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04.06.15

Links 6/4/2015: Krita 3.0 Plans, Intel’s PC-on-a-stick With Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 6:33 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Getting an inside track on open source

    Michael Bryzek saw open source playing a big role in his company’s IT infrastructure, right from the start.

    The CTO and co-founder of online retailer Gilt Groupe, Bryzek built the eight-year-old members-only shopping site using the Web framework Ruby on Rails, the Linux operating system and the object-relational database system PostgreSQL — all open-source tools.

    He says open source doesn’t have the “friction” — that is, sticking points like contractual limits — that typically come with commercial products. He also says his engineers can be more creative and innovative with open source.

  • Jay: A Decentralized and Open-Source Web Wallet for NXT

    Jay, a javascript wallet framework developed for NXT, has just released their open-source, trustless web wallet, which may be the easiest way to make NXT transactions yet.

  • Events

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Piston Unveils Piston CloudOS 4.0, focused on “the Modern Data Center”

      Piston Cloud Computing, Inc. has announced the availability of Piston CloudOS 4.0, which is billed as “an operating system for the modern data center that transforms clusters of commodity servers into a single unified environment.” The platform can purportedly deploy OpenStack in minutes, and CloudOS 4.0 also lets users deploy Hadoop and Spark on bare metal, with forthcoming support for container orchestration tools such as Kubernetes, Mesos and Docker Swarm.

    • Piston Cloud’s Smart Move to Build a Fungible Platform

      Piston Cloud Computing has announced a move beyond OpenStack for its Piston CloudOS 4.0, an operating system for the data center that transforms clusters of commodity servers into a single unified environment.

    • Nebula, OpenStack cloud vendor, just shut down with no notice

      The company was founded in 2011 by Chris Kemp, who had been chief technology officer for IT at NASA where he helped create OpenStack. Kemp left NASA to push OpenStack forward. As Kemp explained to Tech Republic in the fall of 2014, “I wanted the project to live on beyond the work we were doing … I knew that if we could open-source this work under a very flexible open-source framework, and really get a community gathered around contributing to it, the project could live on.”

  • Business

    • Semi-Open Source

      • Open Source Human Transformation: Hinduism’s gift to mankind

        At the outset, one needs to appreciate that the word “Religion” is related to the Abrahamic faiths more. Eastern spiritual traditions, which find their beginnings in Hinduism, are neither faiths nor religions. Hinduism is an amalgam of various spiritual traditions. The ways are different, the goals are different and the very way of looking at man, divine and life is different. Open Source, personal, subjective, experiential and not fixed in history via a person or event. Now, let us look at what is on offer from Hinduism. Something that is fundamental to human well being.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU remotecontrol

      Whatever you do…..don’t get beat up over your Energy Management strategy. GNU remotecontrol is here to help simplify your life, not make it more complicated. Talk to us if you are stuck or cannot figure out the best option for your GNU remotecontrol framework. The chances are the answer you need is something we have already worked through. We would be happy to help you by discussing your situation with you.

    • GCC 5 Is Coming This Month With OpenMP 4.0, Offloading, Cilk Plus & More

      GCC 5 is expected to be formally released later this month and it by far is looking to be the most exciting GNU Compiler Collection update yet! GCC 5 has amassed a ton of exciting open-source compiler features over the past year.

    • XKCD’s Comic About OSes Is Hilarious, Predicts Launch Date of GNU Hurd 1.0

      The XKCD webcomics are funny because they are usually right on the money, with just a side dish of ridiculousness. The latest one is called Operating Systems and encompasses everything that is done wrong in this world, with just a single drawing and small, smart text about Richard Stallman.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Govt makes a pitch for open source software in IT tenders

      With an aim to reduce project costs, the government has decided to give preference to open source software (OSS) over proprietary in e-governance procurements.

    • India backs open source software for e-governance projects

      Federal and state agencies must make it mandatory for suppliers to give OSS a preference over proprietary or closed source software while responding to requests for proposals. “Suppliers shall provide justification for exclusion of OSS in their response,” according to the policy statement posted to the website of the Ministry for Communication & Information Technology.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Students compete for a chance to have their Raspberry Pi code run in space

      As part of the mission’s education outreach program, children in UK schools will get the chance to write code to run their own applications in space. The Pis will each have a specially made sensor board attached in order to access data on the space station’s atmosphere. Schools will get the chance to run experiments in their own classroom and compare the results from space, or just make interesting applications to run on the space station. We’re really excited to see what the young minds of Britain come up with, and what they can learn from turning their ideas to a reality by programming the boards.

Leftovers

  • On Armenia centennial, US rockers hope music raises pressure

    One hundred years after the mass killings of Armenians, US band System of a Down is taking the fight for remembrance beyond politicians to the world’s music fans.

    The Los Angeles-area hard rockers, who have sold more than 40 million albums since the mid-1990s, are of Armenian descent and are preparing a European tour to culminate in a public concert on April 23 in Yerevan, the band’s first performance in Armenia.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • The Pentagon’s $10-billion bet gone bad

      Leaders of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency were effusive about the new technology.

      It was the most powerful radar of its kind in the world, they told Congress. So powerful it could detect a baseball over San Francisco from the other side of the country.

      If North Korea launched a sneak attack, the Sea-Based X-Band Radar — SBX for short — would spot the incoming missiles, track them through space and guide U.S. rocket-interceptors to destroy them.

    • Apparent Saudi Strike Kills at Least Nine in Yemeni Family

      At least nine people from a single family were killed when what appeared to be an airstrike by the Saudi-led military coalition struck a home in a village outside Sana, Yemen’s capital, officials said Saturday.

      Village residents gave a higher toll, saying that as many as 11 members of the Okaish family, including five children, were killed in the bombing on Friday. The airstrike may have been intended for an air defense base about a mile and half away, a Yemen Interior Ministry official said.

      Bombings attributed to the coalition have killed dozens of civilians since the start of the Saudi-led air offensive intended to cripple the Houthis, a Yemeni militia that has gained control of Sana and other parts of Yemen in the past eight months.

    • Manufacturing a ‘Good Adversary’ in Tehran

      The real story behind America’s 30-year Cold War with Iran

      [...]

      The real reason the Bush White House had abandoned the opening to Iran was that the CIA and the Pentagon desperately needed to replace the Soviet threat as justification for continuing Cold War levels of appropriations.

      To head off deep cuts in the CIA budget, the agency’s new director, Robert M. Gates, had identified Iran and the proliferation of nuclear weapons as a new threat. Just two weeks after Gates became director in November 1991, a “senior administration official” was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as saying that relations with Iran would remain in the “deep freeze,” because of Iran’s “continued support for international terrorism” and its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

      That comment dovetailed with the argument Gates made in pubic testimony to fend off deep budget cuts. Testifying before the Defense Policy Panel in early December, just two days after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Gates said the “accelerating proliferation” of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems were “probably the gravest concern” among post-Cold War threats.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Judge Shoots Down ‘FOIA Terrorist’ Jason Leopold; Says ‘Panetta Review’ Documents Can Be Withheld In Full

      The CIA’s internal document designations seem to bear some resemblance to the NYPD’s use of its “SECRET” stamp — which is deployed arbitrarily and without oversight to declare certain documents out of the reach of Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests. If the CIA feels exemption b(5) gives it the best chance to keep documents out of the hands of journalists like Jason Leopold. it can slap these designations on as many papers as possible and mention its predetermination in FOIA lawsuit declarations.

      Second, Boasberg’s refusal to challenge even a single exemption assertion by the CIA isn’t particularly good news, considering his recent appointment to the FISA court. While he has pushed back on government secrecy in the past, he’s also been just as likely to grant its wishes. Considering he’s replacing FISA Judge Reggie Walton — one of the few FISA judges to openly question surveillance tactics and hold the NSA accountable for its abuses — this latest decision seems to indicate his appointment is a downgrade in terms of government accountability.

  • Finance

    • George Will Revives Tired Canard That Reagan Created One Million Jobs In One Month

      But Will’s claim about Reagan’s job creation record is disingenuous. As Business Insider pointed out, Reagan’s so-called million job month in September 1983 was simply an outlier inflated due to nearly 675,000 striking communication workers returning to work…

    • The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

      ONCE upon a time in America, baby boomers paid for college with the money they made from their summer jobs. Then, over the course of the next few decades, public funding for higher education was slashed. These radical cuts forced universities to raise tuition year after year, which in turn forced the millennial generation to take on crushing educational debt loads, and everyone lived unhappily ever after.

  • Censorship

    • Turkey reportedly blocks Twitter and YouTube

      Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is calling for a ban on social media once again.

      A spokesperson for this office said on Monday that a prosecutor has ordered Internet providers to block sites that include YouTube and Twitter, which is extremely popular in the country.

      The request comes after photos spread online showing militants holding a prosecutor hostage at gunpoint last week during a takeover of this courthouse office. Prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz, who investigated the death of a teenager who was hit by a police gas canister fired during nationwide anti-government protests in 2013, died last week in a shootout between police and the Marxist militants.

    • Turkish Censorship Order Targets Single Blog Post, Ends Up Blocking Access To 60 Million WordPress Sites

      A lawyer and Turkish Pirate Party member tracked down the root of the sudden ban on all of WordPress: a court order seeking to block a single blog post written by a professor accusing another professor of plagiarism. This post apparently led to several defamation lawsuits and the lawsuits led to a court order basically saying that if blocking the single post proved too difficult, fuck it, block the entire domain.

    • Turkey Blocks Twitter, YouTube, Scores of Websites After Prosecutor’s Killing

      Twitter and YouTube are blocked once again in Turkey as of today, April 6, following the mass circulation of photos of a hostage crisis that ended with the death of a government prosecutor. According to Hurriyet Daily News, authorities have also blocked 166 websites that posted the photos.

      Although Facebook was initially blocked for the same reason, the block was lifted after the company complied with Turkish officials’ orders to remove the offending images.

  • Privacy

    • Blocking The Fields

      You now need an army of spies, analysts and police to watch the security cameras, check on the spies and watch for people jumping fences. This is not about the bad thing you first objected to any more. It’s now about jumping fences to get to places that have been made unreachable by them, checking on spies for telling lies, dealing with corruption among your informers, suppressing all the “SJW”s who whine about the loss of freedom and undermining your political opposition who are equally clueless about blocking fields but can see that what you are doing is hugely unpopular.

      Congratulations! Your attempt to stop something your supporters disapprove of by mandating the impossible has created a police state. It doesn’t matter how bad the thing you were trying to stop is; people probably agree that it’s a bad thing.

      By mandating the impossible, you caused collateral damage that outweighed any benefits, and by associating it with a thing no-one dares defend in public you were able to accidentally destroy society without opposition. And you didn’t notice because you never do for walks in the fields.

    • Why John Oliver Can’t Find Americans Who Know Edward Snowden’s Name (It’s Not About Snowden)

      On his HBO program last night, John Oliver devoted 30 minutes to a discussion of U.S. surveillance programs, advocating a much more substantive debate as the June 1 deadline for renewing the Patriot Act approaches (the full segment can be seen here). As part of that segment, Oliver broadcast an interview he conducted with Edward Snowden in Moscow, and to illustrate the point that an insufficient surveillance debate has been conducted, showed video of numerous people in Times Square saying they had no idea who Snowden is (or giving inaccurate answers about him). Oliver assured Snowden off-camera that they did not cherry-pick those “on the street” interviews but showed a representative sample.

    • Microsoft drops ‘do not track’ browser default to reflect ‘evolving industry standards’

      Microsoft has updated its ‘Do Not Track’ policy, which will no longer be a default setting in its browser, thus giving third parties like advertisers a free hand in deciding whether to track the user or not, unless the option has been turned on manually.

      The ‘Do Not Track’ (DNT) setting in browsers specifies whether the user wants his or her browsing information to be available to third parties such as content providers and advertisers, who gather it so they can learn about a person’s interests and habits.

    • Exclusive: TSA ‘Behavior Detection’ Program Targeting Undocumented Immigrants, Not Terrorists

      A controversial Transportation Security Administration program that uses “behavior indicators” to identify potential terrorists is instead primarily targeting undocumented immigrants, according to a document obtained by The Intercept and interviews with current and former government officials.

      The $900 million program, Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques, or SPOT, employs behavior detection officers trained to identify passengers who exhibit behaviors that TSA believes could be linked to would-be terrorists. But in one five-week period at a major international airport in the United States in 2007, the year the program started, only about 4 percent of the passengers who were referred to secondary screening or law enforcement by behavior detection officers were arrested, and nearly 90 percent of those arrests were for being in the country illegally, according to a TSA document obtained by The Intercept.

    • Artists secretly install Edward Snowden statue in Brooklyn park

      Dressed in reflective yellow construction gear while working under the cover of darkness early Monday, a small group of artists installed a tribute to NSA-leaker Edward Snowden in a Brooklyn park.

      The Snowden bust stands atop a column at the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park, a site built to honor more than 11,000 American prisoners of war who died aboard British ships during the American Revolutionary War.

    • Artists secretly install Snowden monument

      A group of artists secretly installed a 100-pound sculpture of government leaker Edward Snowden in a New York City park early on Monday morning, though it was taken down by city officials later in the day.

      The handful of people wearing yellow reflector vests and hard hats snuck into the park and, in the predawn hours, attached the massive bust of a neatly coiffed Snowden wearing his trademark square-rimmed glassed onto the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument in Brooklyn, which honors soldiers imprisoned in the Revolutionary War.
      In a statement provided to city blog Animal, which also produced a short video about the installation, the activists said that the effort was meant to reinvigorate the focus on the leaker and the massive government surveillance that he exposed.

      “We have updated this monument to highlight those who sacrifice their safety in the fight against modern-day tyrannies,” they told the website.

    • Edward Snowden statue appears in Brooklyn overnight

      A trio of anonymous artists and helpers installed a bust of Edward Snowden in Brooklyn Monday morning.

      The 100-pound statue was hauled into Fort Greene Park just before dawn, according to ANIMALNewYork, which originally reported the story.

      The idea for the statue came from two artists and was made by a West Coast sculptor. Snowden leaked classified information from the National Security Agency to mainstream media in June 2013. He was charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with two counts of violating the Espionage Act and theft of government property and currently lives in Russia.

    • New York City Takes Down Edward Snowden Statue Erected By Guerilla Artists

      NYPD says the art prank is under investigation

      New York City has removed a statue of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden erected by a group of artists in a Brooklyn park.

    • John Oliver Asks Edward Snowden If The American Government Is Spying On Your Naked Photos

      “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” viewers got a surprise during Sunday’s show when the British satirist interviewed a man he described as “the most famous hero and/or traitor in recent American history:” NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

  • Civil Rights

    • Eight San Francisco police officers expected to be fired over racist, homophobic texts

      Eight San Francisco police officers implicated in sending and receiving racist and homophobic text messages have been suspended and are expected to be fired, according to news reports.

    • Barrett Brown, John Kiriakou & the Bureau of Prisons’ Deep Contempt for First Amendment

      The Bureau of Prisons’ contempt for the First Amendment has been on full display this week.

      Journalist and activist Barrett Brown pled guilty to offenses stemming from YouTube videos he uploaded containing a threat directed at the FBI, emails from hackers he redacted and laptops found in a kitchen cabinet that he hid from authorities. He was sentenced to five years and three months in jail on January 22.

    • Barrett Brown’s account of the arbitrary suspension of his e-mail

      On Tuesday March 31, I used the inmate computer system to send an email to a journalist of my acquaintance in which I inquired about getting him in touch with another inmate who was interested in talking to the press about potentially illegal conduct by BOP officials. When I tried to log in to the system one hour afterwards, I received a message reading: “Denied: You do not have access to this service.” I asked our Counselor Towchik about this and he called another office, from which he apparently received a vague explanation to the effect that they were “working on it”, which we took to understand that this was a system maintenance issue; he told me to return to his office later that afternoon. I did so, and he told me that several people were having issues with the system and that he would make further inquiries, and that if necessary he would bring the technical staff over to our unit the next day to discuss it with us, assuming the problem had still not been fixed. The next morning I reached my mother by phone and learned that apparently everyone on my message contact list had received an automatic email to the effect that my messaging privileges had been temporarily suspended, but I reassured her that it was merely a mistake. When I met again with Towchik, however, he conceded that the problem didn’t seem to be technical after all and that I should ask Trust Fund Manager Coleman about it at lunch. Failing to find Mr. Coleman, I met that afternoon with Unit Manger Ivory, who checked my files but could find no reason why my access should have suddenly been suspended and also advised me to meet with Mr. Coleman. At some point that day, my attempts to log in started to prompt a different message stating: “This account is on suspension until 4/1/2016 11:59:59 pm (from portal 16)”. At the next lunch period on Thursday, April 2nd, I was unable to locate Mr. Coleman, but laid out my problem to the associate warden who told me to return in five minutes, when Mr. Coleman would be present.

    • The Persian Paradox: Iran Is Much More Modern Than You Think

      People in the West tend to have a monolithic view of Iran. But there’s a lot more to the country than the mullah-led theocracy, and it often gets ignored. And national pride is alive and well.

    • Petition Against Obama Decree on Venezuela Tops 8m Signatures

      A petition launched in Venezuela opposing President Barack Obama’s latest sanctions and the labelling of Venezuela as a national security threat has topped 8 million signatures, it was announced Sunday.

      President Obama issued an executive order March 9 declaring a “national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela.”

      Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro thanked the supporters who backed the call for Obama to “repeal the decree” through his Twitter account.

      The signatures will be handed in during the Summit of the Americas which starts later this week in Panama and will be attended by all the nations in the hemishphere.

    • Two Court Rulings Completely Disagree With Each Other Over Whether Websites Need To Comply With Americans With Disabilities Act

      On March 19th, there was a ruling [pdf] in a case in a federal district court in Vermont, brought by the National Federation for the Blind against Scribd, saying that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applied to the internet, and thus Scribd had to comply with the ADA. The specific concern is whether or not a website is a “place of public accommodation.” Three years ago there was a similar ruling against Netflix (also brought by the National Federation for the Blind), which we noted had some troubling aspects to it. Since then, there have been a number of cases that have gone the other way. And, indeed, just this week the 9th Circuit appeals court upheld a lower court ruling [pdf] saying that Netflix does not need to comply with the ADA.

    • Willie McRae

      The Scotsman claims that the police had first removed the vehicle and then replaced it, and this explains the mystery of why the gun was so far from the car after McRae’s remarkable two shot “suicide”. For me, that adds just another level of improbability to so very many. How, inside a car, you shoot yourself in the head in such a way that the gun falls out of the window, seems problematic. The car was crashed over a burn; how you order that with the suicide is peculiar.

    • A Non-Conspiracy of Douthat’s

      The “difficult and personal” decision of whether folks like these can decide if you can shop at a store or not.

    • School Teachers With Valid Work Authorization Labeled As “Illegals” By Fox News

      Fox News misleadingly slurred immigrants with legal permission to work in the United States as “illegals” during a segment highlighting attempts by disadvantaged school districts around the country to boost bilingual education initiatives.

04.05.15

Links 5/4/2015: Linux Australia Server Woes, MATE 1.10

Posted in News Roundup at 8:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Magic Lantern Brings Linux to Canon EOS Cameras

    On April 1st the Magic Lantern team announced a proof of concept that lets you run Linux on a Canon EOS camera. Because of the date of the post we’ve poured over this one and are confident it’s no joke. The development has huge potential.

  • Desktop

    • Lenovo ThinkPad T450s Broadwell Preview

      This is a “first impression” review. I’ve had the system in my hands for all of about twenty-four hours and am still exploring and forming more solid opinions. Also any problems I had likely do have solutions, but as I said: less than forty-eight hours of ownership so I haven’t had a chance to. Linux-centric system review will follow this weekend / next week.

    • A Million People Switched To GNU/Linux In Spain, France, and Germany Q1 2015

      A rise of 0.5% represents 1M increase in users, assuming share of page-views = share of desktop PCs = share of users.

  • Server

    • Linux Australia server hacked, personal information may have been stolen

      A public server belonging to Linux Australia, the umbrella group for Linux user groups in the country, were breached on March 22, and the personal information of members may have been stolen.

    • How Linux Australia Handled Its Recent Data Breach

      In an email, Linux Australia revealed that its servers where compromised during the morning of 22 March. Over the course of a few hours, the organisation believes its databases containing conference information were dumped to an external source. A “currently unknown vulnerability” caused a buffer overflow that allowed the hacker to acquire root access.

    • On featuring and writing clickbaity articles

      I think you do not even begin to understand the complexities of how communities in Linux interact with each other. I have friends across Red Hat, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Debian and countless other distributions that I’ve acquired during the past 5 years of working on Kubuntu and KDE. Sure, from time to time we joke about the short comings of one another’s projects, but that’s what they are, jokes. We most certainly do not intend to belittle each others work and to be honest, I am quite happy that you’re not part of this community.

    • Have you heard of ONLYOFFICE? It’s like Google Docs, only it’s not from Google … and you might be able to run your own instance

      How could I have missed ONLYOFFICE? If not for this How to Forge article on installing it, I would have never known that it existed as a hosted alternative to Google Docs/Spreadsheets or that you can self-host the software, though I’m not sure how functional the roll-your-own version is at this point.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • Torvalds’ temptress comes of age: Xfce 4.12 hits the streets

      Torvalds, in a now-deleted Google Plus post, had called Xfce “A step down from GNOME 2, but a huge step up from GNOME 3″.

      Xfce’s biggest problem seems to be that no one sticks with it. Torvalds soon moved back to GNOME and, after experimenting with Xfce, Debian also went back to using GNOME as the default for the upcoming Debian Jessie.

    • MATE 1.10 Desktop Environment Arrives with Better GTK3 Support

      MATE, one of the most lightweight and appreciated open source desktop environments used in numerous distributions of Linux, including Ubuntu MATE and Linux Mint, has reached today version 1.10.0, a released that introduces several new features and a great number of improvements.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Krunner – The birth of a cyborg

        Krunner is exactly like that lovely, lovely 80s futuristic Dystopian sci-fi movie with Arnold and Jesse, except that is different in every single way. Now, for those of you who’ve fiddled with KDE before, possibly on a roof, hihi, then Krunner is not a stranger. It’s a familiar and useful application available in the desktop framework set of default tools. Only now we have Plasma at our disposal, and we need to give it a fresh new try.

      • The Space-Time Continuum of KDE’s Activities

        This is not about KDE e.V.’s new time travel program. This is about Plasma and its concept of Activities. They have been a topic of hot debates. Some people love them, some don’t care. Björn called for finding a new metaphor which better fits the mental model of the user, so that Plasma’s activities can appeal to a larger group of people. Here are my thoughts.

      • Work In Progress, all the way

        I must say KDE Connect is one of my personal killer features in our KDE eco system and if you haven’t tried it, you should. Really. It always makes me smile when someone tells me “sure I’m using KDE Connect” – my sister’s been over for lunch a few days ago and I spotted her phone on the “Available Devices” list. That was quite surprising, to say the least. However, it makes me sad to see how we suck at marketing. This made me think on how we could make KDE Connect an integral part of our user experience rather than a 3rd party kind of thing.

      • Some Skrooge news

        The next Skrooge version, initiating the 2.x naming scheme, will be based on kf5. Don’t expect too much in terms of functionalities or appearance, this is for some other time.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • MakuluLinux unity Desktop is Live !

        finally the long wait is over, The MakuluLinux unity desktop is now live and available for download, You can head over to the Unity section and check out the release notes and grab your copy from the download section. Hope you guys enjoy this release, a lot of hard work went into making this and I want to than all the testers for their hard work in helping making this release a unique one !

      • LXLE 14.04.2 & 12.04.5 Release Notes with Screenshots

        The next incremental update of LXLE has been released, ticking it up to 14.04.2 along with the last 32bit version of LXLE ever, which is based on 12.04.5. The 32bit closely mirrors the changes to the latest 64bit edition of the OS.

