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11.19.16

Links 19/11/2016: KDE Applications 16.12 Beta, Zorin OS 12

Posted in News Roundup at 1:56 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Ubuntu Mate, Windows 10 and macOS Sierra: A marriage of 3 OSs

      I gave myself a little gift recently and revisited Ubuntu Mate by virtue of a transplanted hard disk.

      In my case, Mate was a gift that was giving and giving until it wasn’t.

      When the eMachines T6528 went belly up due to leaky logic board capacitors, I parted this tank of a tower out, half-heartedly vowing to get back to this low-footprint Linux distribution as soon as I could.

      Fast forward several months and with some precious free time on my hands, I was finally able to make good on the promise.

  • Server

    • Cloud Native: Service-driven Operations that Save Money, Increase IT Flexibility

      I obsess about operations. I think it started when I was a department IT manager at a financial services institute. It was appallingly difficult to get changes deployed into production and the cost of change was spectacularly high. It felt like there had to be a better way, and most every decision I have made professionally since 2008 has led me to work on technology that makes that guy or gal’s life easier.

    • Planning Microservices: Know the Tradeoffs With Monolithic Design

      By now, you no doubt understand the advantages of using a microservices architecture, especially in greenfield applications and in new organizations that need to achieve efficiencies wherever they can. But what about your legacy code and applications? Do you totally rewrite the monolith or do you chip away at it with new functionalities, added as microservices, over time?

    • Docker Containers and Synnex Distribution? Oh My

      In a quiet corner at the Synnex Varnex conference, Rob Moyer is pulling back the curtain — just a bit — on the Synnex CloudSolv strategy for channel partners. The conversation with ChannelE2E includes some familiar themes. But there are also some surprises — including a serious bet on container technology and Docker.

      Synnex CloudSolv is a management and deployment platform that helps channel partners to activate cloud solutions for their end-customers. Moyer, VP of software and cloud services at Synnex, isn’t pursuing a toe-to-toe cloud marketplace battle against Ingram Micro, Tech Data and other distributors. Instead of vetting hundreds of software and SaaS solutions for online distribution, Moyer discreetly but purposely made a few strategic bets — including Docker, Microsoft Office 365, Google G Suite (particularly for education) and Red Hats.

    • 5 Common Myths about Containers

      Containers are faster. Containers work only on Linux. Containers are insecure. These are all examples of myths about Docker and other container platforms that continue to persist.

      Some of these misconceptions reflect popular misunderstandings of containers. Others are based on information that was once accurate, but is no longer true. Either way, these myths are important to clear up if you want to deploy containers effectively.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Ships Beta of KDE Applications 16.12

        Today KDE released the beta of the new versions of KDE Applications. With dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team’s focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing.

        Check the community release notes for information on new tarballs, tarballs that are now KF5 based and known issues. A more complete announcement will be available for the final release

        The KDE Applications 16.12 releases need a thorough testing in order to maintain and improve the quality and user experience. Actual users are critical to maintaining high KDE quality, because developers simply cannot test every possible configuration. We’re counting on you to help find bugs early so they can be squashed before the final release. Please consider joining the team by installing the beta and reporting any bugs.

      • KDE Applications 16.12 Enters Beta Testing, Final Release Arrives on December 15

        Today, November 18, 2016, KDE announced the availability for public testing of the Beta build of the upcoming KDE Applications 16.12 software suite for KDE Plasma 5 desktop environments.

        As reported last week, the KDE Applications 16.08 series reached end of life with the third and last maintenance update, versioned 16.08.3, which means that work begun on the next major branch, KDE Applications 16.12, which you can now take for a test drive using today’s Beta release.

      • KDE Applications 16.12 Now In Beta

        KDE Applications 16.12 is now in beta while this collection of KDE software is under a dependency and feature freeze ahead of next month’s official release.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Zorin OS 12 Core and Ultimate Are Here: Our Biggest Release Ever

        We’re proud to announce the availability of the Zorin OS 12 Core and Ultimate–the biggest release in the history of Zorin OS. With this new version, we’ve introduced an entirely new desktop experience that will make your computer more useful, more powerful and more enjoyable to use.

      • Zorin OS 12 Officially Released, the Biggest Release Ever of the Linux Distro

        The guys behind the Ubuntu-based Zorin OS Linux operating system were proud to announce the general availability of the final release of Zorin OS 12, which comes in both Core and Ultimate flavors.

        Zorin OS 12 is the result of many months of hard work, and it looks like it’s the project’s biggest release ever. The GNU/Linux distribution is now based on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, it’s powered by the long-term supported Linux 4.4 kernel, and ships with the Zorin Desktop 2.0 desktop environment.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the Week 2016/46

        Now this is a week I call fully rolling. There was a full 7 snapshots since the last review – which is about the maximum we can do in a week with one snapshot per day (or we have to change the versioning to not be only ‘date’ based). So, this review is about the snapshots {20161110..20161116}.

      • When Trying Out Tumbleweed, It’s Easy To See Why OpenSUSE Leap Disabled Nouveau

        I’ve been running some fresh benchmarks of the recently released openSUSE Leap 42.2 compared to the rolling-release openSUSE Tumbleweed and friends. Those benchmarks will be posted shortly, but after using the Nouveau experience on Tumbleweed I found the need to comment.

      • OpenSUSE 42.2 Merges Best Features of Enterprise, Community Models

        In the world of Linux distributions, users are often faced with the option of choosing an enterprise-grade distribution or a community distribution. With the openSUSE Leap approach, SUSE is attempting to merge the best of both the enterprise and community models into a new type of Linux distribution. In the pure community-first model the upstream open-source code is packaged in a distribution, which can then be further hardened to eventually produce an enterprise-grade Linux product. The open-source openSUSE Leap 42.2 Linux distribution became generally available on Nov. 16 and takes a different approach. Code from the SUSE Linux Enterprise Service Pack 2 release, which debuted on Nov. 8, is now in the freely available openSUSE Leap 42.2 update. As part of its enterprise community stability focus, openSUSE Leap benefits from the Linux 4.4 Long Term Support Kernel (LTS). SUSE expects to support openSUSE Leap releases for 36 months. The new release also includes the latest in open-source application packages with LibreOffice and Firefox as well as developer and graphics tools. This slide show eWEEK takes a look at some of the features in the new openSUSE 42.2 Linux operating system release.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Permabit pulls on Red Hat, opens arms for a Linux cuddle

        The Mad Hatter of Linux is getting Alice in Wonderland style physical space virtualisation with thin provisioning, compression and deduplication courtesy of Permabit.

        Building on its June 2016 Linux availability announcement, Permabit and Red Hat have a go-to-market partnership based on the former’s Albireo deduplication and HIOPS compression technology being added as a kernel module to Red Hat Linux. Up until now dedupe and compression have largely been storage array features, and then appearing in software-only storage running on servers and direct-attached disks, SSDs or JBODs.

      • Red Hat CEO on Microsoft, Google, and Cutting Edge Software

        Even among technology companies, Red Hat has to stand out as one of the geekiest firms in the business.

        The enterprise company offers services and support around the Linux open-source operating system, which non-techies can think of as a free equivalent of Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s MacOS. Developers and IT operators, however, regard Linux as more than just a free service: It’s the underpinning of some of the most popular apps and software used today.

        For instance, if you’ve ordered a car ride from Uber or bought digital storage from Amazon, it’s likely Linux OS was in a corporate data center somewhere along the line, making sure the appropriate software was chugging along.

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Introducing Fedora Hubs

          The goal of the Fedora Hubs project is to provide a consistent contributor experience across all Fedora teams. Hubs serve as an “intranet” for the Fedora Project. The many different projects in Fedora each have different processes and workflows. Hubs will be a single place where contributors can learn about and contribute to these projects in a consistent way.

          Hubs is also a social tool for Fedora contributors. It’s designed to help you keep up with everything and everybody across a big open source project in ways that aren’t currently possible. Hubs solves obstacles so new contributors can get in touch with experienced ones.

          Do you want to learn more about the history behind Hubs? Fedora Design team lead Máirín Duffy wrote a few blog posts on the progress of Hubs.

        • Fedora Loves Python at SeaGL 2016

          The Seattle GNU/Linux conference, SeaGL, intentionally attracts a variety of attendees, students from Seattle Central College, local Linux enthusiasts, curious neighbors, and programmers from big software companies, indies and start-ups. About 500 people attended the exhibits and talks on the two days. The exhibit area was closed for the keynotes so I saw Corey Quinn tell us the Art of Personal Failure and Allison Randal presented Free as in Freedom. Bill Wright received the Cascadia Community Builder Award for his efforts building LinuxFest NorthWest.

        • Flock Stories 2016, Episode 4: Matthew Miller

          Today’s guest is Matthew Miller (mattdm)! He’s a long-time Fedora user and contributor, as well as the founder of Boston University Linux. However, perhaps most important of all, he is the current Fedora Project Leader! In this interview, we ask Matthew questions like…

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Tails 3.0 Anonymous Live OS to Be Based on Debian 9 “Stretch”, Require 64-bit PC

          A few days after the announcement of Tails 2.7, the development team behind the popular amnesic incognito live system based on Debian GNU/Linux unveiled a few technical details about the next major release.

          Yes, we’re talking about Tails 3.0, which is now in development and appears to be the next major update of the anonymous live OS that ex-CIA employee Edward Snowden used to protect his identity online. Tails is a Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution built around the popular Tor anonymity network and Tor Browser anonymous browser.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • This Ubuntu Linux laptop packs a 4K display and Nvidia’s beastly GeForce GTX 1070

            System76’s Ubuntu-based Oryx Pro is a Linux laptop loaded with features also found in some of the fastest Windows laptops.

            The Oryx Pro can be the ultimate Linux gaming laptop. It can be configured with a 15.6-inch 4K screen and Nvidia’s latest Pascal GeForce GTX 1070 GPU.

            The laptop with those features starts at $1,987, and goes higher as more storage and memory are added. The ultimate 4K Oryx Pro configuration with 9TB of SSD storage prices out at $7,012. It comes preloaded with Ubuntu 16.04 or 16.10.

          • Ubuntu Core 16 Enables Snappy IoT

            Ubuntu Core 16 is now available. It is a tiny, transactional implementation of Ubuntu Linux that targets embedded applications such as the Internet of Things (IoT). It uses a new packaging system with modules called snaps that include metadata about their connectivity and interface requirements (Fig. 1).

            A snap can have one or more interfaces that are either a plug or a slot providing connections between snaps. A snap exists as a read-only, immutable, compressed squashFS blob, while an instance also includes a private, writeable directory. Communication with the operating system services uses the interface mechanism. Snaps can be given access to other directories.

          • Ubuntu Core [Comic]

            Nowadays, Linux processes are forever in conflict. Is there somewhere out there for them to live together in harmony… perhaps by separating them via full resource isolation?

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source Solves and Supports Today’s Business Needs

    Open source is free software that developers make available to benefit the community. The original developer of the software benefits from making their code freely available because doing so increases the number of end users with the ability to enhance the software. These enhancements can make the software more valuable for all. Some examples of open source software include Android, Wikipedia, Mozilla Firefox, WordPress and Drupal.

  • Calendar sharing in the XXIth century

    But the point is this one: It is 2016 and shared calendars that should be simple and straightforward are both complex and obscure. People should not think twice about what to use: they should be able to share their calendars seamlessly, post it online, move from one provider to another with very little hassle. Instead of this most are locked in and when they want to move to another provider the notion that they should learn about the various calendar sharing protocols is simply outlandish.

  • Can Node.js Scale? Ask the Team at Alibaba

    Alibaba is arguably the world’s biggest online commerce company. It serves millions of users and hosts millions of merchants and businesses. As of August 2016, Alibaba had 434 million users with 427 million active mobile monthly users. During this year’s Singles Day, which happened on November 11 and is one of the (if not the) biggest online sales events, Alibaba registered $1 billion in sales in its first five minutes.

  • Five Tenets of Thriving with Open Source without Risking Your Business

    Vendors, university researchers, students, and developers find that open source is a very effective tool for validating a solution to a particular problem. However, these solutions are often born within the context of a specific company’s use case or a specific research problem. Therefore, these projects are similar to code built in the context of a professional services engagement and often don’t have the polish and finish of an enterprise product. Some may not even have solved basic enterprise requirements like availability, resilience, security, and so on.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Back End

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • A New Tool for LibreOffice

      Tony Get, my colleague, showed me an interesting tool available in Android: it’s an app to turn your Android device into a remote control to work with your LibreOffice Impress presentations. It is called Impress Remote and it is very easy to use.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Funding

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • GDS Appoints Anna Shipman As Open Source Lead

      The Government Digital Service (GDS) has appointed its first open source lead, with the goal of driving the use of open source platforms and frameworks throughout Whitehall and beyond.

      Anna Shipman, who has been at GDS for several years will step into the role, having worked extensively with open source as the development lead for GDS’s open source infrastructure provisioning project vCloud Tools.

      Shipman also has experience working with open source projects outside of GDS with her work on government-as-a-platform, the GDS objective to create a range of open and reusable digital components that can be used to create digital services without the need for costly, bespoke systems.

    • Director’s Forum: A Blog from USPTO’s Leadership

      Improving the way the government delivers information technology (IT) solutions to its customers isn’t just a goal, it’s our mission. We at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office know that by publishing our open source code, the public can help us come up with new and better IT solutions. In advance of the new Federal Source Code Policy and in support of the Administration’s Open Government Initiative, we have been publishing content on Github for over a year, and it now includes source code for a mobile application for trademarks.

  • Licensing/Legal

    • Choosing Your Open-Source Licenses

      Open-source development covers a lot of bases. There’s everything from documentation to development that is freely available on the web. It’s rather magical to know that you’ve got access to the code that drives some of the industry’s most widely used platforms like OpenStack, Kubernetes, Docker, and much more.

      As a purveyor of some open-source goodness myself, I’ve started to become more aware of the nuances of each of the various open-source licenses. There is much more to these licenses than many of us may realize. It is a legal contract, so it is important to be aware of the differences in each license.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Data Pipeline goes open, changing business models, and more open source news

      The world of open source software is a busy place. Sometimes keeping up with all of the news, announcements, and cool things to be discovered can be difficult. Here’s a look at some of what we’re reading today.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • AMD announced a new release of Radeon Open Compute Platform

        AMD announced a new release of Radeon Open Compute Platform (ROCm) featuring software support of new Radeon GPU hardware, new math libraries, and a rich foundation of modern programming languages, designed to speed development of high-performance, energy-efficient heterogeneous computing systems. AMD also announced planned support of OpenCL™ and for a wide range of CPUs in upcoming releases of ROCm, including support for AMD’s upcoming “Zen”-based CPUs, Cavium ThunderX CPUs, and IBM Power 8 CPUs. The advances further cement ROCm’s position as the most versatile open source platform for GPU computing.

