Society Foundation is listed among organizations which are backing The International Fact Checking Network, the body tasked with flagging bogus news stories to social media users, on its website.

    Soros, a staunch Democrat who tried to block George W. Bush’s campaign in 2004, has given $25million to Clinton and causes dear to her.

    Other donors involved in the new fact checking feature include eBay founder Pierre Omidyar who has committed more than $30million to the Clintons and their charities.

  • Facebook Announces Its Pilot Plans To ‘Deal’ With Fake News — Not With Censorship, But With More Info

    Facebook is now taking clear steps to try to address what some are calling its “fake news” problem. As someone who has argued that the fuss over this is massively overhyped and misleading, I actually find Facebook’s steps here to be fairly sensible, and not a cause for concern — but let’s dig into the details.

    We’ve made it clear that we think that people freaking out about fake news on Facebook are overreacting, when they try to “blame” the results of the election, or even how people feel about certain candidates on Facebook. And, we’ve also warned that the end result of much of the complaining is inevitable calls for censorship, which is dangerous. In fact, we’ve already seen that both China and Iran are using the hubbub over “fake news” to justify their own draconian censorship and surveillance efforts.

    But, that doesn’t mean that Facebook should do nothing about it. “Fake news” is unlikely to be influencing the election, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a nuisance — though, if we’re going to talk about “fake news” at the very least we should divide it into more accurate subgroupings: there’s outright made up false news, there’s propaganda (those first two can overlap, admittedly), there’s erroneous (but well-intentioned) reporting and then there’s actually good reporting that people dislike. That last one some may argue is not fake news, but trust me when I say that some people are using this “fake news” storm to lump in those kinds of articles too — which does a good job of showing why the label “fake news” is a real risk of being abused for censorship.

  • Western countries cling on to censorship to save ‘democracy’

    Some Western leaders, alongside their media allies, take a peculiar approach toward free speech and democracy, one seemingly predicated on how these reconcile with their own foreign policy objectives and who is affected – friend or foe.We see how the US and its allies avoid criticising the Saudi regime’s lack of democracy and free speech, alongside what is arguably the worst human rights record of any nation in the 21st century. Saudi Arabia’s leaders also escape judgement for their role in permitting the spread of the reactionary Wahhabi/Salafist doctrine that forms the bedrock of Jihadi terror.

  • Support grows for fight to reverse censorship of ‘Militant’ at Attica

    More than one month after the Militant appealed the impoundment of its Oct. 3 issue by Attica prison authorities, the New York State Department of Corrections has still not responded. Attica officials banned a second issue, the Oct. 31 Militant, claiming that allowing an article reporting on the appeal to get into the prison “could incite disobedience.”

    The Militant subscriber, Jalil Muntaqim (formerly Anthony Bottom), has faced other arbitrary acts of censorship and violation of his constitutional rights by Attica prison authorities.

    Last year Attica officials banned four books sent to him, including one of poems that he wrote, and have been interfering with his mail.

  • Professor Watch List: A Racist Violation of Free Speech

    Turning Point USA is biased against black faculty and freedom of speech. Turning Point is 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded on June 5, 2012. They sponsor Professor Watch List http://www.professorwatchlist.org a website meant to expose and document college professors who allegedly discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom. Listed on this watch list are 147 US college professors who have supposedly expressed leftist perspectives. Turning Point accept tips for new additions to the Professor Watch List, but claims to only publish profiles on incidents that have already been reported somewhere else.

  • Twitter and Facebook Censorship and Mainstream Media Denial

    I had never heard of ghost banning until I was ghost banned by twitter. That of course is the idea – they censor you without realising you are censored. People no longer get notifications when I post, and the tweet only turns up in the twitter line of followers who happen to be logged in at the time my tweet goes out. Those logging in later will no longer see tweets I issued while they were away. Most of my tweets no longer show up on twitter searches, and further restrictions are applied when people retweet my tweets.

    Since ghost banning, traffic to this website from twitter has fallen 90%.

    As twitter do not inform you that you have been ghost banned, it is hard to know exactly what prompted it, but I believe it immediately followed this tweet.

  • A brief history of film censorship in Egypt

    In 1986, a police officer filed a case to demand the ban of the film Lil-hub Qissa Ukhra (Love Has Another Story, by Raafat al-Mihi), because he believed a sex scene it contained showed actual intercourse and not just acting. Actors Yahia al-Fakharany and Maaly Zayed were interrogated by the vice crimes prosecution, as was Mihi, but they were all released. The officer had probably been troubled as an adolescent by a difficult existential question: are kisses in films real or simulations? The conviction that all kisses must be real saved him from an existential labyrinth. And it seems that he wasn’t the only troubled mind: the prosecution, which followed up on the case, shared his conviction. Indeed, so do all censorship officials in Egypt.

  • UK’s Ridiculous Internet Porn Crackdown Can Be Used To Kill Social Media Accounts

    Last month, the UK moved forward with the latest version of its ridiculous “Digital Economy Bill” which will put in place mandatory porn filtering at the ISP level — requiring service providers to block access to sites that don’t do an age verification check. But it was at least somewhat vague as to which “ISPs” this covered. The bill has moved from the House of Commons over to the House of Lords, and apparently we now have at least something of an answer — and it’s that social media sites like Twitter and Facebook will be covered by this regulation.

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • The importance of cryptography for the digital society

    Following the Council meeting on 8th and 9th December 2016 in Brussels, ENISA’s paper gives an overview into aspects around the current debate on encryption, while highlighting the Agency’s key messages and views on the topic.

  • Berlin whistleblower behind German-NSA secret data leak, not Russian hackers – sources

    Russian hackers are not the source behind the recent WikiLeaks release of leaked secret data on German-US intelligence cooperation and a parliamentary inquiry into it, Der Spiegel reports, citing unnamed security officials who have indicated it’s an inside job.

  • Letters: tech companies must take responsibility for algorithms

    Carole Cadwalladr is absolutely right to highlight how Google’s autocomplete and algorithmic search results can reinforce hate speech and stereotypes (“Google is not ‘just’ a platform”, Comment).

    But she is less right to claim I tried to absolve Google of responsibility by tweeting: “I’m sure @google will argue they aren’t responsible for the results” in support. What I actually tweeted was that plus – “but they reap advertising revenue from the search. Is that ethical?”

    Google and others argue their results are a mirror to society, not their responsibility. As a chartered engineer, I strongly agree with Ms Cadwalladr that companies such as Google, Facebook and Uber need to take responsibility for the unintended consequences of the algorithms and machine learning that drive their profits. They can bring huge benefits and great apps but we need a tech-savvy government to minimise the downside by opening up algorithms to regulation as well as legislating for greater consumer ownership of data and control of the advertising revenue it generates.

  • Live by the Cloud, Die by the Cloud 1

    Longtime readers know that I’m not a fan of most cloudy services. Not just about the privacy sucking aspects, but also about the inability to control your own data.

    This week, we’ve seen two huge cloud providers do dumb things.
    Dropbox disabled public folders. Seems they didn’t like people transferring files? I dunno. The other was a change in ToS for Evernote. They wanted to clarify that their people could read your notes. Gee – put stuff on someone else’s server and wonder if they can read it? Duh.

    Remember Google Reader? They weren’t able to make money off it, so after years of happy users, they shut it down.

    I’m not including links for these things because I’ve learned those will disappear quickly.

  • FBI, NSA staff among Yahoo hack victims: Report

    The personal data stolen from one billion accounts run by US internet giant Yahoo in 2013 included personal data belonging to the employees of government agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Security Agency (NSA).

    The data also included sensitive information like phone numbers, passwords, security questions and backup email addresses of White House officials as well as some British authorities, the CNN reported Friday, citing Andrew Komarov, chief intelligence officer at InfoArmor.

  • ‘Furious’ German spies frozen out by UK intelligence after ‘leaking to WikiLeaks’

    German requests for Britain to release details of the secret operations to a committee investigating the NSA’s activities were refused, in part because the UK fears a debate in the Reichstag that would publicise the country’s spycraft.

    The Daily Mail reports there are claims in Germany that a tranche of 500,000 sides of files published by WikiLeaks this month were secret GCHQ documents on covert cell phone policy for British spies from 2010.

  • Anti-Snowden NSA official could lose job for hypocritical retaliation against another whistleblower

    An NSA inspector general who strongly criticised Edward Snowden in 2014 for not coming to him with his concerns about NSA’s domestic eavesdropping practices is facing termination for having retaliated at another whistleblower who followed protocol.

    Dr George Ellard, a Yale-trained lawyer and former prosecutor, was tasked with overseeing the NSA for nine years.

    During a panel discussion at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington in 2014, Ellard argued if Snowden had come to him with his concerns – instead of leaking thousands of classified documents – he would have received the same protections as other NSA employees. The NSA has a special complaints hotline which receives about a thousand reports annually from employees.

  • Your wearable-tracked health data is for sale, according to a new study

    If you sport a Fitbit or Apple Watch on the regular, you probably love the health insights you get from your wearable. You know how much you move, how well you sleep and have likely started tracking patterns and trends as soon as you have enough time logged.

    But you’re not alone. There are tons of advertisers and big pharma companies interested in your personal health data almost as much as you are — and, according to researchers, they can get it almost as easily as you can.

  • Hello, this is 33C3 „works for me“

    Feeling isolated and threatened, we turn further against each other, take less care of each other and worry even more about ourselves. And yet, we are never alone: Excessive surveillance is now politically normalized, if not for all then at least for those who are different, intractable, foreign.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Cops shoot and kill someone about 1,000 times a year. Few are prosecuted. What can be done?

    Millions of people have seen the video from North Charleston, S.C. Walter Scott was running away from police Officer Michael Slager when the officer shot him in the back, killing him instantly. Yet after watching the video many times, a jury was unable to reach a verdict in the officer’s recent murder trial. This is a story that has become all too familiar.

    I’ve been keeping track of these incidents, and my best estimate is that on-duty police officers across the country shoot and kill someone about 1,000 times each year. Almost all the cases end with a determination by a prosecutor that the police shooting was legally justified. Since 2005, only 78 police officers across the country have been charged with murder or manslaughter resulting from an on-duty shooting. To date, just 26 of those officers have been convicted of manslaughter or a lesser offense, and only one was convicted of murder. (It was an extraordinary situation: James Ashby, a police officer in Rocky Ford, Colo., saw a man skateboarding on a highway, followed the man into his home, shot him in the back in front of his mother, and then pepper-sprayed him as he lay dying. Ashby was convicted of second-degree murder.)

  • Tunisian child rapist who impregnated his cousin is ordered to MARRY her by judge

    The 20-year-old depraved sex fiend, from Tunisia, was not given a custodial sentence by the judge, who instead decided the best course of action would be to trap the tragic victim with her attacker forever.

    The judge justified his decision by claiming it complies with Article 227 of a law initiated in 1958 which states a man who rapes a child younger than 15 will receive either six years in prison or “may resort to marrying her to commute the sentence”.

    He said the girl as “mature enough” to have consented to sexual intercourse with her cousin.

  • Victim Shaming, Yasmin Seweid, and the Critical Need for Skepticism in a Volatile Time

    Police now say Yasmin made the whole thing up. Everyone who wrote hate mail to me and posted hateful things on my Twitter and Facebook can apologize now.

  • Ilhan Omar’s Hate Crime

    The pattern is near-identical: a Muslim woman who has very publicly made defeating Islamophobia part of her political work suffers a hate crime after Trump’s election.

    She reports the crime only through the media, who sends what she says viral without asking any critical questions, despite some issues that might be worth questioning. The story is added to the tally of such crimes, as another example of what people want to believe.

    At issue? If a hate crime is real, it must be prosecuted publicly and aggressively. We live in a vulnerable, volatile time. Anyone who would commit a hate crime needs, within the law, to be made an example of, lest the next one be the spark that starts a larger fire. At the same time, if a hate crime did not occur, that too must be prosecuted fully. Every false or exaggerated report adds to the arsenal of false reports that negate real reports.

  • Obama Loses His War on Whistleblowers

    Obama has waged a vicious War on Whistleblowers, the details of which are insufficiently known to the public. High level security officials, true American patriots like Thomas Drake and John Kiriakou have been handcuffed, dragged through the courts and jailed. William Binney had guns pointed at himself and his wife in their home. Chelsea Manning endures constant persecution and humiliation which meets the bar of cruel and degrading punishment. Edward Snowden pines in exile. These are just the highest profile examples. Hillary Clinton was the driving force behind Obama’s hard line attacks on whistleblowers.

    Under Obama, whistleblowers face a total of 751 months behind bars — compared to 24 months for all other whistleblowers combined since the American Revolution. The protection of free speech and truth-telling has been wrenched away under Obama.

    I am proud to be a whistleblower myself, and like Drake, Kiriakou, Binney, Manning and Snowden a recipient of the annual Sam Adams award. We have another recipient – Julian Assange – who is a most useful ally indeed.

    Whistleblowers seemed a soft target. Indeed seven years into his Presidency Obama seemed to be winning the War on Whistleblowers hands down, leaving them serving time or marginalised and cast out from society.

  • Opposing Apartheid, or When I Was Clever

    If you live long enough, your past catches up with you and this year for the first time highly classified papers I wrote in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are starting to be released under the 30 year declassification rule.

    My first FCO job was in the South Africa Section as the South Africa (political) officer, at a time when Apartheid was in full sway in South Africa. It was the official policy of Her Majesty’s Government to oppose international sanctions efforts, and the Thatcher government’s official line was that Mandela was a terrorist properly in jail after a fair trial. There was a huge tension between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and 10 Downing Street.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Australia’s Pirate Site Blockade Boosts Demand For VPNs

      The Pirate Bay and other sites must be blocked by local Internet providers, an Australian court ruled this week. While the measures have yet to be implemented, many pirates are already trying to find ways around them. Data from Google shows a big surge in “VPN” searches and VPN services also report a significant increase in Aussie interest.

    • The Music Industry Shouldn’t Be Able To Cut Off Your Internet Access

      EFF, Public Knowledge, and the Center for Democracy and Technology Urge The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to Protect Internet Subscribers in BMG v. Cox.

      No one should have to fear losing their internet connection because of unfounded accusations. But some rights holders want to use copyright law to force your Internet service provider (ISP) to cut off your access whenever they say so, and in a case the Washington Post called “the copyright case that should worry all Internet providers,” they’re hoping the courts will help them.

    • Fair Use Is Essential to a Free Press

      When copyright law and the First Amendment come into conflict, the First Amendment must win. The fair use doctrine—the idea that there are certain ways that you can use a piece of copyrighted work regardless of whether you have the rightsholder’s permission—was written into copyright law to help ensure that copyright holders’ wishes are never elevated above free speech. As such, it’s been an essential tool for defending a free press: without fair use protections, people and companies in the public eye could use copyright law to ban coverage that’s critical of them. It’s alarming, then, to see an association that represents news companies asking the Trump transition team (and presumably Congress) to change the law and weaken fair use.

      The News Media Alliance (formerly the Newspaper Association of America) recently released a whitepaper addressed to the Trump transition team (PDF). NMA asks for “strong copyright protection” that will “[allow] for a return on [the news media industry’s] massive investment.” In essence, it claims that Google News and similar aggregators steal newspapers’ profits.

      It’s unclear exactly how NMA wants news aggregators regulated. A copyright law that would bar websites from linking to and posting short excerpts of news articles? When similar laws have been proposed and passed in Europe, they’ve been shown to hurt newspaper revenues and keep new voices out of the journalism market.

    • KickassTorrents Brought Back to Life by Original Staffers (Updated)

      A large group of original KickassTorrent staffers has launched a reincarnation of the infamous torrent site, hoping to restore it to its former glory. The new site uses a fresh and secure database, but the look and feel of the platform remains the same.

    • Team Prenda Finally Goes To Jail: Hansmeier & Steele Indicted & Arrested

      For many, many, many years, we’ve been saga of Prenda Law — a legal operation set up to file tons of shakedown copyright infringement lawsuits in an effort to get as many people as possible to just pay up and settle. The scam got deeper and deeper the more you looked, including forged signatures, clear evidence that the main actors behind Prenda — John Steele and Paul Hansmeier — were uploading their own works as a honeypot, while pretending to represent clients that they themselves owned through various shell companies — which they denied owning. It went on and on and on. And on and on and on. Things really went sideways almost four years ago when Judge Otis Wright in California was the first judge to put much of this together, and called all of them to court, where everyone pleaded the fifth (yes, lawyers were pleading the fifth in a case they themselves brought). In response, Judge Wright referrred the case to law enforcement, leading many people to ask over the past four years how it was these guys weren’t in jail (and, in fact, they continued to file lawsuits, reprising the same scheme but with ADA shakedowns.

      Court after court after court has slammed Prenda, and ordered Hansmeier and Steele (partner 3, Paul Duffy, died in the middle of all of this) to pay up lots of money. Of course, in response to that, there were further accusations of illegally hiding money, bogus trusts, a questionable bankruptcy claim and more. And, yet, they still were not in jail. Oh, and we didn’t even mention the various ethics investigations that recently suspended Hansmeier’s license.

    • Prenda Copyright Trolls Arrested and Charged With Fraud and Extortion

      For years Prenda Law extracted millions of dollars in cash settlements from alleged BitTorrent pirates, leaving misery in its wake. While the firm no longer exists, two of its principals have now been arrested. The duo hafe been charged with conspiracy to commit fraud, money laundering, and perjury. Interestingly, The Pirate Bay plays a key role in the case.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • These Were The Best Linux App & Distro Releases in 2016

    As 2016 dims into embers, it’s take to take a misty-eyed look back over the past twelve months, and at some the best Linux releases that wowed, wooed and otherwise w-worded us.

    In 2016 there were a stack of apps and distribution updates, upgrades and releases. Some well known favourites improved, some new ones appeared in the wild, while others introduced us to new or better ways of doing things we regularly do.

  • The Linux Setup – Piers Anthony, Author

    I use Linux because I didn’t like being governed by Microsoft.

  • An Ode to Linux Desktop Users Everywhere

    Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels. The package makers, the man page writers. The rounded windows in Qt mixed with the less rounded windows of GTK. The ones who literally see things differently because of missing proprietary fonts.

  • My search for a MacBook Pro alternative

    Based on more than 100 user reviews, I could create a shortlist of 8 laptops that seemed to be solid alternatives. Based on my four requirements (Linux compatibility was a decisive factor), this list got narrowed down even further. Only three laptops survived!

    These 3 Linux ready models seems to have comparable workmanship and build quality as the MacBook Pro. They come with latest gen and upgradeable hardware and most of their users swear by them.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux 4.8.14

    Turns out I’m going to be on a very long flight early tomorrow morning,
    so I figured it would be good to get this kernel out now, instead of
    delaying it by an extra day. So, I’m announcing the release of the
    4.8.14 kernel.

    All users of the 4.8 kernel series must upgrade.

    The updated 4.8.y git tree can be found at:
    git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.8.y
    and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:

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

  • Linux 4.4.38

  • Linux Kernel 4.8.14 Hits the Streets with Numerous Networking Improvements, More

  • It Looks Like There’s A Possible Data Corruption Bug For Btrfs Dating Back To 2009

    A Phoronix reader pointed out to us this weekend there’s been another Btrfs file-system data corruption bug discovered that dates back to around 2009.

  • Qualcomm Falkor (Centriq) Patches For The Linux Kernel

    This week Qualcomm announced they are now sampling the first 10nm 48-core ARMv8 SoC based upon their in-house “Falkor” design. With these SoCs branded as the Centriq 2400 series soon to reach partners and potential customers, Qualcomm has published some Falkor V1 patches for the Linux kernel.

    The ARMv8-based Falkor needs just some basic patches for the Linux kernel. There is the changes for cputype info followed by two patches to address errors with the hardware.

  • Celebrating the first 25 years of Linux

  • MuQSS CPU Scheduler Released For Linux 4.9

    Con Kolivas has announced the release of the MuQSS CPU scheduler v0.15 with support for the Linux 4.9 kernel. MuQSS is his evolutionary successor to the BFS scheduler.

  • Linux Kernel 4.9 Officially Released with Support for AMD Radeon SI/GCN 1.0 GPUs

    As expected, today, December 11, 2016, Linus Torvalds unleashed the final release of the highly anticipated Linux 4.9 kernel, a major update that introduces numerous exciting new features, updated drivers, and other under-the-hood improvements.

  • Linux 4.9 Kernel Officially Released

    The Linux 4.9 kernel has been officially released.

  • Linus Torvalds releases ‘biggest ever’ Linux 4.9, then saves Christmas

    Linux overlord Linus Torvalds has released Linux 4.9.

    “I’m pretty sure this is the biggest release we’ve ever had, at least in number of commits,” Torvalds writes on the Linux Kernel Mailing List.

    “If you look at the number of lines changed, we’ve had bigger releases in the past, but they have tended to be due to specific issues (v4.2 got a lot of lines from the AMD GPU register definition files, for example, and we’ve had big re-organizations that caused a lot of lines in the past: v3.2 was big due to staging, v3.7 had the automated uapi header file disintegration, etc).”

  • Linux Kernel 4.4.38 LTS Adds IPv6, IPv4 and L2TP Fixes, Updated Ethernet Drivers

    Immediately after the release of Linux kernel 4.8.14, renowned Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman was proud to announce the availability of a new maintenance update to the long-term supported Linux 4.4 kernel series.

    Just like Linux kernel 4.8.14, the Linux 4.4.38 LTS kernel release hit the streets only two days after the previous maintenance version, in this case Linux kernel 4.4.37 LTS, and it looks like it’s yet another small patch that changes a total of 35 files, with 242 insertions and 80 deletions, according to the appended shortlog and the diff since Linux 4.4.37.

  • Linux Lexicon — How Does Linux Kernel Work?

    This interface looks to programmers like any other function call but is special because it’s a system call. A system call is just a function that requests something from the kernel, this is where the kernel will carry out the request regardless of the underlying hardware. The Linux kernel implements the POSIX standard of systems calls.

  • Graphics Stack

    • Using DC in amdgpu for upcoming GPU

• Applications

  • A new webinterface called Chorus2

    Kodi has many hidden secrets and even team members don’t know the full potential it packs. One of those features you might not know is that Kodi also has a web-interface from which you can browse your library and start playback directly on your Kodi device. It’s something we’ve never really promoted that it was available and I’m not really sure why. However the past few years not much was changed to to it and it kinda fell into decay with only minor fixes done to keep it kind of functional. For Kodi v17 this has been radically changed as we have packaged up a brand new default web-interface called Chorus2.

  • Pitivi 0.98 — Getting there

    We switched our official build to use GTK 3.22 and the framework did not like how we were using it, spamming us with warnings in the console. We fixed those and improved the timeline in the process and added more unit tests.

  • FreePats 2.0 [released]

  • [Scribus] New Text Layout Engine with Full OpenType Support

    As of 4 December 2016, Scribus 1.5.3svn provides a new text layout engine with support for OpenType advanced features, as well as complex and right-to-left scripts. For text features, a separate “Text Properties” palette has been created.

  • Preparing for Linux

    If you’ve seen the roadmap or the product address then you know Delphi for Linux is coming.

  • Integrating PVS-Studio into Eclipse CDT (Linux)

    The news about the possibility of using PVS-Studio to check source files for free finally prompted me to integrate the analysis of source code into Eclipse CDT. There are guides on integrating with CLion/QtCreator/etc., but nothing for us, the purple Tools used for my experiments: Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers, Version: Neon.1a Release (4.6.1), Build id: 20161007-1200, and PVS-Studio 6.11.20138.1. Here’s what I’ve got.

  • Xtreme Download Manager 2016 Available for Ubuntu/Linux Mint via PPA

    We previously shared mostly used download managers for Linux but xdman is another great download manager available. Xtreme download manager is very powerful utility that has ability to increase download speed up-to 500% (depend on connection), it can pause/resume downloads even broken downloads are resume-able, xdman also has functionality to grab videos from around the internet and offers schedule downloads. Xdman can be integrate with any browser to manage downloads automatically by using Advanced browser integration.

  • Software to Record Linux Tutorials

    I like to use SimpleScreenRecorder, Audacity and then I edit stuff with Kdenlive. There are a few different approaches you can take here. For example, if you’re doing tutorials with a less than powerful PC, you can record the audio on another PC while capturing video demonstrations from the more powerful PC. My PC is thankfully powerful enough to capture everything on a single box. This allows me to achieve the desired result without skipping a beat.

  • Top 12 Image Editor Tools for Linux Desktop

  • EasyTAG: A Tool for Viewing and Editing Tags in Audio and Video Files

    Most of us, come across graphics of several kind in our day to day life. Our interaction with graphics ranges from viewing and manipulating images, videos and audio’s. Before we deal with graphics of any kind in real, all the tag information is our source of knowledge.

  • Nautilus 3.22.2 File Manager Makes Desktop Icons Work on Wayland Sessions

    The last planned point release of the GNOME 3.22 desktop environment arrived a month ago, and it looks like the Nautilus file manager only now received it second maintenance update for the 3.22 series.

    That’s right, Nautilus 3.22.2 is now available, released on the 10th of December, 2016, and it’s a bugfix release that improves keyboard navigation for opening of menus, the popover animation, the recently introduced batch rename functionality, which failed to rename file in some cases, and supports desktop icons on Wayland sessions.

  • Pitivi 1.0 Video Editor Development Advances with Timeline Improvements, More

    The development team behind the Pitivi open-source video editor have announced the availability of Pitivi 0.98, another bugfix and stability release towards the major Pitivi 1.0 version.

    Besides the usual bug fixes, Pitivi 0.98 brings various improvements that might interest some of you who are waiting for Pitivi 1.0 to hit the streets, which should happen in early 2017 now that the team hired Romanian developer Alexandru Băluț to fix remaining blockers, such as customizable keyboard shortcuts and improved timeline.

  • [Older] Denemo Version 2.0.14 is out.

  • [Older] coreutils-8.26 released [stable]

  • [Older] eiffel-cd plugin for Liberty Eiffel

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Easy vsFTPD – FTP server with virtual users on Debian 8 Jessie

    • QMI firmware update with libqmi

    • How To Find Out Public IP Address From Command Line On Linux

    • How To Install qTox Messenger in Ubuntu

    • How To Install GNU Ring in Ubuntu (The Free Replacement for Skype)

    • How to Copy a File to Multiple Directories in Linux

    • Install Adobe Flash Player 11.2 On CentOS/RHEL 7/6 and Fedora 25-20

    • Nitrogen on the MATE Desktop

    • 9 Tools to Monitor Linux Disk Partitions and Usage in Linux

    • Manage Samba4 AD Domain Controller DNS and Group Policy from Windows – Part 4

    • Overthinking Font Installation

    • How to easily open a PDF file from command line in Ubuntu

    • How to Find Recent or Today’s Modified Files in Linux

    • How to Install Redmine 3 with Nginx on CentOS 7

    • Boost your site’s performance and save money with NGinx

    • How to setup rsyslog for Centralized Log Management

    • How to Install Git on Ubuntu 14.04

    • issue #58: HAProxy, CVE’s, SysAdvent, PGP, mcrouter, Expect & more

    • OpenAI – Universe Installation Guide Ubuntu 16.04

    • My first bash bug debugging

    • How to Reset your MariaDB root password?

    • DoSMon on IPFire Installation & Setup

    • How to translate a large C project to Rust

    • How to Compile and Install Traverso DAW on Ubuntu Linux

    • XiX Media Player Qt & Gtk Versions Updated, Install in Ubuntu/Linux Mint [PPA]

    • Building an Email Server on Ubuntu Linux, Part 2

    • smenu: A little preview

    • Testing Your Shell Scripts, with Bats

    • lxdbackup script

    • Gentoo Quick Install Guide AMD64 / x86

  • Games

    • Valve announce Dota 2 – 7.00, a massive update that changes everything

      Valve have announced a massive 7.00 update for Dota 2 [Steam] which changes the entire way the game works, and it sounds very interesting.