      • LXLE 14.04.2 and 12.04.5 Officially Released, the Last to Support 32-bit Architectures

        Approximately a month ago, we’ve reported that the Beta release of the Lubuntu-based LXLE Linux distribution was released introducing UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) support in the 64-bit ISO images, and that they’ve decided to switch to SeaMonkey as the default web browser. Today, we announce that the final release of LXLE 14.04.2 is now available for download.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

    • Debian Family

      • Improving creation of debian copyright file

        In my opinion, creating and maintaining Debian copyright file is the most boring task required to create a Debian package. Unfortunately, this file is also one of the most important of a package: it specifies some legal aspect regarding the use of the software.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • An Ubuntu Touch OTA Update Will Be Available Soon

            Canonical is about to release a new update for the Ubuntu Touch RTM branch, used on both Ubuntu Phones, created by Bq and Meizu, which will most likely bring improvements in battery life, among others.

          • Ubuntu Touch Has Over 1200 Apps And Scopes

            Despite the fact that Ubuntu Touch is a young platform, over 1200 apps are already available for the Ubuntu Touch OS, including some real important apps, like Telegram, Cut The Rope, Tox or GCompris.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Tiny SODIMM-style module runs Linux on Cortex-A5

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Getting To Know Android: Lollipop Edition

          Android 5.0 Lollipop (known previously as just L) was the biggest change to Android since Ice Cream Sandwich. Frankly, I’d rank it as the biggest change to Android ever, for a variety of reasons.

        • OnePlus releases its own version of Android as a replacement for Cyanogen

          Last year, Chinese phone maker OnePlus tried to take on Samsung and HTC with a flagship-style phone at half the price. That device, the OnePlus One, ran a customized version of Android developed by Cyanogen, but now the company is ready to unveil its own software. After a couple of delays, OxygenOS is now available for OnePlus One owners to download and flash onto their smartphones.

        • OnePlus releases OxygenOS, its custom take on Android

          After a pretty sizable delay, OnePlus has at last released OxygenOS, its in-house version of Android 5.0 Lollipop. As promised back near the start of the year, this Cyanogen replacement is all about a “back to basics” approach that keeps things stock unless the startup thinks a new feature would be genuinely useful. Right now, that’s largely limited to features you already had on your One: you can draw Oppo-style gestures to trigger functions when the screen is off, switch between hardware and software navigation keys and customize your quick-access settings. OxygenOS isn’t for the faint of heart at this stage, since you’ll have to be comfortable with installing ROMs (and likely put up with early bugs), but it’s worth a shot if you want to catch a glimpse of OnePlus’ software future.

        • OnePlus’s Android Lollipop-based ROM, OxygenOS, is available to download now

          The China-based mobile phone manufacturer has been teasing OxygenOS since last year, after the company encountered issues when launching its One phone in India. It learned that Cyanogen, the organization behind CyanogenMod, had granted exclusivity to another manufacturer in the country, which ultimately expedited OnePlus’s development of OxygenOS.

        • Top Android news of the week: Samsung not working on update, unified mailbox, Asus on fire

          Asus has raised its sales expectations for smartphones to 30 million for this year. The company is on the rise in this category, given it only shipped 10,000 units in early 2014.

        • ASUS raises sales expectations to 30 million smartphones in 2015

          ASUS has been ramping up its mobile strategy in the past few months, announcing cost effective products in both the smartphone and wearables markets. As the new Zenfone 2 range makes its way out around the world, ASUS has just updated its sales expectations to 30 million units for 2015.

        • Android 5.1 L Update Release Date for Samsung Galaxy S4, S5, Note 4, Note Edge

          The Android 5.0 update (also known as Android L or Lollipop) has been very slow to roll out on Samsung flagship phones. Ever since it was announced in June of last year and officially launched in November of that year, its trickling down has been very slow, especially for those who are users of the Samsung Galaxy S5, the S4, the Note 4, the Note 3, and the Note Edge. There have been reports that Android 5.1 might be just as delayed as Android 5.0.

        • Amazon Prime Instant Video Now Supports Android Tablets

          Amazon doesn’t seem to particularly want Android users to enjoy its video streaming service. First it took its sweet time expanding the offering out from Fire and iOS devices. Then when it did finally bring the app to Android, it required installing the standard Amazon app, which then prompted you to install a dedicated Prime Instant Video app from the Amazon Appstore (Google Play, what’s that?). After that, it only ran on phones. Tablets, for the most part, were inexplicably left out.

        • Mailbox for Android version 2.0.1 update brings a Material Design refresh

          If you’re a fan of the “inbox zero” mentality when it comes to managing email, odds are you’ve tried Mailbox for Android. The app, which was an iOS exclusive for some time, makes it easier than ever to delete, snooze and archive emails with just a few swipes. When the application launched on Android, there were few differences between the iOS and Android versions, at least aesthetically speaking. But today that changes, as Mailbox is receiving quite the update to version 2.0.1 which brings a Material Design refresh to the app.

        • Why Android could kill Google’s struggling standalone Chrome apps

          But that positive news carries a darker undertone. Google’s “Chrome app” platform was already underperforming, and now developers have even less incentive to write Chrome apps when they can reuse their existing Android apps.

        • Sony Xperia Z3, Z3 Compact and Xperia Z3 tablet get Android 5.0 Lollipop update

          The Sony Xperia line will finally get the much awaited Android Lollipop 5.0 OS update after the company formally announced the rollout through Twitter.

        • Android 5.1 certified for Sony Xperia Z3 and Sony Xperia Z3 Compact?

          Sony might have taken a lot of heat for being so late to update its current flagship phone. But the manufacturer apparently isn’t taking any chances when it comes to Android 5.1. New firmware has been certified for both the Sony Xperia Z3 and Sony Xperia Z3 Compact. The new firmware version is 23.2.A.0.278.

        • Sony Xperia Z Android 5.0 Lollipop update: Teaser image hints at imminent release

          Sony has shared a teaser on its Sony Xperia Google+ page showing the Xperia Z with Android 5.0 Lollipop’s lock-screen notification feature and the tag “Coming Soon”, indicating that the Japanese company could release the new update to the first generation Xperia smartphone, ahead of the newer Z1 and Z Ultra models.

Free Software/Open Source

  • ONOS Blackbird Release Demonstrates SDN Control Plane Performance and Scale Leadership
  • ONOS ‘Blackbird’ Promises Carrier Grade SDN Option for Service Providers

    ONOS has announced the availability of the second release of its open networking operating system, Blackbird, promising to bring carrier grade Software Defined Networking (SDN) implementation option for service providers. The ONOS Blackbird release includes a set of metrics to effectively measure performance and other carrier-grade attributes of the SDN control plane.

  • 6 operating systems designed just for Docker and other container runtimes

    If you’re familiar with Unix-like free software operating systems, I’m sure you’ve probably lost count of the number of Linux distributions in active developments. I know, it’s a very long list, and growing.

    But get ready for the same trend on the container technology side, because the conditions that made it possible to have hundreds of Linux distributions – freely available source code, hordes of developers with time to spare and an itch to scratch – are also in play in the field of containerization.

    So far, I’ve been able to identify just six of such container-native operating systems, as they are called, but trust me, there will be many more to come.

    So here are six container-native operating systems that I’m aware of. If you know of any not in the list, please post a comment.

    Read more

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Mirantis Joins Open Source PaaS Project Cloud Foundry Foundation

      Mirantis, the pure-play OpenStack company, has joined the Cloud Foundry Foundation, an open source Platform as a Service (PaaS) project that acts as a middleware for OpenStack deployments. Mirantis is commited to supporting Cloud Foundry and partnering with distribution vendors in its ecosystem instead of building its own Cloud Foundry distribution.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • BSD

  • Public Services/Government

Leftovers

  • Teenagers have never been a smaller portion of our population

    The problem for teen density is that the rest of the country keeps getting older and the population keeps growing.

  • Fear in Chelsea on the campaign trail: third Clinton is Hillary’s secret weapon

    They called it “the Chelsea effect”. Senior advisers to Barack Obama coined the phrase during his 2008 campaign for president, after they noticed a surprising trend in the long and bitter battle for the nomination between the then-senator from Illinois and Hillary Clinton.

  • Here’s how to unlock four secret Easter eggs in Android

    Happy Easter!

    From wild pranks on April Fools Day to hidden tricks in its search engine, the Google team loves creating surprises for users. Here’s how to find Google’s Easter eggs, for the four latest versions of its Android operating system.

  • Science

  • Health/Nutrition

    • The Full Toxic Beauty Treatment?

      Most people visit hair and nail salons, at most, only for a few hours a month. Beauticians, however, work in these often toxic environments all day, every day, breathing in fumes and absorbing chemicals through the skin. Hair sprays, permanent waves, acrylic nail applications and other salon products contain ingredients associated with asthma, dermatitis, neurological symptoms and even cancer. Because these products are considered neither foods nor drugs, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has no responsibility to ensure the products are made safer.

    • First full body transplant is two years away, surgeon claims

      Sergio Canavero, a doctor in Turin, Italy, has drawn up plans to graft a living person’s head on to a donor body and claims the procedures needed to carry out the operation are not far off.

    • MN lawmaker wants to give veterans more ‘choices’

      Even more than measuring travel as the crow flies, what Congressman Walz finds illogical is using a medical facility incapable of providing the care a veteran needs, to deny that veteran access to the Choice Card program.

    • Justices Say Nonprofit Hospitals Can Be Liable for Injuries

      A nonprofit hospital that operates a free clinic on the side can be held liable for damages when people are injured on its property, the New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled.

      In a unanimous decision, the court said a nonprofit hospital is covered by the limited liability protections afforded to hospitals, which cap damages at $250,000, rather than the complete immunity afforded by the Charitable Immunity Act, even though it was engaged in a charitable act when the injury occurred.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Nicola Sturgeon speaks at anti-Trident rally and warns “future generations would never forgive us”

      First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has this afternoon spoken at the annual anti-Trident rally in Glasgow, urging people across the UK to seize the moment of the Westminster election to block the renewal of Trident nuclear weapons.

    • Iran, Stubborn History and a Toast to the Future

      Whatever the truth may be regarding the manner in which the release of the hostages was secured, the truth remains: The Iran Revolution happened, the Shah fell and fled, Khomeini rose, the US Embassy was sacked, the hostages were taken and subsequently freed, and since that time the United States and Iran have been in a de-facto state of war. After the hostages were home and President Reagan was installed, sanctions were levied against Iran – against its currency, its weapons program, and most notably its nuclear program – which have shattered its economy.

    • Not everyone on the right balks at Iran deal

      For the most part, commentary and analysis of the preliminary nuclear deal with Iran falls along predictable lines. On the one hand, we see President Obama’s policy backed by the American mainstream, many congressional Democrats, a variety of foreign policy experts, and most of our allies.

    • U.S. to Train Nazi Troops in Ukraine

      The Azov Battalion was founded and its members were selected by Andrei Biletsky, a Ukrainian nazi (that’s an ideological term, meaning racist fascist — not a term referring specifically to the first political party with that particular ideology, the National Socialist Party of Germany). When Britain’s Guardian interviewed members, the reporter was shocked to find that they’re nazis (“neo-Nazis”).

    • Manning Joins Twitter, Has More Than 1K Followers Before Posting
    • Chelsea Manning Joins Twitter From Prison & We Can’t Wait To See What She Has To Say
    • Chelsea Manning joins Twitter and gets over 1,000 followers before posting

      Chelsea Manning, the US soldier serving 35 years in military prison for leaking state secrets to WikiLeaks, has joined the social media site Twitter.

    • The lies still killing Gulf War vets

      More than 200,000 US troops sent to Iraq and Kuwait in January 1991 were exposed to nerve gas and other chemical agents. The Department of Defense and CIA launched a campaign of lies and concocted a cover-up that continues today, notes

    • The Iraq War and Stubborn Myths

      Another widespread fallacy is that such neoconservatives as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz strong-armed an inexperienced president into taking the country to war. President Bush, as he himself famously asserted, was the “decider.” One could argue, however, that Hans Blix, the former chief of the international weapons inspectors, bears some responsibility. Though he personally opposed an invasion, Mr. Blix told the U.N. in January 2003 that despite America’s ultimatum, Saddam was still not complying fully with his U.N. pledges. In February, he said “many proscribed weapons and items,” including 1,000 tons of chemical agent, were still “not accounted for.”

      [...]

      By then, however, most Americans had concluded that no such weapons existed. These were not new chemical arms, to be sure, but Saddam Hussein’s refusal to account for their destruction was among the reasons the White House cited as justification for war.

    • The Pentagon Ups the Ante in Syria Fight
    • Is US The “Good Guy” Imposing Sanity On Iranian “Bad Guy”?

      Ex CIA analyst Ray McGovern today points out that “The mainstream U.S. media portrays the Iran nuclear talks as ‘our good guys’ imposing some sanity on ‘their bad guys.’”

    • How the United States welcomed Nazis after World War II

      Years ago, when the United States and the Soviet Union had both experienced setbacks in their space programs, one of my professors suggested that our scientists and theirs may have flunked the same course at Heidelberg. It was no great secret that, in the waning days of World War II, the United States scrambled to capture German rocket scientists before the Soviets got them. Hitler’s rocket attacks on Great Britain had made clear that the Germans were far ahead of us in that technology. The Cold War was in its infancy, and the United States already foresaw using rockets to transport nuclear weapons.

      Of the more than 1,600 Nazi scientists brought to the United States, Eric Lichtblau, author of “The Nazis Next Door,” singles out Wernher von Braun as the preeminent catch. Infamous for having led development of the German V-2 rocket, von Braun ended up in Huntsville, Ala., helping develop the rockets that eventually took American astronauts to the moon. It was well known that the V-2s had been built by slaves, mostly prisoners of war, many of whom were abused, starved and worked to death. Von Braun did not deny his role in this, yet with the aid of Walt Disney, who on his TV show repeatedly turned to von Braun as an expert on space travel, the German emerged as an American hero.

    • Drone movie review

      “The robotic war is here, and the future of war could be an Orwellian version of Terminator.” This quote, taken from the director’s statement, best summarises the growing fear of future, and even contemporary, military combat. Documentary director Tonje Hessen Schei wants to bring to the forefront the secretive CIA drone war, and the impact this has on both the victims and the combatants.drone (1)

    • Why Iran Distrusts the US in Nuke Talks

      The Iranians may be a bit paranoid but, as the saying goes, this does not mean some folks are not out to get them. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his knee-jerk followers in Washington clearly are out to get them – and they know it.

      Nowhere is this clearer than in the surreal set of negotiations in Switzerland premised not on evidence, but rather on an assumption of Iran’s putative “ambition” to become a nuclear weapons state – like Israel, which maintains a secret and sophisticated nuclear weapons arsenal estimated at about 200 weapons. The supposed threat is that Iran might build one.

    • Verbal outburst between Turkey and Iran

      Iran has been an important player in the region since the ousting of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953 by a coup. The CIA much later acknowledged that the coup to overthrow Mosaddeq, who was nationalizing Iranian oil, was carried out under CIA direction.

    • US repair crew arrives to fix F/A-18s

      The US Marine Corps’ press office said the Tainan Airport is an US-approved divert airfield, but China’s foreign ministry said it had complained to Washington about the two US F/A-18s that landed in Tainan on Wednesday

    • Why arming U.S. allies can be like sending weapons to the enemy

      The United States has a long tradition of arming its allies to advance Washington’s foreign policy. In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the U.S. the “arsenal of democracy” as he pledged thousands of ships, tanks and warplanes to countries battling Nazi Germany.

      Roosevelt’s characterization is no less true today. The U.S. government is sending large amounts of weapons to allies desperately battling Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria. Washington is also considering equipping the battered Ukrainian military, which has been fighting Russian-sponsored rebels in the country’s east.

      Broadly speaking, there are two ways the U.S. can arm an ally. America can donate, or sell cheap, the latest U.S.-made weaponry. Or it can send foreign-made weaponry — Russian usually — through a middleman.

    • Iran breakthrough provides no hint about fate of detained Americans

      Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent who also had worked for the CIA, disappeared during a visit to Iran’s Kish Island more than eight years ago. While Iran has denied holding him, U.S. officials believe he has been in Iranian custody.

    • ‘Framework’ agreement with Iran sparks hope for jailed Americans

      Supporters of four Americans believed to be held in Iran are hoping the “framework” for a deal between the West and the Islamic Republic includes freedom for the U.S. citizens.

    • A Disappearance in Mexico

      The main part of the Samford event involved two parents of missing students addressing the crowd through an interpreter. At times breaking down in tears, they said their children had gone out to fundraise for their education. After fundraising, the parents explained, the students were attending protests in Iguala and hoping to travel to Mexico City. They were instead intercepted by the Iguala police and eventually handed off to the drug-trafficking organization called Guerreros Unidos, the parents said.

    • Honduran death squads kill four student protesters, including a 13-year-old

      The remains of 13 year-old Soad Nicole Ham were found in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa last Wednesday after a death squad kidnapped and murdered her for participating in recent student demonstrations against the country’s crumbling education system. A medical examination of the girl’s remains, which were discovered in a plastic bag on the street, revealed signs of brutal torture.

      Soad Nicole was the fourth demonstrator to be killed by death squads in Tegucigalpa last week. The bodies of Elvin Antonio López, Darwin Josué Martínez, and Diana Yareli Montoya—all between the ages of 19 and 21 and all actively involved in student protests—were also discovered in various neighborhoods of the city. Yareli Montoya, whose body was riddled with 21 bullets by masked attackers, took two painful days to die.

    • Cold War mystery: Israeli spies may have stolen US uranium to build the bomb

      In the 1960s, hundreds of kilograms of uranium went missing in the US state of Pennsylvania. Is it buried in the ground, poisoning locals – or did Israel steal it to build the bomb, Scott Johnson asks.

    • Another CFR-Rhodes Agent for Secretary of Defense

      In sum, nearly all US defense secretaries have been CFR members or analysts, some even high-ranking Council officials. At the same time, US defense secretaries and CFR agents have counseled one another and collaborated in efforts to shape the course of Western globalization. Given this ubiquitous exchange between the CFR and the office of United States Secretary of Defense, an Ashton Carter military should be expected to follow the CFR’s script.

    • “A Necessary, If Still Unpalatable, Potential Ally in Combating the Islamic State”

      It’s a good thing the Times is keeping the faith about the dangers of NSA surveillance, the moral necessity of closing Guantanamo, the crucial importance of accountability in drone strikes, and the urgency of a laser-like focus on CIA interrogations that took place more than a decade ago.

    • Iran Riches Coveted by Big Oil After Decades of Conflict

      The discovery of crude in 1908 laid the foundations for the company that would become British Petroleum and opened one of the richest opportunities that Western oil companies have ever enjoyed in the turbulent Middle East. Since then, the industry’s history in Iran is intertwined with CIA-backed coups, colonial exploitation and the anti-Western resentment surrounding the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

    • NEWS ANALYSIS: Oil majors likely to kiss and make up with Iran

      Outside the boardroom of BP’s headquarters in London, a display case houses the geological data from Masjid-i-Solaiman, Iran’s first oil well. The discovery of crude in 1908 laid the foundations for the company that would become British Petroleum and opened one of the richest opportunities that western oil companies have ever enjoyed in the turbulent Middle East. Since then the industry’s history in Iran is intertwined with Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-backed coups, colonial exploitation and the anti-western resentment of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

    • Cold War-era plane repair firm Air Asia still active in Taiwan

      US military aircraft are no longer allowed to be deployed to Taiwan after Washington established ties with Beijing in 1979, but Air Asia was able to deal with the US planes, showing it is still active. Chang Ching, a Taiwanese military expert, rejected rumors on the internet that the US was trying to provide F/A-18C technology to Taiwan by sending the two fighters, calling the claims nonsense.

    • Letters to the Editor: Watch where we send troops

      The U.S. interventions around the world have not always been for the good. We have overthrown democratically elected governments because they were supposedly Communist. The Chilean people might have a different take on our allowing the C.I.A. to overthrow the democratically elected Allende and then to install a dictator like Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet was wanted in Spain and arrested in England for his crimes. He was later reindicted in Chile but died before trial. George W. Bush was actually convicted in absentia in Malaysia for torture. We expect other countries to follow the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations. It is no wonder so many citizens of Venezuela and Cuba have a negative attitude towards the good old U.S.A. We also tried to overthrow the Castro government militarily and with exploding cigars. Our CIA also told the white South African police where Nelson Mandela was hiding after his conviction on terrorism by the same legal system, leading to 27 years on Robbins Island at hard labor. We also replaced a head of state picked by the citizens of Iran in the 1950s and replaced him with the Shah of Iran. We all know how that turned out, but just as in this country, we care about those of lighter skin colors. We should heed the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.”

    • Yossi Melman: There is no no existential threat to the Jewish State

      In an analysis in Jerusalem Post today, Yossi Melman makes the case that there is no existential threat to Israel and indeed Israel has a submarine capability to make a nuclear retaliatory strike against Iran, should Iran destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. Melman reports that the submarines are coming from Germany out of “pangs of guilt following the Holocaust.”

    • More on Senator Menendez’s favorite (ex?) terrorist group and the insanity of neocon policy in the Mideast

      Even at this late date a lot of people claim not to know the difference between us true conservatives and the so-called “neo” conservatives.

      Hint: “Neo” means new. And if you have new beliefs, then by definition you’re not a conservative. We stick to the tried and true. Plato’s fine but that Aristotle guy was getting a little ahead of himself.

      Another hint: If you’re a true conservative, then people will call you an “isolationist.”

    • Why still meddling?

      The US has not limited its dealings to the Middle East but has conspired to control many countries by making them financially dependent. This has been done by promising countries the US would help in power generation and construction of infrastructure. Huge loans were organised and contracts awarded to US companies such as Haliburton, so the money never left the US. The loans were impossible to repay which led to increased unemployment and poverty in the target country. The US could then control the assets of that country for its own gain, whether it be oil, gas, minerals or, in the case of Panama, the canal.

    • U.S. Military Planes Cleared to Refuel Saudi Jets Bombing Yemeni Targets

      The U.S. Defense Department has cleared the way for American military planes to start refueling Saudi Arabian jets bombing Houthi fighters in Yemen as the U.S. deepens its role in the expanding regional conflict, U.S. defense officials said Thursday.

    • Yemen as Vietnam or Afghanistan

      It is hard to believe that history now seems to be repeating with Egypt and Saudi Arabia again engaged in a counter-guerrilla war in Yemen! For Nasser, it was Egypt’s Vietnam. Will the new Yemen war be Egypt’s (and Saudi Arabia’s) Afghanistan? I think it is very likely. All of the signs point in that direction.

      And, as I have laid out in numerous essays on Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Mali and Algeria, and in my little book Violent Politics, guerrilla wars are almost never “won” but usually drain the supposedly dominant power of its wealth, moral position and political unity.

    • From Turkish prison, Kurdish leader tells followers to lay down their arms

      It has been one of the world’s longest and deadliest civil conflicts. Since the first incidents more than three decades ago, an estimated 40,000 lives have been lost.

      It has been, some say, a battle by activists among Turkey’s Kurdish minority for independence. It has been, others say, a guerrilla war by rebels who have punctuated their campaign with terrorist acts.

    • The Libyan quagmire

      Libya is no exception to this rule. Since the overthrow of Libya’s ruler Muammar Qaddafi in October 2011, the country has fallen into chaos in which armed militias govern their own patch of territory while successive governments have been unable to stabilize the situation and actively take control of the country. According to a BBC report, there are more than 1,700 armed and ideologically divided groups across Libya creating indescribable havoc, which is not only fragmenting the country but bringing Libya to the status of a lawless failed state. Some of the groups are Jihadist, others secular, liberal, or split according to geographical location, ethnic identity, or along tribal lines.

      [...]

      Khalifa Haftar was a colonel under Qaddafi. He led Libyan forces during a disastrous war with Chad in the south. After his defeat by Chadian forces in 1987, he was taken captive for almost five years, refusing to return to Libya out of fear Qaddafi would “punish” him for his defeat. Later, the CIA succeeded in whisking him out of Chad together with 300 of his men to Virginia where he underwent special training by the CIA. After living in exile in the U.S. for 20 years, he returned to Libya and led ground forces to help oust Qaddafi in 2011.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Obama’s Secrecy Obsession

      But Obama’s lack of transparency — after promising in 2008 to run a transparent administration — has left him at the mercy of Washington’s closed club of insiders, while alienating him from the broad American public. With neoconservatives and other opinion leaders dictating the dominant narrative on topic after topic, Obama has ended up reacting to events, not controlling them.