      • AMD Goes Open Source in Newest ROCm Platform Update

        Processor maker is going all in for developing and sharing GPU-related hardware and software for high-end computing use cases.
        In days gone by, one rarely heard of IT companies getting involved in the open sourcing of hardware blueprints. It was always about software. This is happening more frequently all the time and making a significant impact in many enterprises. It’s yet another seismic change that has hit the larger-picture IT world.

        This is relevant now because companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Brocade, Cisco Systems and a number of others through the Open Compute Project are now dedicated to designing and open sourcing items such as new-gen servers, racks, routers, switches, specialized teleco equipment and storage appliances, in addition to offering previously proprietary expertise to others in how to build new-gen IT hardware.

      • RusEFI open-source engine-control hardware now working in the real world

        RusEFI isn’t anywhere near a works-right-out-of-the-box system, even now. It’s hardware for the expert user who is comfortable doing everything from soldering to writing code, and it’s all absolutely open-source, on both the hardware and software sides. The advantage of this? According to RusEFI developer Andrey Belomutskiy, “You are free to criticize/change software and hardware without being yelled/threatened/banned, in the spirit of open source.”

Leftovers

  • Science

    • What Electronics Can Do to Your Infant’s Brain

      Have you ever watched a baby stare at a TV? The TV is huge, flashing and mesmerizing, and you’ll notice that while watching, infants do not turn their heads – they just sit and stare straight ahead. Because infants become so transfixed on the screen, they stop doing anything and everything else and ultimately, they miss out on human interaction and the opportunity to explore their new and exciting world.

      The same is true of certain electronic toys. The graphics and sounds are mesmerizing and hold a child’s attention for longer than a traditional toy. Studies have shown that during the time kids are watching a screen or playing on an electronic toy, they are not interacting and learning as much as they could with other types of toys. Electronics also change how we interact with our children – sometimes the toy becomes the babysitter, and parents do not have to interact.

    • We Should Think of American Education as a National Security Issue

      The election of Donald Trump to the White House left great segments of the US population elated, and others feeling deflated and terrified. It still isn’t clear what he will do after he’s inaugurated, although certain policies and approaches are beginning to take shape. But as observers take stock of how a novice politician who’s never held elected office snagged the highest one in the land, something has become abundantly clear—America is divided, and one of the starkest divisions is around education.

      People voted along lines that reflect levels of education. While Hillary Clinton led college graduates by nine points (52/43 percent), Trump led non-college graduates by eight (52/44 percent). According to Pew Research, this is the widest gap in support between college-educated and non-college educated voters recorded in exit polls since 1980.

      To hold Trump, or any president, accountable to the people they represent, the US needs an informed electorate. According to some experts, this is literally an issue of national security. More uniformly educated populations are better equipped to resolve chronic policy problems, bolster economic growth, and keep pace with rapidly shifting geopolitical dynamics, which contributes to stability at home.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Michigan Officials Seek to Block Court-Ordered Bottled Water Delivery in Flint

      State officials in Michigan asked a federal court in Detroit on Thursday to block a court order requiring bottled water deliveries to homes in Flint, Michigan, where residents are still waiting for clean tap water two years after municipal water supplies were contaminated with dangerous levels of lead.

      The state’s motion requests the court to temporarily block the water delivery order while officials appeal the requirement. The order was issued by a federal judge last week and requires city and state officials to deliver bottled water to Flint residents unless they have a functioning faucet filter or refuse the delivery service.

  • Security

    • Security updates for Friday
    • Serious Linux Vulnerability Found By Just Holding Down The Enter Key For 70 Seconds

      Security researchers have found a rather frightening vulnerability in Linux that could ultimately allow an attacker to copy, modify, or destroy the contents of a hard drive, along with with configure the network to exfiltrate data. That in and of itself is cause for concern, but the real harrowing part about this is how easy it is to activate—an attacker need only boot up the system and hold down the enter key for 70 seconds.

    • Open Source Software: Secure Except When It Isn’t

      There is still a flaw in the open source security model which the Core Infrastructure Initiative only partly addressed. Remember the thousands and thousands of eyes looking for vulnerabilities in the code? While that may be true in a generalized sense, there are some small but important projects that are flying under the radar and don’t seem to be getting the necessary attention.

    • Adobe Fined $1M in Multistate Suit Over 2013 Breach; No Jail for Spamhaus Attacker

      Adobe will pay just $1 million to settle a lawsuit filed by 15 state attorneys general over its huge 2013 data breach that exposed payment records on approximately 38 million people. In other news, the 39-year-old Dutchman responsible for coordinating an epic, weeks-long distributed denial-of-service attack against anti-spam provider Spamhaus in 2013 will avoid any jail time for his crimes thanks to a court ruling in Amsterdam this week.

      On Oct. 3, 2013, KrebsOnSecurity broke the story that Adobe had just suffered a breach in which hackers siphoned usernames, passwords and payment card data on 38 million customers. The intruders also made off with digital truckloads of source code for some of Adobe’s most valuable software properties — including Adobe Acrobat and Reader, Photoshop and ColdFusion.

    • Half of companies have been hit with ransomware in the past year

      MORE TERRIFYING SECURITY RESEARCH has discovered that almost half of a collection of firms surveyed admitted that they have been the victim of a ransomware attack.

      Endpoint security outfit SentinelOne said that the ransomware attacks do not just go after monies these days, but have darker aims and can be used to threaten and terrorise people.

      “[Our] results point to a significant shift for ransomware. It’s no longer just a tool for cyber crime, but a tool for cyber terrorism and espionage,” said Tony Rowan, chief security consultant at SentinelOne, in the firm’s Ransomware Research Data Summary (PDF).

    • Security Of FLOSS

      I’ve worked with IT since the 1960s. I’ve seen systems that fell down just idling. I’ve seen systems that were insecure by design. Their creators just didn’t seem to care. I’ve seen systems that were made to get you. Their creators wanted to own your soul. I’ve also used FLOSS.

  • Defence/Aggression

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Attribution of Russia in DNC hack has curtailed Kremlin’s hacking, Clapper says

      In what might be viewed as a slight disagreement in assessment, or at the very least, semantics, Clapper told the committee Thursday that there was not strong evidence of a connection between WikiLeaks, which provided a frequent drip of leaked emails from top Democratic officials aimed at damaging the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton, and the Russian hacking campaign against Democratic party entities and individuals, for which many believe provided WikiLeaks the stolen contents for their leaks.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • New peatland coalition targets cutting climate change, saving thousands of lives

      A new global initiative, launched today at the climate meeting in Marrakech, aims to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and save thousands of lives by protecting peatlands – the world’s largest terrestrial organic soil carbon stock.

      The Global Peatlands Initiative will mobilize governments, international organizations and academia in a targeted effort to protect peatlands, which contain almost 100 times more carbon than tropical forests.

      Greenhouse gas emissions from drained and burning peatlands account for up to 5 per cent of anthropogenic carbon emissions. These emissions are rising due to increasing peat degradation and loss from agriculture and fires, and driving the world closer to a dangerous tipping point.

      Rising temperatures can cause a chain reaction in which thawing permafrost switches boreal and Arctic peatlands from carbon sinks to sources, emitting huge amounts of greenhouse gas. Peat carbon stocks are equivalent to at least 60 per cent of all atmospheric carbon, meaning they hold the potential to send climate change spiraling out of control.

    • New UN initiative aims to save lives and cut climate change by protecting peatlands

      A new global initiative was launched today at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 22) under way in Marrakech, aims to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and save thousands of live by protecting peatlands – the largest terrestrial organic soil carbon stock.

      According to the UN environment Programme (UNEP), the Global Peatlands Initiative seeks mobilize governments, international organizations and academia in an effort to protect peatlands, which contain almost 100 times more carbon than tropical forests.

      If global temperatures continue to rise, this could lead to thawing permafrost, switching boreal and Arctic peatlands from carbon sinks to sources, resulting in huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions and potentially causing climate change to spiral out of control.

      Erik Solheim, head of UN Environment stressed that despite the Paris Agreement, global temperatures will rise over 3 degrees Celsius this century. “This will cause misery and chaos for millions of vulnerable people, so we cannot afford to let any opportunity to reduce emissions slip by,” he added.

    • 69 Million People Exposed to ‘Killer Haze’ During Wildfire in Indonesia

      Latest study from Scientific Reports reveals that massive wildfires in Indonesia and Borneo had produced unhealthy air pollution, exposing 69 million people and causing thousands of cases of premature deaths.

      The wildfire greatly affected the forests and peatland of Equatorial Asia during the autumn of 2015. Experts have found that a quarter of people living in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia were severely exposed to the killer haze between September and October 2015.

      In an article by Eureka Alert, the lead author of the study, Dr. Paola Crippa, from Newcastle University, UK, said: “Our study estimated that between 6,150 and 17,270 premature deaths occurred due to breathing in the polluted air over that short two month period. To put this into perspective, we estimate that around 1 in 6,000 people exposed to the polluted haze from these fires died as a result. The uncertainty in these estimates is mostly due to the lack of medical studies on exposure from extreme air pollution in the area.”

    • Why It Matters That Trump’s Attorney General Pick Is a Climate Change Skeptic

      Jeff Sessions, the ultra-conservative Republican senator from Alabama, has been a controversial political figure for decades. His early career as a US attorney was threatened by allegations of racist remarks in the 1980s, but he remained popular in his home state and managed to carve out a congressional career for himself as a staunch opponent of, among many other things, consensus climate science.

      But Sessions is about to get a whole lot more influential to the lives of all Americans: President-elect Donald Trump has picked him to be the next attorney general of the United States.

      In what’s become a daily routine during the Trump transitionary period, the president-elect’s pick of Sessions has been met with exasperated outcries. Civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union are preparing for a long period of conflict under the Trump Administration, and Sessions is sure to be a part of it.

  • Finance

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Why Anti-Trump Protests Matter

      Since election night, U.S. cities and towns have rung with protest. Hundreds of thousands of people, from New York City to Los Angeles, from Columbia, South Carolina to Salt Lake City, Utah took to the streets en masse to protest the election of a man who promised, among other things, to force Muslims to register and to repeal a health care bill that helps some 20 million people get health insurance, and who has been accused of sexual assault by at least 13 women. Hand-scrawled signs declared “Not My President,” “No To Bigotry,” “Trump Puts My Life In Danger,” and “Protests Are Patriotic.”

    • Anna Soubry: ‘What’s happened to our country? We’ve lost the plot’

      The Tory MP was one of David Cameron’s modernisers, and campaigned to remain in the EU. Now she is angry at everyone – at Labour, her own party, the Daily Mail, even herself – but feels she must vote for article 50 regardless

    • Donald Trump Agrees to Pay $25 Million in Trump University Settlement

      Donald J. Trump has reversed course and agreed to pay $25 million to settle a series of lawsuits stemming from his defunct for-profit education venture, Trump University, finally putting to rest fraud allegations by former students, which have dogged him for years and hampered his presidential campaign.

      The settlement was announced by the New York attorney general on Friday, just 10 days before one of the cases, a federal class-action lawsuit in San Diego, was set to be heard by a jury. The deal, if approved, averts a potentially embarrassing and highly unusual predicament: a president-elect on trial, and possibly even taking the stand in his own defense, while scrambling to build his incoming administration.

      It was a remarkable concession from a real estate mogul who derides legal settlements and has mocked fellow businessmen who agree to them.

      But the allegations in the case were highly unpleasant for Mr. Trump: Students paid up to $35,000 in tuition for programs that, according to the testimony of former Trump University employees, used high-pressure sales tactics and employed unqualified instructors.

      The agreement wraps together the outstanding Trump University litigation, including two federal class-action cases in San Diego, and a separate lawsuit by Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York attorney general. The complaints alleged that students were cheated out of thousands of dollars in tuition through deceptive claims about what they would learn and high-pressure sales tactics.

    • Who Will Advise Trump on Science?

      In 1976, President Gerald Ford appointed physicist H. Guyford Stever as the first Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Having previously advised the military during World War II, and directed the National Science Foundation for four years, Stever became the first of a long line of advisors who counseled the White House on matters of science and technology—everything from disease outbreaks to climate change to nanotechnology.

      [...]

      But amid that certainty, there is also lots of room for variability. (Buckle up; here be acronyms.) Holdren currently wears many different hats. He’s also the president’s Science Advisor or, to quote the formal title, the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology. He co-chairs (with Obama) the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST)—a group of leading scientists and engineers who offer policy recommendations on everything from the reliability of forensic science to preparing for a biological weapons attack. And he sits on the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), a group that coordinates research and development efforts across all federal agencies; it is chaired by the president and includes the vice-president and several cabinet secretaries.

      So Holdren’s a busy guy. But of these jobs, only the OSTP directorship is a non-negotiable Senate-confirmed post. The rest are essentially optional, and depend on the president’s attitudes to science and willingness to continue the legacy of past offices. Trump might not convene the PCAST or the NSTC; both are established by Executive Order. He could appoint an OSTP Director and never seek advice from them.

    • The End Of Trump’s Reign Could Be Way Sooner Than You Think

      So that election sure was pretty crazy, huh? There are lots and lots and lots of really pissed-off people right now, and since we’ve said quite a bit on the subject, I won’t add more to that here. What I will tell you is that you absolutely have a real-world, tangible way to fight. And I’m not talking about having to wait four years for the next presidential election.

    • Michael Moore’s to do list for a revolution: an intervention for liberals

      We have a new leader in America. Known for his distinct regional accent and often seen wearing a baseball cap at rallies, he starred in a show on NBC, and holds strong opinions about guns and the NRA. He may not be the leader you saw coming, but you’re going to see a lot more of him: Michael Moore. The documentary filmmaker shuns the activist label he is often given. In a recent LA Times interview Moore asserted, “I’m not an activist, I’m a citizen. It’s redundant to say I’m an activist. We all should be active.” Moore has been very active, and has made films that take on some of America’s most complex and controversial topics — globalization, gun violence, 9/11, our healthcare system, the economy, war, and most recently, Donald Trump, someone he did see coming. Unlike the Democrats.