      The test client has the new version available right now, with the stable client update expected tomorrow.

    • Oolite, a life in space as vagabond and mercenary – nice free software

      In my early years, I played the epic game Elite on my PC. I spent many months trading and fighting in space, and reached the ‘elite’ fighting status before I moved on. The original Elite game was available on Commodore 64 and the IBM PC edition I played had a 64 KB executable. I am still impressed today that the authors managed to squeeze both a 3D engine and details about more than 2000 planet systems across 7 galaxies into a binary so small.

      I have known about the free software game Oolite inspired by Elite for a while, but did not really have time to test it properly until a few days ago. It was great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were still valid. But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had to retrain to be able to dock on a space station. And I am still not able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life.

    • Astroneer, the excellent looking space adventure game will come to Linux

      You may not remember Astroneer [Steam, Official Site], as I covered it late last year as a possible game coming to Linux. The developers have since been back in contact with me to confirm a Linux version is coming.

    • 17 Memorable Retro Games That You Can Play On Linux Today

      This article is primarily focused on gamers who play on Linux and grew up with games which we call “retro” in today’s times.

    • Gaming in VMware On Linux FAQ Q/A

    • Wine 2.0-rc1 Released

    • The New Feature Highlights For The Upcoming Wine 2.0

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • How input works – creating a Device

    • Geotagging in digiKam with a Lazy Bash Script

      Sometimes, the easiest way to geotag photos in digiKam is to copy and paste geographical coordinates from an existing photo. I usually use Google Photos for that, as it conveniently displays geographical coordinates of the currently viewed photos in the information sidebar.

    • [Slackware] December packages… not Santa Claus but Plasma 5

      I wanted to have the last 16.08.x release of KDE Applications available in my repository before the new 16.12.x releases start coming. There are some big changes in Applications 16.12 for which I need to time to review, plan and build packages. Therefore you will probably not see packages for Applications 16.12.0 in 2016.
      So, my december release of the ‘ktown’ packages – KDE 5_16.12 – is sporting KDE Frameworks 5.28.0, Plasma 5.8.4 and Applications 16.08.3 for Slackware, built on top of Qt 5.7.0 which was recompiled with a patch which should improve stability. You can use the latest KDE 5 on Slackware 14.2 and -current.

    • No one “works” on Poppler

      I thought that was obvious, but today someone thought that i was “working” as “paid working” on it.

      No, I don’t get paid for the work i do on Poppler.

      It’s my computing hobby, and on top of that it’s not even my “primary” computing hobby, lots of KDE stuff take precedence over it, and i guess Gnome stuff may also take precedence for Carlos (second top commiter according to the git shortlog)

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • GNOME Music Is Being Revived

      Thanks in part to last month’s GNOME Core Apps Hackfest in Berlin, the GNOME Music application is being revived.

      GNOME Music, of course, being a music player for GNOME. The current GNOME Music was basically a prototype and not designed for scalability, thus GNOME Music is going back to being rewritten before focusing on new user features.

    • The future of GNOME Music

      GNOME Music is an app that I particularly fell in love. Not because it worked perfectly (it didn’t, at all), nor because it’s fast to the last bit (it isn’t, at all), neither because it’s written in a programming language that I love (i.e. C. And no, it isn’t).

      So why the hell did I invest my free time, energy and resources on it? If we look on how it is right now, it makes no sense. So for my dog’s sake, why?

      Simply because I want to push GNOME forward.

    • Examining User eXperience

      In most cases, usability and UX are strongly aligned. And that makes sense. If you can use the software to get your work done, you probably have a good opinion of the software (good usability, positive UX). And if you can’t use the software to do real work, then you probably won’t have a great opinion of it (bad usability, negative UX).

      But it doesn’t always need to be that way. You can have it the other way around. It just doesn’t happen that often. For example, there’s an open source software game that I like to play sometimes (I won’t name it here). It’s a fun game, the graphics are well done, the sounds are adorable. When I’m done playing the game, I think I’ve had a fun time. And days or weeks later, when I remember the game, I look forward to playing it again. But the game is really hard to play. I don’t know the controls. The game doesn’t show you what to do to move around or to fire the weapons. And for a turn-based game with a time limit, it’s important that you know how to move and shoot. Every time I play this game, I end up banging on keys to figure out what key does what action. It’s not intuitive to me. Essentially, I have to re-learn how to play the game every time I play it.

• Distributions

  • Reviews

    • Manjaro 16.10 Xfce – Surprised me, I like

      Weird. I have never expected to be writing a conclusion to an Arch-based distro review and feel really pleased about the whole experience. But then, looking at how Manjaro behaved and how it delivered, I really don’t have much to complain. The list of bad things is not very long: Samba printing, Bluetooth, some cosmetic problems, and ultra-slow GRUB updates. Other than that, it was really good.

      You get a stable, fast distribution with a balanced kit of programs, media codecs and smartphone support out of the box, low resource utilization, very decent battery life, and even some perks, in the form of a new kernel that may resolve hardware and driver issues, if you have them. Plus, you can actually tame it if you feel like spending some time on the aesthetics front, and it won’t bite with random, unexplained errors. Most importantly, there’s a continuous trend of improvement and maturity in the distribution. Just look at my previous reviews, dating back to 2013. Everything seems to be in order, well, except this one really big thing.

      What’s next? Is this the sum of what the community can do – wants to do, or can we expect Manjaro to take a more commercial, more adult approach, and even become something that could one day appeal to non-Linux folks? That might not be the mission, and perhaps it will never happen, but I am always apprehensive around small distros, because changes can be painful and devastating, and as a user, you need to believe you have a solid, stable, long-term support behind you. This review cannot answer that, but at the very least, it gives you an indication what you can do with Manjaro 16.10 Xfce, if you feel like testing. Overall, 9.25/10 I would say, and it doesn’t take much to up the score. Quite a surprise for this bleak year of distro testing, and a most refreshing change for this no less dreary autumn season. Surpassed my expectations and bitterness. Well worth a ride. Get it, fellas, get it.

    • An Everyday Linux User Review Of Zorin 12

      This version of Zorin is a great step forward. It has a renewed sense of purpose and stands out in its own right as a decent Linux distribution.

      I think Zorin should follow Mint’s lead and stick with aligning itself to the Ubuntu LTS release. This gives the developers more time to push it along at their own pace.

      All in all a decent alternative to Linux Mint and Ubuntu.

    • Netrunner 16.09 Avalon – King Arthur wasn’t there

      Blade Runner? Say what. Nope. Netrunner. But not the Netrunner distro as you remember it. There are changes in the land of sprinters. The old system, which used to be based on Ubuntu LTS, is now a different fork and a separate entity called Maui, and it shall bear the scrutiny of my wits, senses and taste very soon.

      This means, today, we are testing Netrunner 16.09 Avalon, the latest semi-rolling edition based on Debian Stable. Now, my previous testing experience does not agree with this model. Netrunner 17 Horizon was a pretty good product, in fact good enough to be the honorable mention in the annual Plasma/KDE vote, but the rolling 2015.11 was a disaster that would not even install, and got a zero score. So, with less than high hopes, we proceed.

  • New Releases

    • Solus Project Announces Brisk Menu Applet for MATE Edition, Solbuild, and More

      Joshua Strobl from the Solus Project was extremely happy to publish today, December 11, 2016, the 40th installation of the project’s This Week In Solus (TWiS) weekly newsletter.

      We can’t say that TWiS is still a weekly thing lately, because it’s not, and that’s only because the team is hard at work planning new features for the rolling and independently-developed Linux-based operating system. As some of you might be aware, they recently announced Solbuild, the brand-new, faster package build system.

      But there are bigger news than that, especially for those who use the Solus MATE Edition, as the team is currently developing a new Applications Menu applet for the MATE desktop environment, which is entitled Brisk Menu. It aims to offer a traditional experience in the style of MAE, and you can see it in action in the attached screenshot.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat launches ‘OpenShift’ dedicated on Google Cloud Platform

      World’s leading provider of open source solutions Red Hat has announced the general availability of OpenShift Dedicated on Google Cloud Platform.

    • Red Hat and Google join forces on containers

      Red Hat and Google are set to offer enterprise customers a managed OpenShift service hosted on Google’s cloud to make the build, launch and management of applications a less time-consuming process.

      OpenShift Dedicated on Google Cloud Platform will speed up the adoption of containers, according to Red Hat, giving developers the guidance they need to create applications and deploy them faster.

    • Red Hat’s Container Platform Lands on Google Cloud

      Red Hat’s OpenShift Dedicated container platform will now be available on Google Cloud Platform, the companies announced yesterday.

      OpenShift Dedicated is a managed version of Red Hat’s OpenShift container platform, targeting enterprises. Launched in December, the Dedicated version puts Red Hat in the role of a service provider, taking care of infrastructure and operations.

    • Red Hat launches ‘OpenShift’ dedicated on Google Cloud Platform

      World’s leading provider of open source solutions Red Hat has announced the general availability of OpenShift Dedicated on Google Cloud Platform.

    • Red Hat launches OpenShift on Google Cloud

    • Finance

      • S&P Ends at Record High, How Did This Stock Fare: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

      • Neuberger Berman Group LLC Sells 12 Shares of Red Hat Inc. (RHT)

      • Trade Report: The Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Stock Rating Upgrade by the Vetr Inc.

      • Bank of Montreal Can Has $44,446,000 Stake in Red Hat Inc. (RHT)

      • Bullish EPS Forecast Of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) At $1.7

      • Sorting Out the Technicals on Shares of Red Hat Inc. (RHT)

      • Analysts Set Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Target Price at $88.82

    • Fedora

      • Some preliminary Fedora 25 stats — and future release scheduling

      • Fedora Devs Discuss Changing Their Release Scheduling, Maybe One Big Release Per Year

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu 17.04 | Release Date & New Features

          Following the release of Ubuntu 16.10, Canonical is gearing up for the release of the next iteration of the world’s most popular open-source operating system, i.e., Ubuntu 17.04. This release is codenamed Zesty Zapus after a jumping mouse found in the North American region. While Zapus stands for the genus name of a mouse, Zesty is an adjective for ‘great enthusiasm and energy.’

          As the name suggests, this next short-term release will arrive in the month of April. If you’re an avid Ubuntu user, you must be knowing the significance of .04 in 17.04.

        • The 6 Biggest Ubuntu News Stories of 2016

          What a year it’s been — and I’m only talking about Linux, open source and related communities!

          2016 has been a pretty knock-out year for Linux. In this post we highlight 6 news stories from the past twelve months that relate specifically

          Ubuntu fans have had it especially cushy this year, with 2016 gifting not 1 but 2 convergent devices: a high-end Ubuntu Phone, and a mid-range Ubuntu tablet. This year was also host to a rock solid, super dependable LTS release in the form of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, and a forward-looking short-term release in Ubuntu 16.10.

        • System 76 Talks With Ubuntu, WordPress Ups Game and More…

          This week we learned that Canonical has been working with another company that’s not located anywhere near Redmond for a change. Denver based System 76, the OEM that’s built it’s reputation marketing desktops and laptops preloaded with Linux, has been talking with Canonical to help developers at Ubuntu up their game on the desktop front. To be more specific, the two have been working together to increase HiDPI (High Dots Per Inch) support in Unity 7.

        • System76 Working with Canonical on Improving HiDPI Support in Ubuntu

          Last week System76 engineers participated in a call with Martin Wimpress of the Ubuntu Desktop team to discuss HiDPI support in Ubuntu, specifically Unity 7. HiDPI support exists in Unity 7, but there are areas that could use improvement, and the call focused around those. The conversation was primarily focused around bugs that still remain in the out-of-the-box HiDPI experience; specifically around enabling automatic scaling and Ubuntu recognizing when a HiDPI display is present so that it can adjust accordingly.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Linux Mint lacks resources to maintain KDE Plasma version — turns to Kubuntu team for help

            There are too many dang Linux distributions and desktop environments nowadays. This is frustrating, as it spreads developer resources too thin. In other words, developers are often working on too many separate projects that further fragments the community. Linux on the desktop could be much further along if teams pooled resources and focused on a narrower field of development.

            Today, Clement Lefebvre, Linux Mint leader, concedes that his team simply doesn’t have the resources to meet its goals. You see, the team is finding it very difficult to maintain a KDE Plasma version of its operating system, so it has turned to the Kubuntu team instead. The question becomes, why bother? KDE users should simply use Kubuntu and the Linux Mint team should stay focused on Cinnamon and Mate. Am I right?

          • The Wait Is Almost Over: KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS Is Coming to Kubuntu, Linux Mint KDE

            Today, December 11, 2016, the Kubuntu and Linux Mint developers were proud to announce the availability of the KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS desktop environment in the Kubuntu Backports Landing PPA repository.

            It’s been a long time coming, but Kubuntu 16.04.1 LTS (Xenial Xerus) and Kubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) users will soon be able to update their beloved KDE Plasma 5 desktop environment to the latest, long-term supported KDE Plasma 5.8 release. The KDE Frameworks 5.28.0 and KDE Applications 16.04.3 software suite are available as well, and these KDE technologies are also available for Linux Mint 18 “Sarah” KDE users.

          • Ubuntu-Based KDE Neon User LTS Edition Distro Out Now with KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS

            The development team behind the KDE Neon GNU/Linux distribution have announced the availability of an LTS (Long Term Support) flavor of the KDE Neon User Edition operating system.

            As you might know, KDE Neon is usually distributed as User Edition and Developer Edition 64-bit Live ISO images. While the former is shipping with the latest stable KDE Plasma, Frameworks, and Applications releases, the latter is targeted at developers and bleeding-edge users who want to test drive the pre-release versions of these technologies.

          • Cinnamon 3.2.4 Desktop Environment Lands with Support for Rhythmbox, MATE Panel

            A new maintenance update of the Cinnamon 3.2 desktop environment has arrived this weekend, versioned 3.2.4, for the upcoming Linux Mint 18.1 “Serena” operating system, but also for users of Linux Mint 18 “Sarah.”

            Cinnamon 3.2.4 is now the latest stable release of the acclaimed desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions, and lands approximately three weeks after the Cinnamon 3.2.2 update, and one day after the announcement of Cinnamon 3.2.3, which was a major version adding numerous improvements, new features, and bug fixes.

          • Making System Settings Access a Cross-Desktop Feature

            Corentin Noël has proposed a cross-desktop URL scheme specification for system settings and we’re excited to announce the first release of Switchboard (the system settings app in elementary OS) that makes use of it!

          • Ubuntu Budgie Minimal Edition Coming Soon for Those Who Love Customizing the OS

            We haven’t heard anything from the Ubuntu Budgie team since their beloved Linux-based operating system built around the Budgie desktop environment was accepted by Canonical as an official Ubuntu flavor.

            However, we’re aware of the fact that the Ubuntu Budgie team have a lot of work on their hands re-branding the entire project from the old name (budgie-remix) to the new one, and we can all agree it’s a huge effort. Also, they’re preparing for the distribution’s first release as an official Ubuntu flavor, as part of Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus).

            The first development snapshot of Ubuntu Budgie 17.04 might land later this month, on December 29, when some of the opt-in flavors will participate in the Alpha 1 release. Until then, it looks like the team is working on an ultra minimal version of Ubuntu Budgie, for those who love customizing their installations.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Raspberry based Private Cloud?

    Here is something that might be a little outdated already, but I hope it still adds some interesting thoughts. The rainy Sunday afternoon today finally gives the opportunity to write this little blog.

  • Phones

    • How To Lie With Graphics: Different Graphics from the Same Data to tell Smartphone Migration Story

      I’m nearly done with the 2016 edition to my mobile handset industry volume that comes out every two years, the TomiAhonen Phone Book. And I was doing an update to one of the graphics and played around with some different ways to tell the same story. Please note, that all these graphics related to the same data set, I am not talking about current market share sales (that is the easy number you can get most anywhere). This is the far harder number to find, the actual installed base of phones in use, accounting for the different ages of phones still being used, and in many countries the strong resale market where old Nokias, iPhones and Galaxies go to find a second or third pocket to live in. This is the type of data my Phone Book is full of, data you always wanted but can’t find in most public sources. All these graphics on this blog posting related to one data set, and all of it is not current sales of smartphones vs dumbphones (‘featurephones’) but rather, it is the full global installed base of handsets, smart or dumb.

    • Tizen

      • Smartphone Game: Disco Dave now on the Tizen Store

      • Twisted Machines: Road Warrior Smartphone Game comes to Tizen

        Remember last month 2 Cricket game released in Tizen Store by Zapak Mobile Games Pvt. Ltd.: (i) T20 Cricket Champion 3D & (ii) Gujarat Lions: Official Cricket Game. Today they added another game Twisted Machines: Road Warrior a good action packed death racing game. The Game will come to an end after the fuel has run out, so in order to avoid that you must try to collect all the fuel cans that you can.

    • Android

      • 9to5Google Gift Guide: The best Android tablets

        On the whole, tablets are a bit of a dying form factor, but they still have a place for many customers, and make great gifts for kids as well. There is, of course, the iPad, which is a great product. However, if you’re looking for something less expensive, or just something with Android, here are some of the best options you can buy.

      • FOSS applications statistics

        On F-Droid repository (catalogue of Free and Open Source Software applications for the Android platform) there are 2001 applications (~1420 also on Google Play) organized in 17 categories:

      • Cat Avatar Generator, the Android app!

      • When is Android 7.1.1 Nougat coming to my phone?

      • Galaxy Note7 devices in the UK will be updated to limit battery capacity to 30% starting December 15th

      • The Christmas 2016 gift guide for gamers on Android

      • Top 5 Best New Android Action Games of November 2016

      • 2017 Nokia-branded Android smartphones rumored to cost as low as $150

      • The horrible iPhone shutdown bug has me considering switching to Android for the first time

      • Samsung Galaxy S7, S7 Edge To Skip Android 7.0 Nougat And Update Directly To 7.1.1, What About S6 And Note Smartphones?

      • Samsung starts rolling out December Android security patch for Galaxy S7 Edge

      • Android 7.0 Nougat News & Update: Finally! HTC One M9 Gets Update; Biggest Bargain Deal For Extravagant Specs

Free Software/Open Source

• PayPal Cuts Costs 10x With Open Source CI

  The bigger you are, the more small efficiencies add up. Manivannan Selvaraj’s talk from LinuxCon North America gives us a detailed inside view of how PayPal cut operating costs by a factor of ten, while greatly increasing performance and user convenience.

  Everything has to be fast now. We can’t have downtimes. No going offline for maintenance, no requesting resources with a days-long ticketing process. Once upon a time virtual machines were the new miracle technology that enabled more efficient resource use. But that was then. Selvaraj describes how PayPal’s VMs were operating at low efficiency. They started with a single giant customized Jenkins instance running over 40,000 jobs. It was a single point of failure, not scalable, and inflexible.

  The next iteration was individual VMs running Jenkins for each application, which was great for users, but still not an optimal use of hardware. Selvaraj notes that, “Only 10% were really used. The rest of the time, the resources were idle and if you think about 2,500 virtual machines, it’s millions of dollars invested in hardware. So, although it solved the problem of freedom for users and removed the single point of failure, we still had the resource management issue where we didn’t use the resource optimally.”

• 6 months of Nextcloud

  Last Friday was the 6 month anniversary of Nextcloud, a good opportunity to look back and reflect on what we have achieved since we started. I also have some interesting news to share, including that Nextcloud GmbH is a profitable company already!

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Pale Moon updated to 27.0.2!

• Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Integral Ad Science Launches Open Source SDK To Drive Mobile Innovation For Adland

• BSD

  • DragonFlyBSD’s i915 Intel DRM Driver Updated To Match Linux 4.5

    DragonFlyBSD and in particular Francois Tigeot continue to do a good job at continuing to update their Intel “i915″ Direct Rendering Manager driver to catch-up with what’s offered by the mainline Linux kernel with their official Intel DRM driver.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • FSFE Newsletter – December 2016

    In mid October, the lower chamber of the Russian Federation (“Duma”) approved a bill that will boost Free Software on multiple levels within the Russian Federation’s public sector. It requires the public sector to prioritise Free Software over proprietary alternatives, gives precedence to local IT businesses that offer Free Software for public tenders, and recognises the need to encourage collaboration with the global network of Free Software organisations and communities.

    The legislators made an extra effort to ensure a proper use of language. The bill talks about “Free Software”, explicitly mentions the four freedoms and even uses “GNU/Linux” to refer to the most widespread free operating system.

    As our Policy Analyst Polina Malaja puts it: “The bill is an example of public software procurement done right.”

• Licensing/Legal

  • [Older] Licensing resource series: License Violations and Compliance

  • [Older] The Licensing and Compliance Lab interviews Micah Lee of GPG Sync

    This is the latest installment of our Licensing and Compliance Lab’s series on free software developers who choose GNU licenses for their work. In this edition, we conducted an email-based interview with Micah Lee of GPG Sync.

    GPG Sync is a recently launched project for managing the sharing of GPG keys, particularly within an organization. Micah Lee made the project internally at First Look Media and has now shared it with the world.

  • Apache and the JSON license

    The JSON license is a slightly modified variant of the MIT license, but that variation has led it to be rejected as a free-software or open-source license by several organizations. The change is a simple—rather innocuous at some level—addition of one line: “The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.”. Up until recently, code using the JSON license was acceptable for Apache projects, but that line and the ambiguity it engenders was enough for Apache to put it on the list of disallowed licenses.

    At the end of October, Ted Dunning brought up the license on the Apache legal-discuss mailing list. He suggested that classifying the JSON license as acceptable (i.e. on the list of Category A licenses) was an “erroneous decision”. That decision was made, he said, “apparently based on a determination that the no-evil clause was ‘clearly a joke’”. He pointed to a thread from 2008 where a “lazy consensus” formed that the “not evil” condition did not preclude Apache projects from using the license.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Government in France: an Empty Promise?

    As France is hosting the Open Government Partnership Global Summit, a number of Civil Society Organizations point out the inconsistencies of the French government. Some have decided not to attend.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Fuzzing OpenGL Shaders Can Lead To Some Wild Results

    Alastair Donaldson at the Imperial College London has been working on testing OpenGL shader compilers across vendors and operating systems with OpenGL shader fuzzing and has been finding some surprising — and sometimes comical — results. The results so far are interesting and show how some small code changes can cause big problems for some OpenGL shader compilers.

  • Google starts using HTML5 by default instead of Flash for some Chrome users

    Google has started disabling Flash and displaying HTML5 content instead on certain websites for a small number of people using its Chrome browser. People can still explicitly permit Flash to load on the affected sites — which are the top 10 that use Flash.

    Google has deployed the change for half of the people who are using Chrome 56 beta, which rolled out yesterday, Google technical program manager Eric Deily wrote in a blog post.

    Then, “in the next few days,” Deily wrote, the feature will be active for 1 percent of users of Chrome 55 stable.

Leftovers

• ‘Clean your desk’ : My Amazon interview experience

  The whole experience was somewhat surreal. I remember in previous years, while applying for internships at Amazon, on being told that I have to take an automated test while being recorded through my camera, I’d recoiled at this intrusion of privacy. Now, I’d given a company complete access to my entire machine, just so I can apply to work there. If the video had worked, I would have proceeded with the interview, because at the time of doing the interview I was looking for a job and I 1) don’t live in the Bay Area, and 2) am not a citizen of a North American country, so good/interesting programming jobs aren’t plentiful.

• Liberty in the Library – FAIFE Network Launches

  Libraries are increasingly places not just for reading, but also for creating and sharing. They are guardians of free access to information and free expression – two values which are inseparable from each other, and have fulfilled this role for centuries.

• China suggests the construction of rail lines linking Afghanistan and Pakistan

  China has proposed that a railway line be built linking the Pakistani city of Quetta to the Afghani capital of Kabul, as well as from the Pakistani city of Peshawar to Kabul, according to Afghan Presidential Palace.

  The proposal was made by the Chinese Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Kong Xuanyou in a meeting with the Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani.

  Xuanyou emphasised the importance of Afghanistan to China’s New Silk Road.

• Science

  • Dinosaur tail trapped in amber offers insights into feather evolution

    A length of fluffy plumage discovered within a piece of amber has been identified as part of a dinosaur tail, offering new insights into the evolution of feathers.

    Around 3.7cm long, with chestnut-coloured feathers on the top and pale feathers underneath, the tail was found complete with fossilised bones as well as traces of muscles, ligaments and mummified-looking skin.

    While researchers say it is not possible to determine the species to which the tail belonged, they say the dinosaur lived around 99 million years ago and was most likely a juvenile, non-avian theropod – a group of dinosaurs that includes velociraptors and tyrannosaurs.

  • John Glenn, First American To Orbit The Earth, Dies At 95

    The first American to orbit the Earth has died. John Glenn was the last surviving member of the original Mercury astronauts. He would later have a long political career as a U.S. senator, but that didn’t stop his pioneering ways.

    Glenn made history a second time in 1998, when he flew aboard the shuttle Discovery to become the oldest person to fly in space.

    Glenn was 95 when he died; he had been hospitalized in an Ohio State University medical center in Columbus since last week.

  • John Glenn, the last of the Mercury Seven astronauts, has died

• Hardware

  • Qualcomm Debuts 10nm FinFET Centriq 2400 Processor With 48 Cores

    Qualcomm and its Qualcomm Datacenter Technologies subsidiary announced today that the company has already begun sampling its first 10nm server processor. The Centriq 2400 is the second generation of Qualcomm server SOCs, but it is the first in its new family of 10nm FinFET processors. The Centriq 2400 features up to 48 custom Qualcomm ARMv8-compliant Falkor cores and comes a little over a year after Qualcomm began developing its first-generation Centriq processors.

• Health/Nutrition

  • What Do Flint And The Dakota Access Pipeline Have In Common? Water

    With all the attention lately on the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, some folks have wondered why more attention isn’t being spent on the Flint, Michigan, water crisis. While mainstream media has devoted a multitude of stories on the Flint water crisis, the same news outlets have paid little attention to the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.

    [...]

    Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore hails from Flint, Michigan, and has a deep connection with the city. It is obvious that he cares tremendously about the city and its inhabitants. On his website, he gave a ten-point rundown of why the water crisis happened, to begin with, but it all seems to boil down to two things: greed and a gaping disregard for human life, particularly Black lives (Flint is a majority Black city).

    Several points in his essay were striking in how government officials, at both the state and federal level, seemed to disregard the lives of people who live in Flint.

• Security

  • A ‘mystery device’ is letting thieves break into cars and drive off with them, insurance group says

    Insurance crime investigators are raising alarms over a device that not only lets thieves break into cars that use keyless entry systems but also helps start and steal them.

    Investigators from the National Insurance Crime Bureau, a not-for-profit organization, said in an interview they obtained what they called the “mystery device” from a third-party security expert at an overseas company.

    So far, the threat here may be mostly theoretical. The crime bureau said it heard of the device being used in Europe and had reports that it had entered the U.S., but said there are no law enforcement reports of a car being stolen using it in the United States.

  • Turkish hacking group offers tiered points rewards program for DoS attacks

    A TURKISH HACKING GANG is taking an unusual approach to funding denial of service attacks, and is soliciting for, and offering hackers rewards for taking down chosen pages.

    This is unusual, as far as we know, and it has led to the creation of comment from the security industry. Often these things do.

  • German judges explain why Adblock Plus is legal

    Last month, Adblock Plus maker Eyeo GmbH won its sixth legal victory in German courts, with a panel of district court judges deciding that ad-blocking software is legal despite German newsmagazine Der Spiegel’s arguments to the contrary. Now, the reasoning of the Hamburg-based panel of judges has been made public.

    According to an unofficial English-translated copy (PDF) of the judgment, Spiegel Online argued it was making a “unified offer” to online consumers. Essentially, that offer is: read the news content for free and view some ads. While Internet users have the freedom “not to access this unified offer,” neither they nor Adblock Plus have the right to “dismantle” it. Eyeo’s behavior thus amounted to unfair competition, and it could even wipe the offer out, Spiegel claimed.