    • Obama Administration Improperly Claims Secrecy Power Over Videos of Former Guantanamo Prisoner’s Force-Feeding

      President Barack Obama’s administration claims that the executive branch alone may decide whether to disclose previously classified videos of the force-feeding of a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner—even though the videos are judicial records and a judge should be able to unseal and release them to the public.

      On October 3, 2014, a federal district court ordered the Obama administration to review videos of Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Syrian who at the time was still being held in indefinite detention. The government was granted permission to redact portions they believed needed to be censored for “national security.” Lawyers for Dhiab and media organizations, which supported disclosure, were to put forward a proposal for the release of videos.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • ‘Cheating’ jockey is caught in finish line photo: Winning rider who ‘used secret device to give horse painful electric shocks’ exposed

      After being confronted by Texas Department of Public Safety investigator Jeff Green, Chapa first denied having seen the photo, then claimed it was ‘photo-shopped and someone was trying to frame him,’ the complaint stated.

      Two days after the race, Texas Racing Commission stewards suspended Chapa, pending an investigation and hearing.

      ESPN reports that Chapa faces a felony charge and that a warrant was issued for his arrest on Tuesday, but authorities have so far been unable to locate him.

    • Indian Army Team To Scale Mount Everest, Will Come Back With 4000 Kg Garbage

      Mountaineers usually shed baggage as they climb higher. A 30-member Indian team setting out for Mount Everest next month plans to come down with 4,000 kilos of excess baggage, or rather, garbage.

    • Toward Democracy? Part Eight

      Offshore oil is not the only resource the UK Government wants kept out of Scottish control; England needs our water supplies. Over-population has begun a series of famines which will increase throughout the century. More wastelands must be cultivated, and Scotland has many used as sporting estates by very few. Unionist politicians thwarted Irish Home Rule by giving a separate UK parliament to northern Protestants who owned Ireland’s heaviest industries. In the 1970s the Westminster party leaders created an oil fund for the Shetland Islands, whose people have quietly benefited from local oil fields in a way Westminster openly denied to the rest of Scotland. The Shetlanders have now a generally higher standard of living than on the Scottish mainland, and higher than many parts of London.

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Holyrood inquiry to probe historic CIA-backed human brainwashing experiments

      THE Holyrood inquiry into historic child abuse will be asked to investigate Scottish links to an infamous CIA-backed brainwashing programme, the Sunday Express can now reveal.

    • For Obama Critics, Google Is Part of the Conspiracy — Until It Isn’t

      Google’s Chairman Eric Schmidt is apparently friends with Obama–cue fanfare and commence the investigation! SearchEngineLand reported Republicans think the Federal Trade Commission is treating the search giant with kid gloves when it comes to antitrust laws and are calling for an investigation.

    • Tragedy in Chico

      The story of Cass Edison is nothing short of tragic. At age 55, the accomplished journalist had had many experiences most of her peers could only imagine—living in Singapore and the Philippines, being recruited by the CIA, starting her own newspaper. Alcoholism took its toll, though, and led to lost relationships, money, and even her home. Then, one morning last month, she was found dead, her body dumped in a stranger’s yard. A suspect is in custody and, based on evidence, the case against him is strong.

    • Why conservative media are so powerful

      In this context, Fox News’s “Fair and Balanced” slogan is a bit of genius. It gives Fox’s opponents something to drive themselves nuts over, since the network is (with a few exceptions, such as Shepard Smith’s straight news reporting) so manifestly uninterested in adhering to its own stated mission. But while liberals fight to preserve the idea that news should be fair and balanced, Fox News and publications built on its model get on with their real work of being wildly entertaining and pushing the ideas and narratives its anchors and writers think are important.

  • Censorship

    • Senator Feinstein calls for internet ban of Anarchist Cookbook and Inspire magazine

      Feinstein is currently Vice Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, but under her chairmanship of the committee, which ended last year, she was responsible for the release of the report on the CIA’s use of torture against detainees during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. She released her request on Friday.

    • Sen. Feinstein Wants DIY Bomb-Making Guide ‘Anarchist’s Cookbook’ Off The Internet

      The Anarchist Cookbook was written by William Powell in 1971, and contains instructions to make explosives. Powell has fought to have is own book removed from publication, but the publisher has refused.

    • DDoS attacks that crippled GitHub linked to Great Firewall of China

      Earlier this week came word that the massive denial-of-service attacks targeting code-sharing site GitHub were the work of hackers with control over China’s Internet backbone. Now, a security researcher has provided even harder proof that the Chinese government is the source of the assaults.

    • BBC Rape Documentary Misses the Point

      This International Women’s Day marked the beginning of a large-scale campaign to eradicate gender inequality and end violence against women in India. India’s Daughter, a documentary from Leslee Udwin focusing primarily on the December 2012 gang-rape of Jyoti Singh, was intended to air on BBC that day to launch the campaign. According to Udwin, the campaign will show this film to 20 million schoolchildren in an effort to educate them on issues of gender sensitivity. BBC decided to release the film four days early while the Indian government banned it amid controversy. Discussion around India’s Daughter since then has primarily focused on the ban.

    • Real Action For Children Not Censorship

      No, it was screaming tabloid headlines and a promise from the Tories to bring in web blocking powers, Internet regulation and what amounts to electronic ID cards.

    • Free speech under fire

      That said, many outlets in the United States debated publishing some of the controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons after the attacks. The New York Times declined to do so, saying it would cross the “line between gratuitous insult and satire.” Online outlets, including BuzzFeed, Vox and the Huffington Post, opted to publish the cartoons.

    • Porn sites must have age checks, say Conservatives

      Pornography websites must adopt age-restriction controls or face closure, the Conservatives say.

    • Google Asked to Wipe Record Breaking 100 Million Pirate Links in 2015

      We’re just three months into 2015 but Google has already processed copyright takedown requests for 100 million allegedly infringing links. This is a significant increase compared to last year, and one that hasn’t been without controversy.

  • Privacy

    • Opinion: Mixing the world of spying and public office

      Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was a KGB officer before he moved on to politics. Mixing the secret world of spying and public office is not a good idea, argues DW’s Alexander Andreev.

    • On Movies, Dynasties, and Hope

      One of the most interesting political movies of recent years was the German film The Lives of Others, which gave a realistic depiction of the overwhelming espionage to which the government of East Germany subjected the citizens of that country, and of the corruption at the highest level, as officers of the state and the ruling party used their powers for unspeakable private purposes. The movie won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, along with a number of other prizes, and was acclaimed by many as a masterpiece.

    • All of the ways US intelligence thought Hitler may try to disguise himself

      Fearful that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler would attempt to flee Germany, US intelligence tried to predict what the Führer would like if he altered his appearance.

    • The Government Says It Has a Policy on Disclosing Zero-Days, But Where Are the Documents to Prove It?

      We have known for some time that the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement community looks to find and exploit vulnerabilities in commercial software for surveillance purposes. As part of its reluctant, fitful transparency efforts after the Snowden leaks, the government has even officially acknowledged that it sometimes uses so-called zero-days. These statements are intended to reassure the public that the government nearly always discloses vulnerabilities to software vendors, and that any decision to instead exploit the vulnerability for intelligence purposes is a thoroughly considered one. But now, through documents EFF has obtained from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, we have learned more about the extent of the government’s policies, and one thing is clear: there’s very little to back up the Administration’s reassuring statements. In fact, despite the White House’s claim that it had “reinvigorated” its policies in spring 2014 and “established a disciplined, rigorous and high-level decision-making process for vulnerability disclosure,” none of the documents released in response to our lawsuit appear to be newer than 2010.

    • Section 215’s Multiple Programs and Where They Might Hide after June 1

      But my post was about more that just the phone dragnet. It was about two things: First, the way that, rather than go “cold turkey” after it ended the Internet dragnet in 2011 as the AP had claimed, NSA had instead already started doing the same kind of collection using other authorities that — while they didn’t collect all US traffic — had more permissive rules for the tracking they were doing. That’s an instructive narrative for the phone dragnet amid discussions it might lapse, because it’s quite possible that the Intelligence Community will move to doing far less controlled tracking, albeit on fewer Americans, under a new approach.

    • Times Hammers NSA for Inspector General Info

      Dogged in pursuit of hidden national security-related documents, the New York Times and investigative reporter Charlie Savage are returning to federal court to demand the release of the National Security Agency’s inspector general reports.

  • Civil Rights

    • US to UN Human Rights Committee: Move Along, Nothing to See Here

      Yesterday the United States gave the U.N. Human Rights Committee its one year follow-up report on progress made to implement four priority recommendations made by the committee a year ago. The independent human rights experts had reviewed the United States’ compliance with a major human rights treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). They found the U.S. coming up short in many areas, including accountability for torture, privacy and surveillance, Guantánamo, and gun violence.

    • UK Intelligence Services Attack SNP

      Ever since Treasury Permanent Secretary Nicholas MacPherson stated that civil service impartiality rules do not apply in the case of Scottish independence, I have been warning the SNP that we are going to be the target of active subversion by the UK and US security services. We are seen as a danger to the British state and thus a legitimate target. I spelled this out in my talk to the Edinburgh SNP Club on 6 March, of which more below.

    • #Frenchgate: Definitely the Security Services

      It seems to me the overwhelming probability is that this document, whether it purports to be a FCO or Scottish Office document, was originated by the Security Services, possibly with the active collusion of someone in the Scottish Office, or equally possibly without their knowledge. Whatever it purported to be, it never entered the normal civil service distribution systems, as the FCO would have a copy, and it would have raised alarm bells all over the place as seriously weird and improbable. It is in that sense a fake, even if it were physically produced inside the Scottish Office. Its purpose was to be leaked to the media and influence the election.

    • Three Reasons Why the United States Is Broken, Bloated and Bleeding

      Between 1979 and 2007, average incomes for the 1% increased 241 percent. In the same time period, middle-class incomes grew 19 percent.

      The top 10 percent in this country earns an average income of $161,000 (a little less than the average salary of your Congressional representative) while the bottom 90 percent bring in a little under $30,000.

    • EXCLUSIVE: As Chicago Police Kill Youth, Vast Misconduct Allegations Purged

      The high cost of failed oversight

      A combined $21 million in taxpayer funds are dedicated to the city’s police accountability structure, among the Independent Police Review Authority, Internal Affairs, and the Police Board, according to the City of Chicago’s 2015 budget. In contrast, a proposed ordinance to fund reparations for police torture victims seeks a one-time sum of $20 million, to provide counseling and education to those tortured into false confessions by police, alongside monetary restitution and inclusion of the city’s decades-long police torture scandal in Chicago public school curricula.

      Between 2012 and 2014, the City of Chicago Department of Law requested payment of $192 million in settlements, verdicts and fees attributed to the Chicago Police Department. $61 million was paid to settle wrongful convictions, and another $43 million went toward cases charging excessive force. The majority of cases were from the city’s backlog, which as of September 2014 included 491 Chicago police cases – but on average 20 percent, or 250 cases, were the result of incidents taking place in the years of the current administration.

    • Exclusive: Lithuania prosecutors restart investigation into CIA jail
    • Exclusive – Lithuanian prosecutors restart investigation into CIA jail

      Lithuanian prosecutors said on Thursday they had restarted an investigation into allegations that state security officials helped the CIA run a secret jail in the Baltic state as part of the agency’s global programme to interrogate al Qaeda suspects.

      Prosecutors re-opened a probe, which was dropped four years ago, after a U.S. Senate report last year detailed a secret CIA facility that matched reports about a site in Lithuania, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office said.

    • Lithuania reopens CIA ‘black site’ investigation

      Lithuanian prosecutors said Thursday they have reopened an investigation into allegations that the Baltic nation hosted a secret US interrogation centre for Al-Qaeda suspects a decade ago.

    • Lithuania Next in Line as New Evidence of Secret CIA Jail Emerges

      Lithuanian prosecutors have restarted an investigation into claims that state security officials helped the CIA run a secret jail in the country, as part of the US intelligence agency’s post 9/11 interrogation and rendition program.

    • Lithuania prosecutors restart probe into secret CIA ‘black site’

      Lithuanian prosecutors have reportedly reopened a criminal investigation into claims that state security officials helped the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to operate a ‘black site’ in the Baltic country.

      Senior prosecutor Irmantas Mikelionis has decided to restart the investigation into the “possible abuse” of power by state employees, the spokeswoman for the prosecutor-general’s office told Reuters in an email on Thursday.

    • CIA Interrogations: what have we learned in the UK?

      When late last year the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence published parts of its 6,700 page report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme, it shed light – remarkable light – on how the ‘war on terror’ had been conducted by the US for some time.

      It very rightly prompted questions for this country. The most immediate and top level question was, if that is what the US did, what did Britain do? But one need barely scratch the surface of the matter before encountering some difficult questions about method – how do we find out what Britain did? – and about scrutiny – are there lessons to be learned about oversight and accountability?

    • It’s Been A Year Since Senators Voted To Reveal CIA Torture. What Do We Have To Show For It?

      One year ago Friday, the Senate Intelligence Committee, then under the command of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), voted to share with the world some of Washington’s most tightly held secrets: gruesome accounts of CIA personnel torturing detainees for the good of all Americans — who had little idea what was being done in their name.

      After a protracted battle with both the CIA and the White House over how much information to release, the executive summary of Feinstein’s massive torture report finally saw the light of day in early December. Its release did not set off a violent backlash overseas despite panicked warnings from the intelligence community, nor did it irrevocably damage U.S. national security. It didn’t sit well with the American public either, who saw headlines about rectal feeding and sodomization for weeks.

    • Poland risks breaching court ruling on CIA jail: lawyer

      Poland must de-classify details of an investigation into a secret CIA jail on its soil, or it will be in breach of a European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling, a lawyer for a former inmate at the secret jail said.

    • Worse in Store for Russian Economy, Bosnia Just Beats Deadline to Form Government

      A lawyer for a man who was held at a secret CIA prison in Poland is warning Warsaw that it must declassify documents related to the investigation or be in breach of a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, Reuters reports.

    • Poland risks breaching EU court ruling on CIA jail

      Poland must de-classify details of an investigation into a secret CIA jail otherwise it will be in breach of a European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling.

    • Cough Up the Docs: Poland Warned of Court Breach Over Secret CIA Jail

      Poland has been warned that it must de-classify details of an investigation into a secret CIA jail in the country, or it will be in breach of a European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling, according to the lawyer of a former inmate who was held at the facility.

    • Polish airport used by CIA obtains millions in EU funds

      A small airport in north-eastern Poland used by the CIA to fly in kidnapped detainees for torture at a nearby intelligence training camp has received over €30 million in EU funds.

      The EU money is part of a larger €48.5 million sum to turn the former military airstrip into an international commercial airport known as Szymany.

    • Poland asks U.S. to spare alleged USS Cole bomber from execution

      Poland, which allowed the CIA to have a secret interrogation site there after 9/11, has formally asked the United States to make sure the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombing is spared the death penalty, Poland’s Foreign Office said Wednesday.

    • Poland seeks U.S. assurances over Guantanamo inmate

      Poland’s government has sent an official note to U.S. authorities seeking diplomatic assurances that an inmate at the U.S. military jail in Guantanamo Bay will not be subject to the death penalty, the Polish Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

    • Britain spied on Argentina until 2011 over fears that it would try to retake Falklands, CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden claims
    • Whistleblower Edward Snowden claims Britain spied on Argentina over fears of new Falklands invasion
    • UK ‘spied on Argentina’ over Falklands, claims Edward Snowden
    • UK ‘spied on Argentina for five years’ fearing new Falklands invasion
    • REVEALED: Britain spied on Argentina over fears of ANOTHER Falklands invasion
    • Britain spied on Argentina, says Snowden
    • CIA Allowed To Keep Interrogation Program Docs Secret

      A Washington, D.C., federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Central Intelligence Agency did not have to cough up documents to a Vice Media Inc. reporter on its use of contentious “enhanced interrogation” techniques, finding the documents were exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

    • Judge Rules That the CIA’s ‘Panetta Review’ Can Remain Private
    • Court Denies FOIA Request for Panetta Review on CIA Torture
    • Judge: CIA can keep Panetta review secret
    • Federal judge denies FOIA request for secret CIA document
    • CIA Veteran Sees Big Hole In Sterling Espionage Conviction

      Leutrell Osborne is a 27-year veteran of the CIA who as a case officer oversaw spies and assets in 30 countries. He said he befriended Sterling, who like Osborne is African American, during the course of a discrimination lawsuit Sterling initiated against the CIA in 2000. That litigation was ultimately dismissed by the courts in early 2006 due to the government’s national security claims.

      [...]

      However, Osborne said the CIA never contacted him about Sterling, prior to or during the course of the criminal investigation targeting Sterling. That criminal investigation, which led to Sterling’s indictment in 2010, was initiated by at least 2008 — when reporter Risen was first subpoenaed in the case. Osborne also said that, to date, the CIA has not returned a call he made to the agency shortly after Sterling’s conviction in late January.

      If the CIA was truly concerned that Sterling was leaking classified information, then the agency should have vetted anyone who had his confidence, particularly current and former CIA personnel, to determine the extent of his alleged espionage activities, Osborne contends.

      “The CIA investigated Sterling, and they knew I knew him, or should have known, yet they did not talk to me,” Osborne said. “Is the CIA that incompetent in security? The CIA is supposedly the best security organization in the world, and yet they didn’t care that there were holes in their investigation? That raises a red flag for me.”

    • Was I a CIA Spy? 50 Years On, I Still Don’t Know

      A new book tells the story of how the CIA used unwitting college kids to send in reports from Third World countries. And I was one of them.

    • Views of the News: CIA reform adds cyber and regional analysis

      A major problem in adding cyber resources will be avoiding duplication with NSA and with the Pentagon’s Cyber Command.

    • Perils of the CIA’s reform and what Congress can do

      Unlike many other Congressional reports that are soon forgotten, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s interrogation program has been quickly followed by a major restructuring in the agency it so harshly criticized. Unfortunately, the CIA’s reform announced by its director, John Brennan, goes in the opposite direction of the Senate’s report logical conclusions.

    • Whistleblower says US keeping him from think tank work, as he ‘might comment on prison reform’

      Whistleblower John Kiriakou, a former CIA veteran recently released from federal prison for disclosing the agency’s torture program, says the federal government recommended he not work for a Washington think tank on account of his goal of prison reform.

      Kiriakou tweeted Wednesday that the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) — a subagency of the US Department of Justice that is responsible for operation of all federal prisons, including the one Kiriakou served time in — said it was “inappropriate” for him to work at the Institute of Policy Studies, a social justice think tank located in Washington, given his stated desire to work for reform of the US prison system.

    • Free Brazil Movement Leader Denies CIA Link

      The national coordinator of the Free Brazil Movement, or Movimento Brasil Livre (MBL), Renan Haas, denied any links or financing by US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in an interview with Sputnik.

    • US Manipulates Students as Part of Spy Game – Former CIA Officer

      Former CIA Officer Larry Johnson says that CIA exploiting college students travelling abroad to gather intelligence during the Cold War is not a shocking discovery.

    • Views of the News: CIA reform adds cyber and regional analysis

      CIA Director John Brennan announced recently that the organization will be broadly restructured to include cyberspying—plus 10 mission centers to analyze dangerous regions worldwide.

      Cyberspying will enable the CIA to track targets via their digital activity such as car rentals. It will also help CIA agents conceal their online tracks.

    • What Harvard Law Students Should Know About the Torture Lawyers: What Will They Tell Their Children?

      John Yoo (Yale Law, ’92), is a charter member of the Richard Rich Society. He is the very model of a modern Richard Rich. At the CIA’s request, Yoo wrote secret memos assuring CIA agents that they had legal authority to use “extraordinary techniques” when interrogating prisoners. These memos were secret, of course, because they could not have withstood the light of day. CIA officials jokingly referred to them as “get out of jail free cards” because they were meant to give American war criminals a new legal defense: “I’m not a war criminal because my lawyer said I could do it.”

      Yoo also wrote memos justifying the creation of military tribunals that would not be bound by the ordinary rules of evidence – something officials don’t do unless they intend to introduce evidence obtained by illegal means.

      The memos were a “bad idea and even worse advice,” Dean Chris Edley (Harvard Law, ’78) conceded when he defended Yoo’s return to his tenured position at Boalt Hall, but they couldn’t be deemed criminal unless a court so ruled. And because President Barack Obama (Harvard Law, ‘91), would not allow the torturers to be prosecuted, there was nothing to prevent Yoo from returning to the classroom.

    • The Torturous Evasions of the American Psychological Association

      Even as the Senate Intelligence Committee released its scathing report last December highlighting the role of psychologists in designing and implementing the CIA’s torture of detainees, the American Psychological Association (APA) had already begun to distance itself from the two leading psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who created what the committee called the “ineffective” and “inhumane” $81 million program for the CIA. That program was also adapted by the U.S. military, leading to the horrors of Abu Ghraib. In an October, 2014 press release and public statements in response to James Risen’s book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War, the world’s largest psychology organization sought to rebut the damning confidential emails in Risen’s book about how the APA’s own leaders apparently colluded with the Bush administration’s top national security psychologists, including those with the CIA, to provide ethical and legal cover for psychologists’ involvement in “enhanced interrogation.”

    • Florida Teen, War Criminal: The Life Of An ‘American Warlord’

      Only one American in history has ever been convicted of torture committed abroad: Chuckie Taylor, the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor.

      His father led militants to take control of Liberia in the late ’90s, went in exile after Liberia’s Second Civil War and was found guilty of abetting war crimes in Sierra Leone. But young Chuckie Taylor seemed far removed from that warlord life — he lived in America with his mother and stepfather, just another teenager listening to hip-hop and watching TV in his room.

    • Confessions of a D.C. Madam

      Confessions of a DC Madam (Trine Day, March 2015) is an autobiographical account of Henry W. Vinson’s odyssey from the humble origins of Williamson, West Virginia to running the largest gay escort service in Washington, D.C. by the time he was 26 years old.

      This haunting exposé is the first book to tell the tale of sexually blackmailed politicians and government officials in the U.S. by an individual who actually witnessed these sinister maneuverings first-hand. Confessions of a DC Madam proves that there is a clandestine checks-and-balances system in effect within our government—blackmail.

      Vinson intricately documents his interactions with various closeted and non-closeted VIPs who solicited the escorts he employed. Moreover, this new book details Vinson’s numerous exchanges with a CIA asset whose specialty was sexually compromising the power brokers of Washington, DC, and the trials and tribulations Vinson suffered because he was privy to information that could have produced a seismic political scandal.

    • Guantanamo Bay Diary

      Also nearby is the only known military “black site” on American soil. A place where torture happened.

    • How Canada lets people get tortured

      Following December’s release of the U.S. Senate report on American complicity in torture, Prime Minister Stephen Harper quickly declared, “It has nothing to do whatsoever with the government of Canada.” Despite the CIA’s close relationship with Canadian state security agencies, as well as two judicial inquiries finding Ottawa complicit in the torture of Canadian citizens in Syria and Egypt, Harper preferred to ignore the facts.

      At about the same time, a stunning memoir was published that paints another damning portrait of Canadian authorities from even before September 11, 2001. Guantanamo Diary was originally composed by hand in 2005 from a cell at the infamous U.S. torture camp, which remains open despite President Obama’s promise to close it eight years ago. It tells the remarkable story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian national who remains detained there despite a 2010 U.S. release order.

    • Detained mothers launch hunger strike

      About 40 mothers being held at an immigration detention camp in Karnes, Texas, have launched a hunger strike to protest the detainment of their children as the families await immigration and asylum hearings, according to detainees and advocates working on their behalf.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Peter Sunde: The ‘Pirate Movement’ is Dead

        Give up the idea of pirates being cool. They’re not. My biggest regret in my part in all of this was to use the word pirate. Not even Johnny Depp can make pirates look cool – and he manages to make cocaine-dealers look awesome. Pirates are awful. And today’s pirates – the ones in Somalia – also lost their battles. Good! So let’s get rid of this stupid culture of having a stupid culture.