      Moore tried to warn the left in July, when he wrote a piece titled simply “5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win. In it, he did not mince words: “Go ahead and say the words, ’cause you’ll be saying them for the next four years: ‘PRESIDENT TRUMP.’ Never in my life have I wanted to be proven wrong more than I do right now.” With his midwestern directness and efficiency, Moore then proceeded to list how and why Donald Trump was going to win.

      A week after Trump’s election, Democrats and progressives are still raw with shock and grief. The agony is acute. The mood of over half the country? Political satirist Barry Crimmins nailed it in a tweet, saying “We’re now kids trapped in the back of our blowhard, road-raging, shitty-driver, dad’s car for a 4-yr trip and he’s issued a “No Talking” edict.”

    • Donald Trump daughter Ivanka pictured in meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

      Donald Trump’s daughter has been pictured attending a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, heightening concerns the President-elect’s family will wield unprecedented influence over his political duties.

      Ivanka Trump, who features in handout photos of the impromptu gathering, plays a significant role in managing Mr Trump’s businesses, along with his other adult children.

      Unlike other presidents, Mr Trump’s children are part of his transition team, which has been beset by problems since its inception.

    • In Their Coastal Citadels, Democrats Argue Over What Went Wrong

      Republican America is now so vast that a traveler could drive 3,600 miles across the continent, from Key West, Fla., to the Canadian border crossing at Porthill, Idaho, without ever leaving a state under total GOP control.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Dunja Mijatović: Online threats of killing, rape and violence everyday reality for too many female journalists

      No job comes without sacrifices, but how many downgrading comments, criticism or even threats can one person take before it becomes too much?

      Just consider the experiences of a female journalist that I know:

      She had her phone number shared on dating websites, her email and other accounts were hacked, she received death threats on Skype, the website publishing her articles was hacked and a sex video was posted with the implication that she had participated in an orgy. Anonymous articles with lies about her and her family were also posted online.

      Imagine being forced to shut down your accounts on social media platforms because of such massive attacks with detailed images of rape and other forms of sexual violence.

      At one point, you would probably be inclined to ask yourself if it is really worth it. Is this a career I want to continue to pursue?

      In the past few years, more and more female journalists and bloggers have been forced to question their profession. Male journalists are also subject to hate speech and online abuse, but research findings suggest that female journalists face a disproportionate amount of gender-based threats and harassment on the internet. They are experiencing what Irina Bokova, director-general of UNESCO, has described as a “double attack”: they are being targeted for being both a journalist and a woman.

      How do these attacks affect female journalists’ lives, their work and society in general? Journalists are used to being in the frontline of conflict and they often deal with difficult and even dangerous situations. But what if you cannot shield yourself from these threats? What if the frontline became your own doorstep, your office or your computer screen?

    • European Union Orders British Press NOT to Report when Terrorists are Muslims

      So, according to the ECRI and scholars of Teesside University, when Muslim jihadists murder people and the press reports that killers are Muslims, the press, and not Islamists, is encouraging “Islamophobic incidents” in Britain. According to ECRI Chair Christian Ahlund, “It is no coincidence that racist violence is on the rise in the UK at the same time as we see worrying examples of intolerance and hate speech in the newspapers, online and even among politicians.”

    • More dialogue needed on censorship: Singapore International Film Festival chief

      Yuni Hadi has been promoting independent Singapore films for many years. She has helmed the film programme at The Substation Centre for the Arts, creating milestone projects such as the annual Fly-by-Night Video Challenge and the Singapore Short Film Festival. She also helms Objectifs Films, a Singapore-based international film distributor. She is also the co-producer of award-winning Singapore film Ilo Ilo which saw its box-office takings in Singapore surge, after it attained international accolades.

      Today, she is executive director of the Singapore International Film Festival which takes place from No 23 to Dec 4.

      She went “On the Record” with 938LIVE’s Bharati Jagdish about censorship and growing the local film industry. They started by talking about the perceived bias against local content.

    • Junk Scientist Greets Skepticism With Legal Threats, Sues Blogger For Criticizing Him And His Work

      There’s nothing those operating on the fringes of science hate more than people questioning their means, methods, and conclusions. To question is to be sued, unfortunately. Ken White has again fired up the Popehat signal in hopes of securing a skeptical blogger some legal assistance in fighting off a clearly bogus defamation suit by a junk scientist offended by the blogger’s dismantling of his junk science.

    • Bhutan journalist hit by defamation suit for sharing Facebook post

      It is known as the land of gross national happiness, a country that puts contentment before the trappings of wealth and power. But discontent is growing in Bhutan after one of the country’s best-known journalists was hit with a defamation suit for sharing a story on Facebook.

      In a case that will test the boundaries of freedom of speech in the tiny Himalayan kingdom, independent journalist Namgay Zam, a former presenter on the state-run broadcaster Bhutan Broadcasting Service, faces imprisonment or a fine equivalent to 10 years’ salary if she is found guilty of defaming a prominent businessman.

    • Rap star handed five YEARS in jail after Sharia court says his songs are blasphemous

      A Sharia court convicted the 29-year-old singer after he was banned from performing due to the nature of his music.

      Amir Tataloo’s fans reacted furiously to the news that he had been apprehended while walking down a street in the capital Tehran in August.

      He has been held in custody until his trial this week and will now be forced to endure physical punishment after defying the Ministry of Culture.

      According to reports Mr Tatoloo refused to leave the country he was born in and defied orders to stop performing.

    • The Failure of Facebook Democracy

      In December of 2007, the legal theorist Cass R. Sunstein wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education about the filtering effects that frequently attend the spread of information on the Web. “As a result of the Internet, we live increasingly in an era of enclaves and niches—much of it voluntary, much of it produced by those who think they know, and often do know, what we’re likely to like,” Sunstein noted. In the piece, “The Polarization of Extremes,” Sunstein argued that the trend promised ill effects for the direction—or, more precisely, the misdirection—of public opinion. “If people are sorted into enclaves and niches, what will happen to their views?” he wondered. “What are the eventual effects on democracy?”

    • It’s time to get rid of the Facebook “news feed,” because it’s not news

      In the wake of the US election, critics have blamed Facebook for bringing about—at least in part—Trump’s surprise win. A BuzzFeed report showed that Facebook users interacted far more with “fake news” stories about both candidates than they did with mainstream news outlets before the election. This wouldn’t seem like such a big deal if it weren’t for a Pew Research Center survey showing that 44% of Americans rely on Facebook to get all their news.

      But proving whether fake news influenced the election more than the usual political propaganda is impossible. What’s certain is that fake news on Facebook is a symptom of a larger problem: the company is trying to play contradictory roles as both trustworthy news publisher and fun social media platform for personal sharing. The problem is that it cannot be both—at least not without making some changes.

    • James Woods Quits Twitter Over ‘Censorship’ of Alt-Right After Suing User Who Called Him a Coke Addict
    • Actor James Woods quits Twitter, citing censorship
    • ‘Buh-bye’: Twitter zaps ‘dramatic b*tch’ James Woods for quitting site over ‘censorship’ of racists
    • I QUIT! James Woods to leave Twitter over alt-right ban and censorship
    • Conservative Actor James Woods Quits Twitter Over Censorship Concerns
    • He’s done! Fed-up James Woods bids Twitter a not-so-fond farewell over political censorship
    • How attacking the alt-right only adds to the flames

      What blissful days these must be for the alt-right.

      Their preferred candidate for president is transitioning into the White House.

      Their champion, Steve Bannon, formerly CEO of the most mainstream media platform for alt-right voices on the internet, Breitbart.com, has secured a place in the West Wing at elbow’s length from the new president.

      And the conventional media seem to be stumbling around trying to decide whether to explain the alt-right, ignore it, censor it or refuse to even speak its name.

      Josh Marshall, at Talking Points Memo, fears the very term “alt-right” is a sinister “branding move” to give cover to racists. Instead, he suggests journalists should use phrases such as “the alt-right, a white nationalist, anti-Semitic movement.”

    • 60 percent of Russians think Internet censorship is necessary, poll finds

      Sixty percent of Russians believe that Internet censorship — in particular, the banning of certain websites and material — is necessary, according to a new poll.

      Just 25 percent opposed the idea; the rest of the respondents didn’t know or declined to answer.

      The poll was conducted by the Levada Center, an independent polling firm, which asked Russians questions about trust in media and censorship between Oct. 21 to 24. On the subject of political censorship, 32 percent of Russians said that denying access to certain websites would infringe upon the rights and freedoms of activists, while 44 percent said it did not and 24 percent could not answer.

    • Russia starts blocking LinkedIn network
    • U.S. says concerned over Russia blocking access to LinkedIn
    • LinkedIn Blocked In Russia; Government Says It Threatens Russian Online Censorship Drive

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Argentina Orders Telecoms To Create A Permanent Database Of All Mobile Phone Users

      Even one is a problem, for reasons that Edward Snowden and Andrew “bunnie” Huang pointed out earlier this year: a mobile phone is “the perfect tracking device.” The new register may indeed help tackle the theft of mobile phones in Argentina. But it will also create a powerful and dangerous new resource that the authorities will surely be unable to resist dipping into for other purposes.

    • Look Inside the Windowless New York Skyscraper Linked to the NSA

      Since publishing a story about an apparent National Security Agency surveillance site in New York, The Intercept has obtained several previously unseen photographs from within the building, offering a rare glimpse behind its thick concrete and granite walls.

      On Wednesday, we reported that top-secret documents indicate there is an NSA spy hub inside the massive, windowless skyscraper at 33 Thomas Street, used by AT&T to route communications across the world. The 550-foot tower contains equipment that covertly monitors phone calls, faxes, and internet data, according to the documents. But with the exception of employees who have worked at the building, few people have ever been allowed inside the iconic brutalist structure, which was built to withstand a nuclear attack amid the Cold War.

      Stanley Greenberg, a 60-year-old artist based in Brooklyn, shared a series of photographs he took in September 1992 while visiting 33 Thomas Street. Back then, before the 9/11 attacks, security was not as tight. At the time, Greenberg was carrying out research for a book, Invisible New York, and AT&T granted him access. The photographs never made it into the book, but Greenberg revisited his photo archive this week and sent the pictures to The Intercept after reading the revelations about the building’s apparent role as an NSA site, code-named TITANPOINTE.

      [...]

      One of Greenberg’s photos (featured at the top of this article) clearly shows some of AT&T’s “4ESS switch” equipment that is used to send phone calls across networks. The NSA’s documents describe the TITANPOINTE facility as containing a “RIMROCK access,” which is what the agency calls the 4ESS switches that it taps into. By 2004, at least one of these was an “international gateway” used to route foreign calls to and from the U.S., a former AT&T engineer has said.

      Another photograph taken by Greenberg (below) shows a room full of large batteries, which were likely used as a back-up energy source for the building in the event of a power failure. Original planning documents for 33 Thomas Street state that it would have enough emergency power to last two weeks, enabling it to become a “self-contained city” in the event of a catastrophe.

      [...]

      Klein later moved to California, where he continued his work for AT&T. In 2006, he alleged in a sworn court declaration that the company had maintained a secure room in one of its San Francisco offices, which he stated had been equipped with NSA technology to spy on phone and internet traffic. Klein told The Intercept that he didn’t know of any NSA presence at 33 Thomas Street, but it did not surprise him to discover its apparent role as the TITANPOINTE surveillance site.

      “I always assumed and gathered information back then that there were numerous other offices like the one in San Francisco,” he said. “I was only aware of the ones on the West Coast, from talking to people. But logically I assumed there had to be some in places like New York or Chicago, the major telecom centers.”

    • ‘National Bird’ Confronts Perils Of Becoming Drone Whistleblower

      President Barack Obama’s administration institutionalized a drone program that involves a targeted assassination policy for individuals put on kill lists. It not only devastated the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in countries, like Afghanistan, but it traumatizes the military officers, who are part of the system which makes strikes possible. But for them, there is little to no support for the depression, suicidal ideations, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) they develop as a result of the horrible things they are asked to do.

      As the documentary, “National Bird,” shows, the officers struggle with the morality of their actions, but they face a presidential administration, which has criminalized more whistleblowers than all other previous presidential administrations combined. Officers who speak out about the drone program face the prospect of harsh prosecution under the Espionage Act, as if talking about what they saw as officers is treasonous. That weighs heavy on veterans of the drone program and makes them terrified to be labeled whistleblowers because they know how the government could destroy their lives if they become known to the public as whistleblowers.

    • Law updating GCHQ’s power passes final hurdle in Parliament

      A new law giving GCHQ increased powers is set to become law.

      The Investigatory Powers Bill has been passed by peers in the House of Lords and there only remains some discussion of possible amendments in both houses of Parliament before Royal Assent by the Queen makes it law.

      Privacy campaigners have criticised the bill as ‘Snooper’s Charter II’ after the 2012 Draft Communications Bill which was blocked by Liberal Democrats in the coalition government.

    • Trump’s CIA Director Pick Thinks Using Encryption ‘May Itself Be A Red Flag’

      Donald Trump announced on Friday that he’s chosen Congressman Mike Pompeo to run the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the premiere spy agency of the United States.

      Pompeo, a Republican lawmaker from Kansas and a former Army officer, has little-to-no experience in the world of intelligence (other than being part of the House Intelligence Committee), but he’s distinguished himself for being a strong supporter of mass surveillance and for thinking that using encryption, by itself, might be a sign that you’re a terrorist.

      “Forcing terrorists into encrypted channels, however, impedes their operational effectiveness by constraining the amount of data they can send and complicating transmission protocols, a phenomenon known in military parlance as virtual attrition,” Pompeo wrote in an op-ed published in January by The Wall Street Journal. “Moreover, the use of strong encryption in personal communications may itself be a red flag.”

    • TfL to track Tube users in stations by their MAC addresses

      Transport for London is to start a four week trial of reading Wi-Fi connection request data from London Underground passengers’ mobile phones.

      The trial, which will last four weeks from 21 November, “will help give TfL a more accurate understanding of how people move through stations, interchange between services and how crowding develops,” according to the transport authority.

      The idea is to develop a more accurate picture of how passengers make interchanges on the Tube network.

      Data available to TfL at present only records where people enter the London Underground and where they leave it, meaning figuring out their movements in between those points is a matter of educated guesswork.

    • Local Muslims express concerns about Flynn being tabbed as NSA director

      The selection of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn for National Security Adviser has local Muslim leaders concerned about what it could mean for their community members.

      There’s already been some talk of a Muslim registry under a Trump administration, but the appointment of Flynn is adding to the concerns of Muslims in south-central Wisconsin.

      Flynn has been outspoken in his opposition to radical Islam, but that is not the part that bothers local Muslim leaders.