    “The Claimant [Spiegel] argues that the Defendant’s [Eyeo's] business model endangers the Claimant’s existence,” reads the judgment, which isn’t final because it can be appealed by Spiegel. Because users aren’t willing to pay for editorial content on the Web, “it is not economically viable for the Claimant to switch to this business model.”

    Spiegel asked for an accounting of all the blocked views on its website and a fine to be paid—or even for managers Wladimir Palant and Till Faida to be placed in “coercive detention” of up to two years.

  • Op-ed: I’m throwing in the towel on PGP, and I work in security [Ed: Onlya tool would drop PGP for Facebook-controlled Whatsapp. The company back-doors everything under gag orders.]

    In the coming weeks I’ll import all signatures I received, make all the signatures I promised, and then publish revocations to the keyservers. I’ll rotate my Keybase key. Eventually, I’ll destroy the private keys.

  • 90 per cent of NHS Trusts are still running Windows XP machines

    90 PER CENT of the NHS continues to run Windows XP machines, two and a half years after Microsoft ditched support for the ageing OS.

    It’s Citrix who is ringing the alarm bells, having learnt that 90 per cent of NHS Trusts are still running Windows XP PCs. The firm sent Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to 63 NHS Trusts, 42 of which responded.

    The data also revealed that 24 Trusts are still not sure when they’ll migrate from Windows XP to a newer version of Microsoft’s OS. 14 per cent said they would be transitioning to a new operating system by the end of this year, while 29 per cent pledged to make the move sometime next year.

  • Ransomware blamed for attack that caused Lincolnshire NHS Trust shutdown

    RANSOMWARE is to blame for an attack which saw an NHS Trust in Lincolnshire that forced to cancel operations for four days in October.

    In a statement, Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust said that a ransomware variant called Globe2 was to blame for the incident.

  • Researchers Find Fresh Fodder for IoT Attack Cannons

    New research published this week could provide plenty of fresh fodder for Mirai, a malware strain that enslaves poorly-secured Internet of Things (IoT) devices for use in powerful online attacks. Researchers in Austria have unearthed a pair of backdoor accounts in more than 80 different IP camera models made by Sony Corp. Separately, Israeli security experts have discovered trivially exploitable weaknesses in nearly a half-million white-labeled IP camera models that are not currently sought out by Mirai.

  • Your data is not safe. Here’s how to lock it down

    But some people worry that government surveillance will expand under a Donald Trump presidency, especially because he tapped Mike Pompeo, who supports mass surveillance, for CIA chief.

  • Tor at the Heart: Library Freedom Project

    Library Freedom Project is an initiative that aims to make real the promise of intellectual freedom in libraries by teaching librarians and their local communities about surveillance threats, privacy rights and responsibilities, and privacy-enhancing technologies to help safeguard digital freedoms.

  • Five-Year-Old Bait-and-Switch Linux Security Flaw Patched

    Maintainers of the Linux Kernel project have fixed three security flaws this week, among which there was a serious bug that lingered in the kernel for the past five years and allowed attackers to bypass some OS security systems and open a root shell.

  • The Internet of Dangerous Auction Sites

    Ok, I know this is kind of old news now, but Bruce Schneier gave testimony to the House of Representatives’ Energy & Commerce Committee about computer security after the Dyn attack. I’m including this quote because I feel it sets the scene nicely for what follows here.

    Last week, I was browsing the popular online auction site eBay and I noticed that there was no TLS. For a moment, I considered that maybe my traffic was being intercepted deliberately, there’s no way that eBay as a global company would be deliberately risking users in this way. I was wrong. There is not and has never been TLS for large swathes of the eBay site. In fact, the only point at which I’ve found TLS is in their help pages and when it comes to entering card details (although it’ll give you back the last 4 digits of your card over a plaintext channel).

  • PowerShell security threats greater than ever, researchers warn

    Administrators should upgrade to the latest version of Microsoft PowerShell and enable extended logging and monitoring capabilities in the light of a surge in related security threats, warn researchers [...] Now more than 95% of PowerShell scripts analysed by Symantec researchers have been found to be malicious, with 111 threat families using PowerShell.

  • Microsoft PowerShell Becomes a More Popular Malware-Spreading Tool

    Microsoft PowerShell is a really powerful tool for IT professionals running Windows, and the Redmond-based software giant is making it the default shell in the operating system, but security experts that cybercriminals are also increasingly using it for spreading malware.

    Security firm Symantec analyzed malicious PowerShell scripts and said that the number of threats is growing at a fast pace, especially in the case of enterprises where the shell framework is more widely used.

  • The dangers of stable/LTS/supported versions

    This means that people are running stable versions and thinking they are secure, but if we trust security specialists, [almost] every crash can be exploited, and I’m almost sure neither Ubuntu nor RedHat nor Debian have backported all of the crash fixes of the more than 20 releases and 2 years of development behind those *very old* versions they are shipping.

  • GStreamer and the state of Linux desktop security

    Recently Chris Evans, an IT security expert currently working for Tesla, published a series of blog posts about security vulnerabilities in the GStreamer multimedia framework. A combination of the Chrome browser and GNOME-based desktops creates a particularly scary vulnerability. Evans also made a provocative statement: that vulnerabilities of this severity currently wouldn’t happen in Windows 10. Is the state of security on the Linux desktop really that bad — and what can be done about it?

  • The State of Kernel Self Protection Project by Kees Cook, Google

  • 5-Year-Old Linux Kernel Local Privilege Escalation Flaw Discovered

  • Private Internet Access funds OpenVPN 2.4 audit by noted cryptographer Dr. Matthew Green

    Private Internet Access is happy to announce that an OpenVPN 2.4 audit is going to be completed by noted cryptographer Dr. Matthew Green, assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute. Dr. Green has a long, distinguished history in the fields of applied cryptography and cryptographic engineering and has previously lead the Truecrypt audit.

  • [Older] Risky design decisions in Google Chrome and Fedora desktop enable drive-by downloads

  • The IoT: Gateway for enterprise hackers

    The risk of notoriously insecure Internet of Things devices is not so much that those devices themselves will be compromised, but that they provide dozens – perhaps hundreds – of openings that could allow attackers to get inside an enterprise network

  • Netgear users advised to stop using affected routers after severe flaw found

  • We must return transparency to voting [Ed: a real problem]

    With the passage of the Help America Vote Act in 2002, electronic voting systems became the law of the land. This law required proprietary electronic voting systems be used in America.

    It must be noted, however, that Americans would not be permitted to use open-source software to protect their right to vote. When proprietary electronic-voting systems are used for elections, Americans literally lost their right to vote.

    In America, our governments, whether local, state or federal, rely on elections that permit anyone to scrutinize the election process, including the vote count. Whether by paper ballot or electronic voting system, it is every American’s right to examine the vote count process to satisfy their personal demand that the vote count is accurate and verifiable.

  • CloudLinux 7 Kernel Update Patches 5-Year-Old Privilege-Escalation Vulnerability

• Defence/Aggression

  • Mad Men: Trump May Be the Perfect Vehicle for Kissinger’s Philosophy

    Henry Kissinger was in Beijing just before president-elect Donald Trump decided to upend decades of diplomatic protocol and speak on the phone with the Taiwanese president. The details of Kissinger’s conversation with Chinese officials, including President Xi Jinping, were undisclosed, but clearly the aging statesman was trying to resurrect his role as a go-between between China and Washington. Perhaps he even conveyed to the Chinese sentiments similar to those he expressed to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, essentially trying to present Trump as a statesman without “baggage,” beholden to no one.

    Give Trump a chance, Kissinger said. Let’s not box him in. “We must give him time to develop his philosophy.” “We hope,” Kissinger told Xi in Beijing, “to see the China-U.S. relationship moving ahead in a sustained and stable manner.” Then Trump pulled the rug, raising doubts about Washington’s decades-long One China policy and confirming China’s worst fears. On Tuesday, Kissinger trekked to Trump Tower to huddle with the president-elect.

  • Around 1,500 European jihadists return from Mideast: report

    Around a third of the estimated 5,000 European jihadists who went to Syria and Iraq have returned to Europe, and some may have orders to attack, an EU report warned Wednesday.

    Up to 2,500 fighters from Europe remained on the battlefield but their massive return in the short term seemed unlikely, according to the report seen by AFP.

    Belgium expressed concern last month that jihadists were increasingly returning to Europe as US-backed coalition forces drive the Islamic State (IS) group from territory in Syria and Iraq.

    The report said between 15 to 20 percent of the Europeans have died on the battlefield, around 30 to 35 percent have returned and 50 percent remain in the battle theatre, which amounted to between 2,000 and 2,500 Europeans.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

  • 5 New Tactics In Civil Disobedience, Taught By Standing Rock

    If you’ve only been half-following the story of Standing Rock, you might not know much beyond some snarky Twitter memes about the cops going “a little overboard” (for instance, they nearly blew a woman’s arm off with a concussion grenade). The allegations of police brutality have been serious enough that the United Nations has opened an investigation. But the most important story from Standing Rock isn’t the police brutality, the evidence that protester’s phones were hacked, or even that this is the largest gathering of Indigenous Americans in modern history.

  • The Standing Rock Water Protectors Aren’t Leaving

    Temperatures in Cannonball, North Dakota are now at lethal lows, dipping well below freezing, with winds reaching up to 50 miles per hour. On December 4th, thousands of US veterans began to arrive at Standing Rock to join the Water Protectors in solidarity. Veterans announced they would serve as security for the Water Protectors at the front lines, pledging to defend them in the case of police attacks.

    As veterans began arriving by the busload, the Army Corp of Engineers announced that the Dakota Access Pipeline would not be granted a permit to continue pipeline construction. It’s widely speculated that this announcement was strategically timed to persuade the veterans to leave Standing Rock and that DAPL will not in fact cease construction. As the weather worsens, many wonder what lies ahead for the Water Protectors.

  • Open Pit Mine in Montana Kills Thousands of Migrating Snow Geese

    Thousands of snow geese have been killed by the toxic waters of the Berkeley Pit, a flooded former copper mine in Butte, Montana that is one of the most poisonous and acidic bodies of water in the United States.

    Unusually warm weather led the flock—tens of thousands of geese—to migrate south from Canada to the American Southwest later than usual, and they ran into a snow storm in Montana. The only open water in the area on which they could land was that contained in the Berkeley Pit.

    The geese landed in the pit, whose water is contaminated with arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, copper, iron, and zinc, in late November. The heavy metal contamination has resulted in water so acidic that the organisms able to survive within the pit are the objects of scientific study. Thousands of birds did not survive after touching down on the red-tinged toxic waste.

  • Donald Trump’s Interior Pick Thinks Climate Change Is ‘Creative Writing’

    Today, Donald Trump nominated his pick for Secretary of the Interior: Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House Republican Conference, and a vocal climate change denier.

    Just days after selecting Scott Pruitt—an attorney general whose pockets have been lined by the fossil fuel industry—to head up the Environmental Protection Agency, Trump has beefed up his roster of pro-fossil fuel personalities. At this point, a larger theme is emerging. As president, Trump intends to undo the current administration’s climate legacy by unleashing Cabinet officials with experience systematically striking down climate regulations.

    According to the League of Conservation Voters, a national environmental nonprofit, McMorris Rodgers boasts a lifetime voting score of 4 percent. She’s voted to strike down bills that would limit emissions from power plants, protect communities from toxic coal ash, ban the sale of ivory products in the US, and protect threatened species like the lesser prairie chicken.

  • Trump team memo on climate change alarms Energy Department staff

    President-elect Donald Trump’s Energy Department transition team sent the agency a memo this week asking for the names of people who have worked on climate change and the professional society memberships of lab workers, alarming employees and advisors.

    The memo sent to the Energy Department on Tuesday and seen by Reuters on Friday, contains 74 questions including a request for a list of all department employees and contractors who attended the annual global climate talks hosted by the United Nations within the last five years.

    It asked for a list of all department employees or contractors who have attended any meetings on the social cost of carbon, a measurement that federal agencies use to weigh the costs and benefits of new energy and environment regulations. It also asked for all publications written by employees at the department’s 17 national laboratories for the past three years.

  • Trump team memo on climate change alarms Energy Department staff [Ed: same as above, widely syndicated]

  • Trump’s EPA Pick Is a Shill For the Oil Industry

    f all the people Donald Trump was considering to run the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), his eventual pick, Scott Pruitt, a fellow climate change denier, has the most dangerous ties to the fossil fuel industry. The news was announced today, after the Oklahoma attorney general beat out four other candidates, including climate change denier Myron Ebell.

    Like his competition, Pruitt, a lawyer, possesses the following characteristics: a staunch disbelief in man-made global warming, a disdain for the EPA’s regulatory power, and a strong yearning to undo President Obama’s environmental policy, such as the proposed Clean Power Plan.

    Pruitt, in his role as Attorney General, also has experience fighting environmental policies in court. His resume, according to the New York Times, notes him as “a key architect of the legal battle against Mr. Obama’s climate change policies.” Earlier this year, Pruitt spearheaded a 28-state lawsuit in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia against alleged constitutional overstepping by President Obama’s climate rules. The Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to global warming, and is essential to meeting Paris Agreement goals, was criticized by opponents for being an illegal power-grab by the EPA. The case is expected to move to the Supreme Court.

• Finance

  • Uber is treating its drivers as sweated labour, says report

    Uber treats its drivers as Victorian-style “sweated labour”, with some taking home less than the minimum wage, according to a report into its working conditions based on the testimony of dozens of drivers.

    Drivers at the taxi-hailing app company reported feeling forced to work extremely long hours, sometimes more than 70 a week, just to make a basic living, said Frank Field, the Labour MP and chair of the work and pensions committee.

  • Inequality Is Killing The American Dream

    Decades of rising income inequality and slowing economic growth have eroded a pillar of the American dream: the hope that each generation will do better than the one that came before, according to new research released Thursday.

    If the findings hold up, they have profound economic, social and even political implications. The decline in what economists call “mobility” — how easy it is to move up the income ladder over a lifetime or across generations — has been especially stark in the Rust Belt states that helped propel Donald Trump to victory in last month’s presidential election.

    In 1970, according to the research, conducted by Stanford economist Raj Chetty and several co-authors, roughly nine out of every 10 American 30-year-olds earned more than their parents did at the same age, after adjusting for inflation. In 2014, only half of 30-year-olds could say the same.1 The slowdown in mobility shows up in all 50 states and is true across the income spectrum. The biggest declines were among the children of middle-class families.

  • How Donald Trump’s Web of LLCs Obscures His Business Interests

    To be more precise, he has a revocable trust that owns 99% of a Delaware limited liability company that owns 99% of another Delaware LLC that owns a Scottish limited company that owns another Scottish company that owns the 26-year-old Sikorsky S-76B helicopter, emblazoned with a red “TRUMP” on the side of its fuselage.

  • We must stop the Tories from putting private profit before quality and safety of our railways

    When you arrive at the scene of a rail disaster the first thing that hits you is the loss. The loss of unfulfilled lives. The loss of parents, children, partners and other loved ones knowing they’ll never see them again.

    Then you feel pride. For the emergency workers who will work through the night to find the injured and the dead. Then you get angry. Angry that mindless privatisation and the profit motive had led to a train crash.

    As Shadow Transport Spokesman I saw at first hand the under-investment in British Rail by the Tory Government . In the 10 years before 1997, it was £1.2billion a year.

  • Wells Fargo is successfully convincing judges that forged arbitration agreements are legally binding

    When you sign up for a Wells Fargo account, you’re required to sign an arbitration “agreement” giving up your right to sue the company, and requiring you to have your case heard by an arbitrator paid for by — and dependent on — Wells Fargo instead.

    At least 2,000,000 times, Wells Fargo employees were pressured — on pain of termination and lifelong blacklisting from the finance industry — into opening fake accounts in their customers’ names. These accounts existed solely to accrue fees, which, in many cases, made their customers overdrawn (or simply generated suspicious seeming queries against their credit records), and when that happened, their credit records were dinged, which can cost you a job, a loan — even your house if you can’t refinance your mortgage.

    Now those millions of defrauded people are trying to sue Wells, and Wells is arguing that the binding arbitration agreements on accounts that you didn’t open are also binding — that by having your signature forged on a fraudulent application, you waived your right to sue.

  • Posti denies losing entire newspaper print run

    National mail carrier Posti has denied claims that it lost an entire print run of the Social Democratic Party weekly, Demokraatti. On Thursday the party organ said that it would provide free access to its digital paper because a Posti search for 10,000 copies of the weekly proved to be fruitless.

  • A mafia expert has named ‘the most corrupt country in the world’

    The UK is the most corrupt country in the world, according to journalist Roberto Saviano, who is an expert in the Italian Mafia.

  • UK firms ‘face more, not less, red tape if Britain exits customs union’

    UK businesses will have to deal with 60m more pieces of paperwork each year if Britain leaves the customs union as it departs the EU, according to research from a group campaigning to keep trade links with the bloc after Brexit.

    According to Open Britain, a hard Brexit could spark an “avalanche of paperwork” if thousands of importing and exporting businesses were forced to fill out similar forms to those required in moving goods and services beyond the union.

    The claim comes as the government faces another potential legal challenge to its Brexit plans, this time from two campaigners who are seeking a judicial review in the high court to keep Britain in the single market.

    Under the EU customs union, which deals with rules relating to trade, unified tariffs are levied on imports to the whole area, meaning no new charges or associated paperwork are needed for goods shipped between members.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • This Man’s First-Hand Account of the Michigan Recount Is Disturbing

    Over at Medium, Nick Sharp, a man who volunteered as an observer with Recount Michigan 2016, described his experience. It does not sound positive. In fact, he before the count was suspended by a federal judge, Sharp called it a “bloodbath.”

  • McCain: Tillerson relationship with Putin a ‘matter of concern’

    Sen. John McCain said Saturday that the relationship between Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump’s leading candidate for secretary of state, and Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “matter of concern” to him.

    In an interview with Fox News, the former GOP nominee and chairman of the Senate armed services committee said, “I don’t know what Mr. Tillerson’s relationship with Vladimir Putin was, but I’ll tell you it is a matter of concern to me. You want to give the president of the United States the benefit of the doubt because the people have spoken. But Vladimir Putin is a thug, a bully and a murderer, and anybody else who describes him as anything else is lying.”

  • Bernstein says Trump’s lies worse than Nixon’s

    Carl Bernstein, whose reporting broke open the Watergate scandal that led to former President Nixon’s resignation, said Sunday that Nixon’s lies were nothing compared to Donald Trump’s.

  • Hillary Clinton’s losing campaign cost a record $1.2B

    Hillary Clinton and her supporters spent a record $1.2 billion for her losing presidential campaign — twice as much as the winner, Donald Trump, according to the latest records.

    The president-elect, who confounded critics during the campaign by saying there was no need to raise or spend $1 billion or more, ended up making do with $600 million.

    Clinton’s expensive machine tore through $131.8 million in just the final weeks, finishing with about $839,000 on hand as of Nov. 28.

    Team Trump spent $94.5 million in the home stretch — from Oct. 20 to Nov. 28 — and had $7.6 million left.

    The figures include all spending by the campaigns, PACs and party committees.

    Trump contributed $66 million from his own pocket, $34 million less than he estimated he would shell out.

  • Freedom’s Just Another Word

    This is banana republic crap, people, that looks to negate the votes of some 62 million Americans. We no longer believe in our own system. When the candidate many people did not support wins, the response is to seek to negate the democratic process, via accusations that make McCarthy in the 1950s look like a sad amateur.

    What we have are anonymous voices at an intelligence agency supposedly dedicated to foreign intel saying the Russians helped elect our next president. That says the process is flawed and cannot be trusted, and that Trump will owe a debt to the Russians and can’t be trusted. It will keep alive the idea that Clinton should have won if not for this meddling and undermine for his term the legitimacy of Trump. Via the classification process, the CIA will only need to make public the snippets of info that support its contention.

    This is an attempted coup as sure as it would be if there were tanks on the White House lawn. The CIA might as well have tried to shoot Trump during his next trip to Dallas.

    To date, all of these accusations have been based on anonymous sources and leaks. The president of the United States remains silent.

  • Requiem for the Obama Administration, Trump Edition

    The problems many are now predicting under the Trump administration did not start on November 8. The near-unrestrained executive power claimed by the Obama administration will be transferred to the president-elect. Here’s what that means.

  • Worst False Equivalencies of 2016

    The general election was a tale of two scandals, often lumped side by side: the ongoing FBI investigation into Clinton’s mishandling of government emails and Donald Trump’s ever-expanding list of alleged sexual assault victims. While Clinton’s email scandal was certainly newsworthy (most FBI investigations of candidates are), its relative importance to her fitness for office was dwarfed by the torrent of allegations against the GOP nominee.

  • On International Human Rights Day, a Lesson for Trump

    Saturday is International Human Rights Day, commemorating the day in 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The significance of the day and its history is something that President-elect Donald Trump should reckon with after running a campaign that demonstrated outright contempt for human rights, particularly his “love” of waterboarding.

    Right now, we don’t yet know what Donald Trump will try in office. But to fight against any policies embodying the islamophobia, xenophobia, racism, or misogyny that were embraced during his campaign, we know that we have decades of international human rights law on our side. And no president can undo that because ratified treaties are not just lofty aspirations — under the Constitution they’re “the supreme law of the land.”

  • Jill Stein in Detroit: Michigan’s election ‘a hot mess’

    “We are fighting for the right to vote and to make sure that every vote counts,” said Stein, 66, who triggered historic recount efforts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin after voters in those states shifted to Republican after many years of voting Democratic.

  • This is what happens when Donald Trump attacks a private citizen on Twitter

    About a year ago, 18-year-old college student Lauren Batchelder stood up at a political forum in New Hampshire and told Donald Trump that she didn’t think he was “a friend to women.”

    The next morning, Trump fired back on Twitter — calling Batchelder an “arrogant young woman” and accusing her of being a “plant” from a rival campaign. Her phone began ringing with callers leaving threatening messages that were often sexual in nature. Her Facebook and email inboxes filled with similar messages. As her addresses circulated on social media and her photo flashed on the news, she fled home to hide.

    “I didn’t really know what anyone was going to do,” said Batchelder, now 19, who has never discussed her experience with a reporter until now. “He was only going to tweet about it and that was it, but I didn’t really know what his supporters were going to do, and that to me was the scariest part.”

    This is what happens when Trump targets a private citizen who publicly challenges him.

  • Trump’s Presidency Is Shaping Up to Be an American Tragedy

    They’re already building the inaugural stand on the west side of the Capitol building. In six weeks, Donald Trump will stand on it, in front of thousands, and take the oath of office to become the 45th president of the United States.

  • Gary Cohn: Donald Trump expected to pick Goldman Sachs president as National Economic Council director

    Donald Trump has reportedly chosen Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn as his pick for director of the National Economic Council.

    While the President-elect has promised to “drain the swamp” of bureaucracy and lobbying powers in Washington DC, Americans may question Mr Trump’s choice of the leader of one of the largest banks in the US to lead a government agency. Mr Trump repeatedly criticised Wall Street banks during the presidential campaign, and called for Hillary Clinton to release the transcripts of her paid speeches at Goldman.

    Also on Friday, Mr Trump said he would name Andrew Liveris, chairman and chief executive of Dow Chemical Co, to head the Manufacturing Council, a private sector group that advises the US secretary of commerce.

    Mr Trump made the announcement during a rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, where he introduced Mr Liveris, 62, a dual US-Australian citizen who said he had accepted the appointment.

  • Without these ads, there wouldn’t be money in fake news

    It’s never been easier to launch a wildly profitable online media empire. Whether you’re an aspiring mommy blogger or political pundit, $10 gets you a URL and online storage. Fill out a short form and copy-paste some code to get ads on your website.

    Lure in some readers and you’ll have no trouble making money.

    Every 1,000 visitors earns you at least a dollar or two with traditional banner ads sold through Google — boxes typically pitching products that readers have browsed online. But the same readership generates three times the income through recommended content ads. Usually displayed in a familiar grid, they couple crazy headlines with scintillating pictures — a must-click combination dubbed chum.

  • The FBI Is Investigating Me Because I Tweeted A Joke About Fake News

    This is a story about how the FBI came to investigate a joke I tweeted about fake news.

    I’m a journalist, and I’ve written lots of stories about the FBI. I don’t think the bureau is retaliating against me for critical coverage. But I’m astonished that the nation’s top domestic law enforcement agency has launched such an obviously frivolous investigation — and worried that other people are being targeted for similarly silly reasons.

    Journalists benefit from special protections because the Justice Department doesn’t want to embarrass itself by picking a fight with people who buy server space by the terabyte. Non-journalists in my position have fewer ways to fight back — and lots of reasons to worry. They don’t have easy access to millions of readers. Many companies are more likely to fire an employee for causing trouble than to provide legal counsel. Many people feel compelled to talk to the bureau even though saying the wrong thing can lead to a felony charge for lying to the FBI.

  • Fake news peddlers and muckrakers risk “sickness of coprophilia,” says Pope

    The Pope’s pop at phony folk who run fake news stories on the Web—published mostly to stir up bizarre and frenzied smears against politicians and other public figures—sits at the extreme end of clickbait and, for many commentators, it left a skid-mark over the recent US election.

    “I believe that the media should be very clear, very transparent, and not fall prey—without offence, please—to the sickness of coprophilia, which is always wanting to communicate scandal, to communicate ugly things, even though they may be true,” he told Belgian Catholic weekly newspaper Tertio. “And since people have a tendency towards the sickness of coprophagia, it can do great harm.”

    The Oxford English Dictionary describes coprophilia as an “Abnormal interest and pleasure in faeces and defecation,” while the word coprophagia refers to people who eat faecal matter.

  • Stop worrying about fake news. What comes next will be much worse

    In my exploration of “fake news”, I’ve found some troubling things. And it’s not just the rightwing news network that’s worrying. I’ve recently gone back and taken a preliminary look at the leftwing media ecosystem, trying to map the hyperlinks between these sites – so I’m not trying to establish causation or assign blame as to what kinds of content these sites circulate. There are plenty of other people willing to do that. What I’m really looking for is a way forward.

    I’m primarily interested in the larger network that has enabled fake news to become such a salient topic. What I’ve found most troubling about fake news so far isn’t the factual errors, the misinformation, or the propaganda involved. It’s not the politics either . And no, it’s not Trump.

    What’s scary about fake news is how it is becoming a catch-all phrase for anything people happen to disagree with. In this regard, fake news is sort of the stepbrother of “post-fact” and “post-truth”  –  though not directly related, they’re all part of the same dysfunctional family.

    Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have been accused of being responsible for the result of the US election, the Brexit referendum outcome or events such as Pizzagate – which led Hillary Clinton this week to describe fake news as “a danger that must be addressed”. The worst part of this debate has been obscured by politics-as-usual, techno-dystopian Fahrenheit 451 tropes – and to some degree, more misinformation.

  • GOP elector: Not all of us are voting for Trump

    A Republican presidential elector from Texas says he won’t be the only Republican elector who won’t vote for President-elect Donald Trump, ABC News reported.

    “I don’t think I will be the only one voting for someone other than Donald Trump who is carrying a Republican elector ticket,” he said.

    Christopher Suprun says other electors have reached out to him about other potential picks besides Trump. He said the “faithless electors” haven’t selected an alternative yet, after Ohio Gov. John Kasich told electors earlier this week not to write his name down.

    “As electors come forward, and I have had conversations with other Republican electors in particular, I think we will start discussing names specifically and see who meets the test that we could all get behind,” Suprun said.

  • The CIA’s Absence of Conviction

    I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also.

    A little simple logic demolishes the CIA’s claims. The CIA claim they “know the individuals” involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks. The anonymous source claims of “We know who it was, it was the Russians” are beneath contempt.