04.04.15

Links 4/4/2015: Rust 1.0 Beta, IceCat 31.6.0

Posted in News Roundup at 11:12 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Get 91% off the Linux Learner Bundle

    Master Linux quickly & efficiently with the next great courseware offer from TNW Deals! The Linux Learner Bundle puts you in command of the basics with 6 elite courses and 50+ hours of interactive learning content.

  • Desktop

    • Meerkat Is a Superb Mini-PC from System76 That Can Be Anything, Including Steam Link

      Meerkat is a mini-PC developed by System76 that is based on the NUC Intel platform and that comes with some insane specifications. The good news is Meerkat is now available for purchase.

    • Ubuntu on the Asus Zenbook UX305 ultrabook

      The Asus Zenbook UX305 is a thin and light laptop that offers a pretty great value. For $699 you get a 2.6 pounds notebook with 8GB of RAM, 256GB of solid state storage, a 13.3 inch full HD matte display, and an Intel Core M Broadwell processor.

    • Vive La France Libre! GNU/Linux Rolls Onwards And Upwards
    • A Linux Paradox Needs Explanation: Making Your Linux OS Look like Windows

      The Linux platform is extremely flexible, and it can be implemented pretty much anywhere, either as a server, a firewall or as an OS for your heating system at home. The same flexibility allows users to customize their operating systems to look like Windows, and that is somewhat of a paradox.

    • Google Unveils 4 New Chromebooks and Chrome OS on a Stick

      Google has unveiled five new computers running its Linux-based Chrome OS, including the first Chrome OS stick computer and the lowest priced touchscreen Chromebook to date.

      The new models move Chrome OS closer to the mobile embedded realm of Android, a trend underscored with Google now opening up its technology for porting Android apps to Chrome OS to any Android app developer. Google also showed off a beta Chrome Launcher 2.0 that switches the UI to a more Android-like Material Design look and feel, as well as Google Now.

    • Five New Chrome OS Computers

      The candy-bar sized Chromebit HDMI stick has some of the same innards as the four new Chromebooks including a Rockchip RK3288, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of eMMC. The under $100 TV plug-in also sports a USB port, Bluetooth, and WiFi ac.

    • Google announces new Chromebooks and Chromebit HDMI sticks

      Google’s Chromebooks have long been burning up the sales charts on Amazon’s list of bestselling laptops. Now the company has announced four new Chromebooks, new HDMI sticks called Chromebits, and an update to its App Runtime for Chrome.

    • Chromebook Flip: Incentive for Google to improve touch for Chrome OS

      Chromebooks have been available with touch screens since the original Chromebook Pixel. They aren’t common but there are a few models on the market. One reason they aren’t common is that touch support in Chrome OS is not very good, so there’s no incentive for OEMs to build Chromebooks with touch.

  • Kernel Space

    • Graphics Stack

      • The Important X.Org Election Is Ending This Weekend

        For X.Org members that haven’t yet voted in this year’s particularly important elections, there’s just a few days to cast your ballot.

        The elections were supposed to happen back from 9 March to 22 March, but were significantly delayed and didn’t get started until 23 March. As such, they’re now expected to end on 5 April at 23:59 UTC.

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • Countdown on elementary OS Website Suggests a New Freya Release

      A countdown has appeared today, April 4, on the elementary OS website suggesting that a new release of the highly anticipated operating system will be unveiled in approximately 7 days and 10 hours from the moment of writing this article.

    • New Releases

    • Arch Family

      • BlackArch Linux Offers Wealth of Security Research Tools

        There is no shortage of Linux-based operating systems focused on security research in the market today, including BackBox, Pentoo, CAINE and Kali Linux. While all of those Linux operating systems include a healthy volume of tools, BlackArch is in a category of its own in terms of the sheer number of included applications. BlackArch Linux version 2015.03.29, released March 29, provides users with more than 1,200 security tools. BlackArch is an Arch Linux-based security research operating system. Arch Linux is what is known as a rolling release Linux distribution that is constantly being updated. BlackArch includes anti-forensic, automation, backdoor, crypto, honeypot, networking, scanners, spoofers and wireless security tools. Among the interesting tools that BlackArch includes is Easy Creds, which aims to make it easier for security researchers to obtain user credentials during a penetration test. Within BlackArch’s backdoor tools category is OpenStego, a steganography application, which can be used to hide data inside an image. eWEEK takes a look at some of the features in the BlackArch 2015.03.29 release.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Scientific Linux 7.1 to Offer ZFS on Linux, UEFI Secure Boot Support Still Not Fully Implemented

        The Scientific Linux development team, through Pat Riehecky, has announced a couple of days ago that the first Release Candidate (RC) version of the upcoming Scientific Linux 7.1 computer operating system is available for download and testing.

      • Scientific Linux 7.1 Is Coming Soon, Up To An RC State

        Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 was released in March and since then all of the RHEL derivatives have been busy testing and pushing out their updates. The Scientific Linux development community is close to getting out their SL7.1 release but they’re hoping for some last-minute testing.

        Scientific Linux 7.1 RC1 was released last night with all of the RHEL 7.1 changes incorporated. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 brought Kpatch support, SSSD for CISF, USB 3.0 support for KVM as a tech preview feature, vCPU support in KVM up to 240 vCPUs, Btrfs improvements, and many package updates throughout. Those wanting to find out about the upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 improvements can find the release notes at RedHat.com.

      • Fedora

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Hack The Home: creating the home of the future

            These days, the free availability of open source software – take Snappy Ubuntu Core as a great example – means the near future is more sci-fi than DIY. Now, as GE’s company FirstBuild is about to prove, the home is the playground of the inventor, and freely available open source software like Snappy is their toolkit.

          • Canonical Wants Ubuntu to Power the House of the Future

            The home of tomorrow will be smart and it will be a part of the Internet of Things, but what operating systems will be behind everything? Canonical wants to make Ubuntu Snappy Core the engine for the house of the future, and that’s the reason it’s sponsoring the Mega Hackathon: Hack the Home event.

          • Users Report Some Bq Aquaris 4.5 Ubuntu Phones Going into Reboot Loop

            Users have reported that some of the Bq Aquaris 4.5 Ubuntu Edition phones are stuck in a continuous reboot loop and Canonical took notice. They are now investigating the problem, and they are looking for solutions.

          • Lots of GnuPG Vulnerabilities Have Been Closed in All Ubuntu OSes

            Canonical has published details in a security notice about a number of GnuPG vulnerabilities that have been found and fixed in Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS operating systems.

          • Cube i7-CM is an Ubuntu tablet with Intel Core M

            Chinese device maker Cube offers a range of tablets with Android, Windows, or both. Now the company’s launching its first tablet running Ubuntu Linux.

            The Cube i7-CM is a tablet with an Intel Core M processor Canonical’s Linux-based operating system. It launches in China this week, but you should be able to have one shipped internationally if you find a seller at AliExpress or a store that exports Chinese tablets.

          • Is Radio Ready for Ubuntu?

            In the early 1990s, it seemed that the major PC operating systems had pretty well marked their territories. Creative endeavors went with Macintosh; business and finance adopted Windows; Linux was embraced by the computer geeks.

            But are those boundaries cast in stone? Andrew (A.J.) Janitscheck, director of program operations and support for Radio Free Asia, thinks it might be time for radio stations to do a rethink.

            His NAB Show presentation “Ubuntu — Radio Ready” describes RFA’s adoption of Linux, which began with system administrators and spread much further. Today, the RFA studios and broadcast network are powered by Ubuntu and Ubuntu Studio.

          • You Can Now Send Web Pages to Your Ubuntu Phone from Any Browser

            A Softpedia user brought to our attention that there’s a new application for Ubuntu Touch OS, as well as corresponding browser extensions, that allow users to send web pages (basically any URL) to their Ubuntu Phone devices.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Tiny SODIMM-style module runs Linux on Cortex-A5

      Denx announced an “MA5D4″ COM that runs Linux on Atmel’s SAMA5D4 SoC, plus a baseboard kit that adds a touchscreen and CAN, serial, HDMI, USB, and camera ports.

      Like Denx Computer Systems’s recent, Freescale i.MX6-based Denx M6R computer-on-module, the MA5D4 is supplied with the Yocto Linux based Embedded Linux Development Kit (ELDK) distribution from sister company Denx Software Engineering. Applications are said to include mobile input and output terminals, measuring instruments, or scanners with simple UIs. Many other types of IoT gizmos could make use of this module, especially those that require low power consumption, which is claimed to be ~500mW on the MA5D4.

    • Open spec x86 SBCs gain prototyping add-ons

      Newark Element14 launched a $20 motor control add-on for AMD’s Gizmo 2 SBC, and MinnowBoard.org tipped a new “Lure” LED add-on for the Minnowboard Max.

    • Tiny SBC runs Linux on Vybrid-based COM

      F&S announced an open-spec “PCOMnetA5″ SBC, combining a carrier board with a Linux-ready COM equipped with Freescale’s Cortex-A5 and -M4 based Vybrid SoC.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • IoT on Tizen with IoTivity

          First, what is the Internet of Things? I will try to answer this question based on my personal research and experiments as a Tizen and IoTivity community contributor.

          Many analysts or programmers may feel the “IoT hype” is overrated, since it became one of top buzz word of this year 2015, (it replaced big data which took the place of cloud the year before).

          Believe it or not but I also think something big is happening now in the embedded world, pretty much similar to what happened when local networks were connected together into the Internet.

          This can be a hasty analogy, but I see the very same pattern: while we’re used to connect embedded devices or computers, let’s transpose this one level down, then it’s easy to imagine the connections between each components of the system and the ability to deal with them as network nodes.

      • Android

Free Software/Open Source

  • Meteor: An amazing free, open source Web app platform you have to try

    So, you’re probably wondering what makes Meteor so damn exciting … first of all, you code in JavaScript on both the client- and the server-side. Second, Meteor is real-time even for implementing code updates for running apps. Third, it’s based on Node.js:

    … a platform built on Chrome’s JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

  • Hidden Costs of Open Source
  • Open Source as a Force Multiplier

    In essence, the Open Source approach serves as a force multiplier for my development team. Welcome to the team!

  • Open-source eats open-source: Why the innovation will never stop

    Technology only exists thanks to innovation. If nobody was pushing the boundaries with fresh ideas, then technology, and the people who depend on it, would have died out with the neanderthals. But while many people might believe the big tech vendors are the ones responsible for driving most of the innovation in computing today, that assumption couldn’t be further from the truth.

  • OpenIndiana 2015.03 “Hipster” Solaris OS Adds Enlightenment 0.19 as Alternative Desktop

    After half of year of development, Ken Mays has announced earlier this week the availability of a new OpenIndiana release, 2015.03, dubbed Hipster. OpenIndiana is the continuation of the OpenSolaris operating system, and this new release introduces several updated packages, an alternative desktop environment, and various under-the-hood improvements.

  • Events

    • LLVM Microconference Accepted into 2015 Linux Plumbers Conference

      This microconference will cover all things LLVM related to Linux. Discussions will range from progress in compiling the Linux kernel (and changes in clang/LLVM) to support of clang in yocto, and even to compiling an entire distro with clang (while also using the “musl” replacement for glibc and uclibc). The topics will also include LLVM being used for bug hunting and for the extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF).

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Rust 1.0 beta released

        The Rust team at Mozilla Research has announced the first beta release of Rust 1.0. The release notes detail a number of important changes, but the announcement adds some additional noteworthy items.

      • Rust 1.0 Now In Beta
      • Announcing Rust 1.0 Beta

        Today we are excited to announce the release of Rust 1.0 beta! The beta release marks a very significant “state transition” in the move towards 1.0. In particular, with the beta release, all libraries and language features that are planned to be stable for 1.0 have been marked as stable. As such, the beta release represents an accurate preview of what Rust 1.0 will include.

      • Mozilla Firefox 37.0.1 Out Now, Disables HTTP/2 AltSvc and Fixes Bugs

        Mozilla has pushed the first point release of its recently announced Firefox 37.0 web browser to mirrors worldwide. The new version will be available to users via the application’s built-in updater.

      • IceCat 31.6.0 release

        GNUzilla is the GNU version of the Mozilla suite, and GNU IceCat is the GNU version of the Firefox browser. Its main advantage is an ethical one: it is entirely free software. While the Firefox source code from the Mozilla project is free software, they distribute and recommend non-free software as plug-ins and addons. Also their trademark license restricts distribution in several ways incompatible with freedom 0.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Survey Results Disagree on the True State of Hadoop Adoption

      How much traction are Hadoop and other Big Data tools getting in enterprises? That depends on which studies you put credence in. A new report from Barclays Bank PLC notes that Hadoop is gaining substantial enterprise traction, but other reports note that many enterprises remain in evaluation stage. Meanwhile, a recent report from Snowflake Computing, a cloud data warehousing company, found that nearly two thirds of the respondents said that they believe Hadoop will not have any impact on their legacy data environments.

    • OpenStack Innovator Nebula Ceases Operations: Is OpenStack in Trouble?

      The company founded by the OpenStack founder (and former NASA CTO) goes bust; what happened and does this mean OpenStack as a whole is in trouble?

  • Databases

    • Open source is better off without FoundationDB

      Database startup FoundationDB mysteriously vanished at the end of last month, along with both the downloads of its proprietary database and its open source projects.

      As it turned out, Apple bought the company for internal use. I was interested in how this was perceived. When Ben Kepes of Forbes initially wrote about the purchase, for example, he erred in characterizing FoundationDB as all open source. It was an easy mistake; the company used the language of developer communities. Many of us assume “open” when we hear “community” because open source is so much the default these days.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Thousands of Spaniards leave Twitter for GNU social

      Unlike Twitter, which is controlled by a centralized authority, GNU social is a network of independent servers called nodes. Federation technology allows users to communicate between nodes, preserving the unified experience of traditional social media systems, and the free GNU social software allows anybody with an Internet connection to start their own public or private node and join the network. These administrators can even customize their nodes to suit the unique needs of their users.

    • Social FLOSS “Out There”

  • Public Services/Government

    • Overhaul to ensure relevance of projects on Joinup

      The projects shared on the Joinup collaboration platform are being checked for relevance. Over the past 8 years, Joinup and the original two communities, OSOR and SEMIC, have collected over 4000 software solutions and more than 2000 semantic assets. Some of these projects have meanwhile been replaced by new tools, some moved to different repositories, and others have become obsolete.

  • Licensing

    • European Commission finalises the draft EUPL v1.2

      After this presentation, a specific point was still under investigation: the possibility of an “opt out” clause regarding the updated list of compatible licences. This list is not only extended to the GPLv3 and AGPLv3, but also to other copyleft licences like the MPL or the LGPL that protect the covered files or the derivatives of the covered works against exclusive appropriation (prohibition of re-licensing the covered files or their derivatives under a proprietary licence) without any ambition to extend their coverage to the whole work or application in which the covered file is integrated or linked.

  • Openness/Sharing

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Suing EPA for failure to regulate nano-pesticides

      We finally know what the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will and will not do about regulating the use of nanomaterials in pesticides. It has taken seven years and a lawsuit to force the EPA to act. And unfortunately, its action leaves much to be desired: there are still no requirements to protect nano-pesticide manufacturer workers, farmer workers and those living downwind from nano-pesticide drift. (A 2014 General Accountability Office report stated that the EPA’s oversight of pesticide residue testing laboratories was inadequate. Nano-pesticide residue testing standards have yet to be developed.)

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Nuclear deal: Iranians find ways to celebrate on social media

      As news of Thursday evening’s breakthrough in nuclear negotiations began to sink in, Iranians reacted jubilantly – both in the streets of Iran and online.

    • It Didn’t Happen

      It is so unthinkable, that IT NEVER HAPPENED. Not one British mainstream media report of the debate mentions Trident missiles or nuclear weapons. A Google news search on trident missiles or on nuclear weapons throws up zero references to the leaders’ debate or Nicola Sturgeon in British mainstream media today. Not one of the broadcasters’ highlight packages repeated Nicola’s outrage at the country’s throwing away money on weapons of mass destruction when so many children are living in poverty.

    • Whisper it Gently: Iran Played a Blinder

      Three months ago, I published this: “I remain hopeful that Iran will realise that there is a huge opportunity here. If Iran tactically backs down on its nuclear programme in the current circumstances, that will not be a defeat for Iran but a defeat for the neo-cons.”

      That is precisely what has happened. My own Western diplomatic source with access to the talks, has told me today that he estimates 96% of the movement since December has been on the Iranian side, and only 4% on the international side. At the end, the Iranians took everyone by surprise by agreeing to take 2,000 more centrifuges out of use than anybody ever thought they would.

    • At least 54 Colombian girls sexually abused by immune US military: Report

      US soldiers and military contractors sexually abused at least 54 children in Colombia between 2003 and 2007, according to a recently released historic document on the country’s conflict. The suspects have allegedly not been prosecuted due to immunity clauses in bilateral agreements.

    • US Military’s Sexual Assault of Colombian Children

      …not a single U.S. mainstream domestic news outlet has covered any aspects of the report to date.

    • Five Years On, the WikiLeaks “Collateral Murder” Video Matters More than Ever

      This weekend marks the fifth anniversary of the release of the WikiLeaks “Collateral Murder” video which showed a July 12, 2007 US Apache attack helicopter attack upon individuals in a Baghdad suburb. Amongst the over twelve people killed by the 30mm cannon-fire were two Reuters staff. The video was part of the huge cache of material leaked to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning.

    • The Case for Giving Iran’s Scholar-Diplomats a Chance

      Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president, has more cabinet members with Ph.D. degrees from U.S. universities than Barack Obama does. In fact, Iran has more holders of American Ph.D.s in its presidential cabinet than France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, or Spain—combined.

    • Top Bush Administration Official Says There’s No Alternative To Diplomacy With Iran

      Gen. Michael Hayden, President George W. Bush’s director of the NSA and CIA, told Fox News on Friday morning that he was “heartened” by the tentative deal the Obama administration and its international partners have reached with Iran in an effort to contain its nuclear program.

    • Iran: US Drone Killed Two of Our Advisers in Iraq
    • Iran US Drone Strike: Revolutionary Guard Claims America Killed 2 ‘Advisers’ In Iraq
    • Iranian Guard says US drone killed 2 of its advisers in Iraq; US says it only struck militants
    • Iran Says U.S. Drone Killed Two Advisers In Iraq
    • Monthly Drone Report, March 2015: US drone strikes drop 50% as chaos envelops Yemen
    • ‘Kill Chain’ holds up the drone and looks at it from every angle

      Recall, fondly, the $435.00 hammer. That was the $15.00 hammer the Pentagon bought back in the 1980s, after $420.00 had been tacked on for research and development. R&D on a hammer (a pause here to reflect on this), a tool that hasn’t changed since the first years of the Iron Age (1200 BC). Good for a laugh, that kind of cheesy, bureaucratic thievery.

      Now consider the drone, as Andrew Cockburn does with mordancy in Kill Chain: an unmanned aerial vehicle that has been with us for some time; imagine a hot-air balloon that escapes its mooring. But the kind that takes pictures and fires a high-explosive missile you do not want to be on the receiving end of (and the receiving end is not necessarily its target).

    • Trusting High-Tech Weapons of War
    • Review of “Kill Chain: Rise of the High-tech Assassins”

      Cockburn has provided a highly readable, and logically devastating story, written from a bottom-up empirical perspective. He explains why our strategy in Yemen was doomed to fail, as indeed it has in recent weeks. His meticulously referenced historical and empirical research makes this book hard to pick apart. No doubt, there are some small errors of fact. For example, not all the drone/bombers deployed in ill starred Operation Aphrodite (which blew up JFK’s elder brother) in 1944 were B-24s as Cockburn incorrectly suggests; the operation also used B-17s. But I defy anyone to find a single thread or family of threads that can be used to unravel his tapestry.

    • Television Commercial in California Asks Drone Pilots to Stop Killing

      The ad was produced by KnowDrones.com, and is cosponsored by Veterans for Peace/Sacramento, and Veterans Democratic Club of Sacramento. It is airing on CNN, FoxNews and other networks starting Tuesday in the Sacramento/Yuba City area, near Beale Air Force Base.

    • Think drones technology is not really the problem? Think again

      While US targeted killing outside international law did not originate with drones, without a doubt it is the technology that has enabled a wholesale expansion of it – so much so that it has almost become normalised. And it is not just ‘anti-drone’ campaigners who are making this point. The 2014 report of the Stimson Task Force on US Drone Policy, authored by former senior US military and administration officials, states “it would be difficult to conclude that US targeted strikes are consistent with core rule of law norms” and declares that “the availability of lethal UAV technologies has enabled US policies that likely would not have been adopted in the absence of UAVs.” (For more on drones and targeted killing see here). But the problem with drones is not just their use for targeted killing as we continue to stress.

    • UG#706 – When Are Terrorists Not Terrorists? (States assassinating by drones)

      We conclude with Wendy Patten, who looks at the US government’s use of drones, specifically the policies which guide it. She begins by describing what is currently known of a May 2013 presidential policy guidance (PPG), which purports to constrain use of drones. Only a 2 page ‘fact sheet’ of this has currently been declassified. Then she looks at what has emerged from the efforts to use litigation as regards drone usage.

    • Mike Tipping: Maine’s senators can help end hypocrisy over war and peace

      Traditionally, Maine’s senators have used positions like these to advocate for steady spending on shipbuilding as a way of safeguarding jobs at Bath Iron Works and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. At this crucial moment, however, Maine’s representatives in Washington also should take a broader view and ask deeper questions about our military spending, our foreign policy goals and our priorities as a nation.

    • How Yemen’s US-backed ex-dictator is tearing his country apart

      For years, the Americans saw President Ali Abdullah Saleh as a key ally in the fight against al-Qaeda. He allowed his air bases to be used by US drones to strike at the movement’s operatives, and gladly received Western aid in development cash and arms supplies.

    • The collapse of the Obama doctrine: Yemen war as an opportunity?

      Despite a preliminary nuclear deal agreed upon between Iran and its allies, it is unlikely Obama will enact any major shift in regional policies, but continue to hide behind its allies to achieve muddled objectives

    • Scotland’s biggest public sector pension scheme has £83mn stake in arms trade

      Scotland’s most substantial local authority pension scheme has been sharply criticized for investing £83 million in 11 of the world’s biggest arms firms.

      At the close of 2014, Glasgow City Council’s Strathclyde Pension Fund had shares amounting to £19.6 million in Lockheed Martin and Boeing – two of the biggest arms manufacturers on the planet.

    • US drone programme: ‘Schizophrenia’ comes to the big screen
    • DARPA’s Vision of Future War — Swarms of Missiles and Drones

      One of the most important jobs for an air force is suppressing enemy air defenses. It means hacking, jamming or otherwise blowing up radars and anti-aircraft missile sites — often during the opening stages of a war.

    • DARPA needs drones, fighters, missiles to attack in tandem; wants open systems to make it happen

      Pentagon researchers have decided the most effective way to penetrate state-of-the-art air defenses is the same approach with which users have flummoxed large-scale IT security operations for years:

    • DARPA wants modular, specialized, cheaper and drop in upgradable swarm cloud of drones, missiles and mothership airplanes
    • Religious leaders urge a ban on fully autonomous weapons

      Diplomats, soldiers, scholars and concerned citizens will meet in Geneva immediately after Easter to discuss these and other implications of a new class of arms known as “lethal autonomous weapons”, or “killer robots”.

    • The West and its flawed anti-IS strategy

      Finally, there is a need for introspection inside Europe, the U.S., and even Australia, which have seen growing numbers of their citizens get through Turkey to join IS. While the brutality of the Assad regime and economic distress in the region have been blamed for the thousands of Arab youth taking up arms for IS, what explains the hundreds of citizens joining it from the U.K., France and the U.S.? According to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, 3,400 of the 20,000 IS foreign fighters are from Western countries. Why are British and French girls becoming jihadi brides, schoolboys and young doctors learning to kill, and teenage Americans travelling all the way just to join IS ranks? Could it be that in the early years of a push for regime change and sanctions against Syria, Western governments themselves promoted the propaganda against Mr. Assad’s government, allowing many of their Muslim citizens to think they had not just religious but national sanction to join the war?