      He’s also taken aim at the religion as a whole, tweeting in February – “Fear of Islam is RATIONAL.”

    • NSA pick Flynn a critic of Muslim militancy, culture

      Michael Flynn, the retired Army lieutenant general and intelligence officer who is Donald Trump’s pick to serve as his national security adviser, is a harsh critic of Muslim extremism and the religion itself, calling “radical Islam” an existential threat to the United States.

      In strident speeches and public comments, including a fiery address at the Republican National Convention, Flynn has aggressively argued that Islamic State militants pose a threat on a global scale and demanded a far more aggressive U.S. military campaign against the group.

    • No Snoopers’ Charter – Donate
    • Top US intelligence official: I submitted my resignation
    • Clapper, US intel chief, resigns
    • Intelligence Director James Clapper Resigns
    • Next for the DNI
    • Intelligence chief to leave as Trump arrives
    • World Briefs: US spy chief resigns, to leave in January
    • Trump weighs dismantling top spy agency: report
    • Donald Trump Is Plotting to Eliminate a Cabinet-Level Position: Report
    • Adm. Michael Rogers Leading Candidate to Be Trump’s Director of National Intelligence
    • Donald Trump Hopes to Abolish Intelligence Chief Position, Reverse CIA Reforms

      Donald Trump’s national security team is discussing plans to dismantle the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the organization that was created in response to the 9/11 attacks, according to an adviser to the president-elect and a former senior intelligence official. The news comes as the current director of national intelligence, James Clapper, announced his resignation Thursday.

      The Trump national security team has been meeting in recent days, planning the removal of the cabinet-level position and assessing how to fold parts of the organization into the 16 federal intelligence agencies it oversees, according to both people with knowledge of the plans. If the restructuring is accomplished, it would undo legislation passed by Congress in 2004, dismantle the biggest American intelligence bureaucracy created since the end of World War II, and roll back a key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission.

    • Police Just Found Phone & USB Stick Belonging To Paris Suicide Bomber, After Misplacing It For Almost Two Years

      Remember how, right after the Paris bombings, people started blaming encryption for the attacks, despite the fact it was later revealed that most of the planning was done in the open and communication occurred via unencrypted SMS messages? As we noted, it seemed pretty clear that the bombings were an intelligence and law enforcement failure rather than an encryption problem.

      Now, just to add more evidence to that conclusion in the most ridiculous way possible, apparently Brussels police just found a mobile phone and USB stick that had belonged to one of the suicide bombers in the Paris attacks, Brahim Abdeslam. The police had seized the phone and USB stick during a drug raid back in February of 2015… and promptly misplaced them entirely. They were found under a stack of papers. Really.

    • Mystery death of former spy worker found drowned in bath with his front door unlocked

      A former GCHQ employee once suspended from work because of an “incident” was found drowned in his bath with his flat’s front door unlocked, an inquest heard.

      Tomas Bleszynski, 28, had never expressed any suicidal thoughts to those closest to him and was actively seeking a new job at the time of his death.

    • SPY BATH DEATH RIDDLE Mystery surrounds case of GCHQ worker, 28, left face down in bath for up to three weeks
    • Mystery surrounds the death of a former spy worker, 28, who was found drowned in the bath with his front door unlocked

      A former GCHQ worker who was looking for a new job was found drowned in his bath with the front door of his flat unlocked by his parents.

      Tomas Bleszynski, 28, had never expressed suicidal ideas and seemed ‘completely normal’ when he last saw his parents a couple of months ago, an inquest heard.

      They found him laying face-down in his bath when they went to his Cheltenham flat – near the spy base – on April 17 because they had been unable to contact him.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • U.S. allowed Italian kidnap prosecution to shield higher-ups, ex-CIA officer says

      A former CIA officer has broken the U.S. silence around the 2003 abduction of a radical Islamist cleric in Italy, charging that the agency inflated the threat the preacher posed and that the United States then allowed Italy to prosecute her and other Americans to shield President George W. Bush and other U.S. officials from responsibility for approving the operation.

    • New CIA Director Mike Pompeo on torture, Muslims, terror, Iran, NSA spying

      Pompeo on Guantanamo Bay:

      “GTMO has been a goldmine of intelligence about radical Islamic terrorism. I have traveled to GTMO and have seen the honorable and professional behavior of the American men and women in uniform, who serve at the detention facility,” Pompeo said in a statement on Nov. 18. “The detainees at GTMO are treated exceptionally well – so well that some have even declined to be resettled, instead choosing to stay at GTMO. It is delusional to think that any plan the president puts before Congress to relocate radical Islamic terrorists to the U.S, and potentially Fort Leavenworth Kansas, will make our country safer. The reality is that this proposal will ultimately put Kansans and Americans in danger.”

    • Stopping Turnkey Tyranny: What The Obama Administration Can Do About The NSA On The Way Out

      Last week, I was a little unfair to our friends over at Fight for the Future in noting that it was too late for President Obama to “dismantle the NSA” as was suggested in a Time article written by FftF’s awesome campaign director Evan Greer. I was focusing on why the President should have limited the NSA much more seriously earlier on (like way earlier…), but some interpreted it to mean that I was suggesting that FftF had only just jumped on the bandwagon to stop mass surveillance. That’s clearly not true — as it’s been one of the leading voices in the fight to get the President to scale back mass surveillance since the group took on that issue many years ago.

    • Barack Obama will not pardon Edward Snowden unless he goes to court – while Trump’s CIA pick wants him executed

      There is very little chance President Barack Obama will pardon Edward Snowden before his final term is up – leaving his fate to an unforgiving Trump administration and an incoming CIA director who had called for his execution.

      Mr Snowden has lived in Russia since he leaked documents revealing a secret surveillance programme helmed by the National Security Agency in cooperation with major telecommunications companies. The Department of Justice charged Mr Snowden with two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917.

    • Obama suggests Snowden pardon unlikely
    • Obama: Pardon for Snowden Couldn’t Be Contemplated Until US Court Appearance
    • Snowden Fields Questions at Pen Int’l Session Dedicated to Imprisoned Writers
    • Amal Clooney told the UN they did nothing to help Isis sex slaves. Now she’s asking women to help instead

      After appearing before the United Nations for the first time and telling delegates she was “ashamed” to stand before them while they did nothing to prevent the rape and abuse of Yazidi women, Amal Clooney stood before a conference of women and urged them to join the fight for women’s rights in countries where they are most under threat.

      The renowned human rights lawyer gave the keynote speech at the Texas Conference for Women on Tuesday, where more than 100 leading women from different sectors also delivered talks.

      In September, Clooney condemned world leaders for their inaction over the persecution of the Yazidi community, a religious minority in northern Iraq who have been targeted by Isis. In her speech on Tuesday, Clooney spoke more about the plight of Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman who was trafficked by Isis as a sex slave and now advocates on behalf of Yazidi women.

    • Trump’s Choice For Attorney General Is A Fan Of “Civil Asset Forfeiture”

      Civil asset forfeiture is victimization by government — removing any possibility of a defense. It’s taking without any sort of proof of wrongdoing by the person whose money has been hoovered up by the government; it’s the antithesis of our legal standard, “Innocent until proven guilty.”

      It turns citizens who have been convicted of nothing into victims of greedy law enforcement workers and officials, who typically get to keep the proceeds or part of the proceeds from stopping somebody on the road who’s carrying some cash and declaring it the result of ill-gotten gains…sometimes simply because people who are in the drug trade use a road and sometimes without as much as a bullshit excuse like that.

    • Jeff Sessions’ Nomination as Attorney General Alarms Civil Libertarians

      President-elect Donald Trump has nominated US Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama to be his administration’s attorney general, a move that civil liberties advocates are decrying as a likely catastrophe for privacy and immigration.

      While many of Trump’s forthcoming nominations will amount to little more than inside-the-Beltway gossip, Sessions stands out. He’s an advocate for surveillance and an enemy of encryption; an opponent of criminal justice reform; and a hardliner on immigration. First elected to the US Senate in 1996, he has long stood to the right even among his conservative Republican colleagues as a champion of security above all. As Attorney General, Sessions would have the power to radically recast the Obama administration’s definition of civil liberties online and off.

      The Senate Judiciary Committee must still approve Sessions’ nomination. But civil rights groups are already sounding the alarm over the possibility that he could become the most powerful law enforcement officer in the land. Sessions’ track record also suggest he’s also going to find himself at sharp odds with the tech industry’s liberal and libertarian-leaning leadership.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Facebook’s detailed open-source maps show the gaps in global internet connectivity

      The open-source maps were created in collaboration with the Columbia University Center for International Earth Science Information Network and World Bank statistics to create datasets that incorporate population demographics, infrastructure development and existing internet penetration to identify the connectivity gaps and how to fix them. Making them open source means NGOs, innovators or companies can access them. They plan to release more maps over the coming months.

    • Say good-bye to net neutrality

      In the wake of a Donald Trump’s upset victory, telecom industry players are rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of eviscerating Barack Obama’s fledgling net neutrality rules.

      It was one of the crowning achievements of Obama’s administration when the FCC passed rules that barred broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing web traffic, or providing paid “fast lanes” for select content. The rules enshrined the principal that all data traveling through ISPs’ pipes had to be treated equally.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Tech Companies Urge Trump To Protect DMCA Safe Harbors

        Donald Trump isn’t in the White House yet is but already under pressure from people hoping to benefit from his influence. Among them Google, Facebook, and Twitter, which have written to the president-elect hoping that he’ll uphold the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA to prevent service providers from being held liable for user-uploaded content.

      • Librarians, Archivists, Call On WIPO Members To Create Safe Harbour Against Copyright Liability

        The age of digitisation has opened new doors to distribution of information including for libraries and archives. However, librarians and archivists are often confronted with risk of liability for copyright infringement, nationally and in cross-border activities. This week, they asked the World Intellectual Property Organization copyright committee to provide them not only with some exceptions to copyright, but with protection against liability.

11.18.16

Concerns Over ‘Terror’ Patent Office: New Article From Dutch Media (Telegraaf)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 3:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Concerns over 'terror' Patent Office

Summary: A new report from the Dutch media reveals plans to discuss removal of the EPO’s immunity and yet more lies from the EPO’s management (this time through Jana Mittermaier)

PETRA KRAMER, a Dutch speaker, has just supplied us with the following article translation, having notified us of this week's parliamentary intervention. Highlighted below in yellow are important and/or new bits of information, such as Jana Mittermaier‘s utter lies (does she even hear herself? Lying has truly become the norm at the EPO, implicating not just the PR team but also Minnoye).

Concerns over ‘terror’ Patent Office

RIJSWIJK – The government and the House are very concerned about the three thousand employees of the European Patent Office in Rijswijk. All political parties want a debate now that, according to the union, “terror will continue in the workplace and this week has again claimed a victim.”

The international organisation with seven thousand employees, three thousand of whom live and work in The Hague region, is led with an iron fist by the Frenchman Benoît Battistelli. According to the union SUEPO, the staff is “systematically suppressed and silenced.”

The President directed the arrows at directors of the union, says lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld. ,,After two fired executives in Munich were fired earlier this year, the secretary, Laurent Prunier, is now also fired while he was sick at home,”said Zegveld. ,,The union is undermined in this way. Workers are ruined for life. There are cases of people who are removed from their offices unannounced and after speaking with the leadership left the building in a wheelchair.”

Zegveld, who has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the union at the European Patent Office, calls the upcoming parliamentary debate and the involvement of the Dutch government “encouraging” and “a turning point”. ,,The largest problem so far is that the organization enjoys immunity, so that the Netherlands can not intervene on its own territory,” said the lawyer.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs indicated Friday that the Netherlands supports plans to modernize the internal organisation, but that the implementation can and must be careful. ,,We will continue to push hard on this issue, because in our opinion it’s not going well,” said a spokesman.

The EPO rejects any accusation that the office would have targetted prominent trade unionists. ,,This is completely unfounded,” said Jana Mittermaier, spokeswoman for the EPO. ,,There is harassment and intimidation by employees towards others. Therefore, there are disciplinary actions taken wholly according to the rules of the EPO. The procedure which has been followed meets the highest international standards, as determined by independent experts.”

The EPO was in disrepute for the first time in 2014. While Prime Minister Mark Rutte gave the starting signal for the new building, it became known a strikingly high number of workers have committed suicide. Several countries of a total of 28 member States, which have reappointed Battistelli until 2018, have been critical of working conditions.

Source: Zorgen over ’terreur’ Octrooiburea █

The Demise of Software Patents in India Illustrated by Infosys’ Policy and Abandonment of Applications

Posted in Asia, Patents at 8:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Vishal Sikka
Reference: Vishal Sikka, the man who took Infosys off the software patents drug. Image credit: Gregor Wolf (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic licence)

Summary: India’s retreat from software patents goes all the way to the top (huge businesses) and includes even Microsoft-connected companies like Infosys, where patent filings have reached an all-time low (single-digit figures)

THIS new article about the ITC speaks about patent shakedown in China courtesy of Qualcomm, which is in antitrust waters in more than one continent and is widely regarded as one of the worst patent bullies out there. Here is what the article says:

Mobile chipmaker Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) was dealt a victory when the U.S. International Trade Commission voted Tuesday to look into Qualcomm claims that some of the mobile devices made by Chinese companies are infringing on the semiconductor’s hardware and software patents.

Notice the mention of “software patents.” This kind of shakedown in China is also accomplished using proxies in India, as noted here the other day. However, while India makes many software products it does not allow software patents (smart move!) and these patents are evidently a passing fad. Yesterday IAM said that Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, who is openly against software patents, has almost entirely abandoned them. The company now worries more about Donald Trump [1, 2] than about patent protection. “The company’s annual report for 2015-2016,” according to IAM, “says it has 292 patents issued by the USPTO, a handful of others in Australia, Singapore and Luxembourg, and an aggregate of 424 pending patent applications.”

“Maybe it will also defect from Microsoft and increasingly embrace GNU/Linux and Free/Open Source software (FOSS), as Wipro attempted to do in recent years.”Patents filed (by Infosys) are just 9 in 2015/16, 19 in 2014/15 (right after Sikka became MD and CEO), 79 in 2013/14, 97 in 2012/13, 153 in 2011/12, and 91 in 2010/11. It’s not hard to see the trend here. Will it be zero next year?