    As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks – there is a major difference between the two. And it should be said again and again, that if Hillary Clinton had not connived with the DNC to fix the primary schedule to disadvantage Bernie, if she had not received advance notice of live debate questions to use against Bernie, if she had not accepted massive donations to the Clinton foundation and family members in return for foreign policy influence, if she had not failed to distance herself from some very weird and troubling people, then none of this would have happened.

  • Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House [Ed: Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller are still mouthpieces of the CIA]

  • Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America

    The CIA officially determined that Russia intervened in our election, and President-elect Donald Trump dismissed the story as if it were a piece of fake news. “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” his transition team wrote in a statement. “The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again’.”

    It wasn’t one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history, so presumably that’s another red-herring lie to distract from Trump treating the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States like it is some rogue blogger to be cast to the trolls. A foreign government’s interference in our election is a threat to our freedom, and the President-elect’s attempt to undermine the American people’s access to that information undermines the very foundation upon which this country was built. It’s also nothing new.

    Trump won the Presidency by gas light. His rise to power has awakened a force of bigotry by condoning and encouraging hatred, but also by normalizing deception. Civil rights are now on trial, though before we can fight to reassert the march toward equality, we must regain control of the truth. If that seems melodramatic, I would encourage you to dump a bucket of ice over your head while listening to “Duel of the Fates.” Donald Trump is our President now; it’s time to wake up.

    “Gas lighting” is a buzzy name for a terrifying strategy currently being used to weaken and blind the American electorate. We are collectively being treated like Bella Manningham in the 1938 Victorian thriller from which the term “gas light” takes its name. In the play, Jack terrorizes his wife Bella into questioning her reality by blaming her for mischievously misplacing household items which he systematically hides. Doubting whether her perspective can be trusted, Bella clings to a single shred of evidence: the dimming of the gas lights that accompanies the late night execution of Jack’s trickery. The wavering flame is the one thing that holds her conviction in place as she wriggles free of her captor’s control.

  • Libraries become new domestic terrorism target in Trump wave of hate crimes

    Authorities say in recent weeks there has been an unprecedented wave of hate crimes targeting library buildings, books, and the people who read them. The officials told the New York Times they’d rarely seen such before. These crimes are intended to terrorize, and they follow a recent report by the F.B.I. which says hate crimes against Muslim people in America shot up over the past year.

  • Michigan Supreme Court denies Stein’s recount appeal

    The Michigan Supreme Court on Friday denied Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s appeal to restart a partially completed presidential election recount, meaning President-elect Donald Trump’s 10,704-vote victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton stands.

    In a 3-2 ruling, the state’s highest court said the Michigan Court of Appeals correctly ruled that Stein was ineligible to pursue a recount.

    Republican-nominated justices Stephen Markman, Brian Zahra and David Viviano denied the appeal. Zahra and Viviano wrote a concurring opinion that further explained why the Court of Appeals was correct to rule that Stein is not an “aggrieved” candidate who could request an appeal. She finished a distant fourth behind Trump and Clinton.

    “Thus, petitioner failed to allege that she has been harmed or that her legal rights have been infringed in any way whatsoever,” Zahra and Viviano wrote in the majority opinion.

  • Michigan Supreme Court denies Jill Stein’s appeal in recount case

    The Michigan Supreme Court has denied Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s appeal to restart the statewide presidential recount, exhausting what’s likely the last legal option for the Stein campaign.

    In a 3-2 order issued Friday evening, the court ruled a recount petition in Michigan “must allege both that fraud or mistake exists and that the alleged fraud or mistake caused the candidate to be aggrieved.”

    The majority order concurs with a State Court of Appeals ruling that ordered Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers, which certifies election results and handles other election-related issues, to reject the recount on grounds that Stein was not sufficiently “aggrieved” as required under state statute earlier this week.

  • Georgia says it’s traced an attempted voter hack to the Department of Homeland Security

    Georgia’s secretary of state says the state was hit with an attempted hack of its voter registration database from an IP address linked to the federal Department of Homeland Security.

    The allegation by Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp is one of the more bizarre charges to come up in the recent spate of alarms about voting-system hacks. He said in a Facebook post on Thursday that he had been made aware of the failed attempt to breach the firewall protecting Georgia’s voter registration database. The attack was traced to an Internet Protocol address associated with DHS, he said.

    “This morning I sent a letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson demanding to know why,” he said in the post.

    The DHS said it had received the letter. “We are looking into the matter. DHS takes the trust of our public and private sector partners seriously, and we will respond to Secretary Kemp directly,” the department said in a statement.

  • Michael Moore: It’s possible Trump doesn’t become president

    After predicting Donald Trump would win the presidency, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore speculated as to whether Trump will make it to the Oval Office.

    “Nothing anyone has predicted has happened,” Moore said of the 2016 election on Wednesday night’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers”. “The opposite has happened.”

    Moore described the unpredictable nature of the election, telling Meyers that anything could happen between now and the inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017.

    “So is it possible, within the next six weeks, that something else might happen? Something crazy? Something that we’re not expecting?” Moore asked.

    Without specifying what that “something crazy” might be, Moore described the Electoral College as a “stopgap” meant to keep a “madman who wants to be king” from becoming president.

    Moore, a staunch opponent of Trump, made waves in July with a post on his website that predicted Trump would win the presidency. He also correctly predicted the Rust Belt — Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — would turn red for Trump.

  • Trump defends wealthy Cabinet: ‘I want people that made a fortune’

    President-elect Donald Trump defended himself on Thursday for picking a number of wealthy people to serve in his Cabinet.

    “One newspaper criticized me, ‘Why can’t we have people of modest means?’ ” Trump said at a “thank you” rally in Des Moines, Iowa. “Because I want people that made a fortune. Because now they’re negotiating with you.”

    The president-elect also likened wealthy Cabinet members to top athletes.

    Trump, whose campaign was built on railing against elites, has received criticism for tapping a number of extremely wealthy people for positions in his Cabinet. NBC News reported on Wednesday that the nascent administration already has a combined wealth of $14.5 billion.

    “These people are giving up fortunes of income in order to make a dollar a year, and they’re so proud to do it,” Trump said.

  • Theresa May’s bunker: only the meekest courtiers are allowed in

    The Downing Street press office has given selected journalists “exclusive” interviews with our new prime minister. By one of those million-to-one coincidences that must make spin doctors believe a supernatural power watches over them, every journalist they graced with their favours interviewed Theresa May on bended knee.

    “It must be hard for someone so reserved and modest to become one of the most public figures in the world,” gulped the reporter from the Sunday Times, as her head ducked so low, onlookers must have feared whiplash injuries to the neck. “How do you steel yourself for making tough decisions?”

    The Financial Times had no doubt she could take them. “The word ‘queen’ attaches itself easily to Theresa May,” its reporter began, not least because the historical figure she identifies with is “Elizabeth I”.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • urandom.pcap: Belarus (finally) bans Tor

    We have recently heard of network anomalies in Belarus. Tor has been finally blocked in December 2016, although it had been explicitly declared that Tor should be blocked since February 2015.

  • Here’s when Swedish Youtube star PewDiePie will delete his channel

    Swedish Youtube star PewDiePie has set a time for when he will close his channel, suggesting he will follow through on a protest against the video hosting site that would mean the end of its most-watched outlet.

  • Facebook court filings hint at possible political future for Mark Zuckerberg

    Mark Zuckerberg may intend to pursue government service while retaining control of Facebook, according to recently unsealed court filings in a case pitting the CEO against minority investors.

    The class-action lawsuit was first filed in late April, after Zuckerberg proposed a corporate shake-up that would dilute the voting power of shareholders – giving him “eternal control” of the company, in the words of the shareholders’ lawyers. Text messages excerpted in the court documents reveal that Zuckerberg and two board members discussed the CEO’s possible government service, and argued about how to present it to shareholders.

    Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, one of the company’s most prominent investors, texted Zuckerberg in March to say that the “biggest issue” of the corporate proposal was “how to define the gov’t service thing without freaking out shareholders that you are losing commitment”.

  • Lawsuit: Texts between Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Andreessen say the Facebook founder may want to go into government

    Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has considered plans to go into government, according to court documents seen by Bloomberg.

    The documents were filed as part of a shareholder lawsuit accusing Facebook’s board of failing to represent the best interests of those holding Facebook’s common stock.

    The lawsuit focuses on a change to Facebook’s stock structure earlier this year. Zuckerberg holds a majority share of voting Facebook stock, giving him control of the company. But he wanted to be able to sell this off to fund his new philanthropy efforts — the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative — without losing this control. (The Financial Times reports that the plaintiffs are accusing Zuckerberg of a “self-interested agglomeration of power.”)

  • New “Online Edition” of the Freedom of Thought Report launched today

    The world’s only global report focusing on discrimination and persecution faced by the non-religious has a new “Online Edition”, launched today at the European Parliament.

  • How Wartime censorship hinders reporting Blitz in 1940

    We arrive at the Second World War in our nightly lookback at some of the Big News of the day to mark the East London Advertiser’s 150th anniversary. The Blitz begins in 1940 in the East End with the Lutfwaffe bombing of the London Docks and the brave firemen in the thick of it reporting “the whole bloody world’s on fire”…

  • HBO Issues Takedown For Artwork Made By Autistic Teenager Because Bullies Gonna Bully Y’all

    It’s well-known at this point that HBO guards its intellectual property on the Game of Thrones franchise more jealously than a direwolf with a freshly harvested bone. To that end, the company often times treats some of its biggest fans with disdain, such as when it killed off viewing parties that would otherwise generate more interest in the show, or the times it abused the DMCA process as a way to keep spoilers from the show from permeating. These actions are indeed annoying, but they lack a certain something in the pure evil department.

    Unlike, say, HBO issuing a takedown on some art produced by a thirteen-year-old autistic child just because that art included a trademarked catchphrase from the show.

  • Facebook Suppresses Truth

    o far 564 people believe they have shared on Facebook my article conclusively refuting the CIA’s invention of lies about Russia hacking the DNC, using the share button on this site. Another 78 have tried to share it from my Facebook page. Between them those 650 people will have. according to the Facebook average, about 200,000 friends. The total amount of incoming traffic from these 200,000 friends? 22 people. Almost nobody can currently reach this site through Facebook, as the “came from” interface on my statcounter below shows. Nothing from Facebook. Facebook are actively colluding in preventing social media from contradicting the mainstream media lies about Russian involvement in the US election campaign.

  • ISPs: Blocking The Pirate Bay is Dangerous Censorship

    Two major Swedish ISPs are warning that a possible court-ordered Pirate Bay blockade will introduce a dangerous and unwarranted form of censorship. Instead, they encourage copyright holders to collaborate with them to find better solutions to the piracy problem.

  • Promising no censorship, social network Gab draws ‘alt-right’

    Squeezed out of Twitter and other social media websites cracking down on hate speech, far-right activists are finding a home on a new platform that promises never to censor content.

    Launched in August, Gab has become known as a safe haven for the “alt-right” movement dominated by the white supremacists who are helping fuel America’s deepening polarization.

    The social network currently has 100,000 members and another 200,000 on its waiting list, according to the company.

  • Ghost Banning on Social Media – the start of systematic censorship

    We are told it is called “ghost banning” – meaning you are present, though invisible in plain sight, and the user is completely unaware. The goal is frighteningly obvious: deny an “offending” website traffic to the point that it disappears from public view. We suspect The Duran is among the many sites targeted in this new form of censorship.

    This is the new business model of the old art of controlling what is considered acceptable speech by the power-that-be. As a result, legacy news outlets that comprise of the world of corporate mainstream media are propped, crowding out alternative views and dissent. Freedom of speech faces an existential threat.

  • EFF To Canadian Court: Order Allowing Worldwide Censorship of Google Search Results Violates Users’ Free Speech Rights

    The court is hearing arguments in Google v. Equustek, a trade secret case in which a British Columbia court issued an order forcing Google to block certain websites from its search results around the world, setting a dangerous precedent for online free expression. Equustek Solutions sued a group of defendants for allegedly misappropriating designs for its routers and selling counterfeit routers online. While Google isn’t a party to the case and had done nothing wrong, Equustek obtained a court order telling the search engine company it must delete search results that directed users to the defendants’ websites, not just in Canada but from all other local domains such Google.com and Google.go.uk. EFF filed a brief in the case siding with Google.

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • Eavesdropping at 10,000 Feet: NSA Airplane Tapping Shows Need for Data Security

    Revelations that British and American intelligence agencies spied on passengers aboard civil aircraft demonstrate the importance of data security in the face of technological improvements in surveillance, cyberstrategy expert Yannick Harrel told Sputnik France.

  • Librarians, Act Now to Protect Your Users (Before It’s Too Late)

    Books checked out from a library and terms searched on library computers can reveal a teenager’s questions about sexual orientation, a neighbor’s religious leanings, or a student’s political interests. Libraries across the country, particularly public libraries, make it part of their mission to serve the most vulnerable and underserved user groups, including users who are homeless, unemployed, or recent migrants or refugees. And when government agents come looking, these library users need librarians to have their back.

    Libraries and librarians have long been stalwart guardians of the rights of free expression and inquiry. As part of their profession, librarians protect their users’ ability to access even the most controversial information and ideas free from government scrutiny. Since the passage of the Patriot Act in particular, librarians have purged user records when necessary to fight against unconstitutional government demands and pushed back against (unconstitutional) National Security Letters (NSLs). Librarians also stood with EFF and the ACLU when we worked to pass the California Reader Privacy Act in 2011.

  • Former NSA head: Employees leaving agency for private sector

    The former head of the National Security Agency said the agency’s employees “are increasingly leaving in large numbers” for better opportunities in the private sector.

    At a Dec. 6 forum hosted by the University of Maryland, former NSA Director Keith Alexander told a gathering of journalism students, reporters and military officials that the agency headquartered at Fort George G. Meade faces a significant challenge in competing with the allure of higher salaries outside of government.

    “Of course they’re going to make a ton more money on the outside,” Alexander said. “I am surprised that people with cyber experience at some of these large companies make up to seven figures. That’s five times what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs (of Staff) makes.”

  • Ex-NSA Director: Agency Can’t Compete for Talent With Private Sector

  • ePrivacy: unraveling the lobbies’ falsehoods

    The review of the European ePrivacy directive on the confidentiality of electronic communications may not have reached the limelight yet, but this doesn’t mean that the influence work and the fight over interests haven’t started. On the contrary, as the draft text is tabled by the European Commission to be published in January 2017, interest groups are at the doors of the European executive power to get their two cents in the upcoming text.

    To get an idea of the content of the discussion happening in high places, we just need to read the open letters, the position papers and others common declarations of ETNO, GSMA, DIGITALEUROPE and other lobbies of the digital and telecom industries: all call for the plain and simple repealing of the directive.

    Much as during the negotiations for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), expounding our arguments is not enough in the face of the industry’s means and striking capacity, we need to review and examine all their misleading arguments, one by one.

  • Release Notes 2.13.1: Bug fixes and more browser support

    Today’s release again contains a couple of bug fixes as well as the possibility to login from not officially supported browsers.

  • Microsoft Said to Use German Site to Appease EU Over LinkedIn

    Microsoft Corp. agreed to add Xing AG, Germany’s biggest professional-networking site, to its Windows software to eliminate opposition in the European Union antitrust review of its $26.2 billion bid to buy LinkedIn Corp, according to two people familiar with the matter.

    Xing’s app will appear on the Windows 10 start menu and add-ins for e-mail software Outlook in German-language versions of Microsoft software sold in Germany, Austria and Switzerland for the next five years, according to one of the people who spoke on condition of anonymity.

  • The Future of Privacy

    I’ve never been able to fit the concepts of privacy, history and encryption together in a satisfying way, though it continues to seem that I should. Each concept has to do with information; each can be considered to concern the public and the private; and each involves aspects of society, and perhaps particularly digital society. But experience has taught me that all I can hope to do with these three concepts is demonstrate the problems that considering them together causes.

    Privacy confuses me, beyond my simplest understanding, which is that individuals prefer, to different degrees, that information about them not be freely available to others. I desire privacy myself, and I understand why other individuals want it. But when the entity desiring privacy is a state, a corporation or some other human institution, my understanding of privacy becomes confused.

  • Microsoft wants to enable cellular PCs, but will carriers bite?

    Microsoft is aiming to help with that by supporting the installation of non-removable programmable SIM cards and data radios in PCs and Windows tablets. In the company’s vision, users will then be able to purchase cellular data for those cards through the Windows Store. The announcement was made Thursday at the company’s WinHEC conference for device manufacturers in Shenzhen, China.

  • The political fight behind Facebook and Google’s new terrorist content database

    This week, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter announced a new database for images and videos that promote terrorism. The database, which is hosted by Facebook, is designed as a defense against propaganda videos and imagery by terrorist groups — a tactic ISIS has aggressively embraced. Flag a single image on a single service, and any of the participating companies will be able to find and remove copies, potentially erasing it from the most popular places on the web in a single stroke. But the implementation of the database is far more fraught, the result of a complex and ongoing negotiation between tech companies and European governments looking to rein them in.

  • Snowden leaks reveal NSA snooped on in-flight mobile calls

    GCHQ and the NSA have spied on air passengers using in-flight GSM mobile services for years, newly-published documents originally obtained by Edward Snowden reveal.

    Technology from UK company AeroMobile and SitaOnAir is used by dozens of airlines to provide in-flight connectivity, including by British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Lufthansa, and many Arab and Asian companies. Passengers connect to on-board GSM servers, which then communicate with satellites operated by British firm Inmarsat.

    “The use of GSM in-flight analysis can help identify the travel of a target—not to mention the other mobile devices (and potentially individuals) onboard the same plane with them,” says a 2010 NSA newsletter.

  • Microsoft’s vision for LinkedIn is about tying its business data into Office and other services

    Now that Microsoft’s massive $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn has officially closed, it’s time for the next step: figuring out how its massive store of business information can best be used by Microsoft and its customers.

  • Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust plans beacon network to provide location-aware patient services

    Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust has upgraded its network infrastructure with a view to providing location-aware services to outpatients via wireless beacon technology.

    Navigating labyrinthine hospital corridors is often a challenge for patients and can lead to delayed or missed appointments. The Plymouth trust’s large Derriford hospital building is no exception, with 200 wards spread over 12 floors.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Actor Judge Reinhold arrested on disorderly conduct charge at Dallas Love Field

    Actor Judge Reinhold was arrested Thursday afternoon on a charge of disorderly conduct at Dallas Love Field.

    Reinhold, 59, was selected by Transportation Security Administration agents for a random pat-down around 2 p.m., according to an official at the city-owned airport, and he was not happy about it.

    He was told he could be taken to a private screening room, but refused — and then became belligerent, officials said. At that point, Dallas police were called.
    

    Officers again tried to calm him, but he was again antagonistic toward officers, authorities said. They decided enough was enough and arrested him.

  • Women’s March on Washington Won’t Be Happening at the Lincoln Memorial

    The Lincoln Memorial has been the site for many of the United States’ most historic rallies, from the civil rights and anti-Vietnam protests of the 1960s to the Million Man March in 1995. However, for the thousands of women planning to march on Washington following Donald Trump’s inauguration, the landmark won’t be available for rallying.

    The National Park Service, on behalf of the Presidential Inauguration Committee, months ago reserved access to the landmark by filing a “massive omnibus blocking permit.” Permits for inaugural events have traditionally reserved most of the National Mall, Pennsylvania Avenue, the Washington Monument, and of course, the Lincoln Memorial, for days and weeks before, during, and after the inauguration, which will take place on Jan. 20, 2017.

  • Where European democracy goes to die

    The EU is pushing more of its lawmaking out of public view.

    Its stated motivation is to prove to an increasingly Euroskeptical public that it can move quickly when it needs to. Critics say it’s dumping oil on the Euroskeptic pyre.

    Next week, the heads of the Commission, Parliament and the sitting president of the Council are expected to embrace “priority treatment” for about 40 draft laws, including the end to mobile roaming fees in Europe and eurozone budget reform.

    In effect, that means legislators, under pressure from EU leaders, will be forced to agree on the most sensitive issues in closed-door “trilogues,” confirming a recent trend that has seen less public scrutiny of far-reaching legislation in parliamentary committees and the plenary.

  • What happens when you opt out of the “voluntary” pornoscanners at Berlin’s Schönefeld airport

    Yesterday morning, Matthias Kirschner opted out of the “voluntary” full-body scanners at Berlin’s Schönefeld, and discovered that “voluntary” means that “if you don’t do it, they will barrack you endlessly about your choice, punitively repeatedly perform the same searches over and over, and attempt to delay you so you almost miss your flight.”

    This is also the case at Heathrow in London: the times I’ve opted out there, I’ve been told to sit and wait for a supervisor (fair enough), but then the screeners took it upon themselves, singly and in bunches, to loom over me and tell me how foolish I was being, how the machines were safe and had good information security, etc — insisting at first that this was their duty (“to find out why I was opting out”), and then admitting (after I flashed my National Union of Journalists press-card and started writing down their names) that this was the job of their supervisor and it was merely recreational abuse on their part.

  • 74% of ‘underage’ asylum seekers in Denmark are adults, teeth & bone tests show

    The Danish Immigration Service has questioned the age of some 800 asylum seekers who said they are younger than 18. In almost three out of four cases, ‘unaccompanied minors’ proved to be adults, according to a report.

    Experts at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Forensic Medicine have been investigating the age of unaccompanied asylum seekers who arrived in Denmark this year and said they are under 18, Jyllands-Posten daily reported.

  • German court rules Muslim girls must take part in swimming lessons

    Germany’s highest court has ruled that ultra-conservative Muslim girls must take part in mixed swimming classes at school, finding against an 11-year-old pupil who had argued that even wearing a burkini, or full-body swimsuit, breached Islamic dress codes.

    The constitutional court in Karlsruhe on Wednesday rejected an appeal by the girl’s parents that she should be excused from the classes because a burkini did not conform with Islam’s ethic of decency, German media reported.

  • Humanists Call For Scotland’s Blasphemy Law To Be Scrapped

    It’s 170 years since it was last invoked, but Scotland’s law against blasphemy still exists – and it’s high time it was scrapped, according to a leading Scottish humanist group.

    The Humanist Society Scotland are calling on the Scottish Government to repeal the antiquated law, which was last put into practice in 1843, when an Edinburgh bookseller was jailed for 15 months for selling blasphemous literature.

    Gordon MacRae, the chief executive of Humanist Society Scotland, said that having a blasphemy law “should be a badge of shame for any progressive nation.”

    After consultation with the Church Of England, England and Wales threw out blasphemy laws back in 2008 when the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act abolished the common-law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel.

  • TSA: Little People With Power

    The TSA is sold to us as security, but it is anything but.

    It’s a way to make us docile in the face of having our constitutional rights violated.

    It’s a way for crony capitalists to lobby expensive machinery into the Federal budget.

    It’s a jobs program for people who’d otherwise be working in a fast food window or a mall food court. (People of this caliber provide “security” like I could provide defense for an NFL team.)

    Because these are people who’d never interact with — and certainly never have power over — so many of the people who go through their line, they so often use some minor mistake (if even that) as reason to punish someone with an invasive search.

  • Building a Prison-to-School Pipeline

    The first day of his first semester at the University of California, Berkeley, Danny Murillo walked into the Cesar Chavez building and saw a white man with tattoos on his arms. Something about the man felt familiar. He could tell from the tattoos that the man was, like him, from Los Angeles, and he was around his own age, mid-thirties, but it was something else that he recognized. He went up to the man and said, “Damn, I feel old around all these youngsters.” The man said, “Yeah, me, too.” Murillo said, “I haven’t been in school for a long time.” The man said, “Yeah, me, too.” Murillo said, “I was on vacation.” The man said, “Yeah, me, too.” Murillo said, “I was in the Pelican Bay SHU.” The man said, “Yeah, me, too.”

  • How Sari Roti became the most hated bread brand amongst Muslims in Indonesia

    Recently, you may have seen calls to boycott bread producers Sari Roti, which is one of the most popular bread brands in Indonesian supermarkets and whose jingle you probably hear at least once a day in your neighborhood, being blasted by their ubiquitous mobile hawkers.

    [...]

    Well, this all began with the December 2 mass protest against Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama for his alleged blasphemy against Islam. On that day, Sari Roti won praise from many Muslims in Indonesia after its street hawkers gave out free bread to the protesters.

  • Erdoğan’s fifth column in Europe

    The plain, simple and bitter truth is that Turkey’s Islamist rulers have supported and maintained parallel networks in Europe; thrown political, diplomatic and financial support to front NGOs whose role is to promote hatred; and run a campaign of intimidation and curtailed free speech in European nations that are home to large Turkish and Muslim expatriate communities.

  • TechCongress Announces Second Class of Congressional Innovation Fellows

    TechCongress, a nonpartisan initiative dedicated to building 21st century government and developing cross-sector technology leaders, is pleased to announce its 2017 class of Congressional Innovation Fellows. This year’s class of fellows bring experience from public interest organizations, private sector companies, government, journalism, and tech startups. Fellows have deep technical expertise, and will find a placement with a Member of Congress or Congressional Committee to gain firsthand knowledge about the legislative process and bring in-depth technical experience to policy challenges. The inaugural class of fellows worked with the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, and the House Oversight and Government Reform IT Subcommittee.

  • Learning how policy is made in the legislative branch

    During my seven years in Washington D.C., I’ve worked for the nation’s premier privacy regulator—the Federal Trade Commission—and for one of the top civil liberties organizations in the United States—the American Civil Liberties Union. These have both been great experiences, but I now want to learn first-hand how policy is made in the legislative branch.

    After more than four years at the ACLU, I’ll be leaving the organization on January 6, 2017 to join the new class of TechCongress Congressional Innovation Fellows.

  • If We Were ‘Staggered’ by Police Brutality, Wouldn’t Walter Scott Mistrial Have Knocked Us Over?

    Corporate media reported the mistrial in the case of South Carolina police officer Michael Slager, whom video showed shooting unarmed African-American Walter Scott eight times in the back in April 2015, handcuffing him on the ground, and then dropping a taser alongside his body—this after Slager stopped Scott for a broken tail light.

    Mostly there were dry headlines like “Mistrial Declared in Black Motorist’s Shooting by Officer.” An AP piece got the headline that many were “at a loss” at the outcome; other headlines had them “stunned.” The story itself included comments that started to get at the depth of folks’ despair: “There’s a jury full of people and they cannot decide if it’s illegal to shoot someone who is running away from you?” asks one source. “What do you say about a country that feels this way about black people?” “Do we really have anything that can seriously be called the administration of criminal justice?” asks another.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • FCC Trump troll promises to take “weed-whacker” to net neutrality

    DWARF-HANDED (allegedly) President Elect Donald Trump has yet to appoint his new head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) but it is widely expected to be existing commissioner and staunch Republican Ajit Pai.

    Mr Pai made barbed comments yesterday about the future of net neutrality and they weren’t pretty. As you may recall, net neutrality was protected under legislation under the Obama administration, but it is widely expected that it could be reversed under Trump.

    Recently, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston made a plea to Donald Trump to do the right thing.

    But in a speech, Mr Pai told the Free State Foundation that he will take a “weed-whacker” to regulations, saying

    “In the months to come, we also need to remove outdated and unnecessary regulations. As anyone who has attempted to take a quick spin through Part 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations could tell you, the regulatory underbrush at the FCC is thick. We need to fire up the weed whacker and remove those rules that are holding back investment, innovation, and job creation. Free State and others have already identified many that should go. And one way the FCC can do this is through the biennial review, which we kicked off in early November. Under section 11, Congress specifically directed the FCC to repeal unnecessary regulations. We should follow that command.”

• DRM

  • The World Wide Web Consortium at a Crossroads: Arms-Dealers or Standards-Setters?