    • Blackwater: One of the Pentagon’s Top Contractors for Afghanistan Training

      Despite a sordid and deadly reputation in Iraq, the mercenary army that began as Blackwater and is now known as Academi was a top recipient of Pentagon contracts for training Afghanistan’s security forces from 2002 to 2014, a government watchdog reported Tuesday.

    • America is still fighting the Cold War: Why its military “strategy” is hopeless

      Current levels of Pentagon spending simply aren’t sustainable. The time is now to abandon our global war on terror

    • There is nothing conservative about the Republican ‘War’ Party

      Neocons have so corrupted the Republican Party that in order to be considered a viable national presidential candidate and to be embraced by the rank and file and Tea Party right, one must openly advocate for an open-ended continuation of the war on terror and a de facto war against Iran.

    • Yemen’s Houthis seize central Aden district, presidential site

      China’s Xinhua news agency said a Chinese missile frigate evacuated 225 people, all non-Chinese nationals, from Aden on Thursday to Djibouti.

    • 35 dead, 88 wounded as Saudi-led air strikes hit Yemen for fifth day

      The Health Ministry, loyal to the Houthi fighters who control the capital, said Saudi-led air strikes had killed 35 people and wounded 88 overnight. The figures could not be independently confirmed.

    • Freedom Rider: American Hell for Yemen

      The U.S.-spawned whirlwind of carnage and destruction has wrecked the societies of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen, yet most Americans feel themselves blameless. “The people, the corporate media and the political system all accept that their government has the right to intervene in the affairs of other nations and that it is always right and moral in its claims.” They behave like zombified cogs in an imperial death machine.

    • COMMENT: The bodies pile up in Yemen’s civil war and Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign, but who is counting the casualties?

      Between 29 and 45 people were reported killed by an apparent air attack at the al Mazraq camp – some were said to have been burned beyond recognition. Depressingly, the victims also included children.

      Although the attack came shortly after Saudi Arabia had launched an aerial bombardment of Yemen, Yemen’s foreign minister, speaking from Riyadh, blamed artillery fired by the Houthi militia which stormed the country’s capital Sanaa late last year. A Saudi spokesman meanwhile said that rebels had been firing from a residential area in response to a question about the bombing.

    • Causing genocide to protect us from terror

      A report called Body Count has revealed that at least 1.3 million people have lost their lives as a result of the US-led “war on terror” in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s a report which should have made front page news across the world.

    • Report: At Least 1.3 Million People Killed In US War On Terror

      A recent report found that in the estimated number of casualties from the United States’ “War on Terror,” at least 1.3 million people were killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. While the report emphasizes that this is a “conservative estimate,” 1.3 million is 10 times higher than the number of casualties previously reported by mainstream media in the US.

    • US War on Terror Leaves 1.3 Million Dead in Three Countries
    • The ‘War on Terror’ has killed 1.3 million people, report finds

      A report has found that 1.3m people have lost their lives as a direct or indirect result of the ‘War on Terror’.

    • Muslim vs. White Mass Murderers

      There is no blame attributed to the French socioeconomic system, which relegates most of France’s Arab population to a permanent underclass of unemployment and poverty. As racial minorities in a country that holds few opportunities for people with their background, the brothers worked dead-end jobs like delivering pizzas and fish mongering. They were not able to get jobs at French investment banks or in the fashion industry. Certainly this must have produced adverse mental health effects.

    • Land safely? ‘Let’s wait and see:’ Alps co-pilot’s last words revealed

      The co-pilot who investigators believe deliberately crashed Germany Wings Flight 9252 gave clues to what he was about to do in the last few sentences he uttered before his actions killed all 150 people on board.

      In transcripts obtained by the German press, Andreas Lubitz repeatedly tells Captain Patrick Sondeimer that he is ready to take over “any time,” the Independent reported.

      Sondheimer then orders his co-pilot to prepare the plane for landing, to which Lubitz responds to with “hopefully” and “let’s wait and see.”

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Julian Assange: ‘I still enjoy crushing bastards’

      Five years after ‘Collateral Murder’, the secret US military video which made the Pentagon furious and WikiLeaks famous around the world, l’Espresso meets the WikiLeaks founder in the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he is holed up to ask whether he has changed his mind and goals

    • eymour Hersh on My Lai and the state of investigative journalism

      When he first reported the My Lai story, Hersh was a freelancer. Magazines including Life turned down his initial account of the massacre, which included a difficult-to-obtain interview with Lieutenant William L. Calley, the commander who led the slaughter. Hersh initially published his blockbuster scoop with a small antiwar newswire called the Dispatch News Service.

    • Latest Wikileaks TPP Document Release Has Obama Administration on the Defensive

      The White House is once again on the defensive. Last week, Wikileaks released a document from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, which have been notoriously private and closed off to the public, and hours later, the White House posted a lengthy blog to defend the most controversial aspect of the document, the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision.

      For a while now, we have known that the TPP was going to include the ISDS, which allows corporations and other investors to sue foreign governments when a new law or regulation hurts the companies investment or when a government expropriates the property all together. But the public has also been clueless as to whether the provision would be worded differently than in previous trade agreements that had the ISDS, such as NAFTA. The Obama administration has quite adamantly insisted that the TPP will be transparent and that governments will not have to worry about challenges to health or environmental regulations, which has happened in previous trade agreements with the ISDS.

    • Zimbabwe: Politics – Where the Media Goes Against Journalism

      It must be a very difficult period for America, Obama especially. There is no rhyme, no reason, to the workings of the world that America has made.

      Everything looks Frankensteinian, all proving runaway, unknown and unknowable.

      Not such a burden for mere mortals, whose very humanity is founded on a limited ken. But not so for gods, who should know, make and determine everything. And America regards itself as a god, the only one in fact.

      A real monotheist god, politically that is. Godliness rests in the power to make reality, to write and dispose of rules of life and nations, as meets the creator’s caprices. And Shakespeare had his finger on the whimsical proclivity of gods. He wrote: “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods/ They kill us for their sport”.

    • Chinese ‘Thunderbolt’ copters to replace US Cobras in Pakistan

      In line with a January 2015 contract, Pakistan has received three Chinese Z-10 “Thunderbolt” attack helicopters to replace its American Cobra helicopter.

    • Chinese attack helicopters could soon replace American Cobras in Pakistan
    • Drone Warfare: Death Delivered From a Location Near You

      On March 7th, my Family and 20 or so other people protested drone warfare in front of the main gate of the Battle Creek Air National Guard base in Michigan. In 2013, the base was named a Reaper Drone Operating Station and should be operational any day, if not already. Weaponized drone operators are dropping bombs from my backyard.

      We stood in the mud on the side of the four-lane highway from Noon to 1pm. A few of us held signs with slogans like “Stop Drone Warfare” while others offered conversation to each other or waved at honking cars. One father and fellow protester brought fresh-popped popcorn, which he passed out in little blue bowls to the few children that were present. In between piling kernels in their mouths, the kids stomped in the water and slid on the ice behind us that had accumulated at the base of a mountain of plowed snow.

    • Luftwaffe Fighter Pilots Learn to Fly Israeli Drones by Mouse

      The German pilot simply presses a key on a keyboard to make his approach to land on the airfield at the military base at Mazar-e-Sharif in northern

    • Just Say No

      Why the United States can’t kick the bad habit of repeating failed campaigns in its war against terror.

    • America That We Need (3-5)

      American airpower has blown away parts or all of at least eight wedding parties in three countries

    • Terrorism, Violence, and the Culture of Madness

      Chris Hedges crystalizes this premise in arguing that Americans now live in a society in which “violence is the habitual response by the state to every dilemma,” legitimizing war as a permanent feature of society and violence as the organizing principle of politics. Under such circumstances, malevolent modes of rationality now impose the values of a militarized neoliberal regime on everyone, shattering viable modes of agency, solidarity, and hope. Amid the bleakness and despair, the discourses of militarism, danger and war now fuel a war on terrorism “that represents the negation of politics—since all interaction is reduced to a test of military strength war brings death and destruction, not only to the adversary but also to one’s side, and without distinguishing between guilty and innocent.” Human barbarity is no longer invisible, hidden under the bureaucratic language of Orwellian doublespeak. Its conspicuousness, if not celebration, emerged in the new editions of American exceptionalism ushered in by the post 9/11 exacerbation of the war on terror.

    • State Department found 4 emails about drones sent by Clinton
    • Hillary Clinton also used iPad for e-mail

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • 15 ways the world will be terrifying in 2050

      But despite our technological advances, humanity has failed to solve many of its problems. The world hasn’t weaned itself off fossil fuels or antibiotics, protected the rain forest, or reduced the stigma surrounding mental illness. We haven’t flood-proofed our cities or protected our energy grids from natural disasters.

    • Instagram endangers rhinos

      Posting your rhino pictures from your game reserve getaway on social media might be inadvertently giving poachers directions to their next kill.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Britain Used Spy Team to Shape Latin American Public Opinion on Falklands

      Faced with mounting international pressure over the Falkland Islands territorial dispute, the British government enlisted its spy service, including a highly secretive unit known for using “dirty tricks,” to covertly launch offensive cyberoperations to prevent Argentina from taking the islands.

      A shadowy unit of the British spy agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had been preparing a bold, covert plan called “Operation QUITO” since at least 2009. Documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, published in partnership with Argentine news site Todo Notícias, refer to the mission as a “long-running, large scale, pioneering effects operation.”

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Truecrypt report

      The NCC audit found no evidence of deliberate backdoors…

    • Tor Summer of Privacy–Accepting Applications Now

      The Tor Project, in collaboration with ​The Electronic Frontier Foundation, has taken part in Google Summer of Code for 2007 through 2014, mentoring a total of 53 students. But this year ​https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2015-March/008358.html, the program was trimmed back and room was needed for new organizations. We think that is important, too.

    • HTTPS Everywhere Version 5: Sixteen New Languages and Thousands of New Rules

      This week we released the latest version of HTTPS Everywhere to all of our users. Compared to the previous major release, this version introduces thousands of new rules, translations of the interface into sixteen new languages, and support for “Block All HTTP Requests” in Chrome. If you already use HTTPS Everywhere, you will automatically be updated to the latest version. If you don’t have HTTPS Everywhere installed, you can get it here.

    • Bill would stop feds from mandating ‘backdoor’ to data

      A bipartisan group of lawmakers is set to push for legislation that would bar federal agents from forcing tech companies to give them access to customers’ emails, texts and photos.

      “I think you have the right to go about your business without government — in a Big Brother way — listening to your phone calls or reading your emails,” said Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis.

      Pocan is sponsoring the Surveillance State Repeal Act with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky. The bill includes a provision that the federal government cannot require electronics or software manufacturers to build in a mechanism to allow the government to bypass privacy technology.

    • Pm Has Us Report On Nsa Interception Of Phone Calls

      AMERICAN officials presented Prime Minister Perry Christie with a formal communication regarding reports that the US’ National Security Agency had been intercepting and monitoring the telephone conversations of Bahamians, Foreign Affairs and Immigration Minister Fred Mitchell confirmed yesterday.

      #The official correspondence, The Tribune understands, contained an assurance from the United States that consideration would be given to changing America’s oversees telephone monitoring procedures.

      #However, Mr Mitchell declined comment on this saying he had yet to formally present the communication to Cabinet. He said once this was done, it was his intention to make a formal statement in Parliament when it meets next, pending instructions from Cabinet.

    • Your Parents Just Became The NSA With This Car Manufacturer’s Spying App

      GM has a message for teenagers who want to drive its cars: even if your older sibling has left for college, Big Brother is still watching you.

    • Destroyed Snowden laptop: the curatorial view
    • A British Museum Is Showing Off a MacBook Air — But Not Because of Apple’s Design
    • Smashed Snowden laptop on display in British museum

      A laptop that was used to store leaked files from Edward Snowden and then destroyed under watch from U.K. intelligence officers is now on display at a prominent London museum.

      The smashed MacBook Air is on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum as part of an exhibition examining “the role of public institutions in contemporary life and what it means to be responsible for a national collection.”

    • In New Video, Congressman Explains Why His Fellow Lawmakers Couldn’t Be Trusted with NSA Oversight

      Congressmen who asked about oversight of NSA mass surveillance and domestic spying in 2013 could have “compromise[d] security” and were denied the records they sought because of concerns they lacked formal government security clearance, a former member of the House Intelligence Committee says in a newly-released video.

      The footage, from an August 29, 2013 town hall meeting, sheds new light on why lawmakers were denied key rulings and reports from the secret courts overseeing the National Security Agency — even as the Obama administration and intelligence officials claimed that all NSA programs were subject to strict congressional oversight and therefore could be held accountable.

    • When Will the NSA Stop Spying on Innocent Americans?

      Unless Congress acts, Americans will soon benefit from one of the Patriot Act’s most important safeguards against abuse: Language in Section 215 of the law is scheduled to expire in June, depriving the FBI and NSA of a provision they’ve used to justify monitoring the phone calls of tens of millions of innocents (though a primary author of the law insists that it grants no such authority). If you’ve used a landline to call an abortion clinic, a gun store, a suicide hotline, a therapist, an oncologist, a phone sex operator, an investigative journalist, or a union organizer, odds are the government has logged a record of the call. If your Congressional representative has a spouse or child who has made an embarrassing phone call, the executive branch may well possess the ability to document it, though government apologists insist that they’d never do so and are strangely confident that future governments composed of unknown people won’t either.

    • NY Times Reporter Demands Access to NSA Inspector General Reports

      Savage says the NSA denied expedited processing of his request, and then never followed up on it.

    • The simple math problem that blows apart the NSA’s surveillance justifications

      At any rate, as I’ve argued before, simple bureaucratic competence and bog-standard detective work are vastly underrated compared to piling up gigantic quantities of irrelevant data. But the false positive problem ought to be the final nail in the dragnet coffin. Unless terrorism becomes thousands of times more common than it is today, such broad techniques will be utterly useless against real terrorism.

    • Advancing cyber bills spark fresh NSA worries

      The House Intelligence panel is preparing to move a cybersecurity bill that privacy advocates argue would embolden the National Security Agency (NSA).

      Before the contentious bill hits the floor, though, Intelligence Committee leaders want to join forces with their Homeland Security panel colleagues who are considering a bill of their own.

    • NSA looks to continue cybersecurity partnership with private sector

      The National Security Agency has helped investigate every major cyber intrusion in the private sector in the last six months, Director Adm. Michael Rogers said, adding that he wants that collaboration to get faster and more anticipatory.

    • Mozilla warns against data-storage rules in NSA reform

      Mozilla on Friday warned against a government policy that could require phone companies to hold on to customer data longer than their business purposes require.

      Advocates for National Security Agency reform have cautioned against such a measure for the past year. Lawmakers are considering ending the government’s bulk collection of U.S. phone records in exchange for a system where officials could search records stored with the private companies themselves with approval from the surveillance court.
      The data retention provision did not make it into reform bills last year, including one in the Senate that narrowly failed on a procedural vote. Mozilla’s director of public policy, Chris Riley, wants it to stay that way.

      “It is an unnecessary, and harmful, posture for any democratic government to take. Data retention mandates are not a missing piece of the long-term surveillance ecosystem; they are a bridge too far,” he wrote in a blog post. Riley asserted that kind of deal would amount to “misguided pragmatism.”

    • NSA spying caused 9 percent of foreign firms to dump U.S. clouds

      In the weeks following Edward Snowden’s revelations of the NSA’s massive web surveillance program PRISM, speculation was raised about the negative implications it could have on U.S. cloud companies.

      Now, Forrester Research has taken the time to see just what kind of impact it has had, asking a host of foreign firms whether or not PRISM has caused them to scale back their spending on U.S. cloud services, and the answer makes for some uneasy reading.

    • ​Snowden, PRISM fallout will cost U.S. tech vendors $47 billion, less than expected
    • How To Make A Secret Phone Call

      To show how hard phone privacy can be, one artist examined the CIA, consulted hackers, and went far off the map (with a stop at Rite Aid).

    • Why Is Obama Keeping Secret Four Seconds of a Nixon-Era Tape?

      Releasing it “would reveal information that would impair U.S. cryptologic systems or activities,” a National Security Agency spokeswoman says.

    • The Dutch “Surveillance Kings of Europe” Are About to Get Even Nosier

      The Netherlands is considering a new law that would give its spooks unprecedented access to global data, including yours and mine.

    • Off the Cuff: Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times

      You’ve expressed regret that Edward Snowden went to The Guardian and The Washington Post to make his NSA disclosures instead of going to The New York Times. But looking at the Times’ history, when it sat on the warrantless wiretapping story during the Bush administration, and also during your career, when you sat on an NSA story at the LA Times, didn’t Snowden make the right choice? Why should the next big whistleblower come to the Times?

      Was he right? No, I don’t think he was right. I understand why he made his decision. I don’t think he was right. First off — and I wasn’t at The New York Times for the [warrantless wiretapping] NSA story — it did publish it, it didn’t kill it.

      But only after the [2004] election.

      It had nothing to do with the election. If you read the accounts at the time, Jim Risen was about to put it in a book. It wasn’t because of the election; it was because Risen was about to put it in a book and that forced the hand of the editors of The New York Times. I wasn’t there, so I’m not going to judge how they made the decision. I was at the LA Times at the time, but they did publish it.

      If you were to say one reason he didn’t come [was because] The New York Times screwed up in the post-war coverage before the US went to war in Iraq, he’s right, The New York Times did. So did the LA Times, which I ran at the time. Everybody did. … But I think that if he looks at our overall track record, we publish stuff very aggressively. We published the NSA stuff, we’ve published other Risen stories, we’ve published hard-hitting reports about the Obama administration that they hate, we’ve published lots of stories about drones [and] we’ve published other stories about surveillance. And it breaks my heart that he went elsewhere. But I think my appeal to him and future Snowdens would be, ‘we do publish.’ You’re isolating a couple of things where you thought we were too slow or did something off, but if you look at the whole history of The New York Times, you have to include the Pentagon Papers, you got to include coverage of Vietnam [and] you got to include our aggressive coverage of the world. I think our track record is really good.

      The LA Times thing has always been misunderstood. The allegation was that when I was editor of the LA Times, an engineer in AT&T or an employee of AT&T became very suspicious about a room at the headquarters in San Francisco, where he was convinced there was some surveillance going on. Nobody could go into the room and the room was always locked. So he came to the LA Times and we reported the hell out of it. We went nuts to report it, but we could never prove it was anything other than a mysterious closed door. This is before people realized how much spying there was, before people realized what the NSA had become. So all we had, with all that reporting, was that there was closed door, it was mysterious, and the government wouldn’t talk about it. And I don’t think that was enough for a story. So we didn’t write a story. It wasn’t because the government told us not to write a story; it was because I didn’t think we had enough for a story. If you look at what people wrote at the time, because eventually The New York Times wrote a modest inside story about the guy’s allegations, all it said was that an engineer at AT&T thinks that there’s a door down the hall that’s locked, etc. So I don’t have any regrets about that one. It turned out it was part of NSA spying, but, jeez, if we published everything where people are concerned about closed doors and mysteries like that, mostly we’d be wrong.

    • Whistleblower’s Legacy: President Reforms Key Surveillance Law; Europe Questions Safe Harbor Regime

      On June 1, 2015, Section 215 of the U.S. PATRIOT Act (50 U.S.C. § 1861) (“Section 215”) is set to expire. Section 215 is the authority that allows the NSA, with assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), to collect “metadata” of every phone call that originated or terminated in the United States. Some of the first documents revealed by Edward Snowden were orders by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (“FISC”) (the court that entertains applications submitted by the U.S. government for electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes) requiring Verizon, Sprint and AT&T to hand over such metadata. The FBI obtained these orders for the benefit of the NSA.

    • Is Big Brother Watching Our Campuses?

      At Georgia State University, algorithms alert advisers when a student falls behind in class. Course-planning tools tell students the classes and majors they’re likely to complete, based on the performance of other students like them. When students swipe their ID cards to attend a tutoring or financial-literacy session, the university can send attendance data to advisers and staff.

    • The Brennan Center Report on the FISA Court and Proposals for FISA Reform

      As Wells noted when it first came out last month, the Brennan Center has a new report: What Went Wrong With the FISA Court. Despite the title, the report is really a condensed history of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC or the Court), with the Brennan Center’s judgements about what has gone wrong with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) itself. The report also provides a vehicle for the Brennan Center to highlight proposals for surveillance reform, some, but not all of which, relate to the upcoming sunset of certain FISA provisions, unless Congress extends them this spring.

      [...]

      For all the criticisms of the USA Patriot Act of 2001, changing FISA’s standard to “a significant purpose” and removing the justification for the old “wall” is one that has been overwhelmingly understood as an important substantive correction. There is no reason to go backwards.

    • Why ‘The Nation’ Is Suing the Federal Government

      The NSA is monitoring almost all of our international communications. This is a fundamental violation of First and Fourth Amendment rights.

    • A mayday mystery and secrets of the NSA

      “We were monitored every second of everyday and we sent those tapes to NSA, headquarters Fort Meade Maryland and the British GCHQ in London. So both the tape and the logs went off to both of them but the way the NSA talks they have everything.”

    • Maine Bill Taking On NSA Scheduled For Important Committee Hearing

      A Maine bill that would turn off support and resources to the NSA in the Pine Tree State will have an important committee hearing Thursday.

      Sen. Eric Brakey (R-Androscoggin) introduced LD531 On Feb. 26. His seven cosponsors literally span the political spectrum, including Republicans, Democrats and an Independent.

      [...]

      Reuters revealed the extent of such NSA data sharing with state and local law enforcement in an August 2013 article. According to documents obtained by the news agency, the NSA passes information to police through a formerly secret DEA unit known Special Operations Divisions and the cases “rarely involve national security issues.” Almost all of the information involves regular criminal investigations, not terror-related investigations.

      In other words, not only does the NSA collect and store this data, using it to build profiles. The agency encourages state and local law enforcement to violate the Fourth Amendment by making use of this information in their day-to-day investigations.

    • Lawmakers Consider Bill That Could Hinder NSA Operations in Maine

      On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the Maine Fourth Amendment Protection Act, a bill introduced by freshman Senator Eric Brakey (R-Androscoggin).

      The bill’s purpose is to withhold material support or other assistance to a federal agency, specifically the National Security Administration, in its efforts “in the collection or use of a person’s electronic data or metadata” without informed consent, a warrant, or a legally recognized exemption.

    • IT Independence is National Security

      The NSA’s “Equation Group” is apparently behind the infection with malware of hard drive firmware on computers used by nations considered “enemies” by the United State. The installation of the malware is believed to have required access to trade secrets of IT manufacturers as well as physical access to the soon-to-be infected computers. Popular Science in their article “The World’s Most Sophisticated Malware Ever Infects Hard Drive Firmware“suggests that the NSA intercepted computers in transit through global logistical chains.

      However, a simpler and more logical explanation remains, though it is one manufacturers vehemently deny; that the NSA had/has direct access to the factory floors of several IT giants. These include Western Digital Corpororation, Seagate Technology, Toshiba Corporation, IBM, Micron Technology and Samsung Electronics.

      The infection of hardware starting on the factory floor is nothing new. Australia’s Financial Review revealed in 2013 in an article titled, “Intel chips could let US spies inside: expert,” that, “one of Silicon Valley’s most respected technology experts, Steve Blank, says he would be “surprised” if the US National Security Agency was not embedding “back doors” inside chips produced by Intel and AMD, two of the world’s largest semiconductor firms, giving them the possibility to access and control machines.”
      First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/03/29/it-independence-is-national-security/

    • 3 Reasons Apple Is Pushing for NSA Spying Reforms

      As the owner of the world’s most valuable brand, Apple is probably keenly aware that appearing to help the government with its controversial bulk data collection programs would tarnish its carefully crafted image as the consumer electronics brand for those who dare to “Think Different.” In this sense, Apple’s public opposition to the government’s surveillance programs is an effort to protect its brand from losing its appeal to consumers.

    • Documents on NSA’s zero-day policy provide little insight, EFF says

      When the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued the National Security Agency (NSA) over records regarding the government’s alleged prior knowledge of Heartbleed, the privacy group hoped to gain insight into the agency’s zero-day exploitation policy.