Infosys has traditionally been like a Microsoft proxy in India (we wrote literally dozens of articles with examples of this), so it’s encouraging to see it diverging away from software patenting (unlike Tata, which is still yearning for them, as recently as last month). Maybe it will also defect from Microsoft and increasingly embrace GNU/Linux and Free/Open Source software (FOSS), as Wipro attempted to do in recent years. █

Drunk on ‘Production’, the European Patent Office (EPO) Grants Patents on Recipes

Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Kongstad beerSummary: Kongstad and Battistelli seem to be perfectly alright with patents on food and beverages, clearly a very steep decline when it comes to patent quality at the EPO

THE WEB page “No Patents on Beer!” was published yesterday. The title is self explanatory and the introduction names Carlsberg from Denmark, where the Chinchilla Man of the Administrative Council is from. Here is what EU Business says:

In 2016, the European Patent Office (EPO) granted three patents to the Danish brewery, Carlsberg. The patents cover barley plants derived from conventional breeding, their usage in brewing as well as the beer brewed thereof. In a joint letter, several civil society organisations are now calling on Carlsberg to drop these patents. They consider the patents to be an abuse of patent law and in conflict with the interests of consumers.

“There should be no patents on beer and barley. Breeding plants and brewing beer are not inventions, but based on centuries-old tradition,” says Erling Frederiksen from Friends of the Earth in Denmark (NOAH). “Carlsberg should make it clear that they just want to produce good beer and are not acting against the interests of citizens and consumers. We do not want corporate control of our food or patent monopolies. No matter whether they are held by Monsanto, Bayer or Carlsberg.”

Quickly afterwards the mainstream media in Germany joined in. It has written about it as well, citing the above. Remember how protests against software patents and patents on life at the EPO culminated in talks, including one from Richard Stallman, in which he sort joked about patents on recipes and what the ramifications would be? Well, his analogy is no longer just an analogy:

The European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich and the Carlsberg company were sloshed Thursday in an open letter by campaigners opposed to the patenting of plants and animals.

No Patents on Seeds, an alliance including Greenpeace, the Catholic charity Misereor, and globally networked small-scale farmers, called on the Danish brewer to voluntarily relinquish three patents it received earlier this year from the EPO.

Documents published by the EPO also list Heineken of the Netherlands as a patent proprietor.

What next after that? Can cooks and chefs pursue patents on their cuisine? How low can one go? Can Mr. Kongstad and his wife pursue patents on methods for cutting a chinchilla? His wife certainly seems to know what she is doing (for the camera even!). Here she is “at work”:

LANDBRUG photo

People who planned to apply for a job at the EPO actually told me that they had changed their mind after reading Techrights. If this is what qualifies for an EP (European Patent) these days, then no wonder the EPO struggles to recruit and lies about it instead.

Last year the EPO actually paid respected publications not just for ads but also for puff pieces aimed at recruitment. Science is fundamentally against lies, but at the EPO lies have become the norm. Staff and journalists are habitually lied to by EPO management and now we have European media which is PAID (even large publications like The Financial Times) to repeat these lies. ‘Informecials’ for recruitment and outright defamation of staff that Battistelli does not like now dominate European media. Yesterday the EPO promoted this new puff piece in Twitter. Is this one also of one of these paid puff pieces? It’s hard to tell. The opening paragraph is purely promotional and it says: “Patenting is an integral part in every technology-driven industry since its protects ideas and enables inventors to create a business around them. But not every inventor or researcher necessarily is a man or woman of business, too. They need help by someone to deal with legal questions to patent and to protect their ideas. The European Patent Office (EPO) can help them.”

Well, what the EPO stands for right now isn’t inventors but booze companies and foreign monopolies. It got a lot harder to derive joy and pride from an EPO job. The only time EPO staff actually enjoys is the time down the pub (after work). █

Like Team UPC, the Internet Association (Megacorporations’ Front Group) Hijacks the Voice of Small Businesses in an Effort to Steer Patent Policy Against Them

Posted in America, Europe, Patents at 7:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Internet Association transition letter

Summary: Another new example of an attempt by large corporations to speak ‘on behalf’ of small businesses and shape patent law for themselves, very much to the detriment of these small businesses

EARLIER this week Benjamin Henrion caught a glimpse and had a go at this letter to Donald Trump (PDF). He said that the “Internet Association speaks about patent litigation for small companies, while none of its members are small” (this can be verified by checking their site). Dimitris Xenos called it a “classic!” and we have made a local copy [PDF] as it’s likely to be removed in the future, making the Internet Association less accountable for these actions.

We have become familiar with and grown accustomed to this tactic (Microsoft has a front group that still does this, for decades now). While the EPO marginalises the appeal boards (if not getting rid of these boards altogether, in preparation for the UPC) we keep seeing the likes of Bristows, principal boosters of the UPC, claiming that the UPC would be good for SMEs (a complete, utter lie, see what SMEs themselves are saying). The firm refuses to give up on the UPC even though without the UK it’s going nowhere. See what it has just published in its increasingly neglected blog:

Following Finland’s ratification of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPC) on 19 January 2016, the government issued on 26 May a legislative proposal (Bill 87 2016) to enable establishment of a local division of the UPC in Helsinki. The Bill’s first reading in parliament was on 25 October, and parliament approved the Bill in its second reading on 28 October 2016.

It does not mention that Finland — like the UK — might be leaving the EU not too long from now. It’s generally considered to be one of the most likely nations to leave next. Like chronic liars that speak about the UPC’s impact on SMEs, the Internet Association hopes we’ll lose sight of who and what it stands for. The members are all large companies and its just another front group of theirs.

When it comes to patents, shaping everything in favour of megacorporations (like those owned by Trump) is to be expected. It’s MEGA (corporations), not MAGA. Hopefully it won’t be the same in Europe; it is under Battistelli and it’s one among many reasons he needs to leave. █

Links 18/11/2016: Apache at 17 (Years), GNU Octave 4.2

Posted in News Roundup at 6:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Jim Zemlin: Why Open Source is Professionalizing, and How to Stay Ahead

    If it is true that software is eating the world then it is also true that open source is eating software. The very fabric of our digital society increasingly runs on software built and supported collectively by hundreds of thousands of people around the globe. And not just traditional technology companies. As we move towards a world defined by digital experiences carmakers, retailers, banks, hospitals, movie studios and so many more are becoming involved in building and underwriting this work—in reality they are becoming software companies themselves.

  • How Open Source and InnerSource are changing the IT Landscape
  • The Tragedy of Open Source
  • Open Source and Trends shaping it
  • Managing the Opportunities and Challenges of Open Source Innovation
  • Open Source is all about Community
  • Open Source Development at the UK Government

    New code developed for the UK government is open by default. Coding in the open enables reuse and increases transparency, which results in better digital services, said Anna Shipman, technical architect at Government Digital Service (GDS). She spoke about open sourcing government at GOTO Berlin 2016.

    Our job is to change the way the government works, said Shipman. The UK government wants to provide digital services which are so good that people want to use them; services which are leading to better interaction between the government and citizen.

    Software development at the UK government used to be done with yearly big bang releases. Over the years this has changed with many teams doing several code updates every day.

  • ‘Podling’ Apache projects are spending longer in the incubator

    Stewards of the Apache Software Foundation are mildly concerned that many nascent projects are spending longer in the incubator, putting pressure on limited mentoring resources.

    In the 12 months up to November 2016, ASF oversaw 30 new “podling” incubator projects, of which four were retired and just seven graduated. Jim Jagielski, director and co-founder at ASF, said the graduation rate has fallen compared to previous years, causing him to ponder why so many projects were apparently stuck.

  • Apache: 17 years on in the open source community

    Apache is a public charity based in the US that facilitates the development of open source projects for the public good in a vendor neutral environment.

    This week the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) hosted ApacheCon in Seville, Spain to celebrate not only it’s 17 year old ‘birthday’ but to further instill this open source community’s core principles that have been with it since the beginning: the ‘Apache Way’.

  • AT&T’s Chris Rice Upskills on SDN & Open Source

    One key advantage SDN provides is the ability to directly program the network by rapidly adding on-demand applications on top of the SDN controller. Service providers are increasingly turning to open source software as a viable alternative to proprietary automation tools, but concerns such as cost, security, standards and whether the software is “carrier-grade” remain front of mind.

  • Transforming scientific research with OpenStack

    A cloud-based approach is often heralded as the natural way forward when it comes to improving agility. And whilst many traditional enterprises have turned to the technology, other types of organizations are seeing the benefits too.

  • Open Source vs Proprietary Cloud: Choose Wisely

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 51 To Enable WebGL 2 By Default, FLAC Audio, Skia Content Rendering On Linux
      • Introducing Firefox Focus – a free, fast and easy to use private browser for iOS
      • Privacy made simple with Firefox Focus

        Today we launched Firefox Focus, a brand new iOS browser that puts user privacy first. More than ever before, we believe that everyone on the Internet has a right to protect their privacy. By launching Firefox Focus, we are putting that belief into practice in a big way.

        How big? If you download Firefox Focus and start to browse, you will notice a prominent “Erase” button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. If you tap that button, the Firefox Focus app erases all browsing information including cookies, website history or passwords. Of course, you can erase this on any other browser but we are making it simple here – just one tap away.

        Out of sight too often means out of mind. Burying the tools to clear browsing history and data behind clicks or taps means that fewer people will do it. By putting the “Erase” button front and center, we offer users a simple path to healthy online behaviors — protecting their online freedom and taking greater control of their personal data. To further enhance user privacy, Firefox Focus also by default blocks advertising, social and analytics tracking. So, on Firefox Focus, “private” browsing is actually automatic, and erasing your history is incredibly simple.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • AtScale Takes its BI Platform Beyond Hadoop

      As it began to develop, 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.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice Conference 2016: First videos online

      Here at The Document Foundation we’ve been really busy since the LibreOffice Conference in September, running our Community Weeks and the Month of LibreOffice. But finally we’ve started putting videos online from presentations at the conference.

      Don’t miss this opening presentation, the State of the Project, and then scroll down for more talks and demos.

  • Funding

    • Kubernetes founders launch Heptio with $8.5M in funding to help bring containers to the enterprise

      For years, the public face of Kubernetes was one of the project’s founders: Google group product manager Craig McLuckie. He started the open-source container-management project together with Joe Beda, Brendan Burns and a few other engineers inside of Google, which has since brought it under the guidance of the newly formed Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

      Beda became an entrepreneur-in-residence at Accel Partners in late 2015, Burns left Google for Microsoft earlier this year and McLuckie quietly left Google to start a new venture a few weeks ago. McLuckie and Beda have now teamed up again to launch Heptio, a new pure-play Kubernetes company.

  • BSD

    • openbsd changes of note

      mcl2k2 pools and the em conversion. The details are in the commits, but the short story is that due to hardware limitations, a number of tradeoffs need to be made between performance and memory usage. The em chip can (mostly) only be programmed to write to 2k buffers. However, ethernet payloads are not nicely aligned. They’re two bytes off. Leading to a costly choice. Provide a 2k buffer, and then copy all the data after the fact, which is slow. Or allocate a larger than 2k buffer, and provide em with a pointer that’s 2 bytes offset. Previously, the next size up from 2k was 4k, which is quite wasteful. The new 2k2 buffer size still wastes a bit of memory, but much less.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • Faster unified capabilities and open source code on DISA’s plate for 2017

      The Defense Information Systems Agency is trying to speed up the delivery of its voice, video and data services to Defense Department and military employees.

      DISA currently has its Unified Capabilities (UC) contract award date set for the fourth quarter of 2018, but the IT agency thinks it can push the award to the left and have it finished by the first quarter. The contract, called Defense Enterprise Office Solutions (DEOS), would integrate things like voice, video, email, content management and other communication devices into one seamless, unified client.

      However, DISA’s Enterprise-wide Services Division Chief Brian Hermann, thinks DISA can award and set up UC faster.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • 4 tips for DIY makers

      First, I take a picture of the postcard and upload it to Wikimedia Commons under a free license, usually Creative Commons Share-Alike 4.0 or CC BY-SA 4.0 International. These two licenses allow anyone to use the image of my artwork for both non-commercial and commercial purposes, modify and remix them. And uploading to Wikimedia Commons puts my artwork in a place where many people will see it.

  • Programming/Development

    • LLVM’s LLD Linker Looking At Enabling Multi-Threading By Default
    • You Are Not Paid to Write Code

      “Taco Bell Programming” is the idea that we can solve many of the problems we face as software engineers with clever reconfigurations of the same basic Unix tools. The name comes from the fact that every item on the menu at Taco Bell, a company which generates almost $2 billion in revenue annually, is simply a different configuration of roughly eight ingredients.

      Many people grumble or reject the notion of using proven tools or techniques. It’s boring. It requires investing time to learn at the expense of shipping code. It doesn’t do this one thing that we need it to do. It won’t work for us. For some reason—and I continue to be completely baffled by this—everyone sees their situation as a unique snowflake despite the fact that a million other people have probably done the same thing. It’s a weird form of tunnel vision, and I see it at every level in the organization. I catch myself doing it on occasion too. I think it’s just human nature.

    • Eclipse Che cloud IDE joins Docker revolution

      Eclipse Che 5.0 is making accommodations for Docker containers and Language Server Protocol across multiple IDEs. The newest version of the Eclipse Foundation’s cloud-based IDE and workspace server will be available by the end of the year.

      The update offers Docker Compose Workspaces, in which a workspace can run multiple developer machines with support for Docker Compose files and standard Dockerfiles. In the popular Docker software container platform, a Compose file is a Yet Another Markup Language (YAML) file defining services, networks, and volumes; a Docker file is a text document with commands to assemble an image. Che also has been certified for Docker Store, which features enterprise-ready containers. In addition, Docker is joining the Eclipse Foundation and will work directly with Che.

Leftovers

  • Are Office Depot workers pushing unnecessary computer fixes?

    1116-ctm-officedepotinvestigation-jones-1181439-640×360.jpg
    KIRO-TV

    The retailer says it helps about 6,000 customers per week with its free PC health checks, and that it does not condone any of the alleged conduct we uncovered. But CBS affiliate KIRO-TV’s undercover cameras showed how employees used the service to sell customers expensive computer repairs that weren’t there, reports KIRO’s Jesse Jones.

    Office Depot’s technicians repeatedly told us our computers were infected.

    “It’s got malware symptoms in there,” one said.

    They said they could fix them — for a hefty fee.

    “It actually looks like it’s $180 right now,” the technician estimated.

    The only problem? All the PC’s were brand new and fresh out of the box. The computer security firm IOActive also gave them a clean bill of health.

    “We found no symptoms of malware on these computers when we operated them,” said Will Longman, IOActive VP of Information Technology and Security.

    We even purchased one of the new computers at Office Depot. But when we brought it to technicians at a different store, a technician said, “Malware symptoms were found in the machine.”