    The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has a hard decision to make: a coalition including the world’s top research institutions; organizations supporting blind users on three continents; security firms; blockchain startups; browser vendors and user rights groups have asked it not to hand control over web video to some of the biggest companies in the world. For their part, those multinational companies have asked the W3C to hand them a legal weapon they can use to shut down any use of online video they don’t like, even lawful fair use.

    Is the W3C in the business of protecting the open web and its users, or is it an arms-dealer supplying multinational companies with the materiel they need to rule the web? We’re about to find out.

    The W3C makes the open standards that allow anyone to make a browser that can read all the documents on the web, and anyone to make a document that can be read by any of those browsers. But in 2013, the W3C started work on a project to give entertainment companies control over who could make a browser that could show streaming videos, creating a standard for “encrypted media extensions” (EME) that Hollywood would control. Even if you make an EME-capable browser that doesn’t violate any copyright laws, it will only show you videos if it also gets the blessing of some of the biggest media companies in the world.

    Like all businesses, media companies have a mix of commercial preferences and legal rights. For example, companies have the legal right to prevent people from making and distributing copies of their videos, with important exceptions. The same copyright law that gives them that right also gives you—the viewer—legal rights, like the right to record a video to watch later, or to convert the video to a format that can be enjoyed by blind people. Maybe they’d prefer that you not record videos for later (for example, so they can charge extra for a “home recording” feature), but that’s just a preference, not a right.

    For decades, media companies have tried to convert their commercial preferences to legal rights, by invoking a 1998 law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it illegal to bypass software that locks up copyrighted works, even when you’re doing something totally legitimate, like converting a video you’re allowed to watch so it will play on an unsupported device. Companies design their products so that locking software (called “Digital Rights Management” or DRM) enforces their preferences, then argue that breaking the DRM is illegal, anything that displeases them is therefore a crime.

  • DOOM Removes Denuvo DRM

    Well this is an interesting news post for a couple of reasons. Personally, I dislike DRM. A lot. It’s software that reduces end-user rights, as both consumers and potentially even as members of society after copyright expires (depending on how judges, and the Librarian of Congress, interpret whether fair use or expiration will override the DMCA’s felony clauses). It’s especially annoying when you see DRM on content that was pirated prior to the official launch, because ticking off your customers and screwing with archivists will really help you if you can’t even secure your own supply chain.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Unknowingly Linking to Infringing Content is Still Infringement, Court Rules

      A court in Germany has held the operator of a commercial website liable after it unknowingly linked to infringing content hosted elsewhere. The Hamburg Regional Court found that the link to a Creative Commons image, posted to another site without the correct attribution, amounted to a copyright infringement.

    • Alleged KickassTorrents Owner Leaves Prison for Hospital

      Facing severe health issues, alleged KickassTorrents owner Artem Vaulin has been transferred from Polish prison to a local hospital. While he is now able to receive proper care, his conditions are far from ideal. Vaulin is permanently guarded by four officers and is handcuffed to his bed at night, which may cause nerve damage according to doctors.

    • BREIN Settles With Private Torrent Tracker Uploaders

      BREIN has signed settlements with eight people who were uploaders at a local private torrent tracker. The pirate group agreed to pay 60,000 euros in total. The private tracker and an unlicensed radio station, where two uploaders were DJ’ing, were closed as well.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Why the operating system matters even more in 2017

  Operating systems don’t quite date back to the beginning of computing, but they go back far enough. Mainframe customers wrote the first ones in the late 1950s, with operating systems that we’d more clearly recognize as such today—including OS/360 from IBM and Unix from Bell Labs—following over the next couple of decades.

• Server

  • Docker acquires file syncing and sharing app Infinit, will open-source the software

    Docker, the startup that pushes open source software for packaging up code into containers that can be deployed on many machines, today announced its latest acquisition: file transfer app Infinit.

    Yes, that’s right, Docker bought a company with a consumer-friendly app. It lets you sync files to your other devices or send them to others.

  • How Virtualized Networks Will Save Us From Dropped Calls

    We’ve all been the victim of a dropped mobile phone call and know how frustrating it can be. However, virtualized networks provide network operators with powerful tools to detect and recover from network disruptions, or “faults,” that can drop calls for thousands of subscribers simultaneously. The Open Platform for Network Functions Virtualization (OPNFV) project together with OpenStack have developed features in software that add resiliency to mobile networks and enable them to recover from network and other outages.

  • It’s Brexploitation! Microsoft punishes UK for Brexit with cloud price-gouging

    “My own story would not have been possible but for the democratizing force of Microsoft technology reaching me where I was growing up,” CEO Satya Nadella told shareholders this week.

    But the price of that “democratizing force” is about to go up, with Britons uniquely singled out. Microsoft has reiterated to Azure customers that prices will go up by 22 per cent from January 1st.

    The problem? The price rise is far greater than any exchange rate post-Brexit fluctuations might justify. Microsoft’s biggest European data centre is in Dublin, a member of the Euro currency. The Euro hovered around €1.28 to one pound for the first six months of the year, before crashing after Brexit. It’s now €1.19, a depreciation of just 9 cents, or 7 per cent.

    The value of the British pound has weakened more dramatically against the US dollar, dropping by 18.9 per cent since 24 June – the day after Brits voted to leave the EU.

    For new Office or Azure cloud customers in the UK, no exchange rate can justify any price rise at all. In September, Microsoft made Azure available in UK data centres.

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • 1 Step Forward, 2 Steps Back: EU Copyright Reform

    Today on the podcast we’re looking at the copyright reform that is being proposed by the EU commission. Of course even as I say those words, I can hear some of you clicking off, or saving this for later even if later will never come. Copyright is one of those things – it hits us in so many ways, everyday, yet often the discussions and specifics cause us to get bored or lost… amazingly something that matters so much is really hard to get excited about. But we’re daring to tackle the important on this program, with help from three voices – Polina Malaja of the Free Software Foundation Europe, Dimitar Dimitrov of the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU, and Julia Reda, German Member of the European Parliament.

• Kernel Space

  • Graphics Stack

    • Nouveau Queues Up Last Minute Updates For Linux 4.10

      Overall the Nouveau DRM updates for Linux 4.10 are significant after they missed out on any feature changes for Linux 4.9. Given all the churn, there’s been a last minute pull into DRM-Next of some more fixes and other minor activity.

    • Geminilake Support Added To The Intel X.Org Driver

    • NVIDIA’s Next Linux Driver Release To Support Vulkan Without X11

      NVIDIA has confirmed that their next proprietary driver update for Linux will introduce support for Vulkan rendering outside of the X.Org Server.

      With NVIDIA’s current Vulkan Linux driver it’s not possible to achieve headless Vulkan rendering if the X.Org Server isn’t running, but that limitation is said to be addressed by their next (post-375) driver release.

    • Mesa 3D 12.0.5 Is the Last in the Series, Users Urged to Move to Mesa 13.0

      Today, December 5, 2016, Collabora’s Emil Velikov proudly announced the release and immediate availability of the fifth and last scheduled maintenance update of the Mesa 12.0 3D Graphics Library for GNU/Linux distributions.

    • Khronos To Develop New Standard For VR

    • The next driver release from NVIDIA will support using Vulkan without needing the X11 on Linux

      It seems NVIDIA are preparing a new driver update that will enable the use of Vulkan without needing X11.

    • xinput is not a configuration UI

• Applications

  • Manuskript is a Promising Open-Source Scrivener Alternative

    Whether you plan to work on a book, a screenplay, or better structure your dissertation, you’ll probably see apps like Scrivener recommended. If you’re running Windows, macOS or even Android then you’re spoilt for choice, with various competing proprietary apps at varying price points readily available. On Linux the choices are somewhat limited.

  • Tor 0.2.9 Is Just Around the Corner As 0.2.8.10 Fixes Memory Leak in OpenSSL 1.1

    The past weekend brought us new stable and development builds of the Tor anonymity network project, versioned 0.2.8.10, as the most advanced version out there, and 0.2.9.6 RC (Release Candidate).

  • Pitivi 0.98 Linux Video Editor Adds Customizable Keyboard Shortcuts

    Version 0.98 of the GNOME-aligned GStreamer-powered Pitivi non-linear video editor was tagged today as the newest development milestone.

    The main feature addition of Pitivi 0.98 is now supporting customizable keyboard supports! Aside from finally supporting customizable keyboard shortcuts for this open-source video editor, a lot of warnings were fixed from GTK 3.22, and there has been a lot of other bug fixing. Bugs around Pitivi’s timeline were primarily targeted by this release.

  • Phoronix Test Suite 6.8-Tana Officially Released

    Phoronix Test Suite 6.8.0 is now available as the latest version of our open-source, fully-automated, reproducible benchmarking software for Linux, BSD, Solaris, macOS, Windows, and other operating systems.

    Phoronix Test Suite 6.8 is the latest stable release now of our GPL-licensed benchmarking software updated on its regular quarterly release cadence. Phoronix Test Suite 6.8 development focused on a number of low-level improvements to particularly benefit Phoromatic and the Phodevi (Phoronix Device Interface) software/hardware library abstraction layer.

  • iPerf As Another Network Benchmark Is Now Available Via The Phoronix Test Suite

  • FFmpeg 3.2.2 “Hypatia” Open-Source Multimedia Framework Released with 30 Fixes

    Today, December 6, 2016, the development team behind the powerful, open-source, free, and cross-platform FFmpeg multimedia framework released a new maintenance update in the FFmpeg 3.2 “Hypatia” series.

  • Proprietary

    • Chromium-Based Vivaldi 1.6 Browser Enters Development, Brings Tab Stack Renaming

      Vivaldi’s Ruarí Ødegaard informs us about the availability of a new snapshot for the cross-platform, Chromium-based Vivaldi web browser, which promises to let users name tab stacks.

      Vivaldi Snapshot 1.6.682.3 marks the beginning of the development of Vivaldi 1.6, the next major version of the popular web browser, and it looks like it has been rebased on Chromium 55.0.2883.64. Besides fixing a bunch of regressions, the new development release implements an option under Settings -> Tabs -> Tab Features -> Tab stacking -> Allow Tab Stack Renaming, which lets you rename or name tab stacks.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How to install Docker and run Docker containers on Fedora 25

    • Validating e-mail addresses

    • Keystone Development Bootstrap with Service Catalog

    • Transitioning to Python 3

    • Kubernetes High Availability Setup Using Ansible

    • Secure USB boot with Debian

    • QEMU Advent Calendar 2016

    • Troubleshooting disk usage on a Linux server with ncdu

    • Step by Step Guide to Bodhi Linux 4.0.0

    • Step-by-Step Guide to Bodhi Linux 4

    • Manage Samba4 Active Directory Infrastructure from Windows10 via RSAT – Part 3

    • Ubuntu Server Security Updates Only

    • Bare metal and Virtual Machine Provisioning through Foreman Server

    • How to use and make the most of fuser command in Linux

    • Canonical Log Lines

    • Essentials of OpenStack Administration Part 1: Cloud Fundamentals

    • How To Use Angry IP Scanner (Network Scanner)

    • How To Find And Delete Files Older Than X Days In Linux

  • Games

    • Doyodo RetroEngine Sigma is a Linux-powered classic video game emulation console

      The Nintendo NES Classic is quite an amazing console. True, it is not as powerful as modern game systems like Xbox One and PlayStation 4, but it comes pre-loaded with many classic NES titles. Unfortunately, its strength is also its weakness — those pre-loaded titles are the only games you can play. You cannot load other games, so you are stuck with what you got.

    • Alwa’s Awakening, a game inspired by old NES classics needs Linux testers

      The developers of Alwa’s Awakening [Official Site, Steam] contacted me to let you all know that they are going to need help testing the Linux version of their game.

    • Quern – Undying Thoughts, a puzzle game inspired by Myst released day-1 on Linux

      For those that remember the classic game Myst, Quern – Undying Thoughts [Steam, Official Site] a game clearly inspired by it launched with day-1 Linux support.

    • The circuit building simulator ‘SHENZHEN I/O’ gets ‘overwhelmingly positive’ reviews from Steam users

      SHENZHEN I/O is the new simulator/puzzle game by Zachtronics, the creators of other excellent games like Spacechem, Infinifactory and TIS-100. After being on Early Access for some time, it’s now available on Steam since November, 17th. But most importantly, even when only two weeks have passed since the official release, the game already has ‘overwhelmingly positive’ reviews by Steam users, just like its predecessors; out of a total 785 reviews so far, only 14 are negative against 771 positives, something truly remarkable.

    • Engage in a battle of wits, luck and skullduggery in ‘The Living Dungeon’, now released for Linux

      The Living Dungeon [Steam, Official Site] is a board game come to life in video game form and it’s now available on Linux. Up to 9 players can take part in a battle of wits, luck and skullduggery. It also features a 30 hour story campaign.

    • Stellaris 1.4 update released with a free DLC named ‘Horizon Signal’

      Stellaris [Steam, Official Site] has received a major patch today to address a bunch of bugs, do some optimizations, adds a ton of achievements and more.

    • Lara Croft GO Launches on Steam for Linux, Mac, and Windows with a 20% Discount

      We always love to see AAA titles released with day-one support for Linux, and Square Enix has just launched the Lara Croft GO turn-based puzzle video game on Steam, the next episode in the Tomb Raider series.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Best KDE/Plasma distro of 2016

      The end is near. I mean, 2016 has less than a month left on its credit. We should now step back and contemplate. Which distribution merits our highest regard, most excitement, best praise, prolonged use? However, before we can declare the final result, we need to do it step by step. First, Plasma.

      Overall, Year 2016 was a fairly tough one for us Linux users. Whether you like it or not, Ubuntu plays a very big part in how the world of distros turns. The pendulum of fortune sways heavily toward the gravitational pull of what Canonical does, and when Ubuntu mis-delivers, a large number of other distributions suffers for it, both directly as they be based on Ubuntu, and also indirectly, through the erosion of hope and good karma. Still, despite these challenges, we can sift through all the trouble and search for the nuggets of happiness. The desktop environment candidate for this article is Plasma, and to some extent, KDE.

    • KDE Frameworks 5 Now Available as a Snap for Snapping KDE Apps on Ubuntu Linux

      Long-time KDE Community developer Harald Sitter has been working lately on creating a sharable KDE Frameworks Snap that would make snapping of KDE applications for Ubuntu and other GNU/Linux distros a lot easier and fun.

      In a recent blog post, the developer explains how he managed to bundle KDE apps as Snaps while trying to make them as smaller as possible. The size of the downloadable binary Snap and Flatpak packages, as well as AppImage or other similar technology, always appeared to have been an issue for most users.

      In order for Snaps and Flatpaks to be adopted by the mass, they need to be smaller, and thanks to the hard work of Harald Sitter, there’s now a Snap version of the KDE Frameworks 5 collection of add-on libraries for Qt 5, which KDE developers are using to develop KDE applications for the Plasma 5 desktop environment.

• Distributions

  • Solus Packagers Rejoice: Solbuild Is the New, Faster Solus Package Build System

    We knew it was destined to happen sooner or later, the evobuild package build system used in the Solus Linux-based operating system for building packages in the .eopkg format is now officially deprecated.

  • “Just 1 Link” To Hack North Korea’s “Terrible” Linux Distro Red Star 3

    North Korea built its own Linux distro which was dubbed as the worst Linux distro ever. A security firm known as Hacker House has found a vulnerability that can compromise the Red Star OS 3 using a malicious link.

  • New Releases

    • Linux Lite 3.2 Users Get New Versions of Lite Software and Tweaks, Update Now

      Jerry Bezencon, the creator of the Ubuntu-based Linux Lite operating system for personal computers, kindly informs Softpedia today about an updated version of the in-house built Lite Software app.

    • NuTyX 8.2.91 available with cards 2.1.100

      The NuTyX team is please to annonce the development release 8.2.91 of NuTyX.

      About 1000 commits since version 8.2

      A new ISO is available in 64 bits. The size is 217M.

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

    • ROSA Desktop Fresh R8 Plasma 5: is it near-perfect?

      ROSA Desktop Fresh R8 Plasma 5 64-bit Live (WOW! That’s a long name!) left a decent impression on me. It was quick. I noticed no issues in regards to speed and performance.

      There were no bugs or crushes during the run.

      Both issues I had during the Live session run were linked to the notification area: the icons that should be placed there don’t appear.

      The default menu in ROSA R8 Plasma 5 is not to my taste, but that is easy to change.

      On the positive note, there were no obvious traces of the operating system “nationality”. Unlike full-of-French Emmabuntus, you won’t find anything Russian in ROSA R8.

  • Gentoo Family

    • Gentoo-Based Porteus Kiosk 4.2 Released with Linux Kernel 4.4.36, Firefox 45.5.1

      Porteus Solutions, through Tomasz Jokiel, announced today the release and immediate availability of Porteus Kiosk 4.2.0, the latest stable version of the free and open source Gentoo-based kiosk operating system for web terminals.

      Powered by the latest long-term supported Linux 4.4.36 kernel, Porteus Kiosk 4.2.0 ships with some of the latest and greatest GNU/Linux technologies and Open Source software projects, including the recently released X.Org Server 1.18.4 display server, as well as the Mozilla Firefox 45.5.1 ESR and Google Chrome 54.0.2840.100 web browsers.

  • Arch Family

    • RaspArch, the Arch Linux Remix for Raspberry Pi 3 SBCs, Now Shipping with Yaourt

      After announcing the release of a new version of his Ubuntu-based ExTiX Linux operating system for Intel Compute Stick devices, Arne Exton has announced today the availability of RaspArch Build 161205.

      RaspArch is a remix of Arch Linux ARM for Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi 2 single-board computers, and the latest release is shipping with the long-term supported Linux 4.4.35 kernel and the latest package versions released upstream as of December 5, 2016.

      “When you have installed RaspArch to your Micro SD Card you can use the system like any other Arch Linux system, i.e. install new programs, etc,” said Arne Exton in the release announcement. “Arch motto is KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). RaspArch uses kernel 4.4.35-1-ARCH and the LXDE Desktop environment.”

  • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • openSUSE Leap 42.2 Linux Now Officially Available as 64-bit Raspberry Pi 3 Image

      openSUSE Project, through Douglas DeMaio, proudly informs Softpedia via an email announcement about the general availability of a 64-bit Raspberry Pi 3 image of the openSUSE Leap 42.2 operating system.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat brings full JBoss software stack to OpenShift

      Three years ago I wrote about how Red Hat was bringing its JBoss Java Enterprise Edition (JEE) middleware to the PaaS cloud. It took longer than I expected. But, the full Red Hat JBoss Middleware stack is now containerized and available on Red Hat’s OpenShift Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud.

    • Building MySQL DBaaS on OpenStack And Ceph Clouds

      With a properly configured OpenStack deployment and Red Hat Ceph storage backend, DBaaS clients merely go to a self-service interface and request the number and configuration of databases they require. OpenStack dynamically provisions the required storage capacity from the appropriate Ceph storage pool. No more manual placement of these database instances on MySQL clusters of various shapes and sizes. This manual exercise was a bit like playing the old Tetris game, trying to fit new database instances into fixed-sized clusters, followed by moving or rearranging them to new clusters when they outgrew available capacity.

    • Now available: The Open Organization Leaders Manual

      Available now, The Open Organization Leaders Manual is a community-produced companion to Jim Whitehurst’s The Open Organization. With contributions from more than 15 authors, it explores new attitudes and practices leaders should adopt when leveraging the power of transparecy, meritocracy, inclusivity, sharing, and collaboration to build the workplaces of the future.

    • Red Hat Opens Call for Submissions for 2017 Red Hat Certified Professional of the Year Award

    • Red Hat Data Shows Big Increases in OpenStack Deployments

      Step back and think about it, and It’s hard to believe that the OpenStack cloud computing story isn’t even five years old yet. Back in 2010, Rackspace and NASA announced an effort to create a sophisticated open source cloud computing infrastructure that could compete with proprietary offerings. Since then, OpenStack has won over countless tech titans that are backing it, and has its own foundation.

      Now, Red Hat is out with results from a survey that show that OpenStack production deployments more than doubled in 2016. Clearly, organizations have moved beyond the evaluation stage and are trusting this open cloud platform.

      Last year, many companies were still learning about OpenStack clouds or developing proof-of-concepts. Now they are deploying OpenStack.

    • Finance

      • Red Hat Inc (RHT) Stake Maintained by Verde Servicos Internacionais S.A.

      • National Pension Service Purchases 12,387 Shares of Red Hat Inc (RHT)

      • Red Hat Opens Call for Submissions for 2017 Red Hat Certified Professional of the Year Award

      • Identifying Analyst Forecast Summary To Consider: Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT), Visa Inc. (NYSE:V)

      • Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Upgraded to “Strong-Buy” by Vetr Inc.

      • ABR Of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) At 1.31

      • Investor Watch on Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

    • Fedora

      • Longer Fedora Cycles, 2017 Predictions, New Bodhi Guide

        The top story today was Fedora developers’ considering lengthening their developmental cycles and releasing only once a year. Matthew Miller said “PR is a legitimate input into planning.” Bryan Lunduke is back with his prognostications for 2017 and Bruce Byfield has seven tips for using Plasma. DistroWatch Weekly reviewed Fedora 25 and Roger Carter penned an extensive user guide for Bodhi Linux 4.0.

      • Fedora 26 Looks At Updating Its CFLAGS / CXXFLAGS

        The latest change request coming in for Fedora 26 is to update the default C/C++ compiler flags.

        The proposed changes are to add -Werror=implicit-function-declaration and -Werror=implicit-int for helping better prepare C code for future revisions to C and making the code more friendly with C++ programs. Additionally, for Fedora 26 on i686, the plan is to drop -mtune=atom. The tuning for Atom was done previously back when 32-bit Intel Atom CPUs were very common, but now less so, and many i686 Fedora packages are being installed on x86_64 and thus might run a bit faster on current hardware.

      • Outreachy Starts Today!

        This blog should now be showing up on various planets (Fedora, Outreachy, Fedora Design), which means I need to do an introduction.

        Hi, I’m Suzanne. I’ve been working on getting myself into User Experience (UX) for about a year now, although I’ve been interested in smoothing the interface between people and technology for longer than that. Most recently, I spent a few years in a PhD program working with robots and investigating the kind of gestures that robots will most need to understand when conversing with people. When that turned out to not be a good program for me, I figured out that UX was the most interesting and relevant path forward.

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • 10 Reasons To Use Ubuntu Linux

          There are numerous Linux distributions designed to serve different needs. Being an open source software, Linux allows the developers to pick its code and create something new and exciting.

          Out of these numerous Linux distributions, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, openSUSE, and Debian are some of the most popular operating systems. If you’re facing trouble with Windows 10’s privacy nuisance, you can surely try out a fresh Linux experience.

        • Canonical and System76 Working on Improving Unity7 HiDPI Support in Ubuntu Linux

          Canonical’s Michael Hall announced on December 5, 2016, that Ryan Sipes, Community Manager at System76, reports on the fact that both companies are currently working together to improve HiDPI support in the Ubuntu Linux operating system.

        • Canonical Patches Important Kernel Vulnerability in All Supported Ubuntu OSes

          On December 5, 2016, Canonical published several security advisories to inform users of the Ubuntu Linux operating system about the availability of new kernel builds for their OSes, patched against a critical security vulnerability.

        • What New Is Going To Be In Ubuntu 17.04 ‘Zesty Zapus’

          Right on the heels of Ubuntu 16.10 ‘Yakkety Yak’ is Ubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus. Ubuntu 17.04 is currently scheduled for release on April 13, 2017 but know that this is only an estimate. One thing to know is that all things being equal, it is going to be released in April 2017. Ubuntu Zesty Zapus will be supported for only 9 months until January 2018 as it is not a LTS (long term support) release.

        • Ubuntu Touch OTA-14 Officially Released with Revamped Unity 8 Interface, Fixes

          A few moments ago, we’ve been informed by Canonical’s Lukasz Zemczak about the general availability of the long-anticipated Ubuntu Touch OTA-14 software update for Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu Tablet devices.

        • Ubuntu OTA-14 Released, Fixes A Number Of Bugs

        • Canonical to sue European cloud provider over unofficial Ubuntu images

          Ubuntu Linux producer Canonical plans to sue a European cloud provider for “publishing insecure, broken images of Ubuntu despite many months of coaxing to do it properly.”

          The company says that its cloud OS relies on trust and that such actions undermine the sucess of the certified Ubuntu images that are guaranteed to run on specific cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure or Google.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Ubuntu-Based BackBox Linux 4.7 Is Out with Kernel 4.4 LTS, Updated Hacking Tools

            On December 6, 2016, the developers behind the Ubuntu-based, hacking-oriented BlackBox Linux operating system proudly announced the release of BackBox Linux 4.7.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Open spec SBC dual boots Android and Ubuntu on hexa-core RK3399

    T-Firefly is Kickstartering the first hacker SBC with Rockchip’s Cortex-A72/-A53 RK3399. The Firefly-RK3399 has up to 4GB DDR3, M.2, and USB 3.0 Type-C.

    T-Firefly, which offers Linux- and Android-ready open source boards like the Firefly-RK3288 and sandwich-style Firefly-RK3288 Reload, both of which are based on the quad-core, Cortex-A17 Rockchip RK3288, has advanced to a more powerful Rockchip SoC for its new open spec Firefly-RK3399. The hexa-core Rockchip RK3399 features two server-class Cortex-A72 cores clocked to up to 2.0GHz, as well as four Cortex-A53 at up to 1.42GHz. This appears to be the first RK3399 SBC and the first SBC to include Cortex-A72 cores.

  • Status of Embedded Linux: Tim Bird Warns of Slow Progress on Linux Shrinkage

    As Chair of the Architecture Group of The Linux Foundation’s CE Working Group, Tim Bird has long been the amiable public face of the Embedded Linux Conferences, which he has run for over a decade. At the recent ELC Europe event in Berlin, Bird gave a “Status of Embedded Linux” keynote in which he discussed the good news in areas like GPU support and virtually mapped kernel stacks, as well as the slow progress in boot time, system size, and other areas that might help Linux compete with RTOSes in IoT leaf nodes.

  • This week in vc4 (2016-12-05): SDTV, 3DMMES, HDMI audio, DSI

    The Raspberry Pi Foundation recently started contracting with Free Electrons to give me some support on the display side of the stack. Last week I got to review and release their first big piece of work: Boris Brezillon’s code for SDTV support. I had suggested that we use this as the first project because it should have been small and self contained. It ended up that we had some clock bugs Boris had to fix, and a bug in my core VC4 CRTC code, but he got a working patch series together shockingly quickly. He did one respin for a couple more fixes once I had tested it, and it’s now out on the list waiting for devicetree maintainer review. If nothing goes wrong, we should have composite out support in 4.11 (we’re probably a week late for 4.10).

  • Raspberry Pi VC4 Driver Work On SDTV, HDMI Audio & More

    Eric Anholt’s latest weekly blog post on the VC4 development highlights SDTV support coming together, the Raspberry Pi Foundation contracting Free Electrons to provide more development help on the display stack, HDMI audio support for VC4 DRM driver continuing to inch along, DSI fixes, some code generation improvements for VC4 Gallium3D, and other work.

  • Rugged Skylake embedded PC has wide range power

    Axiomtek’s “eBOX565-500-FL” computer runs Linux or Windows on dual-core Intel 6th Gen CPUs, and offers four USB 3.0 ports and wide-range power.

    The eBOX565-500-FL updates the two-year-old eBOX560-880-FL embedded PC, which provides dual-core Intel 4th Gen “Haswell” Core and Celeron CPUs. The very similar eBOX565-500-FL instead taps the 14nm Intel 6th Gen “Skylake” ULT processors, once again offering two dual-core options: the 2.4GHz Core i5-6300U and the 2.0GHz Celeron 3955U.

  • USB stick turns 64-bit x86 systems into Linux thin clients

    Igel has launched a “UD Pocket” USB stick that boots up a VDI environment on any 64-bit x86 PC, laptop, or other device without overwriting its local OS.