      Within the heavily redacted pages of the obtained documents, however, a policy was nowhere to be found, the EFF wrote in a blog post on Monday.

    • Freddy Martinez Is Exposing Chicago Cops’ NSA-Style Surveillance Gear

      It took the curiosity of a skinny, fidgeting 27-year-old to force the Chicago Police Department to admit they purchased controversial surveillance technology. The department, legally boxed into a corner over its use of a device known as the StingRay, finally admitted to acquiring the cell-phone tracking product last summer, six years after actually buying the thing. The watchdog work came not from a newspaper or any other media outlet in the city, but Freddy Martinez, an information technology worker who oversees websites for a private company from a downtown office building.

    • Snowden-endorsed security software has no NSA backdoors

      An independent audit has concluded that popular encryption software TrueCrypt has no government backdoors or serious security flaws.

    • Audit Concludes No NSA Backdoors in TrueCrypt Software
    • TrueCrypt doesn’t contain NSA backdoors

      However, the software was found to contain a few other security vulnerabilities, including one relating to the use of the Windows API to generate random numbers for master encryption key material.

    • TrueCrypt audit shows no sign of NSA backdoors, just some minor glitches

  • Civil Rights

    • The Limits of Ken Roth’s Criticism of Obama

      Roth’s view seems optimistic, but it is inappropriate to argue that Obama should engage in a number of tasks while not criticizing increased presidential power. In fact, the actions he recommends could be used to justify a further expansion of executive power. At the same time, Roth’s support for “limits” on mass surveillance and “rules” for drone use, are even worse. This is because these measures would be ineffective in stopping the death and suffering caused by the reign of terror brought on by drone assassinations or in efforts protecting the inherent right of privacy of not only Americans, but people of the world.

    • Under President’s New Cybersecurity Executive Order… Is Wikileaks Now An Evil Cyberhacker For Releasing Trade Deal?

      Yesterday we talked about the ridiculousness of President Obama’s new cybersecurity executive order, in which he declares a national emergency around “malicious cyber-enabled activities” and enables his own government to do mean things to anyone they think is responsible for cyber badness (that his own NSA is the primary instigator of serious cyberattacks gets left ignored, of course). One of the points we made is that the definitions in the executive agreement were really vague, meaning that it’s likely that they could be abused in all sorts of ways that we wouldn’t normally think of as malicious hacking.

    • New Executive Order Could Sanction Cyber Activists, Wikileaks

      After spending a week trying to narrow its scope, President Obama on Wednesday released an executive order that still grants the White House broad authority to sanction individuals and organizations engaged in civil society online.

      The order targets entities located partially or wholly outside the United States “directly or indirectly” responsible for cyber-activities “harming, or otherwise significantly compromising…entities in a critical infrastructure sector.”

      “I’m for the first time authorizing targeted sanctions against individuals or entities whose actions in cyberspace result in significant threats to the national security, foreign policy, or economic health or financial stability of the United States,” the President wrote in an article published on Medium to accompany the executive order. He also described the threat of such attacks as a “national emergency.”

    • Saudi Arabia warns Canada to not support blogger sentenced to 1,000 lashes

      Saudi Arabia’s aggressive response to international criticism of its human rights and justice system continues with a warning to Canadian politicians. According to CBC News, the Saudi ambassador to Canada, Naif Bin Bandir Al-Sudairy, sent a letter to Quebec’s National Assembly telling it not to interfere in the case of blogger Raif Badawi.

    • Legislators Trying To Shield Cops From Accountability Are Running Into Unexpected Opposition: Cops

      Police misconduct has never been more visible, thanks to the internet and advancements in cell phone technology. Between this and increased use of public records requests, there’s a wealth of information surfacing daily on the misdeeds of law enforcement personnel. In theory, this should be raising the level of accountability. In practice, however, it’s a different story.

    • Police Chief Unable To Simply Do Nothing Over Reported Teen Sexting, Brings Child Porn Charges Against Four Minors

      Good, old-fashioned “sexting” has netted more teens some child pornography charges. Despite the teens involved claiming the photographed behavior was consensual, Joliet’s (IL) police chief still believes the only way to address a situation he and the laws he enforces aren’t built to handle, is to handle it as poorly as possible.

    • Final Four, the Madness Continues

      Yes, the NCAA Tournament is in full swing and nothing has changed. Once again, unpaid, logo-covered young men race up and down the court on every channel round the clock, creating billions in revenue for some, millions in salary for others and little for themselves.

      Of course, this is far from a new revelation. The ludicrous injustice of big time college athletics has been uncovered, covered, and re-covered. And the tide of public perception is slowly but unmistakably shifting. More and more people are seeing college amateurism for what is has always been: a thinly veiled attempt to avoid paying workers compensation for injuries as well as compensation in the broader sense.

    • Automakers Say You Don’t Really Own Your Car

      EFF is fighting for vehicle owners’ rights to inspect the code that runs their vehicles and to repair and modify their vehicles, or have a mechanic of their choice do the work. At the moment, the anti-circumvention prohibition in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act arguably restricts vehicle inspection, repair, and modification. If EFF is successful then vehicle owners will be free to inspect and tinker, as long as they don’t run afoul of other regulations, such as those governing vehicle emissions, safety, or copyright law.

    • The Real Monopoly Board: The Victimization of Students by the College Board

      Have you ever applied to college? If so, you probably found yourself in the same situation that many of us have, whether or not to take standardized admission tests. Sadly, this isn’t actually a question because the answer is handed to you; you must take standardized tests in order to apply to a competitive college. Because of this monopoly, standardized test companies can charge any price they want. Being a senior in high school who is (almost) done with the college application process, I have spent hundreds of dollars on the College Board. I have been the victim on countless occasions of their unfair prices, and have found my bank account suffering as a result. It is completely wrong that students are the victims of this monopoly, and College Board should be stopped.

    • Statement on the suspension of Barrett Brown’s e-mail access and BOP retaliation

      An hour or so after having used the system to contact a journalist about potential BOP wrongdoing, Barrett Brown’s access to the TRULINCS prisoner e-mail system was restricted, for a full year until April 2016, without explanation.

      This is contrary to the BOP’s own policy on several points, as noted in their 2009 documentation — the administration is only allowed to remove access to TRULINCS for thirty days pending an investigation of any potential misuse, and the inmate is supposed to be informed in writing of the reason for that.

    • Informant Provided Bomb-Making Manual to Alleged “ISIS-Inspired” Plotters

      In what has been widely described in the media as the breakup of an “ISIS-inspired” plot, on April 2 the Department of Justice announced that Noelle Velentzas, 28, and Asia Siddiqui, 31, both of New York, had been arrested and charged with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. The defendants “plotted to wreak terror by creating explosive devices” for use in New York City and sought “bomb-making instructions and materials” for an attack, the Justice Department statement said.

    • Obama’s NSA Reforms, One Year Later

      In February, the Director of National Intelligence issued a report summarizing the changes that President Obama has implemented since pledging major surveillance reforms in January 2014. The report chronicles a dizzying number of developments and contains links to several hundreds of pages of supporting documentation. But does this impressive accumulation of activity translate to meaningful reform?

    • U.S. Supreme Court: GPS Trackers Are a Form of Search and Seizure

      The Supreme Court clarified and affirmed that law on Monday, when it ruled on Torrey Dale Grady v. North Carolina, before sending the case back to that state’s high court. The Court’s short but unanimous opinion helps make sense of how the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, interacts with the expanding technological powers of the U.S. government.

    • [Australia] The security paradox: individual privacy versus digital driftnets

      The great irony of the Abbott government’s plan enforce the mandatory data retention legislation is that while this is being done to make us safer, in fact it creates new data security risks for us all.

    • [Australia] E-mail autofill blunder leaks personal details of G20 world leaders

      A mistake with Microsoft Outlook’s autofill feature sent personal details of the world’s top leaders attending the G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, to organizers of the Asian Cup soccer tournament. Those affected include the presidents of the US, China, Russia, Brazil, the European Commission, France, and Mexico; the prime ministers of Japan, India, the UK, Italy, and Canada; and the German Chancellor. Among the information disclosed was the passport numbers, visa details, and other personal identifiers.

    • Bolivia’s Contested Process of Change: Views From a Regional Election
    • Deterring Cyberattacks with Sanctions

      The White House has announced a new sanctions program that will authorize the executive branch to penalize malicious cyber “actors” whose behavior endangers “the national security, foreign policy, or economic health or financial stability of the United States.” Sadly the President is opting for theater that creates the perception of security rather than actually making it more difficult for attacks to succeed.

      Obama’s new executive order rests on a strategy of deterrence, a cold war idea that’s been revived by the likes of former NSA director Mike McConnell and more recently by current NSA Director Mike Rogers. The basic idea is this: if enemies fear retaliation they’re less likely to launch an attack (nuclear, cyber, or otherwise).

    • Barack Obama’s press freedom legacy

      According to the CPJ report, the Obama administration’s policies have undermined the role of the press in three fundamental ways.

    • Leading Bahraini activist Nabeel Rajab arrested for highlighting prison abuse

      Head of Bahrain Center for Human Rights detained by police after speaking out over allegations of human rights abuses after riots in Jaw prison

    • Index condemns Bahrain’s continuing harassment of human rights defender

      Index on Censorship condemns the latest arrest and continued harrassment of prominent Bahraini human rights defender Nabeel Rajab.

    • Empathy, rage, and resistance

      I live in a consumer culture that distracts me from the plight of others with images of beautiful bodies wearing beautiful clothes that I am encouraged to buy. I live a life of relative comfort, and I don’t know anyone who’s been killed by a drone or starved to death. But despite having been subject to soul-destroying consumer culture for twenty years, if I saw someone drowning in a pond ten feet away from me, I would not hesitate to help them. Confronted with a fellow being facing imminent death, and having the ability to help, my instincts for empathy and care would spring into action.

    • Idaho Man Charged With Felony for Posting Non-Threatening Rant Against Cop on Facebook (Updated)

      On February 2, Matthew Townsend was standing on the sidewalk near a Liberty Tax Service office in Meridian, Idaho dressed as the Grim Reaper, holding a sign that said “Taxes ≠ liberty, Taxes fund terrorism.”

      For this simple display of activism, which was a play off the usual characters dressed in Statue of Liberty costumers, Townsend would find himself arrested and jailed, charged with resisting and obstruction by a Meridian cop named Richard Brockbank.

      Seven weeks later, a day after attending a hearing for that arrest, Townsend was arrested a second time after police banged on his door at 10 p.m., rousing him from his sleep, charging him with witness intimidation over a Facebook post he had made two nights earlier that police described as a “terrorist threat.”

      In that post, which you can read below, he tagged several journalists, activists, friends as well as some of Brockbank’s family members.

    • When the Government Views Its Own Population as the Enemy

      One could go on listing such facts indefinitely. For instance, the sordid lesson to draw from the Hurricane Katrina debacle in 2005 is that protecting Americans from a natural disaster was not a priority of government at any level, at least not of the governments involved.

    • The Reflective Voter’s Fear

      It is hardly news that American voters don’t choose candidates the way democratic theorists say they should; candidates are sold to them, in much the way that consumer goods are.

    • Pakistan military court sentences 6 Islamic militants to death on terrorism charges

      Pakistani military courts have sentenced six Islamic militants to death on charges including terrorism, murder, suicide bombing and kidnapping for ransom.

    • John Brennan’s reforms would turn the CIA into a paramilitary organization

      After 70 years, it’s time for some major restructuring at the CIA — at least according to its director, John Brennan, who announced earlier this month his plan to overhaul the agency by creating “mission centers” that would concentrate resources on specific challenges or geographic areas. Brennan also announced the formation of a new “Directorate of Digital Innovation” to lead efforts to track and implement new intelligence-gathering cyber tools.

    • India asks Saudi to help evacuate citizens from Yemen

      India asked Saudi Arabia on Monday to help evacuate its citizens from Yemen, where more than 4,000 Indians, over half of them nurses, are caught up in fighting.

    • UN says remaining international staffers leave chaotic Yemen

      The United Nations says the last of its international staffers have now left Yemen as the U.N. human rights chief warns of a “total collapse” in the Arab world’s poorest country.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Despite Claims Title II Will Kill Investment, Comcast Launches Major New 2 Gigabit Deployment

      While broadband ISPs have repeatedly claimed that being reclassified as common carriers under Title II will crush sector innovation, investment, and destroy the Internet as we know it — they simultaneously continue to do a bang up job highlighting how these claims are complete and utter nonsense. For example, while Verizon was busy proclaiming that Title II would ruin, well, everything, it’s been using Title II to reap massive tax benefits. Similarly, despite the fact wireless voice has been classified under Title II for years, that didn’t stop the industry from investing massive amounts during that period or spending record amounts at the FCC’s latest spectrum auction.

    • Brace Yourselves, The Net Neutrality Legal Challenges Are Coming

      On Wednesday afternoon the Federal Communications Commission filed its net neutrality order to the Federal Register, an FCC official confirmed to TechCrunch. Once published by the Register, the filing opens the gates to an inevitable outpouring of legal challenges from net neutrality opponents.

      The FCC’s filing comes a week-and-a-half after the agency was slammed with the first lawsuits attempting to block the new rules. An FCC official said the lawsuits from both The United States Telecom Association and Alamo Broadband — which were filed just 12 days after the rules were published — jumped the gun and may be dismissed on the grounds they were filed too early.

    • Bigger is better — for telecom companies, not Internet users

      Charter Communications’ merger further consolidates an industry characterized by scant competition and unacceptably slow Internet access speeds

04.03.15

Links 3/4/2015: ‘Atomic’ Distribution, System76′s Broadwell-Powered Lemur

Posted in News Roundup at 5:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Can Linux learn anything from Windows 10?

      Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system is available as a preview release. One Linux user at Network World decided to take the plunge and see if there was anything Windows 10 had to teach Linux.

    • 10 Truly Amusing Easter Eggs in Linux

      Back in 1979, a video game was being developed for the Atari 2600 — Adventure.

      The programmer working on Adventure slipped a secret feature into the game which, when the user moved an “invisible square” to a particular wall, allowed entry into a “secret room”. That room contained a simple phrase: “Created by Warren Robinett”.

  • Server

    • RancherOS: A Minimal OS for Docker in Production

      RancherOS, the latest minimal Linux-based operating system for running Docker containers, was recently launched by Darren Shepherd, Rancher Lab’s CTO. In contrast with Boot2Docker (another lightweight Docker-centric distribution) which openly discourages production use, RancherOS’s announcement claims the new OS is production and scale-ready.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux Brought to Canon DSLRs by Magic Lantern

      Members of the Magic Lantern community are saying that this development will open the door to a universe of possibilities. While Magic Lantern was previously a set of hacks running on top of Canon code, being able to run Linux on a Canon DSLR means the developers will be able to implement new features cleanly and access the camera’s hardware directly.

    • Linux Kernel Ported to Canon DSLRs, Thanks to the Magic Lantern Developers – Video

      It’s no longer April Fools Day, so what we are about to tell you is no joke, but the real deal. The awesome developers behind the well-known and acclaimed Magic Lantern third-party software add-on that brings a wide range of new features to Canon EOS cameras, have announced that they’ve managed to port the Linux kernel to Canon DSLRs.

    • Graphics Stack

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Calligra 2.9.2 Released

        The Calligra team has released version 2.9.2, a the bugfix release of the Calligra Suite, Calligra Active and the Calligra Office Engine. Updating the software is recommended to everybody.

      • Calligra Office Suite 2.9.2 Out Now with Major Improvements for Krita Digital Painting Tool

        The Calligra Team, through Jarosław Staniek, was proud to announce today, April 2, that the second maintenance release of their Calligra office suite for KDE desktop environments has been released with a great number of improvements to the Krita digital painting software, for which we have a separate announcement.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Distributions

    • Evolve OS Changes Names to Solus, an Old Community Favorite

      The Evolve OS project has just changed its name to Solus after a trademark spat over a name owned by UK’s Secretary of State office.

    • New Releases

    • Screenshots

    • Red Hat Family

      • PHP version 5.5.24RC1 and 5.6.8RC1

        NEW : Release Candidate versions are now available in remi-test repository for Fedora and Enterprise Linux (RHEL / CentOS) to allow more people to test them. They are only available as Software Collections, for a parallel installation, perfect solution for such tests.

      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host: Updates Made Easy

        Earlier in March we announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host, a small footprint, container host based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. It provides a stable host platform, optimized for running application containers, and brings a number of application software packaging and deployment benefits to customers. In my previous container blog I gave the top seven reasons to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host. One reason was the ability to do atomic updates and rollbacks. In this blog I provide an in-depth look into atomic updating and how it differs from a yum update. And, speaking of atomic updates… it just so happens that our first atomic update was made available yesterday.

      • Fedora

        • FLOCK 2015 is in Rochester NY

          This is a short blog post to get over my writer’s block. For the last 2 years, Fedora has had a computer festival called FLOCK in either Europe or North America. The first FLOCK happened in beautiful Charleston SC in 2013. The second FLOCK was in the wonderful capital of the Czech Republic, Prague. This years FLOCK is to be held from August 12-15 in Rochester New York. The main website is having some issues (various links aren’t pointing to the correct places because WordPress is being obstinate) but these are being worked on as I write and hopefully will be fixed soon.

        • Fedora under construction?

          Fedora’s quality makes complacency easy. But in truth, we’re always under construction — or we should be. You could call that constant disruption by different names. Risk positive. Forward leaning. Embracing change. Since inception, Fedora was intended to avoid the status quo. So what’s next for shaking up said status?

        • Fedora May Move to Project Atomic Distribution

          Fedora 22 was different from other releases most significantly by the way it was distributed – namely in three purpose-designed editions. However, Paul Frields is floating another method for future Fedora releases. He suggest Fedora 23 or 24 may consist of “some combination of a strongly managed center, curated stacks, and an expanding nebula of containers.”

        • Fedora 22 Beta Is Now in Freeze, Will Be Released on April 14

          Dennis Gilmore has announced the other day that the upcoming Beta release of the Fedora 22 Linux operating system is now in freeze and no other packages than the ones who fix the accepted blocker or repair two bugs that have been declared exceptions to the freeze.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Canonical Refuses to Fix a 5-Year-Old Bug in Ubuntu, Related to Notification System

            Recent reports show us that a known Ubuntu bug, which was submitted to Canonical’s Launchpad bug-tracking website about half a decade ago, still exists in the current version of the Ubuntu Linux operating system and Canonical refuses to fix it for unknown reasons.

          • System76 unveils all-new Broadwell-powered Lemur — an affordable Ubuntu Linux laptop

            While many computer manufacturers are in a race to the bottom — both in price and quality — some makers continue to produce reliable high-quality machines. One of these manufacturers is System76. If you aren’t familiar, it manufactures and sells desktops and laptops running the Ubuntu operating system. In other words, Linux fans can buy one of these machines and have it running the Linux distro out of the box — no need to format the drive to remove Windows.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • The Building Blocks of Open Source Innovation

    Open source code creation opens the door for IT developers across varied industries to adopt, modify and customize technology to their organization’s specific needs. Companies are free to contribute to and adopt code so long as resources—such as intellectual property software audit services—are applied to ensure that the ground rules established by the code’s originator are acknowledged and followed.

  • What does the future hold for the Internet of Things?

    I started getting involved with open source as a Computer Science (CS) grad student. I was using a combination of open source and proprietary software in my research. Given the nature of research, being able to rapidly prototype a concept and customize the tools involved are both hugely important goals. I found that open source tools often gave our team this win-win scenario where we were able to quickly try a variety of tools at no cost while also being empowered to modify or even combine solutions. This was a big advantage over using closed proprietary software.

  • ON.Lab Releases ‘Blackbird’ Open Source SDN Operating System

    ONOS’ community today announced the availability of the second release of its open source SDN Open Network Operating System (ONOS), named Blackbird, that is focused on performance, scale and high availability. ONOS is the first open source platform to define a comprehensive set of metrics for effectively evaluating the “carrier-grade quotient” of SDN control plane platforms/controllers and to publicly publish the performance evaluation of its Blackbird release using these metrics.

  • ONOS Project Unveils Second Release of Open SDN Platform
  • Instagram’s open-source library could make it easier for app makers to build for Apple Watch

    The library is known as IGInterfaceDataTable, and is intended to make “configuring tables with multi-dimensional data easier.” In other words, Instagram said, like its own app for Apple’s forthcoming smart watch.

  • Open Xchange teams with PowerDNS and Dovecot to create open source powerhouse

    OPEN-XCHANGE, the security conscious open source white label productivity provider from Germany, has announced a three-way merger to create one of the largest open source companies in Europe.

    The deal sees the company join up with Dutch DNS software vendor PowerDNS and Finnish IMAP server provider Dovecot to form a pan-European powerhouse.

    The new deal sees the combined Open-Xchange take a 90 percent market share in the secure DNS market and some 130 million user accounts.

    We caught up with Open-Xchange CEO Rafael Laguna to get his thoughts on the news, starting with the advantages that the combined company will bring to the open source market.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Project Releases

  • Openness/Sharing

    • How open source software builds strong roots for better governance

      Open data and going digital are subjects high on the international agenda for global development, particularly when it comes to financing improved services and infrastructure for the poorest people in the world. Young people from Laos to Lagos aspire to become software developers, and smartphones are set to put unprecedented computing power into every corner of the earth. But the paradox is that many governments still only have rudimentary information technology infrastructure and often can’t find trained and skilled staff to design and run it.

    • Open Data

      • Slovakia project to reduce administrative burden

        The Slovak Republic wants to reduce the administrative burden on citizens and companies, and to avoid the need to repeatedly request information. The Ministry of Finance in February signed a contract for a base registry to make it possible for public administrations to exchange data and information. The EUR 13 million project will also result in standards for data sharing between public administrations.

    • Open Hardware

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Security

    • Thursday’s security updates
    • Why Unikernels Can Improve Internet Security

      The creator of MirageOS, Anil Madhavapeddy, says it’s “simply irresponsible to continue to knowingly provision code that is potentially unsafe, and especially so as we head into a year full of promise about smart cities and ubiquitous Internet of Things. We wouldn’t build a bridge on top of quicksand, and should treat our online infrastructure with the same level of respect and attention as we give our physical structures.”

      In the hopes of improving security, performance and scalability, there’s a flurry of interesting work taking place around blocking out functionality into containers and lighter-weight unikernel alternatives. Galois, which specializes in R&D for new technologies, says enterprises are increasingly interested in the ability to cleanly separate functionality to limit the effect of a breach to just the component affected, rather than infecting the whole system.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Privacy

    • Consent That Goes Both Ways

      In client-server, we’re calves and sites are cows. We go to sites to suckle “content” and get lots of little unwanted files, most of which are meant to train advertising crosshairs on us. Having Do Not Track in the world has done nothing to change the power asymmetry of client-server. But it’s not the only tool, nor is it finished. In fact, the client-side revolution in this space has barely started.

    • China’s CNNIC issues false certificates in serious breach of crypto trust

      In a major breach of public trust and confidence, the Chinese digital certificate authority China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) certified false credentials for numerous domains, including several owned by Google. The deliberate breach had the potential to seriously endanger vulnerable users, such as journalists communicating with sources. The breach was discovered by Google and published on its security blog on March 23. Despite this serious lapse, it appears CNNIC’s authority will not be revoked, and that its credentials will continue to be trusted by almost all computers around the world.

    • What’s the Cost of NSA Spying?

      By design, the research company’s numbers don’t reflect the amount of money spent by U.S. taxpayers funding the NSA’s operations. Nor do they indicate how much of this $47 billion is being born by the likes of Microsoft and Oracle, as far as I can tell. What I do know is that many foreign governments have been publicly investing in Linux and open source projects since Snowden’s revelations that back doors for the NSA have been built into many proprietary U.S. enterprise software products.

    • Google Strikes Back Against Chinese Certificate Authority

      Both Google and Mozilla are taking aggressive measures against Chinese certificate authority CNNIC.