  • Science

    • Blast Off With the Amateur Rocketeers of the Mojave Desert

      An event called “Large, Dangerous Rocket Ships” doesn’t bring to mind a day of peace and quiet. If nothing else, a field packed with amateur rocketeers blasting things toward the heavens is raucous to say the least. But Sean Lemoine found it all very … zen. “It’s very serene out there, just watching the rockets,” he says.

      Large, Dangerous Rocket Ships is among the world’s biggest amateur rocketry events. Some 250 rocketeers from as away as the UK and Argentina gathered on a cracked lakebed in the Mojave Desert, where the Federal Aviation Administration cleared the airspace for miles around. That’s essential, because these folks launch rockets capable of reaching 17,000 feet and making Elon Musk smile.

  • Hardware

    • Hard Drive Stats for Q3 2016: Less is More

      In our last report for Q2 2016, we counted 68,813 spinning hard drives in operation. For Q3 2016 we have 67,642 drives, or 1,171 fewer hard drives. Stop, put down that Twitter account, Backblaze is not shrinking. In fact, we’re growing very nicely and are approaching 300 petabytes of data under our management. We have fewer drives because over the last quarter we swapped out more than 3,500 2 terabyte (TB) HGST and WDC hard drives for 2,400 8 TB Seagate drives. So we have fewer drives, but more data. Lots more data! We’ll get into the specifics a little later on, but first, let’s take a look at our Q3 2016 drive stats.

  • Security

    • Security updates for Thursday
    • Reproducible Builds: week 81 in Stretch cycle
    • Security-hardened Android, bounties for Tcl coders, and more open source news

      In a blog post yesterday, the Tor project announced a refresh of a prototype of a Tor-enabled Android phone aimed at reducing vulnerability to security and privacy issues. Combining several existing software packages together, the effort has created an installation tool for hardening your phone. While designed for a Nexus 6P reference device, the project hopes to expand to provide greater hardware choice.

    • Linux flaw exposed in a minute by pressing enter key

      Researchers have discovered a major vulnerability in the Cryptesetup utility that can impact many GNU/Linux systems, which is activated by pressing the enter key for about 70 seconds.

    • Chinese IoT Firm Siphoned Text Messages, Call Records

      A Chinese technology firm has been siphoning text messages and call records from cheap Android-based mobile smart phones and secretly sending the data to servers in China, researchers revealed this week. The revelations came the same day the White House and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued sweeping guidelines aimed at building security into Internet-connected devices, and just hours before a key congressional panel sought recommendations from industry in regulating basic security standards for so-called “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices.

    • Google security engineer slams antivirus software, cites better security methods

      Google senior security engineer Darren Bilby isn’t a fan of antivirus software, telling a conference in New Zealand that more time should be spent on more meaningful defenses such as whitelisting applications.

      Speaking at the Kiwicon hacking conference, Bilby said that antivirus apps are simply ineffective and the security world should concentrate its efforts on things that can make a difference.

      “Please no more magic,” Bilby told the conference, according to The Register. “We need to stop investing in those things we have shown do not work. Sure, you are going to have to spend some time on things like intrusion detection systems because that’s what the industry has decided is the plan, but allocate some time to working on things that actually genuinely help.”

      Antivirus software does some useful things, he said, “but in reality it is more like a canary in the coal mine. It is worse than that. It’s like we are standing around the dead canary saying, ‘Thank god it inhaled all the poisonous gas.’”

    • Dutch government wants to keep “zero days” available for exploitation

      The Dutch government is very clear about at least one thing: unknown software vulnerabilities, also known as “zero days”, may be left open by the government, in order to be exploited by secret services and the police.

      We all benefit from a secure and reliable digital infrastructure. It ensures the protection of sensitive personal data, security, company secrets and the national interest. It is essential for the protection of free communication and privacy. As a consequence, any vulnerability should be patched immediately. This is obviously only possible when unknown vulnerabilities are disclosed responsibly. Keeping a vulnerability under wraps is patently irresponsible: it may be found simultaneously by others who abuse it, for example to steal sensitive information or to attack other devices.

    • How To ‘PoisonTap’ A Locked Computer Using A $5 Raspberry Pi

      White hat hacker Samy Kamkar has come up with a way of to hijack Internet traffics from a password-protected computer.

      Serial white hat hacker Samy Kamkar has developed a new exploit for breaking into a locked computer and installing a persistent web-based backdoor on it for accessing the victim’s online accounts.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • David Petraeus in the running to be Trump’s secretary of state

      David Petraeus – the former US army general and CIA director who was prosecuted for mishandling classified information – has entered the race to become Donald Trump’s secretary of state, diplomatic sources said on Thursday.

      Petraeus resigned in November 2012 after the FBI discovered he had had an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, and had shared classified information with her. He eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for mishandling the information. People who have seen him recently say he is anxious to return to public life and has privately refused to rule out serving in a Trump administration.

    • You say pro-NATO, I say pro-peace

      So the NATO Secretary General’s second justification of the organisation’s continued existence is not exactly what one would call compelling. But I suppose he had to try, when Juncker’s threatened folie de grandeur that is the EU army is even less inspiring.

      So, back to President-elect Donald Trump. What will he do, faced with this mess of competing western military/security interests and Euro-bureaucrat careerists? Perhaps his US isolationist position is not so mad, bad and dangerous to know as the wailings of the western liberal press would have us believe?

      American “exceptionalism” and NATO interventionism have not exactly benefited much of the world since the end of the Cold War. Perhaps the time has indeed come for an American Commander-in-Chief who can cut deals, cut through the sabre-rattling rhetoric and, even unintentionally, make a significant contribution to world peace.

      Stranger things have happened. After all, outgoing President Obama won the Nobel Prize for Peace a mere eight months after his inauguration….

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • Assange ends testimony to prosecutors

      WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has “co-operated fully” with prosecutors questioning him over a Swedish rape allegation and hopes the case against him will now be dropped, his lawyer Jennifer Robinson says.

      But she told reporters outside Assange’s refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on Tuesday that even if Swedish authorities drop the case he will still have to stay inside the embassy while a US investigation into WikiLeaks’ release of secret US government documents continues.

      In the embassy where he’s been holed up since mid-2016, the 45-year-old Australian on Tuesday finished two days of giving testimony on an allegation he raped a woman in Stockholm in 2010.

    • Why the World Needs WikiLeaks

      My organization, WikiLeaks, took a lot of heat during the run-up to the recent presidential election. We have been accused of abetting the candidacy of Donald J. Trump by publishing cryptographically authenticated information about Hillary Clinton’s campaign and its influence over the Democratic National Committee, the implication being that a news organization should have withheld accurate, newsworthy information from the public.

      The Obama Justice Department continues to pursue its six-year criminal investigation of WikiLeaks, the largest known of its kind, into the publishing of classified documents and articles about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay and Mrs. Clinton’s first year as secretary of state. According to the trial testimony of one F.B.I. agent, the investigation includes several of WikiLeaks founders, owners and managers. And last month our editor, Julian Assange, who has asylum at Ecuador’s London embassy, had his internet connection severed.

    • What Will Be the Costs of Whistleblowing in Trump’s America When They Were Already Extreme Under Obama?

      It was around four in the morning when I received the phone call. “I was raided by the FBI,” said a trembling voice on the other end. “I need help.”

      I was immediately alarmed. I was in the middle of production of a highly risky investigation into the U.S. drone war, and I had gained exclusive access to film with two whistleblowers who wanted to go on the record about their experiences in the drone program. The voice on the phone belonged to one of them, and my research would later become the documentary film “National Bird.”

      When I answered the phone, I was at a veterans’ convention near Denver and had just established contact with a third whistleblower.

    • How Will Trump Deal with FOIA?

      President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on the idea that the media is incompetent, biased, and vindictive. He was also the first candidate in modern US history to refuse to release his tax returns.

      Taken together, the inbound Trump administration doesn’t look like it’s going to be particularly forthcoming or transparent with reporters. But how will his administration deal with the Freedom of Information Act, one of the most powerful tools reporters, activists, and researchers have to gain insight into the inner workings of government?

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Indonesian fires exposed 69 million to ‘killer haze’

      Wildfires in Indonesia and Borneo exposed 69 million people to unhealthy air pollution and are responsible for thousands of premature deaths, new research has shown.

      The study, published today in Scientific Reports, gives the most accurate picture yet of the impact on human health of the wildfires which ripped through forest and peatland in Equatorial Asia during the autumn of 2015.

      The study used detailed observations of the haze from Singapore and Indonesia. Analysing hourly air quality data from a model at a resolution of 10km – where all previous studies have looked at daily levels at a much lower resolution – the team was able to show that a quarter of the population of Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia was exposed to unhealthy air quality conditions between September and October 2015.

    • Britain ratifies Paris climate agreement

      Britain said on Thursday it had ratified the Paris Agreement, the global deal to combat climate change.

      The Paris Agreement came into force on Nov. 4 when more than 55 countries representing more than 55 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions ratified the deal.

      “The UK is ratifying the historic Paris Agreement so that we can help to accelerate global action on climate change and deliver on our commitments to create a safer, more prosperous future for us all,” Nick Hurd, Minister of State for Climate Change and Industry, said.

    • Largest bank in Norway pulls its assets in Dakota Access pipeline

      A press release from Greenpeace Thursday says the largest bank in Norway, DNB, sold its assets in the Dakota Access pipeline. They say this decision was the result of 120,000 signatures from Greenpeace Norway and others to DNB, urging the bank and other financial institutions to pull finances from the project.

  • Finance

    • EU set to ask Ukip group to repay almost £150,000 in ‘misspent funds’

      Ukip is likely to be asked to repay tens of thousands of euros by European parliament finance chiefs who have accused the party of misspending EU funds on party workers and Nigel Farage’s failed bid to win a seat in Westminster.

      The Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe, a Ukip-dominated political vehicle, will be asked to repay €173,000 (£148,000) in misspent funds and denied a further €501,000 in EU grants for breaking European rules that ban spending EU money on national election campaigns and referendums.

    • We must rethink globalization, or Trumpism will prevail

      Let it be said at once: Trump’s victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive governments to deal with this.

      Both the Clinton and the Obama administrations frequently went along with the market liberalization launched under Reagan and both Bush presidencies. At times they even outdid them: the financial and commercial deregulation carried out under Clinton is an example. What sealed the deal, though, was the suspicion that the Democrats were too close to Wall Street – and the inability of the Democratic media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote.

    • Angela Merkel suggests TTIP trade deal won’t be concluded under Barack Obama’s presidency

      Angela Merkel has said the TTIP trade deal will not be completed now Donald Trump has been elected president of the United States.

      Speaking at a joint press conference with US President Barack Obama, the German Chancellor said the United States represents an important trading partner for both Germany and the European Union.

      “I’ve always come out strongly in favour of concluding a trade agreement with the United States of America,” Ms Merkel said.

      She added: “We have made progress, quite a lot of progress, but they will not be concluded now.

      “But we will keep what we have achieved so far, and I’m absolutely certain one day we will come back to what we have achieved and build on it.”

    • Goodbye, American neoliberalism. A new era is here

      The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph of Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians.

      The Bush and Clinton dynasties were destroyed by the media-saturated lure of the pseudo-populist billionaire with narcissist sensibilities and ugly, fascist proclivities. The monumental election of Trump was a desperate and xenophobic cry of human hearts for a way out from under the devastation of a disintegrating neoliberal order – a nostalgic return to an imaginary past of greatness.

      White working- and middle-class fellow citizens – out of anger and anguish – rejected the economic neglect of neoliberal policies and the self-righteous arrogance of elites. Yet these same citizens also supported a candidate who appeared to blame their social misery on minorities, and who alienated Mexican immigrants, Muslims, black people, Jews, gay people, women and China in the process.

      This lethal fusion of economic insecurity and cultural scapegoating brought neoliberalism to its knees. In short, the abysmal failure of the Democratic party to speak to the arrested mobility and escalating poverty of working people unleashed a hate-filled populism and protectionism that threaten to tear apart the fragile fiber of what is left of US democracy. And since the most explosive fault lines in present-day America are first and foremost racial, then gender, homophobic, ethnic and religious, we gird ourselves for a frightening future.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Daily Report: The Increasingly Tectonic Force of Social Media

      Social media has been in the glare since the election for its perceived harmful qualities, such as the spreading of hate speech and the false information.

      But the effect of social media on world affairs is much larger than just misinformation and mean tweets, Farhad Manjoo writes. In his new State of the Art column, he argues that social media — now collectively used by billions of people worldwide through services like Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, WeChat and Weibo — has grown to a point where it is increasingly influencing the course of global events.

    • Facebook fake-news writer: ‘I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me’

      What do the Amish lobby, gay wedding vans and the ban of the national anthem have in common? For starters, they’re all make-believe — and invented by the same man.

      Paul Horner, the 38-year-old impresario of a Facebook fake-news empire, has made his living off viral news hoaxes for several years. He has twice convinced the Internet that he’s British graffiti artist Banksy; he also published the very viral, very fake news of a Yelp vs. “South Park” lawsuit last year.

      But in recent months, Horner has found the fake-news ecosystem growing more crowded, more political and vastly more influential: In March, Donald Trump’s son Eric and his then-campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, even tweeted links to one of Horner’s faux-articles. His stories have also appeared as news on Google.

    • The fact fake news ‘outperformed’ real news on Facebook proves the problem is wildly out of control

      BuzzFeed is reporting that at the end of the US presidential election, the top malicious fake news stories actually outperformed the most popular legitimate news stories shared by media companies.

      According to data from a Facebook-monitoring tool, the top 20 fake news stories collectively got more engagements – shares, likes, comments – than the top 20 factually accurate news stories shared by mainstream news outlets.

    • [Older] Did Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald Use Threats and Bribery to Silence a Young Journalist?

      In retrospect, it sounds preposterous: A nationally recognized journalist publishes an article alleging a conspiracy between the Republican candidate for President of the United States and Russia, and, when his hyperbole is exposed in an email from a young journalist, allegedly attempts to intimidate and bribe that journalist in exchange for his silence. Nevertheless, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

    • Here’s Your 2016 Election Explained from 2013

      Here’s an excerpt from my book Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99 Percent. I wrote the passage below in 2013. Nobody wanted to read it then, nobody thought it meant anything. Well, maybe it makes more sense now. And, yeah, I’m a little bitter about that.

      “Yep. Thirty years on the big bucket, pouring out two hundred tons of steel a day. Lookit my right arm—muscle’s twice as thick as on the left ’cause of that lever I pulled every day. I got that job right after Korea in fact. My old man sent me to see the foreman while I was still wearing my uniform.”