    Since the early days of Linux, IT administrators and demo presenters have been using USB stick and Live CD-based devices to boot up Linux distributions like Knoppix on desktop computers. Now Igel Technology has taken the bootable USB stick to the thin client world with the Igel UD Pocket. The 22 x 12 x 6mm, 3.3gm device plugs into any 64-bit x86 PC, laptop, or tablet with at least 2GB of RAM and a bootable USB port, to turn it into a thin client running a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) user interface.

  • Phones

    • Tizen

      • Auto Rikshaw Racing Game added to Tizen Store

        Hey guys, do you like to play with Auto Rickshaws ? This is a racing game named “Crazy Auto Traffic Racer”, added by Games2Win Pvt. Ltd.

    • Android

      • Android security in 2016 is a mess.

        Your phone probably contains banking, payment and personal information that can be remotely stolen via numerous known and unknown bugs in the Android software. This is attractive to criminals.

        Vendors (LG, Samsung, Xiaomi, etc.), after selling you their phone, have no incentive to keep your phone’s software up to date with Google’s fixes. Your Android phone is probably out of date and therefore a gaping security hole through which attackers can steal your stuff from the safety of their own laptops.

      • Android, Qualcomm move on insecure GPS almanac downloads

      • 3 biggest security threats for Android users today

      • Evie brings a new level of efficiency to the Android home screen

      • Google launches U.K. Android Pay promotions for the holiday season

      • Android Security Bulletin: Everything you need to know

      • Google Patches Android for 74 Vulnerabilities in December Update

      • Android Nougat hits 0.4% adoption after 3 months

      • Plenty of GIF and emoji fun with Android’s latest update

      • Moto G4 & Moto G4 Plus News & Update: Android 7.1 Nougat Update Rolling Out; Moto G Devices, Not Available?

      • Android platform distribution, December 2016: KitKat is finally toppled, Nougat doesn’t move much

      • Nokia’s Android phone revival has to be about more than just phones

      • How to publish an Android library: a mysterious conversation

      • Android 7.1.1 update brings GIFs, new emoji and Pixel features

      • Android Pay users will be sent a virtual Christmas cracker every time they buy something in December

      • Monzo puts payments on Android

      • Vantiv Launches Program With Android Pay

      • Android 7.0 Nougat Release Date, Features & News, Update: Beta Rolled Out For Samsung Galaxy S7, Edge; Corrections Detailed For Upcoming OS

      • How an Android Wear smartwatch can keep your business running smoothly

      • Android 7.1.1 in pictures: Nexus versus Pixel

      • Galaxy S7 Nougat update: Top 10 features to know

      • Google is putting a news feed in Android’s home screen

      • ASUS ZenPad 3S 10 review: The iPad Air running Android

        The history of Android on tablets is complicated. Just as Apple had done in 2007 with the first iPhone, the iPad’s release in 2010 set a very high standard for the rest of the market. The next year, Google released Android 3.0 Honeycomb on the Motorola Xoom, designed specifically with tablets in mind. The Xoom wasn’t the iPad killer that Motorola had hoped for, and there have been very few Android tablets that could stack up to Apple’s iPad line.

Free Software/Open Source

• NIPS conference: Google releases open-source, AI, 3D game-development project

  Today, on the opening day of the marquee AI conference Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference in Barcelona, Google announced in a blog post the release of its DeepMind Lab project available to the AI community under open source licensing terms.

  Artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) are the next two computing platforms. DeepMind Lab is a 3D AI platform for building virtual games that bring these two platforms together in multiple dimensions. DeepMind Lab uses a special kind of AI, called machine learning (ML). And within the field of ML, it uses an advanced form of machine learning called deep reinforcement learning (DeepRL).

• 7 cool little open source projects that stood out in 2016

  In the early days of the open source movement, a lot of the attention was on operating systems, and later on large content management systems. These days, containers are mentioned regularly even in mainstream news outlets. The big tech stories are great, but they miss the other great activity in the niches of the open source space. I’ve rounded up seven interesting lesser-known projects from the past year. You can see more articles about projects like this in my Nooks and Crannies column.

• The most in demand skills you need for an open source job

  With coding and software development in serious need of talent, it’s essentially a graduate’s market, but you still need the right combination of skills and attributes to beat the competition. When it comes to open source and DevOps, a deeper understanding is essential.

• Why the Open Source Cloud Is Important

  To this end, foundations such as the Cloud Foundry Foundation, Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and Open Container Initiative (OCI) at The Linux Foundation are actively bringing in new open source projects and engaging member companies to create industry standards for new cloud-native technologies. The goal is to help improve interoperability and create a stable base for container operations on which companies can safely build commercial dependencies.

• AI Platforms Welcome Devs With Open Arms

  Two leaders in the field of artificial intelligence have announced that they’re open-sourcing their AI platforms.

  After investing in building rich simulated environments to serve as laboratories for AI research, Google’s DeepMind Lab on Saturday said it would open the platform for the broader research community’s use.

  DeepMind has been using its AI lab for some time, and it has “only barely scratched the surface of what is possible” in it, noted team members Charlie Beattie, Joel Leibo, Stig Petersen and Shane Legg in an online post.

• Open source is so much more than free code

  In 2011, the Department of Veterans Affairs officially moved its most critical software, the VistA electronic health record system, into open source by establishing the Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance (OSEHRA). Along the way, VA officials solicited and followed advice from numerous open source experts, including Red Hat, Carnegie Mellon University and the Industry Advisory Council.

• Events

  • The Linux Foundation Seeks Technical and Business Speakers for Open Networking Summit 2017

• Databases

  • SQL Server on Linux signals Microsoft’s changing development landscape [Ed: This headline is wrong. There is no SQL Server on Linux; it runs on a Windows compatibility layer and it's entirely proprietary.]

  • Exploring the Trend Towards Open Source Database Management Systems

    The popularity of open source DBMSs, as measured by the DB-Engines Ranking, has reached a new record. So, we’re going to analyze the underlying details.

    We have 154 open source systems in our ranking, slightly less than the 156 commercial systems. If we add up the popularity scores of all the open source systems, we get 46% of the overall scores, whereas 54% goes to commercial systems.

  • Cloud convenience is killing the open source database

    Open source has never been more important or, ironically, irrelevant. As developers increasingly embrace the cloud to shorten time to market, they’re speeding past open source, making it even harder to build an open source business.

    After all, if open source were largely a way for developers to skirt legal and purchasing departments to get the software they needed when they needed it, the cloud ups that convenience to the nth degree. In Accel’s annual business review, the vaunted venture capital firm writes: “‘Product’ is no longer just the bits of software, it’s also how the software is sold, supported, and made successful.” The cloud is changing the way all software is consumed, including open source.

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • LibreOffice 5.3 Beta 2 to Land Soon as Third Bug Hunting Event Is Held This Week

    Today, December 6, 2016, The Document Foundation, through Italo Vignoli, was proud to announce the upcoming third bug hunting session for the LibreOffice 5.3 open-source office suite.

• CMS

  • WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, More: Keeping Up With Open Source CMS

    Due to its organic nature, the world of open source software is in constant flux, which makes it difficult to keep tabs on.

    To keep you in the loop, I’m kicking off a monthly roundup of open source CMS news, starting today.

    Here are your latest open source CMS highlights.

  • 4 open source peer-to-peer marketplaces

    What happens if your startup can’t afford one of these proprietary solutions or you need customized features? You go look for an open source alternative that could open the space for new solutions and modules. Here are four peer-to-peer marketplaces that are working to become the WordPress or Prestashop of their kind.

  • WordPress 4.7 “Vaughan”

    Version 4.7 of WordPress, named “Vaughan” in honor of legendary jazz vocalist Sarah “Sassy” Vaughan, is available for download or update in your WordPress dashboard. New features in 4.7 help you get your site set up the way you want it.

• Education

  • Pencils down: Why open source is the future of standardized testing

    Administering standardized tests online is trickier than it sounds. Underneath the facade of simple multiple choice forms, any workable platform needs a complex web of features to ensure that databases don’t buckle under the pressure of tens of thousands of test takers at once. On top of that, it also needs to ensure that responses are scored correctly and that it’s impossible for students to cheat.

• BSD

  • LLVM 4.0 Planned For Release At End Of February, Will Move To New Versioning Scheme

    Hans Wennborg has laid out plans to release the LLVM 4.0 (and Clang 4.0, along with other LLVM sub-projects) toward the end of February.

    The proposal by continuing LLVM release manager Hans Wennborg puts the 4.0 branching followed by RC1 at 12 January, RC2 at 1 February, and the official release around 21 February.

• Public Services/Government

  • OpenGov Partnership members mull open source policy

    The Open Government Partnership (OGP) will suggest to its member governments to create a policy on open source. This week, a draft proposal is to be finalised at the OGP Global Summit in Paris.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Why your teams may be failing at the collaboration game

    When we think about skills needed to build open structures and establish open mindsets, collaboration jumps to mind immediately. In order to collaborate effectively, communication—or rather, clear communication—is imperative to making it all work.

    Communication can be defined as a transfer of information from one space or person to another—but it can look like dialogue, conflict resolution, listening skills, or even a knowledge commons. In open organizations, we look for timely transfers of information to all members so that they may do their jobs effectively and efficiently.

  • Open Data

    • Portugal’s AMA publishes two open data guides

      The Portuguese Agency for Administrative Modernisation (Agência para a Modernização Administrativa, AMA) has published two national open data guides.

      As its title implies, the ‘Open Data Introduction Guide’ is aimed at the general public or those interested in learning about the subject.

      The ‘Open Data Guide’ is the official government publication on the subject of public sector data openness. It addresses theoretical issues and practices relevant to the development of open data in Portugal. The topics include open movements, the potential of data openness, processes of opening information, ways of reuse, and an introduction to technical issues. This document is aimed at the various stakeholders in the Portuguese open data ecosystem, such as public agencies, researchers, journalists, citizens and companies interested in reusing or analysing public sector information.

    • Poland looking for new Digital Services and Open Data director

      The Polish Ministry of Digital Affairs is looking for a new director for its Department of Development of Digital Services and Open Data. The director is expected to be a “creative and proactive person who will set out the directions and lead the way for the most important and boldest changes in the state administration”.

  • Open Hardware/Modding

    • Accelerating Innovation: Michigan Tech patent database/app promotes open-source hardware

      Open-source innovation is making the traditional patent system obsolete. Michigan Technological University associate professor Joshua Pearce and his team work with what is called open-source hardware development.

      “What that means is sort of developing technologies that don’t rely on patents,” Pearce said. “We work collaboratively with engineers and scientists all over the world, and (it’s) fairly successful. And the reason it’s successful is because if you have thousands of people working on something, it tends to get pretty good pretty fast.”

      Pearce said the concept began some time ago with open-source software.

    • Non-profit creates open-source drinking water filter for 1/10th of the cost

      The high-tech vision of open-source software meets low-tech design at non-profit organization OHorizons, an international coalition of innovators working to solve persistent global challenges. The team’s most recent invention is the open-source Wood Mold, designed to allow even the least experienced person to create a BioSand Filter that can deliver clean water at 1/10th of the cost of the traditional method. The Wood Mold is designed to be accessible by anyone who has the DIY, open-source construction manual that OHorizons offers for free online.

• Programming/Development

  • Why Is C Programming Language Continuously Going Down?

    C has ruled the programming world for a long period, becoming the base of many operating systems and programs. However, over the course of past one year, its popularity has fallen, probably, due to lack of any corporate sponsor and increase in the usage of newer languages.

  • How Should You Put Soft Skills on a Technical Resume?

  • Hype-Driven Development, from Frameworks to Microservices

    HDD happens when a development team picks the “newest, hottest technology” to use on a project, based on how the technology is trending on Twitter, or on a number of enthusiastic blog posts or conference talks. A key symptom of HDD is that contrary to the hype, progress doesn’t speed up when the new tech is developed but just the opposite: work slows to a crawl.

Leftovers

• The Operating System Fountain of Youth: iOS

  When I returned to the store this week, the display was gone. Still, the idea is in the air, the two individuals mentioned didn’t know about the Microsoft product.

  The Microsoft implementation might be too kludgy, or immature, or the concept itself could just be a doomed Rube Goldberg fantasy. Back to reality, we’re likely to pick up fresher clues on iOS direction when new iPads show up, probably next quarter.

• 15+ Stunning Satellite Photos That Will Change How You See Our World

  Every single day, Grant shares one satellite photo from Digital Globes to change the way we see our planet. “With a focal length 16 times longer than a standard DSLR camera, the cameras are so powerful that you can take a picture of a beach ball on the Golden Gate Bridge in full resolution…from Los Angeles,” Grant told Bored Panda. “I try to present the images with no bias and let people decide what these altered landscapes mean, based on the facts and the visual evidence in the frame. I believe that this perspective is a means to start a conversation about the condition of our planet and how we can better protect it.”

• Science

  • Teachers’ union ‘concerned’ over Pisa results

    Finland has slipped down the Pisa rankings in recent years, and that trend continued in the latest set of the OECD educational charts released on Tuesday. Although Finland was the only country where girls outperformed boys in science, the number of poor performing students was up and there were fewer high-achievers.

    Finland’s teaching union, the OAJ, says it is concerned about the development in Finnish Pisa results.

    “Finnish results have declined clearly when compared to previous years,” said OAJ expert Jaakko Salo. “The biggest concern in this is that our cornerstone—equality in education—looks to be crumbling.”

• Health/Nutrition

  • Why is a banned pesticide that harms bees actually being used more?

    Goulson called it “sinister” last week when made aware of the silence, but now concludes it was probably an innocent error. Bob Maurer, chairman of the show, told me the event has never received any sponsorship from the big chemical companies that manufacture neonicotinoids. He believes an accidental “technical hitch” by the video producer was responsible.

    Concern over this coincidence can be dismissed as a conspiracy theory, but what cannot be dismissed is the solid scientific evidence that Goulson is helping to produce, showing how neonicotinoids harm bees and other insects.

  • Civil rights commission to discuss Flint water crisis report

    The Michigan Civil Rights Commission will discuss an early version of its report about the lead-contaminated water crisis in Flint at its next meeting.

    The commission, which meets Monday morning at the University of Michigan Detroit center, is expected to check on progress and provide feedback. The report is scheduled to be released next month.

  • California bill would require reporting of ‘superbug’ infections, deaths

    A California state senator introduced a bill on Monday that would mandate reporting of antibiotic-resistant infections and deaths and require doctors to record the infections on death certificates when they are a cause of death.

    The legislation also aims to establish the nation’s most comprehensive statewide surveillance system to track infections and deaths from drug-resistant pathogens. Data from death certificates would be used to help compile an annual state report on superbug infections and related deaths.

    In September, a Reuters investigation revealed that tens of thousands of superbug deaths nationwide go uncounted every year. The infections are often omitted from death certificates, and even when they are recorded, they aren’t counted because of the lack of a unified national surveillance system.

    “The (Reuters) story highlighted some of the problems that have come from the lack of information, the lack of reporting, especially deaths,” said state Senator Jerry Hill, who introduced the bill. “I wasn’t aware that on death certificates, antibiotic-resistant infections have never been called out.”

    Because there is no federal surveillance system, monitoring of superbug infections and deaths falls to the states. A Reuters survey of all 50 state health departments and the District of Columbia found that reporting requirements vary widely.

• Security

  • HP shutting down default FTP, Telnet access to network printers

    Security experts consider the aging FTP and Telnet protocols unsafe, and HP has decided to clamp down on access to networked printers through the remote-access tools.

    Some of HP’s new business printers will, by default, be closed to remote access via protocols like FTP and Telnet. However, customers can activate remote printing access through those protocols if needed.

  • Google Chrome 55 Fixes Flaws, Blocks Flash

  • Cyberattacks are going to get a lot worse, former NSA official says

    The face of cybercrime is changing. Healthcare has gone from a declared mission of stealing personal data to much more disruptive issues. In fact, healthcare has seen the largest jump in ransomware attacks than in any other industry.

    When Joel Brenner opened the HIMSS Privacy & Security Forum in Boston Monday morning, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology research fellow – who focuses on cybersecurity, privacy and intelligence policy – and former senior counsel at the National Security Agency, didn’t sugarcoat the state of healthcare security.

    The government isn’t going to sort out that problem until we suffer some great losses, Brenner said.

  • Chrome 55 Now Blocks Flash, Uses HTML5 by Default

    Chrome 55, released earlier this week, now blocks all Adobe Flash content by default, according to a plan set in motion by Google engineers earlier this year.

    Back in May, Google’s staff announced that starting with Q4 2016, Chrome would use HTML5 by default, while Flash would be turned off.

    While some of the initial implementation details of the “HTML5 By Default” plan changed since May, Flash has been phased out in favor of HTML5 as the primary technology for playing multimedia content in Chrome.

  • Google Debuts Continuous Fuzzer for Open Source Software

    A new Google program aimed at continuously fuzzing open source software has already detected over 150 bugs.

    The program, OSS-Fuzz, currently in beta mode, is designed to help unearth programming errors in open source software via fuzz testing. Fuzz testing, or fuzzing is when bits of randomly generated code is inputted into programs as a means to discover code and security flaws.

  • Google Opens Up a Powerful FOSS Security Tool

    Back in 2014, public exposure of the OpenSSL Heartbleed security bug created a stage for security experts and commentators to field opinions on the open source error that left an estimated two thirds of the internet unsecured. We followed up back then with a guest post for OStatic from Eren Niazi, founder of Open Source Storage, where he discussed the security implications for the open source community.

  • Google Finally Patches ‘Dirty COW’ Linux Vulnerability With December Android Security Update [Ed: Google patches don’t matter to news sites until there’s some stupid brand with logo and Web site]

  • Google patches Dirty Cow vulnerability in latest Android security update

  • Docker CEO: Docker Already Is a Security Platform (with Swarm, That Is)

    In a reinforcement of his company’s marketing message that containerization as an architecture is more secure by design, Docker Inc. CEO Ben Golub [pictured right above, with HPE Executive VP Antonio Neri] told attendees at HPE’s Discover London 2016 event last Tuesday morning that the Docker platform addresses and ameliorates its users’ security concerns just by its very architecture.

  • Tuesday’s security updates

  • On CVE-2016-4484, a (security)? bug in the cryptsetup initramfs integration

• Defence/Aggression

  • Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureaucratic waste

    The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post.

    Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.

    The report, issued in January 2015, identified “a clear path” for the Defense Department to save $125 billion over five years. The plan would not have required layoffs of civil servants or reductions in military personnel. Instead, it would have streamlined the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, curtailed high-priced contractors and made better use of information technology.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Julian Assange defies Swedish prosecutors by releasing rape statement

    Julian Assange has thumbed his nose at Swedish investigators, who he says have robbed him of his freedom for six years, by releasing the answers he gave to them under questioning in Ecuador’s London embassy last month.

    The decision to issue the statement, which contains for the first time a detailed account by the WikiLeaks founder of his encounter with a woman in August 2010 who made rape allegations against him, marks a fresh twist in a case in which Assange claims an early leak of information from the Swedish police has shaped opinion.

    The transcript of a police interview with the woman was leaked to media in December 2010, which the Australian, who has not been charged with any crime, says helped to establish an aura of guilt around him.

    Since then, Assange has repeatedly asked to be allowed to tell his side of the story to prosecutors, but until recently they insisted he come to Sweden for questioning. Assange has been confined to Ecuador’s cramped London embassy since June 2012, after claiming asylum to avoid extradition over the allegations.

  • Julian Assange says texts show he is ‘entirely innocent’ of rape; WikiLeaks founder criticises Swedish prosecutor

    The ABC has obtained a copy of the statement the WikiLeaks founder gave prosecutors from his refuge inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London on November 14.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

  • A threat to rainforests in Indonesia: Big banks

    In early 2015, scientists monitoring satellite images at Global Forest Watch raised the alarm about the destruction of rain forests in Indonesia.

    Environmental groups raced to the scene in West Kalimantan province, on the island of Borneo, to find a charred wasteland: Smouldering fires, orangutans driven from their nests, and signs of an extensive release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

    “There was pretty much no forest left,” said Dr Karmele Llano Sanchez, director of the non-profit International Animal Rescue’s orangutan rescue group, which set out to save the endangered primates. “All the forest had burned.”

  • Republicans Vow to Finish the Dakota Access Pipeline Under Trump

    This weekend the Army Corps of Engineers said Dakota Access Pipeline won’t go through as planned since it could have destructive environmental consequences. But, as activists know, that doesn’t mean Republicans are done fighting for the oil pipeline.

    President-Elect Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan were among pipeline supporters who emphasized their commitment to the project, and promised to approve the project in the next term. Trump has suggested in prior speech he would push an oil pipeline through during his first 100 days in office, according to the Wall Street Journal.

  • Five things to watch in Dakota Access pipeline fight

    The Obama administration halted construction on the Dakota Access oil pipeline Sunday, saying it would hold off on granting the final easement for the project while it conducts a thorough environmental review.

    Both the developer and President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team have vowed to finish construction, while protesters say they could bring the conflict to court.

    Here are five things to watch in the unfolding fight.

    Trump’s strategy

    When Trump and his administration take office, approving Dakota Access probably won’t be as simple as signing a piece of paper.

    The Army Corps of Engineers ordered an environmental impact statement for the project Sunday. Experts say that because of that, Trump’s administration will have to either complete the yearslong process or find a way to remove the requirement for testing the environmental impact. Doing the latter, however, would be a rare move that could subject the pipeline to a lawsuit.

  • Melting Permafrost Could Affect Weather Worldwide

    Melting permafrost is causing significant changes to the freshwater chemistry and hydrology of Alaska’s Yukon River and could be triggering global climate impacts, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report released yesterday.

    Researchers say the study, which analyzed more than 30 years of data, sheds light on how climate change is already affecting the Arctic.

    According to the report, the Yukon River and one of its major tributaries have accumulated increasing levels of calcium, magnesium and sulfates over the last three decades due to thawing permafrost.

  • Standing Rock protesters asked to ‘go home’ by Sioux leader

    The chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe has asked the thousands of “water protectors” gathered in encampments along the Missouri river to “go home” after the US Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit for the Dakota Access pipeline to drill under the river.

    In a video statement Dave Archambault thanked the thousands of Native American and environmental activists who travelled to North Dakota to help the tribe fight back against the pipeline, which they feared would contaminate their water source and destroy sacred sites.

    But after the “huge victory” of the Army Corps decision, Archambault said: “There’s no need for the water protectors or for anyone to be putting ourselves in unsafe environments.

  • Indonesia takes new step to combat loss of forests, fires

    Indonesia has strengthened its moratorium on converting peat swamps to plantations in a move a conservation research group says will help prevent annual fires and substantially cut the country’s carbon emissions if properly implemented.

    President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s amendment to the moratorium regulation, which was issued on Monday, expands it to cover peatlands of any depth and orders companies to restore areas they’ve degraded.

    Indonesia’s move was welcomed by Norway, which in 2010 pledged $1 billion to help the country stop cutting down its prized tropical forests but has released little of it. As a result of the expanded regulation, Norway said it would give $25 million to Indonesia to fund restoration of drained peatlands and another $25 million once an enforcement and monitoring plan is ready.

    Draining of peat swamps by palm oil and pulp wood companies is a big contributor to destruction of tropical forests in Indonesia and the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. The land conversion worsens annual dry season fires that release huge amounts of carbon stored in the peat. Many of the fires are deliberately set to clear land of its natural vegetation.

  • Britain could slash environmental and safety standards ‘a very long way’ after Brexit, Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg says

    Britain could slash environmental and safety regulations on imported products after it leaves the EU, a Tory MP has suggested.

    Jacob Rees-Mogg said regulations that were “good enough for India” could be good enough for the UK – arguing that the UK could go “a very long way” to rolling back high EU standards.

    The idea, floated at a hearing of the Treasury Select Committee, was immediately rejected by an economist, who said such a move would likely cause “quite considerable” difficulties.

• Finance

  • The Soviet Union collapsed overnight. Don’t assume western democracy will last forever

    Below the medieval citadel in Kazan, two vast frozen rivers turn the landscape white. On a Saturday afternoon there are a few hardy locals shuffling through the icy sludge to take selfies against the mosque, the Christmas lights and the Soviet-era statues.

    It’s 25 years since I was last in Russia, trying and failing to revive the left during the chaotic first days of Boris Yeltsin’s economic reforms. Half a lifetime later I am here to address a room full of people who want to talk about replacing capitalism with something better – and suddenly we have something in common: now we both know what it’s like to see a system that once looked permanent collapsing.

    Since I’ve been here, almost everyone who has chosen to come and hear me is involved in either contemporary arts or philosophy. The journalists who want to interview me – a public critic of Putin’s policy in Syria and Ukraine – mainly write for cultural magazines. These, if not exactly the new rock’n’roll, are the safest intellectual spaces in which critical thought can take place.

  • Tar Heel heist: How the charter school industry is hijacking public education

    If the American Dream is still alive – the one that includes a good job and a house with a yard, kids, and a two-car garage – you can see it taking shape in Wake County in the heart of the state of North Carolina. Signs of surging prosperity are everywhere this morning as I make my way to West Lake Middle School in Apex, NC, on the outskirts of Raleigh.

    What were once sleepy two-lane country roads are now teaming with impatient commuters, school busses, and mini-vans. New housing developments, shopping centers, and office buildings are transforming the rolling Piedmont landscape.

  • TPP May Be Dead – But Its Impact Lingers

    Despite the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) being – to all-intents-and-purposes – dead in the water, pursuit of some of the most egregious objectives of the corporate interests driving the TPP agenda rolls on. Pharma is persisting in its push for countries to adopt not just TRIPS-Plus, but in some cases even TPP-Plus intellectual property rules – presumably groundwork for the later emergence of a ‘son-of-TPP’ agreement.

  • India ready to resume BTIA talks with EU without preconditions

    Government is committed to an early and balanced outcome of India-EU Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) negotiations and is willing to resume talks without any preconditions, Parliament was informed today.

    “The European Union (EU) has expressed willingness to re-engage with India in India-EU Broad based Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) negotiations subject to certain conditions.

  • The Mafia State

    The list of financial titans, including Trump, who have profited from a rigged financial system and fraud is endless. Many in the 1 percent make money by using lobbyists and bought politicians to write self-serving laws and rules and by forming unassailable monopolies. They push up prices on products or services these monopolies provide. Or they lend money to the 99 percent and charge exorbitant interest. Or they use their control of government and the courts to ship jobs to Mexico or China, where wages can be as low as 22 cents an hour, and leave American workers destitute. Neoliberalism is state-sponsored extortion. It is a vast, nationally orchestrated Ponzi scheme.

    This fevered speculation and mounting inequality, made possible by the two ruling political parties, corroded and destroyed the mechanisms and institutions that permitted democratic participation and provided some protection for workers. Politicians, from Reagan on, were handsomely rewarded by their funders for delivering their credulous supporters to the corporate guillotine. The corporate coup created a mafia capitalism. This mafia capitalism, as economists such as Karl Polanyi and Joseph Stiglitz warned, gave birth to a mafia political system. Financial and political power in the hands of institutions such as Goldman Sachs and the Clinton Foundation becomes solely about personal gain. The Obamas in a few weeks will begin to give us a transparent lesson into how service to the corporate state translates into personal enrichment.

  • We don’t need a charter-school lobbyist as education secretary: Stephen Henderson

    In Detroit, parents of school-age children have plenty of choices, thanks to the nation’s largest urban network of charter schools.

    What remains in short supply is quality.

    In Brightmoor, the only high school left is Detroit Community Schools, a charter boasting more than a decade of abysmal test scores and, until recently, a superintendent who earned $130,000 a year despite a dearth of educational experience or credentials.

    On the west side, another charter school, Hope Academy, has been serving the community around Grand River and Livernois for 20 years. Its test scores have been among the lowest in the state throughout those two decades; in 2013 the school ranked in the first percentile, the absolute bottom for academic performance.