    • Invizbox (hands-on): Another flawed Tor “privacy” router debuts

      Invizbox aims to do exactly that. The project follows in the footsteps of Anonabox, the crowdsourced effort that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring a router that anonymizes Internet traffic to market, but was later pulled by Kickstarter after its custom hardware claim came under scrutiny.

    • EFF General Counsel Takes On NSA Spying

      Kurt Opsahl talks to Dark Reading about government surveillance and privacy in anticipation of his Interop keynote.

    • Matt DeHart formally arraigned today

      Matt DeHart, Anonymous activist and alleged WikiLeaks courier, was formally arraigned today, but he did not appear in court. Matt is pleading not guilty to all charges against him, so he waved his formal court appearance and pled not guilty by submitting papers to the court. He remains imprisoned in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

    • A year after firestorm, DHS wants access to license-plate tracking system

      The Department of Homeland Security is seeking bids from companies able to provide law enforcement officials with access to a national license-plate tracking system — a year after canceling a similar solicitation over privacy issues.

      [...]

      In a privacy impact assessment issued Thursday, the DHS says that it is not seeking to build a national database or contribute data to an existing system.

  • Civil Rights

    • NarcoNews: CIA Veteran Sees Big Hole in Sterling Espionage Conviction

      A former CIA spy manager is raising a serious question about the way the intelligence agency handled the national-security risk raised in the case of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer who was recently convicted on espionage charges for leaking classified information to New York Times reporter James Risen.

    • The VICE News Interview: John Kiriakou

      In 2007, John Kiriakou became the first Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official to publicly confirm that agency interrogators waterboarded a high-value detainee, terrorism suspect Abu Zubaydah — a revelation that had previously been a closely guarded secret.

      Five years after this unauthorized disclosure to ABC News, the veteran CIA officer pleaded guilty to leaking to journalists the identity of certain individuals who were involved with the CIA’s rendition, detention, and interrogation program. He was sentenced to two and a half years in federal prison.

    • Guantánamo Bay detainees’ release upon end of Afghanistan war ‘unlikely’

      Typically, when a war ends, so does the combatants’ authority to detain the other side’s fighters. But as the conclusion of the US war in Afghanistan approaches, the inmate population of Guantánamo Bay is likely to be an exception – and, for the Obama administration, the latest complication to its attempt to close the infamous wartime detention complex.

    • With combat over, lawyers for Afghan captives ask Obama to let them go

      With U.S. combat operations officially ended in Afghanistan, some U.S. lawyers for five Afghan detainees at Guantánamo wrote the Obama administration Monday asking that the captives be freed.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Proposals on European net neutrality open ‘two-speed’ internet

      European internet providers would be allowed to profit from “two-speed” data services under proposals being considered in Brussels, opening a transatlantic divide on telecoms regulation after the US banned similar tactics last week.

      In documents seen by the Financial Times, EU member states are proposing rules that would establish a principle of “net neutrality” but still allow telecoms groups to manage the flow of internet traffic to ensure the network worked efficiently.

    • Epic Awards One Of Three Unreal Dev Grants To Makers Of Net Neutrality Game

      It’s been a unique experience for me as a Techdirt writer, one who does not delve into the net neutrality debates and posts very often, to watch the effect the wider coverage about net neutrality has had on the general public. Without being scientific about it, there are certain markers for story penetration I notice and have noticed specifically when it comes to net neutrality. For instance, a couple of months ago, my father called me up with a simple question: “What should my position be on net neutrality?” The question itself isn’t generally useful, but the simple fact that a grandfather is even asking about it means something when it comes to the public consciousness of the topic itself. So too is the appearance of the topic and debates on the Sunday news programs. But maybe the most important indication that net neutrality has become, at the very least, a thing the public is discussing is the topic’s appearance in seemingly unrelated venues. Even if the take was wrong, coverage in political cartoons was something cool to see, for instance. But the topic coming up as the theme of a politically-motivated video game is even more exciting.

04.02.15

Links 2/4/2015: Linux Lite 2.4, Ubuntu Phone Jailbreak

Posted in News Roundup at 11:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Google Goes Crazy for Chromebooks

      Google on Tuesday announced two new budget-busting Chromebook computers, a tablet/notebook convertible with a full swivel screen, and a Chrome computer-on-a-stick.

      The Haier Chromebook 11 (pictured above) and the Hisense Chromebook both are available for preorder for US$149.

    • Choosing Software to Work Remotely from Your Linux Dev Station

      In the previous article, I gave an overview of how I’ve managed to go mobile. In this installment, I’m going to talk about the software I’m using on my different devices. Then in the third and final installment, I’ll explain how I set up my Linux servers, what software I’m using, and how I set up the security. Before getting started, however, I want to address one important point: While downtime and family time are necessary (as some of you wisely pointed out in the comments!) one great use for this is if you have to do a lot of business traveling, and if you’re on call. So continuing our story…

    • A Linux user tries out Windows 10

      Long answer: Are you kidding me? I couldn’t repartition that drive fast enough and re-install Linux.

  • Server

    • ​Canonical to integrate Chef DevOps into Ubuntu

      You may think of Ubuntu as a desktop Linux, and it is, but it’s also the most popular Linux on Amazon EC2 cloud and very popular on most other cloud platforms. So it only makes good sense that Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company, has partnered with Chef, one of the most popular DevOps companies.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Docker

      Solomon Hykes, CTO and chief architect of Docker, joins Randal and Gareth this week to talk about Docker’s 2nd birthday and the vast ecosystem it has developed during the time. Docker is an open platform for developers and sysadmins to build, ship, and run distributed applications.

  • Kernel Space

    • Slow April Fools’ Day for Linux

      This certainly hasn’t been a record year for Linux and Open Source April Fools’ jokes. In days of yore distributions would come up with crazy spins or psychedelic themes. Sites would deploy eye-straining colors and heads of projects would announce defections. Every now and again a prank would be so convincing that folks would believe it. However, we did find a few community members getting into the spirit.

    • Virtual GEM Is Coming For Linux 4.1

      There’s already been a fair amount of code building up for the DRM graphics subsystem for the Linux 4.1 kernel and a new feature was just committed to Git last night.

      Virtual GEM (vGEM) is coming! VGEM can increase Mesa’s software rasterizer performance and this fake GEM memory management support was devised by a Google engineer, Zach Reizner.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • There is no KEndorsements

        The next idea is about monitioring the usage behavior of the user. For this I must say that in a Wayland world KWin would have enough information to do that, but we don’t look at the information at all. We do not care what an application is: we don’t know that a given window is “Krita”, we don’t know that it should be used with a drawing tablet, we don’t analyze any input and just pass it through to the application. KWin is completely ignorant on what the application does with input events passed to them and as ignorant to what a window content looks like. To us a window is just a texture we render to the screen. We don’t know that there is a “drawing area” or a “video” element, it’s just one texture. Similarly we do not know (and care) about input events. All we do is determine which window should get the event and pass it to it. We are quite aware that by passing all input events through KWin we could do evil things. The good thing is that our software is open source and you can see what we do (relevant code file is called input.cpp, events come in from the files under the libinput/ directory).

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Another release, another release video

        Huge credits goes to the GNOME Design Team for awesome assets, Anitek for the awesome music, engagement team for the awesome feedback and translation team for the awesome subtitles. Also thanks to everyone who helped me by fixing visual bugs early so I could record the new improvements. GNOME 3.18 will be amazing.

      • JdLL 2015

        Last week-end, in the Salle des Rancy in Lyon, GNOME folks (Fred Peters, Mathieu Bridon and myself) set up our booth at the top of the stairs, the space graciously offered by Ubuntu-FR and Fedora being a tad bit small. The JdLL were starting.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Simplicity Linux 15.4 Beta Is Now Based on LXPup, Includes the Latest Tor Browser

        The Simplicity Linux development team, through David Purse, had the pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download and testing of the Beta version of the upcoming Simplicity Linux 15.4 computer operating system. Simplicity Linux aims to be a small, fast, and versatile Linux distro based on Puppy Linux.

      • Antivirus Live CD 12.0 Has Been Released, Promises to Protect Computers Against Viruses

        Zbigniew Konojacki, the creator of the 4MLinux series of distributions, has announced recently the immediate availability for download of Antivirus Live CD 12.0, an open source distribution that provides users with a live Linux computing environment built around the popular ClamAV (Clam AntiVirus) virus scanner.

      • Emmabuntus 3 Linux Distribution Is Now Based on Xubuntu 14.04.2 LTS

        Patrick Emmabuntus had the pleasure of informing Softpedia about a new maintenance release of his Emmabuntüs 3 Linux distribution, which is now based on the upstream Xubuntu LTS operating system.

      • Black Lab Enterprise Desktop 6.5 RC1 RELEASED

        Today we are releasing Black Lab Enterprise Desktop 6.5 RC1. This is the first Release Candidate of what will become the final product of Black Lab Enterprise Desktop 6.5. We are now in feature freeze meaning there will be no more changes to the application lineup and we will be working on polish. We have introduced quite a few new features. Enterprise Filesystem support, Built in virtualization utilities, and webapp integration.

    • Linux Lite

    • Ballnux/SUSE

      • openSUSE Tumbleweed Is Moving To Systemd’s Journal, GNOME 3.16, Plasma 5

        The openSUSE Tumbleweed rolling-release distribution has already been using systemd for some time, but they’ve kept to using syslog for system messaging logging. However, that’s going to change as Tumbleweed integrates systemd’s journal.

      • Gnome 3.16, systemd-journal coming in next Tumbleweed snapshot

        It’s official, Gnome will be in the next Tumbleweed snapshot and the development experience is highly anticipated. A clean installation works, but the guys are working on one last test before its released. We’re not promising an early Easter gift, but Tumbleweed users won’t have to wait long for Gnome’s latest upgrade.

    • Debian Family

      • Surviving systemd: Lucas Nussbaum satisfied with init system outcome

        It would not be an exaggeration to say that no leader of the Debian GNU/Linux Project has had to cope with more troubling times than Lucas Nussbaum.

        The extent of debate and acrimony that broke out within the project last year over the decision to adopt systemd as the default init system for the next release, Jessie, would have taxed the patience of even the most suave diplomat.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Vendors queuing to launch Ubuntu smartphones – Shuttleworth

            There is a “queue of vendors” looking to launch Ubuntu-powered devices, following the launch of the first commercial smartphone by vendor BQ last month, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, told Mobile World Live.

          • See What’s New in Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet

            The stable edition of Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) is just around the corner, so this is a good time to take a look at the features that are going to be implemented in the new release and see what important packages have been updated.

          • Ubuntu Phone Jailbreak Now Available, Third-Party App Store Created

            Believe it or not, Ubuntu Phones can be jailbroken too, sort of. In a recent blog post, Ubuntu Touch OS developer Michael Zanetti explains how he managed to create a third-part App Store for the Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system that will allow some open doors for power users and developers who want to explore the platform beyond what’s offered to the normal user.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • ODROID C1 review

      The ODROID C1 is a true alternative to the Raspberry Pi 2. It costs the same but brings Gigabit Ethernet, the option of using a high-speed eMMC storage module, and support for Android!

      The Single Board Computer (SBC) movement is still going strong and with the recent release of the Raspberry Pi 2, it doesn’t seem as if it will lose any of its current momentum. The key selling point of the Raspberry Pi has always been its price. While there are lots of other companies that make these nimble little boards, there aren’t that many who seem to be able to match the Pi’s price point. Of course, some of the boards are only slightly more expensive than the Pi and do offer more functionality. For example, the MIPS Creator CI20 costs just $65 and includes built-in Wi-Fi and 8GB of on-board storage, two things missing from the Pi.

    • Android IVI system serves up to 56 bus passengers

      The Via BLISS (Bus Line In-Seat System) Platform provides an in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) VOD network of the type typically found only on airlines, says Via Technologies. The Android-based system has been deployed by long-distance bus operators in Taiwan and Turkey, and is now open for general availability.

    • Lumenera Announces the Release of Their ‘Lumenera Linux SDK 2.0’

      Lumenera, a leading manufacturer and developer of high performance digital cameras and custom imaging solutions, is pleased to announce the launch of Lumenera Linux SDK 2.0— their new software development kit that supports the popular Ubuntu Linux operating system.

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

  • Studying polar data with the help of Apache Tika

    For the past 10 years, I have straddled the divide between Earth science and informatics. My PhD focused on remote sensing and snow hydrology, but I entered the world of data science and software development when faced by challenges in processing and distributing the immense amounts of data produced by my research. Fortunately, I was lucky. I had the opportunity to collaborate with a group of computer scientists at NASA/JPL who helped guide me into the world of open source software and the Apache way.

  • Coherent UNIX clone goes Open Source

    We missed this earlier this year, but Coherent has been released as open source. Coherent is a UNIX clone originally developed for the PDP-11, but later ported to a number of other platforms, including the IBM PC. It was developed by the Mark Williams Company, and despite an official investigation by AT&T, no signs of copied code were ever found.

  • Open-source ethos moves from code to wider world

    As powerful as that sounds, the company already has something that could be even more potent: a huge sharing of its once-proprietary information, the kind of thing that would bring a traditional Silicon Valley patent lawyer to tears.

  • Goddard releases open source core flight software suite to public

    The Innovative Technology Partnerships Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, announced the release of its core Flight System (cFS) Application Suite to the public. The cFS application suite is composed of 12 individual Command and Data Handling (C and DH) flight software applications that together create a reusable library of common C and DH functions.

  • Web Browsers

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice Continues To Gain Mindshare

      According to Google Trends, LibreOffice is holding a substantial mindshare while openoffice.org is in decline

    • LibreOffice – the Cloud edition

      While I do not believe that office suites will disappear, I do believe that the need to be completely integrated into cloud-like environments, whether centralized or distributed, is key to insure potential and an actual future for any desktop software. Because of these trends, the news are of strategic importance to LibreOffice and to software freedom and digital rights in general. At a time when the Internet and cloud services become more and more centralized, the competition diminishes and so do users’rights. “LibreOffice Online” is really good news, and it should make you happy. More specifically, what was announced leads to two distinct outcomes:

  • CMS

    • Higher ed finds increasing value in open source CMS options

      “The university has since launched somewhere between 350 and 400 websites, all built on Drupal 7,” writes Schaffhauser “While the CMS is centrally managed to keep the system updated, it grants individual colleges, programs and departments the flexibility to put up their own images, update text as they want, add and move site objects (themes, content types and Drupal “modules”) and “essentially have a custom look with a managed system,” [director of university Web services, Mark] Albert explained to Campus Technology.

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Source ‘CloudRouter’ Aims to Simplify Cloud Migration

      Several small networking and software companies are teaming up to introduce CloudRouter, an open source router to simplify cloud migration.

    • Open source CloudRouter goes into beta with OpenDayLight’s backing

      An open source project is getting under way that could, if it lives up to its design goals, ease the enterprise transition between on-premise networking solutions to cloud networking services.

    • Unicorns are real in open source
    • 5 reasons we said YES to the first Open Source//Open Society

      For two days in April, Wellington will be home to some of the biggest influencers in open source development and open society thinking. Building on the success of open source software in powering the growth of the internet Open Source // Open Society will explore developments in open government, open innovation, open education, open data, and open business.

    • What is Open Source? Digital tech heavyweights head to Wellington

      Wellington will host a collaboration this month between open source developers, democracy activists, government officials and digital tech heavyweights at the Open Source // Open Society (OS//OS) conference.



    • Conference to discuss open source and open society in Wellington

      Wellington, New Zealand, will be on the world stage on the 16th and 17th of April when it plays host to a collaboration between open source developers, democracy activists, government officials and digital tech heavyweights at the Open Source // Open Society (OS//OS) conference.

    • Wellington hosts NZ Open Source Conference

      Wellington will be on the world stage on the 16th and 17th of April when it plays host to a collaboration between open source developers, democracy activists, government officials and digital tech heavyweights at the Open Source // Open Society (OS//OS) conference.

    • Open for thinking, open for participation, open for collaboration
    • The Blender Institute’s sixth open film project

      The Blender Institute’s sixth film project, codenamed Gooseberry, is in deep into the most open production from the Blender Institute yet. If you’ve been following the project so far, then you already have a sense of what Blender means by an “open production”—lots of sharing.

    • Open Hardware

      • 3D Printing an Open Source Spectrometer

        As an undergraduate and graduate student, Ben Hickman, under the advisorship of Dr. Jack Summers, began developing an affordable chemistry instrument called a potentiostat. This sparked his interest in electronics and programming. After a number of people expressed interest in the potentiostat, including high school science teachers and ordinary citizens interested in monitoring their local water quality, it was evident that there was a demand for affordable chemistry instrumentation. One of the most useful instruments, yet financially out of reach for most, was a UV/Vis spectrometer.

      • Unchained with Open Source: Michigan Tech 3D Printing Course Teaches Students to Build 3D Printers

        Hats off to Michigan Tech, and Dr. Joshua Pearce, for creating such a unique course that comes full circle in teaching their undergraduate engineering students about the world of 3D printing in a new and comprehensive way. Thrusting engineering students not only into the world of 3D design and 3D printing, they immediately enter the open-source world of the growing ‘maker community’ as well.

      • Open source electromagnetic trackers

        Traneus Rex (a.k.a. Peter) will be presenting a Fantastical Theatre talk titled Open-source electromagnetic trackers and the unusual requirements for the embedded system.

      • 5 DIY hardware platforms for physiological computing

        Physiological computing focuses on the use of biosignals for the development of interactive software and hardware systems capable of sensing, processing, reacting, and interfacing the digital and analog worlds.

        However, biosignals have specific requirements for which typical physical computing platforms are not particularly tuned. Until recently, many projects ended up hindered by high costs and limited access to suitable hardware materials. That scenario is different today, thanks to DIY hardware platforms.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • ‘EC should replace PDF by HTML5 for its online forms‘

      The European Commission should stop using PDF for online application forms, say five European groups campaigning for open standards and free and open source software. The EC should instead switch to modern web tools such as HMTL5 and XForms. The EC’s PDF forms often include elements that are only implemented in proprietary software from a particular vendor, the groups say.

Leftovers

  • Report: EU preparing to bring antitrust case against Google

    The member of the European Commission in charge of competition, Margrethe Vestager, is preparing to file a formal antitrust action against Google in the next few weeks accusing it of abusing a dominant market position, according to the Wall Street Journal. Sources said that the European Commission has been contacting companies that had filed complaints against Google, asking them for permission to publish information submitted confidentially, which is seen as a preliminary move before announcing the antitrust action. A spokesperson for Commissioner Vestager told Ars, “The Google investigation is ongoing. We have no further comments and we do not comment on speculations.” Google had not responded to a request for comment at press time.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Why Iran Distrusts the US in Nuke Talks

      The mainstream U.S. media portrays the Iran nuclear talks as “our good guys” imposing some sanity on “their bad guys.” But the real history of the West’s dealings on Iran’s nuclear program shows bad faith by the U.S. government, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern describes.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Pemex oil platform fire kills four in Gulf of Mexico, 302 evacuated

      At least four people died after a fire broke out on a Pemex oil processing platform in the Gulf of Mexico early on Wednesday, leading to the evacuation of 302 workers, the Mexican state-run oil company said.

      The fire, which burned throughout the day, erupted overnight on the Abkatun Permanente platform in the oil-rich Bay of Campeche. Forty-five people were treated for injuries and 16 of them were hospitalized, two with serious injuries, Pemex said.

    • Fukushima’s Solution to Potential Melt Down? Frozen Ice Walls

      On December 14th, 2014, RT News published an alarming article explaining that Japan’s destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant must decontaminate and then dump into the Pacific Ocean its stored radioactive water from the 2011 tsunami and meltdown disaster. According to the RT piece, the Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations is calling on the Japanese government and TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) to ensure that the release of toxic water is safely below the required radiation levels. However local Japanese fishermen have expressed concerns over issues with radiation and water waste management at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

    • Fukushima No. 1′s never-ending battle with radioactive water

      The disaster that struck four years ago may have abated for most of the Tohoku region, but the nightmare continues at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, which suffered three reactor core meltdowns and is plagued daily by increasing amounts of radioactive water.

    • Greenland’s Meltwater: Europe’s Next Little Ice Age?

      In February 2015, the Guardian published an article which stated that atmospheric warming is capable of reaching thousands of meters below Greenland’s ice sheet, potentially increasing the glacier’s rate of flow and creating pools of “meltwater” trapped below the ice. As a result, Greenland’s meltpools are contributing to rising sea levels. Cornell University Geologist Michael Willis and Ohio State University Glaciologist Ian Howat authored the report, on which the Guardian story is based, and Penn State University Earth Scientist Patrick Applegate confirmed it.

  • Finance

    • Hong Kong murders: Trial of Rurik Jutting adjourned

      The trial of a British banker accused of murdering two women found in his Hong Kong flat has been adjourned.

      Prosecution lawyers asked for the extra time to obtain further documents for their case against 29-year-old former Bank of America employee Rurik Jutting.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Scots say no to SNP super database

      Civil liberties groups fear the scheme – which last month narrowly survived a Holyrood vote – would be only a small step away from an ID card system.

  • Civil Rights

    • Lee Kuan Yew leaves a legacy of authoritarian pragmatism

      For some, Lee Kuan Yew’s death marks the passing of a ruthless tyrant. For others, it is the tireless leader’s final reward.

    • Singapore’s autocracy-for-prosperity compact under strain

      To give his government a free hand to fashion a new society, Lee systematically crushed dissent, muzzled the press and imprisoned political opponents. A social compact of authoritarian government in exchange for a guarantee of prosperity has endured for two generations.

    • Behind Singapore’s growth story lies a human rights tragedy

      By lauding the success of these developmental states, we are in effect saying the end justifies the means

    • The Curse of Lee Kuan Yew

      The leader eulogized by Obama as a ‘giant of history’ is being used to re-legitimize tyranny.

    • Benevolent autocracy: India is drawing the wrong lesson from Lee Kuan Yew

      One of the favourite arguments offered by middle class Indian men (especially when all other arguments fail) is that “India needs a benevolent autocrat,” if the economy has to grow at a fast pace. The word “autocrat” is often used interchangeably with the world “dictator”.

    • Obama authorises penalties for foreign cyber attackers

      President Barack Obama has today signed an executive order extending the U.S. administration’s power to respond to malicious cyberattacks and espionage campaigns. The order enforces financial sanctions on foreign hackers who action attacks against American businesses, institutions and citizens.

    • Snowden Lawyer Discusses Whistleblowing in Panel

      At a panel Tuesday afternoon in Boylston Hall, Jesselyn A. Radack and Walt L. Tamosaitis shared their experiences as whistleblowers and pointed to exposing institutional misconduct as an important method for confronting injustice.

    • The Blood Sacrifice of Sergeant Bergdahl

      Last week charges of Desertion and Misbehavior Before the Enemy were recommended against Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. Tragically, Sergeant Bergdahl was once again crucified, without evidence or trial, throughout mainstream, alternative and social media. That same day Sergeant Bergdahl was offered as a sacrifice to primarily Republican politicians, bloggers, pundits, chicken hawks and jingoists, while Democrats mostly kept silent as Sergeant Bergdahl was paraded electronically and digitally in the latest Triumph of the Global War on Terror, President Ashraf Ghani was applauded, in person, by the American Congress. Such coincidences, whether they are arranged or accidental, often appear in literary or cinematic tales, but they do, occasionally, manifest themselves in real life, often appearing to juxtapose the virtues and vices of a society for the sake and advancement of political narratives.

    • The Native American Genocide and the Teaching of US History

      One of the things that happened in the United States, Riding In points out, “was to take Indian children away from their parents, away from their tribes, away from their religious people, away from their nurturing environment of their communities and place them in these distant boarding schools where the Indian would be beat out of them if necessary. That policy falls within the definition of genocide, the plan to bring about the physical destruction of a … people. This was aimed at the children.”

    • Venezuelan Coup Plotter Gustavo Cisneros Donated $1M to Clinton Foundation

      A recent report has emerged revealing that Venezuelan billionaire and media tycoon, Gustavo Cisneros, donated up to US$ 1 million dollars to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation between 2009-2013, while Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State for the Obama administration.

      A recent review of the foundation’s disclosures, carried out by the Wall Street Journal, brings to light a number of donators that were previously unknown to the public.