      “How’s it up there now? I heard the president say he’s creating more jobs, so I was considering moving up.”

      “Moving on isn’t a bad idea. I wished I had done it at your age. Hell, I wished I’d done it last month.”

      “So there’s work where you’re from?”

      “Same there as it was four years ago and four years before that. Every four years the president comes back into western Pennsylvania like a dog looking for a place to pee. He reminds us that his wife’s cousin is from some town near to ours, gets photographed at the diner if it’s still in business, and then makes those promises to us while winking at the big business donors who feed him bribes they call campaign contributions. I’m tempted to cut out the middleman and just write in ‘Goldman Sachs’ on my ballot next election.”

    • ‘Yesterday We Were Stunned, Today We Organize’ – CounterSpin special report on what comes next after Trump’s election

      So, much to come, but for this week, what now for electoral reform and congressional diversity, for the environment, for Muslim-Americans and others made vulnerable by the so-called War on Terror in its domestic and international fronts? We’ll hear from Rob Richie and Cynthia Terrell from FairVote, from author and professor Deepa Kumar, from Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies, and from Patty Lovera from Food and Water Watch. They’re all coming up, but first a brief look back at recent press

    • How Trump’s ‘Chief Strategist’ Provided a ‘Platform for the Alt-Right’

      Stephen Bannon, the Trump campaign chief executive and the announced “Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the President” in the Trump administration, has declared of Breitbart, the website he still heads, “We’re the platform for the alt-right.” What did he mean by that?

      Well, the alt-right, by Breitbart‘s own description, is a coalition of advocates of “scientific race differences”; people interested in “the preservation of their own tribe and its culture” who “believe that some degree of separation between peoples is necessary for a culture to be preserved”; online traffickers in racist and antisemitic stereotypes who “feel a mischievous urge to blaspheme”; and a significant fringe of hardcore, pro-Hitler neo-Nazis.

    • Neo-Liberalism Under Cover of Racism

      The first, and highly successful method is to convince people that it is not the massive appropriation of resources by the ultra-wealthy which causes their poverty, it is rather competition for the scraps with outsiders. This approach employs pandering to racism and xenophobia, and is characteristic of UKIP and Trump.

      The second approach employs the antithesis to the same end. It is to co-opt the forces marginalised by the first approach and rally them behind an “alternative” approach which is still neo-liberalism. This is identity politics which reached its apotheosis in the Clinton campaign. The Wikileaks releases of DNC and Podesta emails revealed the extreme cynicism of Clinton manipulation of ethnic group votes. Still more blatant was the promotion of the idea that Hillary being a corrupt neo-con warmonger was outweighed by the fact she was female. The notion that elevating extremely rich and privileged women already within the 1% to top positions, breaks a glass ceiling and benefits all women, is the precise feminist equivalent of trickledown theory.

      That the xenophobic strand rather than the identity politics strand won will, I predict, prove to have no impact on continued neo-liberal policies.

    • You Are Still Crying Wolf

      Trump made gains among blacks. He made gains among Latinos. He made gains among Asians. The only major racial group where he didn’t get a gain of greater than 5% was white people. I want to repeat that: the group where Trump’s message resonated least over what we would predict from a generic Republican was the white population.

      Nor was there some surge in white turnout. I don’t think we have official numbers yet, but by eyeballing what data we have it looks very much like whites turned out in equal or lesser numbers this year than in 2012, 2008, and so on.

    • Barack Obama on fake news: ‘We have problems’ if we can’t tell the difference

      “If we are not serious about facts and what’s true and what’s not, if we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems,” he said during a press conference in Germany.

      Since the surprise election of Donald Trump as president-elect, Facebook has battled accusations that it has failed to stem the flow of misinformation on its network and that its business model leads to users becoming divided into polarized political echo chambers.

      Obama said that we live in an age with “so much active misinformation” that is “packaged very well” and looks the same whether it’s on Facebook or on TV.

    • The Electoral College Was Created to Stop Demagogues Like Trump

      Trump promises to bring to the presidency precisely the ‘tumult and disorder’ that Hamilton warned against

      Since Nov. 9, Donald Trump has been described as our “President-elect.” But many would be shocked to learn that this term is actually legally meaningless. The Constitution sets out a specific hurdle for Trump to ascend to the presidency. And that will not happen until Dec. 19 when the members of the Electoral College meet in their respective states to vote for the President.

    • Senator Boxer Introduces Bill to Eliminate Electoral College

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • From Hate Speech To Fake News: The Content Crisis Facing Mark Zuckerberg

      Mark Zuckerberg — one of the most insightful, adept leaders in the business world — has a problem. It’s a problem he has been slow to acknowledge, even though it’s become more apparent by the day.

      Several current and former Facebook employees tell NPR there is a lot of internal turmoil about how the platform does and doesn’t censor content that users find offensive. And outside Facebook, the public is regularly confounded by the company’s decisions — around controversial posts and around fake news.

      (Did Pope Francis really endorse Donald Trump? Does Hillary Clinton really have a body double?)

    • Facebook’s Problem Is More Complicated Than Fake News

      In the wake of Donald Trump’s unexpected victory, many questions have been raised about Facebook’s role in the promotion of inaccurate and highly partisan information during the presidential race and whether this fake news influenced the election’s outcome.

      A few have downplayed Facebook’s impact, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said that it is “extremely unlikely” that fake news could have swayed the election. But questions about the social network’s political significance merit more than passing attention.

    • Six Monarchs, 140 Dissidents, One Rule: Keep Your Mouth Shut

      Bahraini human rights activist Zainab al-Khawaja, known to her 47, 900 Twitter followers as @angryarabiya, faced trial in a courtroom in Manama in October 2014. The charges related to an incident two years earlier when she had ripped up a photo of Bahrain’s King Hamad in an act of protest. If the judge was expecting contrition, he was in for a shock. Al-Khawaja proceeded to pull out another photo of the king, ripped it up, and placed it in front of a bemused judge, who promptly adjourned the hearing and stomped off.

    • Why Twitter’s Alt-Right Banning Campaign Will Become The Alt-Right’s Best Recruitment Tool

      If there are two points worth hammering home on matters of free speech, they are that defenders of free speech must be willing to defend speech they don’t like and that the solution to bad speech is more good speech. I would argue that Western democracy as a whole can be defined as a political version of the Socratic Method, by which the electorate engages in public debate, constantly questioning the other side, in order to produce the most optimal thoughts. For those that value this method of discourse, it’s instantly recognized that it only works if you have opposing views. To that end, it’s imperative that we not only allow, but feverishly welcome, different points of view.

      But this kind of thinking is currently under assault in America, and from both sides. The latest example of this is Twitter’s recent decision to carpet-ban an entire slew of accounts linked to the so-called “alt-right” movement.

    • Mark Zuckerberg Continues to Miss the Point on Facebook as a Media Entity

      Zuckerberg says he “cares deeply” about the company’s fake news problem

      As critics slam Facebook for the role they believe it—and in particular its penchant for fake news stories—played in the election of Donald Trump, CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues to resist any attempt to pin some of the blame on his company. But in doing so, he misses the point.

      Over the weekend, the Facebook co-founder took to the site to respond to some of those criticisms. He said he “cares deeply” about the fake news problem and wants to get it right. But he also said that he doesn’t believe fake news contributed to the election’s outcome.

    • Kim Jong Un Gets New Mean Nickname After Chinese Censors Block Fat Jokes
    • China censors search reuslts for Kim Jong Un’s ‘Fatty’ nickname
    • China clamps down on Kim Jong-un ‘fatty’ jokes
    • China Really Doesn’t Want Anyone to Call Kim Jong-Un a ‘Fatty’

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • UK Joins Russia And China In Legalizing Bulk Surveillance

      The highly-intrusive Investigatory Powers Bill has been passed by the UK’s House of Lords, and will come into force within weeks.

      The move gives the British government the power to spy on its citizens to an extent that’s virtually unprecedented anywhere in the world – only Russia and China have comparable regimes.

      It legalizes activities that the GCHQ spy agency had been illegally carrying out for years, including the bulk collection of personal communications data. It also allows both the security services and the police the power to hack into and bug electronic devices from smartphones to baby monitors.

      Meanwhile, internet and phone providers will be required to record and store for a year their customers’ phone and web activity. This will include the websites they’ve visited and the communications software they’ve used, along with every mobile app and more.

    • Your mobile phone records and home address for sale

      Corrupt insiders at offshore call centres are offering the private details of Australian customers of Optus, Telstra and Vodafone for sale to anyone prepared to pay.

      A Fairfax Media investigation can reveal Mumbai-based security firm AI Solutions is asking between $350 and $1000 in exchange for the private information, but even more if the target is an Australian “VIP, politician, police, [or] celebrity”.

    • Chinese tourist town uses face recognition as an entry pass

      Who needs tickets when you have a face? From today, the ticketed tourist town of Wuzhen in China is using face-recognition technology to identify people staying in its hotels and to act as their entry pass through the gates of the attraction.

      The system, which is expected to process 5000 visitors a day, has been created by web giant Baidu – often referred to as the “Chinese Google”.

      Wuzhen is a historic town that has been turned into a tourist attraction with museums, tours and traditional crafts. When people check in to hotels in the tourist area, they will now have their pictures taken and uploaded to a central database. If they leave and re-enter the town, the face-recognition software will check that they are actually a guest of a hotel there before allowing them back in.

    • UN privacy chief: UK surveillance bill is ‘worse than scary’

      Joseph Cannataci, the UN’s special rapporteur on privacy, attacked the government’s draft Investigatory Powers Bill, saying he had never seen evidence that mass surveillance works. He also accused MPs of leading an “absolute offensive” and an “orchestrated” media campaign to distort the debate and take hold of new powers.

      The comments came during a live streamed keynote presentation at the Internet Governance Forum in Brazil, where leading experts from around the world have gathered to discuss the future of the internet and web policy.

      In a wide-ranging presentation and discussion panel Cannataci — who has previously said the UK’s digital surveillance is similar to George Orwell’s 1984 — discussed the state of surveillance and privacy around the world. Pausing to briefly talk about the Home Office’s new bill, but without going deeply into detail, Cannataci said: “The snoopers’ charter in the UK is just a bit worse than scary, isn’t it.”

    • Google Unleashes its Machine Learning Group [Ed: Human learning at Google (spying, dossiers, classification, surveillance etc.) as “Machine Learning” ‘group’]
    • Companies Keep Asking Us To Track You; We’d Rather You Be Protected From Tracking
    • James Clapper, who led America’s digital mass surveillance efforts, has resigned
    • Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Resigns
    • James Clapper, the US intelligence chief, resigns
    • James Clapper, of NSA-scandal fame, is stepping down
    • America’s Top Spy Talks Snowden Leaks and Our Ominous Future

      Public appearances don’t come easily to James Clapper, the United States director of national intelligence. America’s top spy is a 75-year-old self-described geezer who speaks in a low, guttural growl; his physical appearance—muscular and bald—recalls an aging biker who has reluctantly accepted life in a suit. Clapper especially hates appearing on Capitol Hill, where members of Congress wait to ambush him and play what he calls “stump the chump.” As he says, “I rank testimony—particularly in the open—right up there with root canals and folding fitted sheets.”

    • Lawmakers Want To Halt Changes That Would Allow Trump Wider Hacking Abilities

      A group of senators are making a last-ditch effort to delay proposed changes to a federal rule that would greatly expand the government current hacking powers.

      The Review the Rule Act would delay the proposed changes to Rule 41, officially known as the Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41, from going into effect until July 1, 2017. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court approved proposed changes to Rule 41, giving Congress until Dec. 1 to modify, reject, or postpone the changes established by the court before they become law.

      Broadly speaking, Rule 41 deals with circumstances in which the government is allowed to tap into citizen’s computers.

      The bipartisan group backing the bill includes Democratic Senators Chris Coons, Steve Daines, Ron Wyden, and Al Franken and Republican Senator Mike Lee, together with Representatives John Conyers Jr., and Ted Poe, a Democrat and Republican respectively.

    • Britain has passed the ‘most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy’

      The new law, dubbed the “snoopers’ charter”, was introduced by then-home secretary Theresa May in 2012, and took two attempts to get passed into law following breakdowns in the previous coalition government.

      Four years and a general election later — May is now prime minister — the bill was finalized and passed on Wednesday by both parliamentary houses.

      But civil liberties groups have long criticized the bill, with some arguing that the law will let the UK government “document everything we do online”.

      It’s no wonder, because it basically does.

      The law will force internet providers to record every internet customer’s top-level web history in real-time for up to a year, which can be accessed by numerous government departments; force companies to decrypt data on demand — though the government has never been that clear on exactly how it forces foreign firms to do that that; and even disclose any new security features in products before they launch.

    • Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden threatens to filibuster if Trump goes after encryption

      Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, who was re-elected last week, told VICE News in an exclusive interview that he is willing to cross the aisle to work with President-elect Donald Trump, but that he is also poised for battle on civil liberties.

      Wyden is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and has gone up against the NSA and the CIA. He thinks national security will play a prominent role in the Trump administration. And even though his party is in the minority in Congress, he intends to hold Trump accountable should the president try to weaken protections surrounding encryption.

    • Privacy is the only working antidote against echo chambers

      Echo chambers are causing real harm to developing a coherent discourse in any subject, but those echo chambers all depend on identity. Replace the identity with privacy, and the echo chamber cannot function, instead allowing for a diverse range of unidentified opinions and viewpoints.

      The term “echo chamber” has gotten a revival lately, and especially after the recent US presidential election: the dangers of only speaking to, and hearing, likeminded people – being in an “echo chamber” where your own opinions are echoed back at you. Facebook is cited as one of the worst echo-chamber environments, and for good reason.

      Wall Street Journal’s “Blue Feed, Red Feed” demonstration really highlights how bad the phenomenon is: you only see news stories that reinforce your existing opinions. (If you haven’t seen the demo, it’s worth seeing.) Since Facebook is a for-profit company, it tries to keep us happy, and part of keeping us happy is confirming that we’re right about basically everything we believe.

    • Why the Investigatory Powers Act is a privacy disaster waiting to happen

      On Thursday, the Investigatory Powers Bill, colloquially known as the Snoopers’ Charter, completed its final stage and is set to become law. The legislative process began in March of this year, and has been rather overshadowed by the Brexit referendum and its shambolic aftermath. As a result, the UK government has had a comparatively easy ride over what are some of the most extreme surveillance powers in the world.