  • Jill Stein Takes Long-Shot Recount Campaign to Trump Tower

    Jill Stein went to Trump Tower on Monday to press her case for long-shot recounts in three closely contested states in last month’s presidential election.

    Ms. Stein, the Green Party presidential nominee and now the leader of the recount campaign, appeared emboldened by an early morning federal court ruling that ordered Michigan elections officials — over the protests of President-elect Donald J. Trump and his allies — to begin a recount by noon Monday.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Republican ‘faithless elector’ says he will not cast his vote for Donald Trump as he is ‘unfit for presidency’

    A REPUBLICAN presidential elector has issued the shock claim that he will not cast his vote for Donald Trump in an attempt to block his path to the White House.

    Christopher Suprun said in an article for the New York Times that he could not approve Mr Trump in good conscience as he felt the president-elect was unfit for public office.

    “Mr Trump urged violence against protesters at his rallies during the campaign,” he wrote. “He speaks of retribution against his critics.”

    “I owe no debt to a party. I owe a debt to my children to leave them a nation they can trust.”

  • Trump’s lawyer suggests the president-elect’s fraud claim isn’t true

    As you’ve probably heard, there are progressive efforts underway to force recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania – three traditionally “blue” states where Donald Trump narrowly prevailed. Had these three states, where literally every independent poll showed Hillary Clinton ahead in the months leading up to Election Day, voted Democratic, Trump would’ve lost.

  • Jill Stein charges ahead with recount efforts

    Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is vowing to move ahead with recount efforts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, despite legal setbacks and growing opposition from Republicans and other Donald Trump allies in each state.

    “We will not give in to intimidation, to legal maneuvering and to bureaucratic obstruction,” Stein said at a news conference outside of Trump Tower on Monday.

    Her vow came as Stein’s campaign on Monday morning filed a federal lawsuit in Pennsylvania — an attempt to revive the push there after Stein and other Pennsylvania voters dropped a state-based lawsuit to try to force a recount. They gave up on the state-based lawsuit when a judge raised the bond to $1 million, a price Stein panned as exorbitant .

    But even as she railed against the roadblocks in Pennsylvania, Stein lauded developments in Michigan, which was to begin its recount by noon Monday.

  • Trump’s Threat to the Constitution

    On July 7, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, met privately with House Republicans near the Capitol. I was present as chief policy director of the House Republican Conference. Mr. Trump’s purpose was to persuade the representatives to unite around him, a pitch he delivered in a subdued version of his stream-of-consciousness style. A congresswoman asked him about his plans to protect Article I of the Constitution, which assigns all federal lawmaking power to Congress.

    Mr. Trump interrupted her to declare his commitment to the Constitution — even to parts of it that do not exist, such as “Article XII.” Shock swept through the room as Mr. Trump confirmed one of our chief concerns about him: He lacked a basic knowledge of the Constitution.

  • Michigan recount begins, as Jill Stein’s legal battle moves to Pennsylvania

    Presidential candidate Jill Stein’s fight to force presidential recounts in three states focuses Monday on Pennsylvania, where her Green Party is seeking an emergency federal court order for a statewide recount, and Michigan, where a federal judge has ordered a hand recount to begin by noon.

    The recount is underway in Wisconsin.

    President-elect Donald Trump narrowly defeated Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in all three states. The recounts were not expected to change enough votes to overturn the result of the election.

    Stein says her intent is to verify the accuracy of the vote. She has suggested, with no evidence, that votes cast were susceptible to computer hacking.

  • The Frankfurt School Knew Trump Was Coming

    Shortly after the Presidential election, a small piece of good news came over the wire: the Thomas Mann villa in Los Angeles has been saved. The house, which was built to Mann’s specifications in the nineteen-forties, went on the market earlier this year, and it seemed likely to be demolished, because the structure was deemed less valuable than the land beneath it. After prolonged negotiations, the German government bought the property, with the idea of establishing it as a cultural center.

    The house deserves to stand not only because a great writer lived there but because it brings to mind a tragic moment in American cultural history. The author of “Death in Venice” and “The Magic Mountain” settled in this country in 1938, a grateful refugee from Nazism. He became a citizen and extolled American ideals. By 1952, though, he had become convinced that McCarthyism was a prelude to fascism, and felt compelled to emigrate again. At the time of the House Un-American Activities Committee’s hearings on Communism in Hollywood, Mann said, “Spiritual intolerance, political inquisitions, and declining legal security, and all this in the name of an alleged ‘state of emergency.’ . . . That is how it started in Germany.” The tearing down of Mann’s “magic villa” would have been a cold epilogue to a melancholy tale.

  • 9 Things Obama Can Do Before Leaving Office to Prepare for the Trump Takeover

    In less than seven weeks, President Barack Obama will hand over the government to Donald Trump, including access to the White House, Air Force One, and Camp David. Trump will also, of course, inherit the infamous nuclear codes, as well as the latest in warfare technology, including the Central Intelligence Agency’s fleet of killer drones, the National Security Agency’s vast surveillance and data-collection apparatus, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s enormous system of undercover informants.

  • Why is Donald Trump delegitimizing an election that he won?

    On the other hand, what he DOES is important. When he settled the Trump University for 25 Million, despite prolonging it for multiple years and putting all of the plaintiffs through years of frustration and debt, the news stories lasted less than 12 hours before being drowned by the Hamilton Tweets. My own reaction to the tweet was reflexively the same as others: Our President-elect is so sensitive that anything even slightly negative is considered an insult. But, you have to work HARD to find a story today talking about the settlement (or the fact that some are contesting it), but the fallout from the tweets lasted days. Looking back, more than once a fundamental issue concerning Trump was obscured by Tweet reactions. Nude underage beauty contestants, Manafort Russian connections, a debate that clearly showed Trump unprepared, unpresidential, and unhinged turned immaterial as the world reacted to his tweets about Alicia Machado.

  • Jill Stein On What’s Next With the Recount Effort in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania

    Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has initiated recount efforts in three states — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan — where Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by a combined margin of 103,519 votes. (A fourth, partial recount is underway in Nevada, by independent presidential candidate Roque De La Fuente).

    Though considered an “extreme long shot” by the New York Times, Stein’s campaign raised her initial goal of $7 million — twice as much as she raised in her failed campaign bid — in just a matter of days. Clinton’s campaign has cooperated with the effort.

  • Bob Dole’s Law Firm Was Paid $20,000 A Month To Lobby For Taiwan

    The Taiwanese representative office in Washington paid the law firm of former Sen. Bob Dole $20,000 a month to advance its interests in Washington, public filings show. Dole said on Monday his firm helped broker a controversial phone call between President-elect Donald Trump and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.

    Dole told the Wall Street Journal on Monday that his law firm “may have had some influence” on the phone call, which broke decades of diplomatic precedent, but has been widely praised by China hawks for the tough signal it sends to Beijing. An unnamed Trump transition team official told the paper that Dole had arranged the call.

  • US Power Will Decline Under Trump, Says Futurist Who Predicted Soviet Collapse

    Johan Galtung, a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated sociologist who predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, warned that US global power will collapse under the Donald Trump administration.

    The Norwegian professor at the University of Hawaii and Transcend Peace University is recognized as the ‘founding father’ of peace and conflict studies as a scientific discipline. He has made numerous accurate predictions of major world events, most notably the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

  • Half of Detroit votes may be ineligible for recount

    One-third of precincts in Wayne County could be disqualified from an unprecedented statewide recount of presidential election results because of problems with ballots.

    Michigan’s largest county voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, but officials couldn’t reconcile vote totals for 610 of 1,680 precincts during a countywide canvass of vote results late last month.

    Most of those are in heavily Democratic Detroit, where the number of ballots in precinct poll books did not match those of voting machine printout reports in 59 percent of precincts, 392 of 662.

  • Mismatched numbers means Mich. precincts can’t be recounted

    A single missing ballot was enough to scuttle the recount of a Michigan precinct Monday.

    The computerized poll book in Rochester Hills precinct 11 listed the names of 848 voters who cast ballots there, but the ballot box contained just 847 ballots. So where is the other ballot? The poll workers’ notes offered no explanation.

    “It didn’t match on the canvass and it doesn’t match now,” said Joe Rozell, Oakland County’s director of elections. “This precinct is not recountable.”

    Two Michigan counties began the recount process Monday, hours after a federal judge ordered the immediate start of the presidential recount. Six counties are expected to start the recount process Tuesday, with the last batch of counties to start Dec. 12.

  • How the Electoral College Really Started

  • Florida voters sue for recount

    Three central Florida voters are mounting an unlikely bid to overturn the presidential election result in the Sunshine State.

    In a lawsuit filed Monday in Leon Circuit Court, they assert that Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, actually won Florida. The plaintiffs, who live in Osceola and Volusia counties, say the state’s official election results were off because of hacking, malfunctioning voting machines and other problems.

    They’re asking for a hand recount of every paper ballot in Florida, at the expense of defendants including Trump, Gov. Rick Scott and the 29 Republican presidential electors from Florida.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • 3 Tips for Teachers to Help Teens Distinguish Fact From Fiction

    The rise in websites dispensing false information has become a problem for Facebook. But for one high school teacher, having students take misinformation at face value is nothing new – though it’s gotten worse.

    “I’m constantly got kids coming to me, ‘Did you know?’ insert whatever conspiracy theory,” says Dave Stuart Jr., who teaches world history at Cedar Springs High School in Michigan. “Ranging from the Apollo missions to the moon never happened, to current events-related stuff.”

    The Common Core standards focus strongly on skills that should prepare students to detect fake news – the standards emphasize the need for students to write and read arguments using and looking for strong reasoning and evidence, says Dana Maloney, an English teacher at Tenafly High School in New Jersey.

  • Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube team up to stop terrorist propaganda

    Four of the largest tech companies—Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and YouTube—are coming together to stop the spread of terroristic content on social media.

    The plan is to create a shared database and track the digital fingerprints of accounts who share propaganda for terror networks helping them identify the content and easily remove photo or videos from their sites.

    “Our companies will begin sharing hashes of the most extreme and egregious terrorist images and videos we have removed from our services — content most likely to violate all of our respective companies’ content policies,” the companies announced in a joint statement Monday night.

  • Pakistani Cinema’s Censorship Problem

    Actor Hameed Sheikh, known for his phenomenol performance in Jami’s Moor, spoke about the difficulty he faced while trying to release the movie

  • Hacker News calls for “political detox,” critics cry censorship

    Can social media even exist without political debate? What about trolls? Hacker News, the social news site run by Y Combinator, is trying to find out.

    The head of the Hacker News community since 2014, Daniel Gackle (whose HN handle is “dang”) on Monday initiated a site-wide “Political Detox Week.”

  • With a new Star Trek TV series incoming, we revisit the show’s long history of censorship at the BBC…

    Star Trek is not a franchise you’d normally associate with controversy. Nevertheless, between 1969 and 1994, four episodes of the original series – Empath, Whom Gods Destroy, Plato’s Stepchildren and Miri – were not aired on the BBC, and other episodes were heavily redacted.

  • Internet giants will join forces to stop online sharing of terrorist material

    Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube have announced that they will be working together to curb the dissemination of terrorist material online. The Web giants will create a shared industry database of hashes—digital fingerprints that can identify a specific file—for violent terrorist imagery and terrorist recruitment materials that have previously been removed from their platforms.

    According to a statement the four companies have jointly released, the hope is that “this collaboration will lead to greater efficiency as we continue to enforce our policies to help curb the pressing global issue of terrorist content online.”

  • I’m a Journalist and I Was Stopped From Covering Standing Rock

    It was an assignment that I barely prepared for. I didn’t think I had to.

    For most reporting trips I have made in the last decade, I would think long and hard about where I was going and what the variables were. If I was heading to a conflict zone, I would need body armor and a trauma kit. If it was a natural disaster, I would bring a satellite phone and spare food. If I was heading to an authoritarian country where journalism was not allowed, I would need a mix of burner phones, encrypted hard drives and a disposable laptop. I felt I was prepared for every eventuality. But I never thought that I would have to think about these things so close to home.

    For my recent assignment heading from Canada to the U.S. to cover the anti-oil pipeline protests in Standing Rock for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, I didn’t prepare for anything extraordinary. But at the border, after handing over my Canadian passport I was taken aside. I wasn’t worried. Why should I be? I had nothing to hide, and I felt like it was the one border in my travels where I could proudly proclaim that I was a journalist to safe ears.

  • Ahead of 2022 World Cup, Qatar doubles down on internet censorship and blocks independent news website

    Last week, an independent news website in Qatar, Doha News, discovered that they had been blocked in Qatar. While there has been no official news on why this block has happened, Doha News stated that they suspect that the block happened at the behest of the government. The news site has a reputation for toeing the line in Qatar, and had previously done such “unprecedented” things in the emirates such as publishing an anonymous article by a homosexual Qatari man. Ahead of the 2022 World Cup, it is more than possible that this is just the first of many censorship actions by Qatar. Another famous international media site that is based in Qatar is none other than Al Jazeera.

    Doha News confirmed that Qatar’s two ISPs, Ooredo and Vodaphone, have blocked Doha News. The independent news source tried to create a new domain name to get past the block but that new website was quickly blocked as well. Doha News’s editor, Shabina Khatri was forced to use a different Medium to communicate after the block.

  • Facebook reportedly testing new tool to combat fake news

    Facebook appears to be testing a tool designed to help it identify and hide so called “fake news” on the social network, in an attempt to quell increasingly vocal criticism of its role in spreading untruths and propaganda.

    The tool, reported by at least three separate Facebook users on Twitter, asks readers to rank on a scale of one to five the extent to which they think a link’s title “uses misleading language”. The articles in question were from reliable sources: Rolling Stone magazine, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Chortle, a news site which reports on comedy.

  • Facebook and Google make lies as pretty as truth

    If you asked Google who won the popular vote just after the election, there’s a chance you would have been sent to a conspiracy blog with bogus results. And the site is likely to have looked as legitimate as any other.

• Privacy/Surveillance

  • NSA’s best are ‘leaving in big numbers,’ insiders say

    Low morale at the National Security Agency is causing some of the agency’s most talented people to leave in favor of private sector jobs, former NSA Director Keith Alexander told a room full of journalism students, professors and cybersecurity…

  • Who Are The NSA’s Elite Hackers?

    Last week, a mysterious group calling itself The Shadow Brokers dumped online a series of hacking tools associated with the NSA. The leak provided an unprecedented look into the actual tools that the NSA uses to hack its targets, and in the process, put the spotlight on a little-known team that works inside the spy agency—its elite-hacking unit.

    Known as Tailored Access Operations, or TAO, its existence was barely—if at all—discussed in public until 2009, when intelligence historian and author Matthew Aid described it in his book about the history of the NSA as a “super-secret” unit that taps into “thousands of foreign computer systems” and accesses “password-protected hard drives and email accounts of targets around the world.”

  • Appeals Court to Hear Argument in ACLU Challenge to NSA Internet Surveillance

    A federal appeals court will hear oral argument Friday in Richmond, Virginia, in the case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a broad group of organizations challenging the National Security Agency’s mass interception and searching of Americans’ international internet communications.

  • German Investigation Committee ‘Protracting’ Inquiry Into NSA Spying Scandal

    WikiLeaks published 2,400 documents on the NSA spying affair, according to which Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) was involved in the creation of the spy software that was later used by the NSA to tap top-ranking officials. It was also said that BND used the software in its work.

  • Court upholds warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens under Section 702

    The U.S. federal appeals court has ruled in United States v. Mohamud, a case that began with a 2010 holiday bomb plot and will end with unique implications for the private digital communications of American citizens.

    Digital privacy advocates had hoped that the appeals case might prompt reform for a contentious portion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) known as Section 702. The provision accommodates U.S. surveillance of foreign targets located abroad, although its many detractors argue that Section 702 allows the U.S. government to collect the bulk communications of Americans in the process.

  • United States v. Mohamud

  • No Appeal For US Man Believed Convicted With Warrantless NSA Evidence

    A U.S. man convicted after his emails were revealed by the NSA’s PRISM program, the first public case of its kind, will not have his case overturned, an appeals court has found.

  • German spy agency penetrated by ISIS

    My recent interview about the German domestic spy agency, the BfV – the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, ironically – being allegedly infiltrated by ISIS.

  • Canada Wants Software Backdoors, Mandatory Decryption Capability And Records Storage

    The new Canadian government is looking to further expand its surveillance powers by requiring decryption capabilities for all services, mandatory storage of both internet and phone records for service providers, backdoors that allow interception, and warrantless access to basic subscriber information.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • Saudi journalist banned from media after criticising Trump

    Saudi authorities banned journalist Jamal Khashoggi from writing in newspapers, appearing on TV and attending conferences, the Alkhalij Aljadid reported in Arabic.

    This came after Khashoggi’s remarks during a presentation he made at a Washington think-tank on 10 November in which he was critical of Donald Trump’s ascension to the US presidency.

    Two weeks ago, an official Saudi source was cited by the Saudi News Agency as saying that Khashoggi did not represent the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in his interviews or statements.

  • Michael Coe, associate of hate preacher Anjem Choudary, jailed for 28 months

    An associate of hate preacher Anjem Choudary has been jailed for 28 months for knocking a schoolboy unconscious because he cuddled his girlfriend in the street.

    Michael Coe, a Muslim convert, has a long record of violent offences starting when he was 16, including assaults, burglary, robbery and violent disorder.

    The married father of two was convicted in August of attacking the boy after he took exception to the 16-year-old cuddling his teenage girlfriend in Newham, east London, in April.

  • Coincidence? German Stats Show Surge in Sex Crime Rate Around Refugee Centers

    A group of German activists have carried out a study which found that rates of sexual offenses increase significantly in the vicinity of asylum reception centers, Germany’s Journalistenwatch news portal reported.

  • Afghan migrant woman ‘hunted down to Europe by abusive husband’

    Forced into marrying a man 25 years her senior after he had allegedly raped her, this 23-year-old Tajik woman from Kabul is now in a Greek camp for migrants.

    But Lina told the BBC that the abusive husband she ran away from is now following her, threatening to kill her for disobeying him.

    Her story was corroborated by volunteers for a Spanish refugee charity.

    Lina’s husband is one step behind her and her two small children, having reached the Greek island of Lesbos shortly after she was transported to mainland Greece.

  • Muslims are failing to integrate because men keep marrying abroad, major report warns

    Muslim communities remain isolated even after decades in the UK because men keep marrying foreign wives, a Government adviser has warned.

    Dame Louise Casey said that there is a “first generation in every generation” phenomenon in Muslim communities which is acting as a “bar” to integration.

    The review also accuses Labour and local authorities of having “ignored or even condoned” harmful cultural traditions for fear of being branded “racist or Islamaphobic”.

    It reports concerns that Sharia Courts in the UK have been “supporting the values of extremists, condoning wife-beating [and] ignoring marital rape”.

  • British ‘subjects’ did not deserve legal equality with their colonial masters: Interview with Marieme Helie Lucas on Sharia Courts in Britain

    Today, the British law of the land applies to all citizens, be they Catholics, Protestants, atheists, etc. Not one single citizen is beyond the law. Except for the former ‘natives’, be they actually British citizens or migrants: those – and those only – are, once more, entitled to laws of their own, because, beyond their official citizenship, they are still seen as ‘different’ from – and inferior to – the (former?) colonial master. ‘Let them have their own customs, it is their way’.

    ‘Proper’ British citizens are ruled by laws they have voted on, that they can change if they come together and press their MPs. How can ‘Sharia laws’ be changed by the will and vote of citizens? A significant proportion of British citizens are now under supposedly religious laws that they have neither voted for, nor can change through a democratic process. Democracy for ‘proper’ British citizens but unchangeable ‘tribal native customs’ for others?

  • European Union Directive on counterterrorism is seriously flawed

    European Union Member States must ensure that a new effort to standardise counterterrorism laws does not undermine fundamental freedoms and the rule of law, a group of international human rights organisations said today.

    Amnesty International, the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), European Digital Rights (EDRi), the Fundamental Rights European Experts (FREE) Group, Human Rights Watch (HRW), the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the Open Society Foundations (OSF) are warning that the overly broad language of the new EU Directive on Combating Terrorism could lead to criminalising public protests and other peaceful acts, to the suppression of the exercise of freedom of expression protected under international law, including expression of dissenting political views and to other unjustified limitations on human rights. The Directive’s punitive measures also pose the risk of being disproportionately applied and implemented in a manner that discriminates against specific ethnic and religious communities.

  • Amber Rudd says EU nationals in post-Brexit UK will need ‘form of ID’

    More than 3 million European Union citizens living in Britain after Brexit will have to be issued with “some form of documentation”, the home secretary has said.

    Amber Rudd told MPs she would not yet set out the details for any new EU ID card, but said: “There will be a need to have some sort of documentation. We are not going to set it out yet. We are going to do it in a phased approach to ensure that we use all the technology advantages that we are increasingly able to harness to ensure that all immigration is carefully handled.”

    The home secretary’s statement came in response to Labour’s Hilary Benn, who told MPs that EU citizens already in the UK would need to be documented so that employers and landlords could distinguish them from EU citizens arriving after Brexit.

    During Home Office questions in the Commons, Rudd also said she was aware of the need to continue the seasonal agricultural workers’ scheme after Brexit, but again ruled out demands to remove international students from the annual net migration target.

  • Diverse yet divided: UK is growing apart, Casey report finds

    The UK is becoming more divided as it becomes more diverse, a Government-commissioned review has claimed.

    In the report by Dame Louise Casey, it is revealed that the ‘pace of immigration in some areas has been too much’.

  • Theresa May’s government condemned for driving ‘more austerity and more racism’ after integration review

    Campaigners have condemned a review of integration for “adding to the politics of racism and scapegoating” after it called for immigrants to swear an oath to the UK and children to be taught “British values” in schools.

    Dame Louise Casey’s review, which was commissioned by the Government, found the country is becoming more divided amid growing “ethnic segregation” and that Muslim women in particular were being marginalised by limited English language skills.

  • Sorry, Louise Casey, but Muslim women are held back by discrimination

    Despite the fact that more British Muslim women than men are getting degrees, we are the most disenfranchised group in the country. Not only are we subject to high levels of unemployment and poverty, but discrimination on the basis of our faith, gender and ethnic background hinders our entry into the labour market.

  • Governor Vetoes Bill That Would Have Allowed Agencies To Withhold Names Of Officers Who Deploy Deadly Force

    Last month, Pennsylvania legislators wrapped up a little gift for the state’s law enforcement agencies: a bill that would have allowed agencies to withhold the names of officers involved in deployments of deadly force for at least 30 days. This was just the mandatory withholding window. The bill never stipulated a release date past that point, meaning “never” was also an acceptable time frame.

    The normal concerns for “officer safety” were given as the reason for the new opacity. Rather than see disclosure as an essential part of maintaining healthy relationships with the communities they served, law enforcement agencies saw disclosure as just another way to hurt already very well-protected officers.

    The DOJ itself — often a defender of entrenched police culture — recommended a 72-hour window for release of this information. State legislators, pushed by local police unions, felt constituents would be better served by being kept in the dark. Given the back-and-forth nature of public sentiment, it was unclear how Governor Tom Wolf would react to the passed proposal.

  • Theresa May urged to raise human rights concerns on Gulf visit

    Theresa May has been urged to confirm she will put human rights reform on her agenda when she meets Saudi and Bahraini leaders on Tuesday, after announcements on her two-day trip to the Gulf were squarely focused on trade and security.

    Rights campaigners in Bahrain argue that although the UK has been assisting Bahrain with judicial and police reform since 2012, current levels ofengagement on rights issues have not prevented crackdowns on journalists and pro-democracy activists in the country.

    May said: “I think the UK has always had the position, and we continue to have the position, that where there are issues raised about human rights, where there are concerns, we will rightly raise those.

  • The terrible human rights records of the countries Theresa May is having dinner with tonight

    Theresa May is visiting Bahrain to meet with leaders of Gulf states, who are in the country for a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

    She will attend a dinner with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman on Tuesday, before addressing the plenary session of the summit on Wednesday.

    The Prime Minister will use the visit to announce a new working group with regional nations to combat the financing of terrorists. The UK will provide three specialist cyber experts to the Gulf states to help deal with extremism.

  • Please, Theresa May, save my husband from death in Bahrain

    In 2014 Mohammed was arrested at Bahrain’s airport where he worked as a police officer. My husband believes in human rights, democracy and transparency. He attended peaceful marches in Bahrain calling for our government to respect these values. As a state employee, he knew that it was risky for him to go to these protests. But he believes in reform and so he went anyway.

    After Mohammed was taken into custody, our family heard nothing for four days – we had no idea where he was, or even if he was alive. Eventually, two weeks later, we were allowed to see him, but only with three guards watching us on a surveillance camera. As soon as we saw him, it was clear that Mohammed had been tortured by the security services.

    Mohammed seemed weak and exhausted, and his body was trembling; this suggested to us that he had been subjected to extreme torture. But no one would tell us the reasons for his arrest or the charges against him.

  • Angela Merkel Calls for Ban on Full-Face Veils in Germany

    To loud applause, Chancellor Angela Merkel told her party members on Tuesday that Germany should ban full-face veils “wherever legally possible” and that it would not tolerate any application of Shariah law over German justice.

    Accepting her party’s nomination as its candidate for another four-year term, the chancellor used the moment to broaden her stance on banning the veil, trying to deflect challenges from far-right forces that have made some of their deepest gains since World War II.

    In welcoming nearly one million asylum seekers to Germany a year ago, Ms. Merkel emerged as a powerful voice for tolerance across a Europe gripped by anxiety over waves of arriving migrants and fears of terrorism.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Will Donald Trump Dismantle the Internet as We Know It?

    Talking about net neutrality is so boring, the comedian John Oliver once quipped, that he would “rather listen to a pair of Dockers tell me about the weird dream it had” than delve into the topic.

    So it’s unsurprising that Donald Trump—an entertainer with a flair for the dramatic and little interest in wonky details—has stayed away from the issue almost entirely.

    If you want to captivate a nation, discussing thorny telecommunications policy is generally a terrible way to do it. (For those who have managed to avoid reading up on net neutrality thus far, the term refers to open-web principles aimed at curbing practices that give certain companies competitive advantages in how people access the internet. The FCC formally established rules last year that allow the agency to regulate broadband the way it oversees other public utilities. Those rules ban internet service providers from throttling—or slowing—connections to certain content online, and prohibit providers from offering faster connections to corporations that can afford to pay for premium web services. The rules also discourage zero-rating—in which an internet service provider subsidizes a consumer’s cost of going online but often does so in exchange for a competitive advantage.)

  • Millions in US still living life in Internet slow lane

    Millions of Americans still have extremely slow Internet speeds, a new Federal Communications Commission report shows. While the FCC defines broadband as download speeds of 25Mbps, about 47.5 million home or business Internet connections provided speeds below that threshold.

    Dealing with speeds a bit lower than the broadband standard isn’t too horrible, but there are still millions with speeds that just aren’t anywhere close to modern. Out of 102.2 million residential and business Internet connections, 22.4 million offered download speeds less than 10Mbps, with 5.8 million of those offering less than 3Mbps. About 25.1 million connections offered at least 10Mbps but less than 25Mbps.

    54.7 million households had speeds of at least 25Mbps, with 15.4 million of those at 100Mbps or higher. These are the advertised speeds, not the actual speeds consumers receive. Some customers will end up with slower speeds than what they pay for.

• DRM

  • W3C at a crossroads: technology standards setter or legal arms-dealer?

    The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an amazing, long-running open standards body that has been largely responsible for the web’s growth and vibrancy, creating open standards that lets anyone make web technology and become part of the internet ecosystem.