    • Snooper’s Charter is set to become law: how the Investigatory Powers Bill will affect you

      After more than 12 months of debate, jostling and a healthy dose of criticism, the United Kingdom’s new surveillance regime is set to become law.

      Both the House of Lords and House of Commons have now passed the Investigatory Powers Bill – the biggest overhaul of surveillance powers for more than a decade.

      Now the bill has been passed by both of these official bodies, it is almost law. Before it officially is adopted, however, it will need to receive Royal Assent, which is likely to be given before the end of 2016 (to match the government’s intentions and ahead of existing surveillance laws expiring).

    • Burner Phones and Email Encryption: Protecting Documentary Sources in a Surveillance State

      I bought a burner phone in cash and felt like a criminal. Earlier, as I was spreading the dollar bills on the counter, I asked myself, “Am I completely paranoid?” It was not the first time during the production of my drone warfare documentary, National Bird, that this thought crossed my mind, and it was certainly not the last.

      But I was not paranoid – and neither were the protagonists of my film, three whistleblowers who had worked in the U.S. drone program with top-secret clearances. Less than 24 hours prior to my phone purchase, one of them had had their home raided by the FBI and was now being investigated for espionage. I needed to contact my lawyer, an expert on First Amendment rights, and given the recent turn of events, using my own phone did not seem like a good idea.

      When I started my research for National Bird, I knew I was entering dangerous territory loaded with sensitive information. My goal for the film was to speak to the people directly impacted by the drone war, not to some pundits in suits in front of bookshelves. I wanted to gain access to the people on the inside who were fighting this high-tech war, and to the victims and survivors in the target countries. This was a risky project from the outset and it became necessary to work with lawyers to reduce the risks for everyone involved.

    • iPhone call history can be extracted from an iCloud account

      APPLE USERS are having their call records stored in the company’s iCloud servers in a way that can be extracted by third parties.

      Russian software house ElcomSoft has revealed that it has found a way to extract the data in near real time, for anyone targeting a phone with iOS 9 or above.

      The company has released an app called ElcomSoft Phone Breaker 6.20, capable of performing its nefarious mischief even on a locked, PIN-protected phone.

    • Apple logs iPhone, iMessage and FaceTime calls in iCloud

      Despite Apples’ apparent strong stance on security, its user’s iCloud Drives are frequently accessed by legal authorities.

      Even in the now famous case of the case of the San Bernardino shooter, Apple revealed it had already handed over access to the shooters iCloud. That data includes email logs and content, text messages, photos, documents, contacts, calendars, bookmarks and iOS device backups.

    • Apple Uploading Call Data, Including From Third-Party Call Apps, To Users’ iCloud Accounts

      Plain vanilla call records aren’t that difficult to obtain. They’ve long been considered third-party records and can be obtained without a warrant. The Intercept quotes a former FBI agent as saying this is a “boon” for law enforcement because the four-month retention period is longer than most service providers’.

      That doesn’t seem to be correct at all. The EFF’s Nate Cardozo points out that most service providers retain call logs for at least a year, with some retaining records for as long as a decade. Kim Zetter, who wrote the piece for The Intercept, believes it might be a misunderstanding. Providers may retain content (messages, etc.) for a shorter time frame than the four months of records Apple automatically uploads, but former agent Robert Osgood (quoted in The Intercept’s piece) clearly states he’s referring to call logs.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Christians sentenced to 80 lashes by Sharia court for drinking communion wine

      Yaser Mosibzadeh, Saheb Fadayee and Mohammed Reza Omidi will be flogged in public after being arrested at a house church gathering in Rasht, Iran, earlier this year.

      The trio spent weeks in prison before finally being released on bail, but will now be subjected to the cruel and degrading punishment after being found guilty by Islamist judges.

      Security agents also raided the home of their pastor Yousef Nadarkhani and his wife Fatemeh Pasandideh and arrested them at the same time, but they were not detained.

    • Amnesty criticises Indonesia for blasphemy probe against Governor Ahok

      Amnesty International has asked Indonesia to drop the blasphemy probe against Jakarta’s Chinese Christian Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama.

      Ahok was in the limelight in the last few weeks after hardline Islamist organisations demanded his ouster and held a rally in capital Jakarta that turned violent.

    • Briton who reported rape in Dubai could face jail for extramarital sex

      A British woman who reported being raped by two men is “petrified” after being told she faces jail in Dubai for extramarital sex.

      The 25-year-old tourist claimed she was attacked by two men while on holiday in the United Arab Emirates and reported the incident to police.

      But officers then charged the professional from Cheshire with extramarital sex and, despite being bailed, she is not allowed to leave the country. Her passport has been confiscated and UK-based UAE legal experts Detained in Dubai said she could face a prison sentence if found guilty.

      The family of the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have set up fundraising pages online to raise money to cover her legal costs. She is currently residing in a safe house.

      The woman’s father wrote online that his daughter had met the two men in her hotel who raped her. He claims the alleged attack was filmed. He added: “She is stranded, is not allowed to leave the country, and is alone scared, and in a dreadful situation, as you can imagine.”

    • Turnkey Tyranny: Jamming the Lock on the Way Out

      For six years—from 2006 to 2013—I worked inside the intelligence community to enforce laws and policies that protect privacy and civil liberties. My tenure spanned the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The surveillance policies of both administrations enlarged the powers of the National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence agencies and put considerable strain on privacy.

      Edward Snowden’s disclosures of mass surveillance programs, beginning in 2013, led to a course correction in the late Obama years. Changes included a substantial transparency drive, limits on signals intelligence collection that apply to foreigners, and reforms to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that include the end of bulk collection of metadata under that law. I have argued that the Snowden reforms forced the NSA to become “more transparent, more accountable, more protective of privacy—and more effective.”

      Still, we delude ourselves if we think they have made the NSA tyrant-proof. In Snowden’s first interview from Hong Kong, warned against “turnkey tyranny.” One day, he said, “a new leader will be elected” and “they’ll find the switch.” With Donald Trump’s election, it is important that this warning not be proved prophetic. While the United States has a robust system of intelligence oversight—the strongest in the world—it still largely depends on the good faith of Executive Branch officials.

    • Trump’s Torture Promise Hits A Deep Nerve For The People Who Worked To Ban It

      President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to bring back enhanced interrogation techniques — including waterboarding and “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding” — is rattling the tight-knit community of government officials and activists who have worked for a decade to forbid it.

      “I cannot believe we are honestly having this convo,” one anti-torture advocate, who has helped shape interrogation policy during Obama’s tenure, wrote to BuzzFeed News in an email. “This is so fucking depressing.”

      Trump first promised back in February, months before he won the Republican nomination, that he would revive the use of Bush-era interrogation tactics — like waterboarding, sleep deprivation and rectal feeding — that have since been outlawed and labeled torture. After his win, Republican lawmakers are coming out of the woodwork and endorsing his plan. Sen. Tom Cotton said Wednesday night that he had faith in Mr. Trump to “make those tough calls” to bring back waterboarding.

      For this small community — made up of a smattering of human rights groups, activists and former national security officials — that rhetoric threatens to invalidate nearly a decade of anti-torture efforts and void the marginal, but significant, successes under the Obama administration. While Obama has been fiercely criticized for failing to prosecute Bush-era officials for the CIA’s now-defunct torture program and for aiding the CIA’s obfuscation on the issue, there has been slow, but significant effort to close off pathways for the US to torture in the future, including policies that have passed through Congress.

    • Chelsea Manning Formally Petitions Obama to Commute Her Sentence

      Last week, Chelsea Manning formally petitioned President Obama for clemency, asking him to reduce the remainder of her 35-year sentence to time served. According to the New York Times, Manning, who pleaded guilty in 2010, has been imprisoned for longer than any other whistleblower in American history.

      In a statement accompanying the petition, a copy of which was provided to Jezebel, Manning said she took “full and complete responsibility” for leaking the secret military and diplomatic documents. “I have never made any excuses for what I did. I pleaded guilty without the protection of a plea agreement because I believed the military justice system would understand my motivation for the disclosure and sentence me fairly. I was wrong.”

    • The United Kingdom is a Malign Entity that Must Be Broken – Indefensible Chagos Decision

      I have no doubt the majority of people in the UK would be horrified by the deportation of the Chagos Islanders. But the entire political and economic structure of the UK state is such that it is inevitably a satrap to United states Crimes, be it in Diego Garcia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or elsewhere. The only remedy is for the United Kingdom and its worldwide imperial pretensions to be ended as a state. I express this view succinctly here:

    • UK Home Secretary Agrees To Turn Over Accused Hacker Lauri Love To US Government

      Accused hacker Lauri Love is headed to the United States to face prosecution, thanks to an order signed by UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd. The Home Office felt that — after “all things” were “considered” — the best place for an Asberger’s sufferer with suicidal tendencies is the US prison system, most likely segregated from the general population.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Music torrent site What.cd has been shut down

        What.cd, an invite-only music torrent website first launched in 2007, has been shut down after a raid by French authorities. The private tracker offered free (and often illegal) access to a massive, deeply thorough collection of music and was popular among audiophiles for its strict rules around quality and file formats. The site was created after the shutdown of another well-known torrent website, Oink, which operated between 2004 and 2007. Though its primary focus was music sharing, What.cd also permitted torrents of computer software, ebooks, and other content.

      • World’s largest music torrent site goes dark, disputes report about server seizure

        It took nearly 10 years, but authorities have finally targeted and taken down What.cd, which had risen to become the Internet’s largest invite-only, music-trading torrent site.

        The news was confirmed by the tracker’s official Twitter account on Thursday via two posts: “We are not likely to return any time soon in our current form. All site and user data has been destroyed. So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

      • BREIN’s New Torrent Piracy Crackdown Results in First Settlement

        Last year, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN announced a broad crackdown on torrent pirates, which resulted in the first settlement this week. The person in question paid 4,800 euros for sharing 12 TV-show episodes. According to BREIN, hundreds of thousands of pirates are now at risk of receiving similar treatment.

      • Mega Compromised by Hackers (Updated)

        Mega, the cloud storage site originally founded by Kim Dotcom, was compromised by hackers this week. Outsiders gained access to part of the site’s infrastructure and released some source code, claiming to have user details as well. Mega confirmed the hack of their seperate blog/help centre system but says that no user data was compromised

11.17.16

Techrights Under DDOS Attack From Lockheed Martin Corporation’s Network

Posted in Site News at 3:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Status report on the site’s issues today

Some readers have noticed and have reported to us site access issues (downtime or other difficulties). I personally have spent all day today (since 7AM and more so after 1PM) combating a bizarre kind of DDOS attack, which always came from the same network, owned by Lockheed Martin Corporation. I can say so with certainty. I spent many hours trying to tackle and properly investigate this.

I do not know what motivates this and whether some machines at the Lockheed Martin network (Fairfield, Connecticut, United States) got compromised, but all I know is that for one reason or another someone wants to drive the servers out of memory and knock the site offline. These attacks have been pretty persistent over the past 8 hours. █

Cheapening of Patents at the EPO, Cheapening of Staff of the EPO, and Emergence of Large Corporations’ Tax Evasion Using Piles of Patents

Posted in Europe, Patents at 11:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Whose system is it anyway?

Patent box
Reference: “The “Patent Box” – Proof That the UK is a Rogue State in Corporate Tax”

Summary: Patents are, over time, becoming not about innovation but about passage of heaps of monopolies to large corporations that then use them to evade tax (the patent box loophole)

TODAY we became aware of this blog post from just two days ago. “USPTO Memo Indicates a ‘European’ Approach to Software Inventions,” says the headline, tacitly implying that the EPO is strict on software patents even though the opposite is true (especially in recent years). Lawyers’ favourite CAFC cases are presented as evidence. For instance:

Earlier this month, the USPTO issued a memorandum to patent examiners discussing recent court decisions regarding the patentability of software inventions. The memo refers to three federal circuit decisions in which software inventions were found to be eligible for patent protection. The three decisions mentioned in the memo are McRo v. Bandai (Sept. 2016), BASCOM v. AT&T (Jun. 2016) and Amdocs v. Openet (Nov. 2016).

Recently, I summarised the McRo and BASCOM decisions in a blog post for Cambridge Wireless. The Amdocs decision was issued only a day before the USPTO published its memo to examiners on this issue. Therefore, Amdocs is not considered in detail in the memo. However, the USPTO states that further guidance on the Amdocs decision will be given at a later date.

The USPTO is always behind the times when it comes to regulating patent quality. We saw that as recently as this year because it took 2-2.5 years for the USPTO to truly come to grips with Alice. In the mean time, the EPO went in the opposite direction and insiders tell us that they grant software patents because there is growing pressure to keep up with ‘production’ demands (where grants are rewarded, not proper/thorough examination). A new Central Staff Committee report [PDF] was also leaked to us today. The Central Staff Committee is concerned that 15% increase in so-called ‘production’ results in reductions for staff. Figures are shown to support this claim and also some ‘missing money’ becomes the subject of inquiry. One has to wonder where all that money comes from and how this so-called ‘production’ is attained without increases in staffing. Of course, all it means is that patent quality continues to nosedive.

Speaking of fiscal irregularities and low patent quality, Benjamin Henrion highlight this new article about “patent boxes” — a subject we wrote about before. “Race to the bottom and Apple fiscal evasion via patents will continue with the blessing of Europe,” Henrion noted, as it’s quite common and increasingly ‘normal’ for large corporations to dodge (or evade) tax with patents as a hidden instrument of some kind of “money laundering” . Here is what the Wall Street media said this week:

Adoption of legislation for a common consolidated corporate tax base by 27 EU member states would resolve current patent box conflicts and end transfer pricing disputes that cost multinational companies hundreds of millions of dollars in double taxation, according to EU and industry officials.

Speaking at a Nov. 15 conference hosted by the Federation of European Accountants, Uwe Ihli, the chief architect of the October CCCTB proposal unveiled in October, said tax credits for research and development in the pending legislation are seen as a way to prevent harmful tax competition, triggered by the rush to attract investment by high-tech companies via tax breaks on intellectual property profits.

“We believe the research and development tax breaks in the new proposal will not only be a major attraction for businesses but they will also help resolve the divisions in the EU over patent box tax regimes,” Ihli said.

He added that the R&D terms are based on EU state aid rules and in line with the OECD’s modified nexus approach.

If a process patent-granting en masse can become just an instrument for the benefit of large corporations, and patents are made a lot easier to get, what does that say about the real beneficiaries of today’s EPO? Regarding Apple’s patents, we are planning some articles about those. The EPO is doing a terrible job and it’s not hard to guess who will pay the price. █

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