    Since 2013, the W3C has been working on a very different kind of standard: Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), designed to enable DRM for streaming video, is more than a technology standard. Thanks to US-propagated laws that give DRM makers the right to sue people who break DRM, even for legal purposes, EME will — for the first time in W3C history — give its members the power to sue security researchers, accessibility toolmakers, and competitors who improve EME implementations, regardless of whether these improvements enable copyright infringement or other illegal outcomes.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Pirate Bay Blocking Case Heads Back to Court in Sweden

      In 2015, a coalition of copyright holders lost a court case which demanded an ISP blockade of The Pirate Bay in Sweden. A year later and Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music and Nordisk Film are back, hoping for a victory in a brand new court that could open the floodgates for widespread website blocking.

    • Court: ‘Falsely’ Accused ‘Movie Pirate’ Deserves $17K Compensation

      An Oregon District Court has sided with a wrongfully accused man, who was sued for allegedly downloading a pirated copy of the Adam Sandler movie The Cobbler. According to the court’s recommendations, the man is entitled to more than $17,000 in compensation as the result of the filmmakers “overaggressive” and “unreasonable” tactics.

    • Wild Boys Sometimes Lose It: Duran Duran fail to reclaim their US copyright

      A few weeks after his eighteenth birthday, Duran Duran co-founder Nick Rhodes signed a music publishing agreement assigning his existing and future copyrights to a publisher, as did the other band members. None of them was aged more than 21 at the time.

    • Aussie Celebrities Join Campaign to Oppose Fair Use

      A campaign has been launched in Australia to prevent proposed changes to copyright law and the introduction of a “fair use” doctrine. Australia currently has a “fair dealing” provision but the royalties and anti-piracy group APRA AMCOS and its celebrity supporters are opposing rules that would provide more freedom.

    • Ten Years in Jail For UK Internet Pirates: How the New Bill Reads

      The Digital Economy Bill is currently at the report stage. It hasn’t yet become law and could still be amended. However, as things stand those who upload any amount of infringing content to the Internet could face up to 10 years in jail. With the latest bill now published, we take a look at how file-sharers could be affected.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• SHIFT + F10, Linux gets you Windows 10′s cleartext BitLocker key [Ed: BitLocker = back door]

  Microsoft is working on a patch for a bug or feature in Windows 10 that allowed access to the command line and, using a live Linux .ISO, made it possible steal BitLocker keys during OS updates.

  The command line interface bypasses BitLocker and permits access to local drives simply by tapping the Shift and F10 keys.

  BitLocker encryption is disabled as part of the Windows pre-installation environment.

• Server

  • OpenHPC Pedal Put To The Compute Metal

    The ultimate success of any platform depends on the seamless integration of diverse components into a synergistic whole – well, as much as is possible in the real world – while at the same time being flexible enough to allow for components to be swapped out and replaced by others to suit personal preferences.

  • Docker for AWS Public Beta

    Today, we’re announcing that Docker for AWS is graduating to public beta, just in time for AWS re:Invent. Docker for AWS is a great way for ops to setup and maintain secure and scalable Docker deployments on AWS.

  • Amazon Lightsail: The private server killer

    Hosting companies, and their virtualized descendants — virtual private server companies such as Bluehost, Digital Ocean, and Linode — provide remote servers for developers, websites, and businesses needing other internet services. They continue to be very popular with small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) that can’t afford or don’t need a data center or public cloud services.

  • Trouble in paradise: Is the open-source community planning a revolt against Amazon?

    Things just keep looking up for Amazon. Attendance at this year’s AWS re:Invent conference broke the record; enterprise giants like McDonald’s are singing its praises on the keynote stage; and it has announced roughly 1,000 upcoming features and updates. And yet some foresee adversity ahead from both users and ecosystem players.

    Stu Miniman (@stu), co-host of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, described the conference and Amazon’s announcements as “an embarrassment of riches.” With difficulty, he picked a handful of favorites, among them Greengrass.

    “Greengrass is how Amazon is taking their server-less architecture, really Lambda, and they’re taking it beyond the cloud,” he said. He explained that this technology has huge promise for IoT, which still struggles with the physics of moving data around. “They talked about the ‘snowball edge,’ which is going to allow me to have kind of compute and storage down at that edge,” he stated.

• Kernel Space

  • MSM-Next Prepares Adreno A5xx Support For Linux 4.10

    On Tuesday was the MSM-Next submission by Red Hat developer Rob Clark of these Freedreno MSM changes to be sent to mainline for the Linux 4.10 kernel.

    Notable with this MSM-Next pull request is the addition of Qualcomm Adreno A5xx support. Adreno A500 series support coming to this open-source driver stack was covered earlier this week in Qualcomm Adreno A5xx Open-Source Driver Bringup For Freedreno.

  • DRMFS Pseudo File-System Proposed

    Intel developers are proposing the introduction of a new pseudo file-system intended as a better fit for Direct Rendering Manager drivers rather than the mix of sysfs/debugfs usage currently used.

  • Graphics Stack

    • NVIDIA GTX 680 To GTX 1080 Blender OpenCL Benchmarks

      For this article are benchmarks of 13 Kepler/Maxwell/Pascal NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards when testing Blender 2.78′s OpenCL renderer. Unfortunately, no AMD OpenCL benchmarks for Blender yet — the current open-source stack doesn’t work until ROCm OpenCL support comes into play and the AMDGPU-PRO stack wasn’t working for Blender OpenCL but was falling back to CPU rendering.

    • Amazon Working On EC2 Linux OpenGL Support, Considering Vulkan

      Amazon Web Services today revealed more information about their EC2 Elastic GPUs support they are working to implement in the cloud.

      Amazon’s Elastic GPUs will be offered in four different tiers and range in GPU memory capacity from 1GB to 8GB. They also revealed their work on an Amazon-optimized OpenGL library for Elastic GPUs. They shared that initially there is just Windows support for OpenGL but they are working to support Amazon Linux AMI with their OpenGL implementation. They are also looking at Vulkan support (and DirectX too, sadly).

    • Vivante Gallium3D Driver Proposed For Mainline Mesa + Render-Only Gallium Library

      Fresh from the libdrm 2.4.74 release that had some Etnaviv API changes, the Etnaviv Gallium3D driver has been proposed for mainline Mesa as the open-source, reverse-engineered 3D effort for Vivante graphics cores.

    • Initial XWayland Window Positioning Support For Weston

    • Amlogic Meson VPU DRM Driver In The Works

      A new DRM driver is being baked for supporting the video processing unit for Amlogic Meson SoCs.

    • Plans Emerge For Releasing Mesa 13.1

      Mesa release manager Emil Velikov has laid out his draft of a release schedule for the next major Mesa release.

      Emil has proposed that Mesa 13.1 be officially released around 3 February, but for that to happen the feature freeze and RC1 would be on 13 January followed by weekly release candidates until declaring it ready. This proposed Mesa 13.1 release schedule was laid out today on Mesa-dev.

    • Multiseat systems and the NVIDIA binary driver

      Ever since our school switched to Fedora on the desktop, I’ve either used the onboard Intel graphics or AMD Radeon cards, since both are supported out of the box in Fedora. With our multiseat systems, we now need three external video cards on top of the onboard graphics on each system, so we’ve bought a large number of Radeon cards over the last few years.

• Applications

  • Ardour 5.5 released

    Ardour 5.5 is now available, with a variety of new features and many notable and not-so-notable fixes. Among the notable new features are support for VST 2.4 plugins on OS X, the ability to have MIDI input follow MIDI track selection, support for Steinberg CC121, Avid Artist & Artist Mix Control surfaces, “fanning out” of instrument outputs to new tracks/busses and the often requested ability to do horizontal zoom via vertical dragging on the rulers. There are also the usual always-ongoing improvements to scripting and OSC support.

  • Ardour 5.5 Digital Audio Workstation Released

  • Kodi 17 “Krypton” Beta 6 Improves Support for ASS Subtitles, Fixes Memory Leaks

    The development cycle of the upcoming Kodi 17 “Krypton” media center continues, and a new Beta release has been announced on November 30, 2016, which attempts to address even more bugs and issues reported by users.

    Arriving a month after the fifth Beta development release, Kodi 17 Beta 6 fixes a total of 20 problems, including a possible EPG lock up, a memory leak with ASS subtitles, as well as several regular ones across all supported platforms, multiple issue in the CMake build system, and a potential memory leak in the image handling functionality.

  • MKVToolNix 9.6.0 MKV Manipulation Tool Adds Support for HDMV TextST Subtitles

    The last day of November 2016 brought us a new maintenance release of the popular, free, open-source, and cross-platform MKVToolNix MKV (Matroska) manipulation tool, version 9.6.0.

    Dubbed “Slave To Your Mind,” MKVToolNix 9.6.0 is here one and a half months after the 9.5.0 milestone, but it doesn’t look like it’s a major version. In fact, there are only eight changes implemented in MKVToolNix 9.6.0, and among the most important ones, there’s a fix for an endless loop issue in the mkvmerge component when appending files.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Installing flatpaks gets easier in Fedora 25

    • Speedup Ansible

    • The pitfalls of using ssh-agent, or how to use an agent safely

    • Adding a Simple GUI to Linux shell scripts with kdialog

    • Stepping into Science

    • LPI Announces ‘Open Technology’ DevOps Engineer Certification

    • How to check if AES-NI is enabled for OpenSSL on Linux

    • Virtual Alias Domain in Postfix

    • Redirect Website Requests Based on the Browser Used (Chrome, Firefox or IE)

    • Logging: change your mind

    • Remote Logging With Syslog, Part 1: The Basics

    • Federating Your Kubernetes Clusters — The New Road to Hybrid Clouds

    • How to install VirtualBox Guest Additions on a GUI-less Ubuntu server host

  • Games

    • Solitude, a short game about leaving everything behind, it looks bizarre

    • ‘Kingdoms and Castles’ looks like a really great city-builder that’s coming to Linux

      Kingdoms and Castles [fig, Greenlight, Official Site] is a city-building game set in what looks like middle ages. It has some really cute graphics and it’s confirmed for a Linux release.

    • The GOG winter sale has begun, you can get Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition free

      While Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition is a Windows game on GOG, it was ported to Linux a long time ago. You can find details here on how to install it. If that doesn’t work you can always try Wine.

    • Angeldust, a free to play and Early Access sandbox RPG supports Linux

      Angeldust [Steam, Official Site] is a late night discovery after trawling through Steam around midnight last night. It’s free to play, looks amusing with the colourful cartoon-like characters so I gave it a go.

    • Meet ‘Vilmonic’, the pixel styled artificial life simulator, it’s quite sweet

    • What one game would blow your mind if it came to Linux & SteamOS?

    • Nearly 4 years later, Steam still won’t close to the tray icon on Linux without workarounds

      In January 2017 it will be 4 years since a bug report was opened about Steam not closing to the tray on Linux. On Windows it works perfectly, but on Linux it has been left to gather dust like so many other issues.

      Essentially, the way Steam is setup is that both the Minimize and Close buttons do the same thing: minimize the application. The close button should close it to the tray/indicator but it just minimizes it instead.

    • Anima Gate of Memories, a third person action RPG is now on Linux, some quick thoughts

      I have been waiting for this one! Anima Gate of Memories [Steam, Official Site] looks fantastic and we don’t have many good third person action RPG.

      It was going to be a day-1 release originally, but the developers stated they needed a little more time to polish it up. They have delivered ~6 months later, but it’s better late than never for us!

    • Explosive top down shooter ‘Kick Ass Commandos’ leaves Early Access on Steam, demo available

    • Stratus: Battle For The Sky, an RTS styled like the classic Netstorm Islands at War & it’s coming to Linux

      Stratus: Battle For The Sky [Steam, Official Site] looks like a pretty great RTS game, as a fan of the classic Netstorm Islands at War I am looking forward to this different form of strategy game coming to Linux.

    • Kith: Tales From the Fractured Plateaus, a free short adventure made on Linux

      The creator of Maker’s Eden, Screwy Lightbulb, is developing a new series of short adventures called Kith: Tales From the Fractured Plateaus. The series is set in a world called Kith. The first game in this series has been released on Linux for free on Itch.io.

    • Checking out the parody action platformer ‘Cyber Chicken’, to see if it’s worth your monies

    • It’s All Aboard for Linux Gamers at The Final Station

      The developers of The Final Station, recognizing the growing market for the post-apocalyptic train ride in the open source community, have made their hot-selling title available for the Linux OS.

      The indie game, which Do My Best Games and TinyBuild launched for PC, Mac, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 this summer, became available for Linux last week.

      Although the post-civilization genre is fairly crowded space, the zombie-killing horror ride has earned generally positive reviews from veteran games critics, who appreciated its narrative and level of detail.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Qt Creator 4.2 RC1 released

      We are happy to announce the release of Qt Creator 4.2 RC1.

      Since the release of the Beta, we’ve been busy with polishing things and fixing bugs. Just to name a few:

      We fixed that the run button could spuriously stay disabled after parsing QMake projects.
      Qt Creator is no longer blocked while the iOS Simulator is starting up.
      We added preliminary support for MSVC2017 (based on its RC).

      For an overview of the new features in 4.2 please head over to the Beta release blog post. See our change log for a more detailed view on what has changed.

    • Qt Creator 4.2 RC1 Released

    • Akademy 2017 ‒ Call for Hosts

      Akademy, KDE’s annual conference, requires a place and team for the year 2017. That’s why we are looking for a vibrant, enthusiatic spot in Europe that can host us!

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • GNOME Core Apps Hackfest 2016

      Last weekend I attended the GNOME Core Apps hackfest that I helped organize here in Berlin.

      It was the first time I participated in a Core Apps hackfest and I must say I am really glad with how it all went. I felt like there was a perfect balance of planning, working, and just hanging out together. If you want to know more about the planned items, check out this very complete post by Carlos Soriano.

    • Core Apps Hackfest

      Last weekend I attended the Core Apps hackfest in Berlin. This was a reboot of the Content Apps hackfest we held last year around the same time of year, with a slightly broader focus. One motivation behind these events was to try and make sure that GNOME has a UX focused event in Europe at the beginning of the Autumn/Spring development cycle, since this is a really good time to come together and plan what we want to work on for the next GNOME version.

• Distributions

  • Zorin OS 12 Improves Linux Desktop Access for Windows Users

    There is a seemingly endless variety of Linux distributions in the marketplace, each attempting to carve out its own unique market niche. Zorin OS is one such flavor — a desktop-focused Linux distribution with the goal of helping Windows and macOS users to make the transition to Linux. Zorin OS 12, its latest milestone release, became generally available Nov. 18. Among the improvements in the new release is the updated Zorin Desktop 2.0, based on the open-source Gnome Shell. The new desktop provides users with redesigned icons and a new look for windows and navigation. A feature of Zorin worth noting is the ability to configure the desktop using Zorin Appearance, a tool that provides configurable options for layout, theme, fonts and panel display. Zorin OS also aims to help make the transition from Windows easier by directly integrating the Wine software compatibility layer, which enables many different types of Windows applications to run natively on Linux. Additionally, the included PlayOnLinux tool provides Zorin OS users with a menu of games, internet and office applications that can be installed easily. This slide show covers some of the key highlights of the Zorin OS 12 release.

  • Reviews

    • An Everyday Linux User Review Of Q4OS – Part 2

      So now I have all the software I need installed, all hardware setup and running and I am using Q4OS on a daily basis.

      As an operating system I am finding the performance is extremely good and everything is extremely stable.

      Check out this guide which shows how to make Q4OS look like Windows XP, 2000, 7, 8 and 10.

    • Make Q4OS Look Like Windows With XPQ4

      Many Linux distributions over the years have tried to look like Windows including Lindows, to a certain extent Linux Mint and of course Zorin OS.

      Q4OS with the XPQ4 theme is definitely the one that has achieved the best results.

      Zorin OS looks to be moving in a slightly different direction now and I have just installed version 12 as a dual boot to Q4OS so a review will be coming shortly.

      I could have made my experience with XPQ4 better by installing the ttf-mscorefonts-installer package from Synaptic.

  • New Releases

    • Ubuntu-Based Trisquel GNU/Linux 8.0 “Flidas” Enters Development with MATE 1.12.1

      The development team behind Trisquel GNU/Linux, a 100% libre distribution based on the Ubuntu Linux operating system, announced the availability of the first Alpha images for the upcoming Trisquel GNU/Linux 8.0 release.

    • Trisquel 8 alpha iso has been released!

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

    • Mageia was at The Paris Open Source Summit 2016

      The 2016 POSS (Paris Open Source Summit, on Nov 16 & 17) was a great event for Mageia and its 3 representatives who ran the booth: Dtux, Magnux77 and Lebarhon.

  • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • SUSE buys HPE’s OpenStack and Cloud Foundry assets

      SUSE, which probably is best known for its Linux distribution, has long been a quiet but persistent player in the OpenStack ecosystem. Over the last few months, though, the German company has also emerged as one of the stronger competitors in this world, especially now that we are seeing a good bit of consolidation around OpenStack.

      Today, SUSE announced that it is acquiring OpenStack and Cloud Foundry (the Platform-as-a-Service to OpenStack’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service) assets and talent from the troubled HPE. This follows HPE’s decision to sell off (or “spin-merge” in HPE’s own language) its software business (including Autonomy, which HP bought for $11 billion, followed by a $9 billion write-off) to Micro Focus. And to bring this full circle: Micro Focus also owns SUSE, and SUSE is now picking up HPE’s OpenStack and Cloud Foundry assets.

    • SUSE acquires HPE OpenStack and Cloud Foundry assets

    • Partners: HPE OpenStack And Cloud Foundry Software Sale To SUSE Puts Focus Squarely On Next Generation Hardware

    • SUSE buys OpenStack, Cloud Foundry technology from HPE

    • HPE-SUSE aims to help OpenStack customers do more in hybrid cloud | #HPEDiscover

    • SUSE Acquires HPE’s OpenStack, Cloud Foundry Assets

    • SUSE Acquires OpenStack IaaS and Cloud Foundry PaaS Talent and Technology Assets from HPE to Accelerate Growth and Entry into New Markets

    • HPE Selling OpenStack & Cloud Foundry Assets to SUSE

    • SUSE acquires OpenStack Iaas and Cloud Foundry PaaS from HPE

    • Cloud Foundry Welcomes SUSE as Platinum Member

    • SUSE acquires OpenStack and Cloud Foundry assets from HPE

    • ‘Significant’ number of HPE OpenStackers flung to SUSE

    • HPE Dumps OpenStack, Cloud Foundry Assets Onto SUSE

    • SUSE Acquires HPE OpenStack Cloud Technology and Talent

      HPE sells its OpenStack cloud and Cloud Foundry Platform-as-a-Service technologies to SUSE.

      Linux vendor SUSE is acquiring OpenStack cloud and Cloud Foundry Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) technology and staff from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in a deal announced on November 30. Financial terms of the acquisition are not being publicly disclosed and the deal is set to close in the first quarter of 2017.

    • Tumbleweed Gets 4.8.10 Kernel, Updates for Virtualbox, VIM

      November brought openSUSE Tumbleweed users an early holiday gift with 24 snapshots of new software and four updated Linux Kernels.

      The continuous snapshot streak of Tumbleweed updates ended with snapshot 20161123, which brought Kernel 4.8.10.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat Gift Spurs Open-Source Ideas At Duke

      Kaylyn McGuyrt of Wake Forest, North Carolina, lost her arm in an ATV accident. She now has a clinical-grade prosthetic arm, but many aspects of her job as a cake decorator — from spinning a cake stand to rolling out fondant — are difficult.

      Thanks to a new collaboration between Red Hat, Inc., and Duke University, Duke students are designing a new prosthetic that will help the 26-year-old in her work and other daily tasks.

    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat OpenShift now support .NET Core 1.1 [Ed: Microsoft embracing and ‘extending’ Red Hat]

      Red Hat continues to support enterprises looking to use .NET in Linux environments with the addition of .NET Core 1.1 to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.

      When Microsoft and Red Hat first established a relationship in November 2015, Red Hat was able to expand its preview of .NET on Linux, which gave developers access to .NET technologies across Red Hat’s offerings.

    • Finance

      • Notable Stock Analyst Ratings: Red Hat Inc (RHT), Digital Realty Trust (DLR)

      • Stocks within investor Spotlight: CenturyLink, Inc. (NYSE:CTL) , Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

      • What Is the Price Target Range For Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) Stock?

      • Levels in Review for Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

      • Rosenblatt Securities Initiates Coverage on Red Hat Inc. (RHT)

      • Analyst Upside Underscores Impressive Growth for Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

      • Trading Scope: ADX and CCI Review for Red Hat Inc. (RHT)

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 25 makes Linux easy enough for anyone to try

        When I got the heads-up that Red Hat was readying the release of Fedora 25, it caught my attention like any new release of a major Linux distribution would. But I was in for a pleasant surprise when I went to download a copy of the image.

        The first thing to know about the new version of Fedora is that you don’t have to download an ISO file and write it to a USB stick. This is an important thing to note, as preparing installation media for Linux is one of the bigger hurdles for newbies. (When I say newbies, I think of my mom trying to download and properly burn a USB image.)

      • Fedora 25 GNOME 3 screenshots

        Fedora 25 is the latest edition of the Linux distribution published by the Fedora Project, which is sponsored by Red Hat, Inc. The Fedora Project supports many desktop environments, including Cinnamon, GNOME 3, KDE, LXDE, MATE and Xfce, but the main edition uses the GNOME 3 desktop environment in its default configuration.

      • Fedora 25 Cinnamon screenshots

      • Fedora 25 KDE screenshots

  • Debian Family

    • Creating a team for netfilter packages in debian

      There are about 15 Netfilter packages in Debian, and they are maintained by separate people.

      Yersterday, I contacted the maintainers of the main packages to propose the creation of a pkg-netfilter team to maintain all the packages together.

    • Derivatives

      • New Devuan Beta, Sharket Mare, 2016 Predictions

        Not even 24 hours after my saying there hasn’t been a new Devuan release since April, the project released Beta 2 for 32 and 64-bit machines. Elsewhere, Jeremy Garcia celebrates 16 years of LinuxQuestions.org and writer-blogger Bruce Byfield today said that Linux and its application are commercial grade despite what some may think. The Ubuntu 17.04 release schedule was posted and Canonical has approved Snaps sans dependencies.

      • Systemd-Free Debian Fork Devuan Releases Its Second Beta

      • Devuan GNU/Linux Continues Its Vision of Providing Debian Without Systemd

        It appears that the developers behind the Debian-based Devuan GNU/Linux operating system continue to pursue their vision of providing a libre Debian fork without the systemd init system.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Canonical offers direct Docker support to Ubuntu users

        • Docker and Canonical partner on CS Docker Engine for millions of Ubuntu users

        • Docker, Canonical Team Up on CS Docker Engine for Ubuntu

          When it comes to containers, Canonical has been early to make many of the right moves. The company was one one of the first to weave in platform support for Docker, which is partly significant because the majority of OpenStack deployments are built on Ubuntu.

          Now, Docker and Canonical have announced an integrated Commercially Supported (CS) Docker Engine offering on Ubuntu, meant to provide Canonical customers with a single path for support of the Ubuntu operating system and CS Docker Engine in enterprise Docker operations.

        • Ubuntu devs can now build Snaps without dependencies

          To encourage app distribution advancements, Canonical is now letting Ubuntu app developers build their Snaps without bundling their dependencies. The new support comes through the ubuntu-app-platform snap that has just been reached the Ubuntu Software store.

        • Canonical Releases New Kernel Live Patch Security Update for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

          On November 30, 2016, after publishing new kernel updates for all of its supported Ubuntu Linux releases, Canonical, through Luis Henriques, announced the availability of the second kernel live patch security update to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

        • Four New Kernel Vulnerabilities Patched in All Supported Ubuntu OSes, Update Now

• Devices/Embedded

  • First open source RISC-V chips arrive in Arduino board

    SiFive’s Arduino ready “HiFive1” dev kit features its 320MHz FE310, the first MCU using the open RISC-V ISA. Also, Samsung is rumored to be using RISC-V.

    In July, San Francisco-based startup SiFive unveiled the first SoCs based on the open source RISC-V platform: A Linux-ready octa-core Freedom U500 and a FreeRTOS-based Freedom E300. Now, the company has gone to Crowd Supply to sell an open source, Arduino compatible HiFive1 development board based on the FE300 that it claims is the fastest Arduino compatible in the world, 10 times faster even than Intel’s Arduino 101.

  • Raspberry Pi Foundation Disables SSH in Raspbian PIXEL’s Latest Security Update

    Raspberry Pi Foundation, through Simon Long, announces that a security update is now available for the PIXEL desktop environment of the company’s Debian-based Raspbian operating system for Raspberry Pi single-board computers.

  • MIRACLE LINUX CORPORATION Announces Results of Research and Development Specific to the Use of FPGA Within Enterprise and IoT Environments

  • Phones

    • Nokia MeeGo reborn: Jolla’s Sailfish OS emerges as Russia’s anti-Android choice

    • Russian government certifies Jolla’s Sailfish OS as first official Android alternative

    • Sailfish OS Receives Certification for Government and Corporate Use in Russia

    • Jolla Sailfish OS gets certified for Russian government use

    • Linux-based Sailfish OS Becomes Russia’s Official Mobile Operating System

    • Jolla says Sailfish gets Russian government approval

    • Russian Government To Use Jolla’s SailFish As Alternative OS In Moblies

    • Russia Avoids Android To Secure Its Smartphone Future

    • Russian Government Approves The Use Of Sailfish OS

    • Russian Government Will Exclusively Use Sailfish OS Moving Foward

    • Jolla Sailfish Becomes Official Mobile OS In Russia, BRICS Countries Next

    • Russian government turns to the ghost of Nokia’s mobile OS

    • Jolla’s Sailfish OS now certified as Russian government’s first ‘Android alternative’

    • Russia certifies Jolla’s Sailfish OS for government, corporate use

    • Sailfish picks up Russian support

    • Sailfish OS approved by Russia for official governmental and corporate use

    • Android competitor Sailfish becomes official OS of Russian Government

    • Sailfish OS becomes mobile OS of choice for Russian government

    • Putin likes Sailfish

    • Jolla Sailfish – an alternative to Android

    • Russia Breaks OS Monopoly, Goes With Jolla’s Sailfish OS For Mobile Device Projects

    • Russia Is Planning To Embrace Jolla’s Sailfish OS To Counter Android

    • Jolla’s Mobile Sailfish OS Gets A Break In Russia With Certification As The Government’s ‘Android Alternative’

    • Jolla’s Sailfish OS has been accepted for use by Russia’s government

    • Jolla’s Sailfish OS Set to Defend Russia’s Official Government Business

    • Jolla’s Sailfish OS Obtained Domestic Certification In Russia

    • Jolla’s Sailfish OS Gets Russian Certification

    • Android

      • Donald Trump’s smartphone is a risk to US national security, warn experts

      • Trump’s “Hackable” Android Phone Is A Security Threat To The US — Experts Warn

      • Report: Donald Trump’s Android Phone Is A Security Risk

      • Donald Trump’s personal phone could be a major security risk, experts warn

      • President Donald Trump’s Android Phone Could Easily Be Hacked, Experts Warn

      • The real effect Google’s Pixel phone is having on Android

        If there’s one thing worth remembering about Google’s Pixel phone, it’s that the device itself — what we see on the surface — is but one piece of a much larger puzzle.

        We’ve talked before about how the Pixel is more than the sum of its parts. The phone effectively lets Google have its cake and eat it, too — by leaving Android open to manufacturers while also providing a holistic Google-controlled version of what an Android device ought to be.

      • Over 1 Million Google Accounts Hacked by ‘Gooligan’ Android Malware [Ed: Don’t install random crap on your phone and things will be fine]

      • Android Pay comes to New Zealand

      • The Coolest Features You Can Unlock in Android’s Developer Options

      • Hangouts v15 adds GIF keyboard support on Android 7.1 [APK Download]

      • Huawei Mate 9 gets major software update as release nears

      • IDC’s forecast: Android’s 2016 market share to be 85%, iOS’ 14.3%