      The figures include Argentinian and Ukrainian businesspeople, as well as Prince Turki al-Faisal of the Saudi Arabian Royal Family, who collectively donated up to US$68 million to the organisation over the course of four years. The majority of large donations came from residents in the Ukraine (US$10 million), England (US$8.4 million) and Saudi Arabia (US$7.3 million), according to the report.

    • Noam Chomsky on Institutional Stupidity

      Stupidity comes in many forms. Generally it is easier to spot when other people are being stupid and harder to notice when we ourselves are being stupid, in the sense of relying on unexamined assumptions, entrenched mental habits or poor reasoning. Yet we’re all guilty of these sometimes. Trying not to fool ourselves in these ways is central to philosophy.

      So how can Chomsky help us with this? One of the world’s best-known intellectuals, he first gained fame for his work as a linguist, and in particular for his theory that we have an in-born or ‘innate’ grammar that underlies all of the world’s natural languages. He has gone on to do important original work on many other topics, including machine translation, logic, philosophy, and the nature of the media. A tireless social commentator, he also does a great deal of highly controversial political activism.

    • George Soros Would Invest $1bn in Ukraine With Western Backing
    • The Ukraine crisis is not what it seems

      In the West, the prevailing interpretation of the Ukraine crisis is that Russia — specifically President Putin — started it and controls most of the military forces fighting the Ukrainian army, often described in the media as “Russian separatists”. Martin Wolf of The Financial Times (11 February 2015) claims Russia started it because its leaders fear having a stable, prosperous and West-leaning democracy on their doorstep; they saw this as a distinct possibility after their ally, President Yanukovich, was ousted in a coup in February 2014. By one means or other, Russia’s leaders will keep destabilizing Ukraine to prevent such a democracy until stopped by western force or sanctions.

    • Google Street View flasher censored then arrested after showing breasts to camera car

      A woman who gained brief fame by flashing her breasts at a Google Street View car has been charged by police, who say that her actions “were the same as someone flashing their genitals”.

    • New Silk Road docs show how site got looted by cop who hijacked dealers’ accounts

      On January 26, 2013, Dread Pirate Roberts received a series of urgent messages from one of his top lieutenants, Inigo. His online drug marketplace, Silk Road, was being robbed blind.

      “I hope you get online soon,” Inigo wrote. “We are under attack over 100k stolen, shits hitting the fan you need to pull the plug on withdrawals.”

      But there was no “kill switch” for withdrawals, and Inigo couldn’t stop the bleeding. He and DPR would later lament lacking this critical security feature. One by one, the drug dealers who relied on Silk Road to make money were having their accounts broken into, their passwords changed, and their bitcoins looted.

      “Over 300k stolen,” Inigo wrote later. He was up late, frantic, trying to contain the theft. He kept sending messages to DPR, but the boss wasn’t online.

    • SEC finds that KBR confidentiality agreements ‘stifled’ whistleblowers

      In what is being called a landmark ruling for whistleblowers, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced Wednesday that one of the nation’s largest government contractors used confidentiality agreements that had the potential to intimidate and “muzzle” workers from reporting allegations of fraud.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

    • Copyrights

      • Movie Licensing Group Demands $350K From Schools

        Fears that teachers and pupils might breach Spain’s new copyright law if strict guidelines aren’t adhered to have led to some schools being presented with an enormous bill. The worldwide Motion Picture Licensing Corporation is now offering a blanket license to one region in return for a payment of $350,000 a year.

04.01.15

Links 1/4/2015: Firefox 37, VirtualBox 5.0 Beta

Posted in News Roundup at 5:37 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Why open source and enterprise users are natural allies

    Open source software and enterprise users are natural allies. For example, at HotWax Systems, enterprise users are our focus customers, and open source software is at the core of the capabilities we deliver.

  • The benefits of open source identity management software

    What happens when your identity vendor doubles its software maintenance costs and management is so tired of being held at virtual vendor gunpoint that they start looking for an equivalent product in the marketplace? Realistically, there are two ways to respond to this problem: First, go with another vendor and hope it doesn’t have the same sales strategy as the last one, or second, look to see if there’s something on the open source…

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • How Moodle is driven by user and community feedback

      Moodle is a well-established, highly flexible open source learning platform, having grown from small beginnings at the start of the century into the mainstream solution for millions of people worldwide. Its customizable and secure learning management features allow anyone to create a private website filled with dynamic courses in any subject that promote learning on a schedule that suits students.

  • Education

    • OSS Watch: ‘Universities need to adapt to open source’

      Computer Science students are not learning the skills they need for working in the modern free and open source-friendly of software development, says Scott Wilson, service manager at OSS Watch, a service for higher and further education institutions in the UK. “Institutions need to rethink how they teach computing, to ensure students can practice the craft of software development, such as the use of source control, issue tracking and test-driven development, rather than just programming languages.”

  • BSD

    • OpenBSD 5.7 highlights

      The OpenBSD 5.7 release is still a month away, but the changes have been done for some time. The release page lists lots of changes, though certainly not all, and sometimes it’s hard to tell the big changes from the small changes. Annoying perhaps, but rewarding to someone who reads through the entire list looking for hidden gems. A few notes about changes I found personally interesting.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Hungary: open source key to Internet security

      The use of open source and open standards is essential for a secure Internet, the Hungarian government says in a statement following a workshop with IT researchers and ICT service providers. This type of software will also reduce the cost of ICT and contribute to the country’s economy, says Tamas Deutsch.

  • Licensing

    • Allwinner: “We Are Taking Initiative Actions Internally”

      Allwinner has been taking a lot of heat lately for violating open-source licenses with their Linux binary blob components. They then got caught obfuscating their code to try to hide their usage of open-source code, shifted around their licenses, and has continued jerking around the open-source community.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Jersey eGovernment to be restarted

      The government of Jersey is to restart its eGovernment project, according to press reports. The government failed to find a suitable contractor for the project and is reconsidering its objectives and approach. Jersey wants to make most of the island’s public administration services available online.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Image of the Day: Intersex Fish

      Researchers found a developing egg in the testes of a male deep sea trout off the coast of France, an intersex condition possibly linked to pollution levels in the surrounding waters.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Obama Personally Tells the Egyptian Dictator that U.S. Will Again Send Weapons (and Cash) to his Regime

      Yesterday, the Egyptian regime announced it was prosecuting witnesses who say they saw a police officer murder an unarmed poet and activist during a demonstration, the latest in a long line of brutal human rights abuses that includes imprisoning journalists, prosecuting LGBT citizens, and mass executions of protesters. Last June, Human Rights Watch said that Egyptian “security forces have carried out mass arrests and torture that harken back to the darkest days of former President Hosni Mubarak’s rule.”

  • Finance

    • Harry Reid’s appalling defense of his attack on Mitt Romney’s tax record

      One of the more outlandish moments of the 2012 campaign came when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid went to the floor of the world’s greatest deliberative body and accused GOP nominee Mitt Romney of not paying any taxes at all for the past 10 years. Reid’s evidence? Someone had told him. (That “someone” is alleged to be Jon Huntsman, father of the former Utah governor. Huntsman denies involvement.)

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Lee Kuan Yew is finally dead — and America’s elites are eulogizing a tyrant and psychological monster

      Lee Kuan Yew made Singapore wealthy & kept people in line with barbaric fear. Clinton & Kissinger should be ashamed

    • Media Inflate Threat With ‘ISIS Plots’ That Don’t Actually Involve ISIS

      Right on cue, the American media publish dressed-up FBI press releases about the “disrupted” plot, complete with balaclava-wearing stock photos: “FBI Disrupts Plot to Kill Scores at Military Base on Behalf of Islamic State” was the Washington Post‘s headline (3/26/15).

      These outlets, as usual, omitted the rather awkward fact that this “ISIS plot” did not actually involve anyone in ISIS: At no point was there any material contact between anyone in ISIS and the Edmond cousins. There was, as the criminal complaint lays out, lots of contact between the Edmond cousins and what they thought was ISIS, but at no point was there any contact with ISIS–the designated terror organization that the US is currently launching airstrikes against.

  • Censorship

    • New Pirate Bay Blockade Foiled By Simple DNS Trick

      The world’s newest blockade of The Pirate Bay has been thwarted in a matter of minutes. After a court in Spain ordered the country’s ISPs to block the notorious site on Friday, users who tweaked their connections to use Google’s DNS instead of the one provided by their service provider were back on the site in seconds.

    • How The TPP Agreement Could Be Used To Undermine Free Speech And Fair Use In The US

      We’ve been writing a lot about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement over the past few years. There are many, many problems with it, but the two key ones are the intellectual property chapter and the investment chapter. Unlike some who are protesting TPP, we actually think that free trade is generally a good thing and important for the economy — but neither the intellectual property section nor the investment chapter are really about free trade. In many ways, they’re about the opposite: trying to put in place protectionist/mercantilist policies that benefit the interests of a few large legacy industries over the public and actual competition and trade. We’ve already discussed many of the problems of the intellectual property chapter — which is still being fought over — including that it would block the US from reforming copyright to lower copyright term lengths (as even the head of the Copyright Office, Maria Pallante has argued for).

  • Privacy

    • [NyTimes] The French Surveillance State

      Prime Minister Manuel Valls of France has presented yet another antiterrorism bill to Parliament. French lawmakers, who overwhelmingly approved a sweeping antiterrorism bill in September, are scheduled to debate the new bill this month.

    • The French Surveillance State

      Prime Minister Manuel Valls of France has presented yet another antiterrorism bill to Parliament. French lawmakers, who overwhelmingly approved a sweeping antiterrorism bill in September, are scheduled to debate the new bill this month. Mr. Valls argues that the bill’s sweeping new provisions for government surveillance are necessary to monitor potential terrorist-related activity, especially on the Internet and cellphones.

    • French Surveillance Bill: Time To Act!

      As the French Intelligence Bill (which should be more aptly called the French Mass Surveillance Bill) is being examined from 1 April by the French Parliament’s Law Commission, La Quadrature du Net launches a new campaign website and calls on all citizens to mobilize far and wide in order to convince Members of the French Parliament to refuse a law which, in its current form, organises mass surveillance and legalises intelligence methods that are highly detrimental to fundamental freedoms, all without any serious guarantees against abuse.

    • Facebook tracks everyone, everywhere, finds Belgian privacy probe

      FACEBOOK IS DISPUTING the findings of a Belgian study into the firm’s treatment of user rights, and has claimed that the opinions are wrong and that actually it does a lot for human privacy.

    • How Big Business Is Helping Expand NSA Surveillance, Snowden Be Damned

      Today, the bill is back, largely unchanged, and if congressional insiders and the bill’s sponsors are to believed, the legislation could end up on President Obama’s desk as soon as this month. In another boon to the legislation, Obama is expected to reverse his past opposition and sign it, albeit in an amended and renamed form (CISPA is now CISA, the “Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act”). The reversal comes in the wake of high-profile hacks on JPMorgan Chase and Sony Pictures Entertainment. The bill has also benefitted greatly from lobbying by big business, which sees it as a way to cut costs and to shift some anti-hacking defenses onto the government.

  • Civil Rights

    • Leaked TPP Investment Chapter Reveals Serious Threat to User Safeguards

      A newly leaked chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement from Wikileaks has confirmed some of our worst fears about the agreement. The latest provisions would enable multinational corporations to undermine public interest rules through an international tribunal process called investor state dispute settlement (ISDS). Under this process, foreign companies can challenge any new law or government action at the federal, state, or local level, in a country that is a signatory to the agreement. Companies can file such lawsuits based upon their claim that the law or action harms their present or future profits. If they win, there are no monetary limits to the potential award.

    • New TPP leak reveals how we’re trading our sovereignty for cheap tariffs

      WikiLeaks has published the secret investment chapter in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Dr Matthew Rimmer, associate professor at ANU College of Law, explains its insidious implications.

    • Cop caught berating Uber driver in xenophobic rant is NYPD detective, police sources say

      The angry lawman who was caught on camera belittling an Uber driver during a bias-fueled tirade in the West Village is an NYPD detective assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, police sources confirmed Tuesday.

      The NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau is investigating the video, which shows Det. Patrick Cherry lambasting the Uber driver during a traffic stop and mocking his broken English.

      “I don’t know where you’re coming from, where you think you’re appropriate in doing that; that’s not the way it works. How long have you been in this country?” Cherry, who is white, barked at the driver after pulling him over in an unmarked car with flashing lights, according to video of the encounter.

    • Witnesses, Who Say Police Killed Activist, Are to Be Charged in Egypt

      Egyptian prosecutors are bringing criminal charges against witnesses who said they saw the police kill an unarmed poet and activist during a demonstration, a lawyer who has seen the charges said on Monday.

      The witnesses voluntarily told the Egyptian authorities that on Jan. 24, they had seen a group of riot police officers fire birdshot across a street into the peaceful march, which had been headed to Tahrir Square to lay memorial flowers to mark the anniversary, on the following day, of the Arab Spring uprising here.

    • Chinese court jails Muslim for 6 years for growing beard, wife gets 2 years for wearing veil

      A court in China’s mainly Muslim Xinjiang region has sentenced a man to six years in prison for “provoking trouble” and growing a beard, a practice discouraged by local authorities, a newspaper reported Sunday.

    • Katie Hopkins attacked me on Twitter — so I reported her to the police for inciting racial hatred

      That all changed following Katie’s comments, which pointedly linked the Pakistan flag to paedophilia. Employing her usual hateful and provocative shtick she went on to demand whether the nine men convicted in Rochdale of child grooming and sexual offences in 2012 were “my friends”. More abuse from Katie followed before she finished with a promise to come to Rochdale and “explain why no one messes with our white girls”.

      It would be easy to dismiss this as the vacuous posturing of an ill-informed pundit except my timeline suddenly became filled with a deluge of racist bile from Katie’s supporters. Soon I was getting threats from the EDL. A far right group called the North West Infidels suddenly announced they would be marching on our town and the Internet was quickly awash with intolerant abuse directed towards anyone of Pakistani origin in our town.

    • Leann and Paul DeHart to cross US/Canada border tomorrow, 1 April, 10am EDT

      With Paul having already been forced to give testimony to a secret grand jury in Washington DC regarding possible espionage charges, Matt’s parents are concerned that the actions they took to protect their son may have put them in legal jeopardy too.

      Matt, the Courage Foundation’s third beneficiary and a former US Air National Guard drone team member, was deported from Canada to the US on 1 March 2015, after being denied political asylum. Matt had sought refuge in Canada after he was tortured by the FBI during interrogation. The FBI’s own report confirms that US agents questioned him over an “espionage matter.” The FBI asked him about his unit, Anonymous, and WikiLeaks, yet they subsequently presented him with charges related to accusations of teenage pornography. Canadian officials said that the teen porn allegations have “no credible and trustworthy evidence” but deported him regardless, and Matt will be arraigned on Tuesday, 2 April, in Tennessee.

    • 5 other insane things a corrupt DEA agent did while allegedly stealing Bitcoin from Silk Road

      Anyone who has been following the real-life criminal drama swirling around the online drug marketplace Silk Road had their mind blown this week when San Francisco prosecutors announced charges against two federal agents involved in the investigation. DEA agent Carl Mark Force IV and Secret Service agent Shawn Bridges were allegedly helping themselves to copious amounts of Bitcoin through theft, deception and fraud, using the inside information and technical access they had to Silk Road operations as federal investigators.

    • Bureau of Prisons Demanded Whistleblower Work in Jail Cell

      A special prosecutor has stopped retaliation against a whistleblower committed directly under the nose of the Justice Department’s internal watchdog.

    • “Blackwater” Leads Failed Afghan Drug War, Reaps Hundreds of Millions of Dollars

      A mercenary force infamous for a 2007 massacre in central Baghdad has received nearly $600 million from US taxpayers to clamp down on Afghan opium production—an effort that’s been widely reported as a complete failure.

      New data released Tuesday by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) shows that the lion’s share of private contracting dollars spent by the Department of Defense in counter-narcotics operations is going to the security firm Academi—a corporation formerly known as Blackwater.

    • After a story is published, a minimum wage worker loses her job

      Shanna Tippen was another hourly worker at the bottom of the nation’s economy, looking forward to a 25-cent bump in the Arkansas minimum wage that would make it easier for her to buy diapers for her grandson. When I wrote about her in The Post last month, she said the minimum wage hike would bring her a bit of financial relief, but it wouldn’t lift her above the poverty line.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • The Path Toward Tomorrow’s Internet

      High school students in Tennessee can see and manipulate ocean plankton under a superhigh-resolution microscope in Southern California, with a biologist in California serving as their tour guide.

      Surgeons in Cleveland and Los Angeles share insights and run through a simulation of brain surgery on a biologically exact image of the patient’s brain just before the real operation begins.

      Harnessing data from sources ranging from environmental sensor networks to patient records, researchers in Dallas and elsewhere are working to someday be able to send personalized alerts to people who are particularly sensitive to tiny airborne particles — notably, the 44,000 Americans who have an asthma attack each day, with 1,200 of them having to be admitted to a hospital.

    • Massive Anti-Net Neutrality E-mail Campaign Shows Signs Of Faking Many Signatures

      During the first round of the FCC’s net neutrality comment period, the agency was absolutely swamped by public input (including ours), the vast majority of it supporting net neutrality. After the agency released a database of the comments, analysis of the comments showed that while around half were generated via “outrage-o-matic” forms from various consumer advocacy groups, once you got into the other half of the comments — almost all were in support of net neutrality. After the volume of pro-neutrality comments received ample media coverage, anti-neutrality organizations — like the Phil Kerpen’s Koch-Funded “American Commitment” — dramatically ramped up their automated form comment efforts to try and balance the comment scales.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Georgia Supreme Court: No, Writing Mean Things About Copyright Trolling By Linda Ellis Is Not ‘Stalking’

        A few years ago, we wrote about a terrible Georgia state court ruling against Matt Chan, the operator of Extortion Letter Info (ELI), a website/forum that has tracked copyright trolling for many years. There had been a number of discussions on the site about Linda Ellis, who is somewhat notorious for her trolling effort. Ellis wrote a poem called “The Dash” that gets reposted a lot online. Ellis and her lawyers then send threat letters, emphasizing the possible $150,000 in statutory damages (yet another example of how statutory damages aid in copyright trolling), before suggesting much lower (but still crazy high) dollar amounts to “settle.” While some of the discussions on ELI were overly aggressive towards Ellis, it still seemed ridiculous that the court ordered Chan to remove all content relating to Ellis and to block any future mentions of her.

      • KickassTorrents Celebrates ‘Happy Torrents Day’

        For the fourth year in a row KickassTorrents is celebrating Happy Torrents Day by encouraging users to download and share as much as possible. The initiative was started to celebrate file-sharing and is growing bigger every year. The latest edition features various challenges and also sees the debut of a Kickass magazine and a Torrents Day album.

Links 1/4/2015: $149 Chromebook, Cinnamon 2.4.7

Posted in News Roundup at 5:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 5 questions to determine if open source is a good fit for a software project

    A benefit of open source in general, and commercial open source in particular, is that you have the support of others as well as the ability to do the maintenance yourself.

  • Events

    • Registration for R/Finance 2015 is now open!

      The conference will take place on May 29 and 30, at UIC in Chicago. Building on the success of the previous conferences in 2009-2014, we expect more than 250 attendees from around the world. R users from industry, academia, and government will joining 30+ presenters covering all areas of finance with R.

    • Glimpse of FOSS ASIA
    • FUDCon Pune Planning Meeting – 31 Mar
    • Android/Mobile Microconference Accepted into 2015 Linux Plumbers Conference

      As with 2014 and several years prior, 2015 is the year of the Linux smartphone. There are a number of mobile/embedded environments based on the Linux kernel, the most prominent of course being Android. One consequence of this prominence is a variety of projects derived from Android Open Source Project (AOSP), which raises the question of how best to manage them, and additionally if it is possible to run a single binary image of the various software components across a variety of devices. In addition, although good progress has been made upstreaming various Android patches, there is more work to be done for ADF, KMS, and Sync, among others. Migrating from Binder to KDBus is still a challenge, as are a number of other candidates for removal from drivers/staging. There are also issues remaining with ION, cenalloc, and DMA API. Finally, power management is still in need of improvement, with per-process power management being a case in point.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 37.0

        Firefox 37.0 has been released. This release features improved protection against site impersonation via OneCRL centralized certificate revocation, Bing search now uses HTTPS for secure searching, opportunistic encrypting of HTTP traffic where the server supports HTTP/2 AltSvc, and more. See the release notes for details.

      • Mozilla Firefox 37.0 Officially Released with Native HTML5 YouTube Playback, Firefox 40 Pushed to Nightly Channel

        As expected, Mozilla had the pleasure of unveiling today, March 31, the Mozilla Firefox 37.0 web browser for all supported computer operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, while pushing Firefox 40 to the nightly (unstable channel), Firefox 39.0 to the Dev channel, and Firefox 38.0 to the Beta channel.

      • Firefox 37 Coming Today With Heartbeat, HTTPS Bing

        Mozilla is today releasing Firefox 37.0 and with this open-source web-browser update comes many changes.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Why DBaaS matters to OpenStack operators

      OpenStack Live attendees will have several opportunities to hear Amrith Kumar speak. Kumar, the founder and CTO of Tesora, will give three talks: Replication and Clustering with OpenStack Trove; Deploying, Configuring, and Operating OpenStack Trove; and An introduction to Database as a Service with an emphasis on OpenStack using Trove.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Development activity in LibreOffice and OpenOffice

      The LibreOffice project was announced with great fanfare in September 2010. Nearly one year later, the OpenOffice.org project (from which LibreOffice was forked) was cut loose from Oracle and found a new home as an Apache project. It is fair to say that the rivalry between the two projects in the time since then has been strong. Predictions that one project or the other would fail have not been borne out, but that does not mean that the two projects are equally successful. A look at the two projects’ development communities reveals some interesting differences.

  • BSD

  • FSF

    • LibrePlanet & the Sounds of Silence

      My sponsor for attending LibrePlanet was John Sullivan, the executive director of the Free Software Foundation, and I was surprised that he took the time to get me shown around. I wanted to kiddingly say to John, “Hey, you got people to do this, right?” I didn’t because I was afraid the humor would not have translated well…and I’m not sure it did here either.

    • Have You Decided Yet?

      On March 21st of this year, the Free Software Foundation presented our organization Reglue with the Award for Projects of Social Benefit. We share that announcement link with Sébastien Jodogne for being given the Award for the Advancement of Free Software. We’re specifically thankful that people like Sean “NZ17″ Robinson spearheaded this nomination campaign and got us into the running.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Bringing open source to the NHS

      Malcolm Senior, director of informatics at the Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, has been writing about the prospect of open source in the NHS.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

      • UK Ordnance Survey switches to Open Government Licence

        Ordnance Survey (OS), the British national mapping agency, has switched to version 3 of the Open Government Licence as the default for all of its open data products. This should make it easier for the open data community and other data publishers to re-use the OS mapping data, and for the data to be freely and easily mixed with other UK government sources.

      • Italy to implement its second OGP Action Plan

        Italy has published its second OGP Action Plan, covering the period 2014-2016. The central themes in the plan are participation, transparency, technological innovation, integrity, and accountability. Several online portals, including the Italian open data platform, will be extended with new functionality.

    • Open Hardware

      • Michigan Tech course to build your own 3D printer

        When engineering students start college, the high cost of proprietary tools can be a barrier to making their dreams become a reality. Recent advances in free and open source 3D printing have lowered rapid prototyping costs, making it accessible to everyone. The software industry already knows the force of open source, so now it’s time to start teaching free and open source hardware to all engineers.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Pac-Man Invades Ingress And Google Maps As Google Gets April Fools Started A Little Early

    You know what day it is. Yes, it’s March 31st, and that means the April Fools onslaught has commenced… because what’s better than one day when the internet becomes an annoying cacophony of fake news? Two of them, apparently. In fairness, Google’s pranks are usually less annoying than they are fun little games. Case in point, Pac-Man is invading Maps and Ingress.

  • OpenIndiana 2015.03 Updates Its Solaris/Illumos Environment

    The OpenIndiana crew responsible for this community-based OpenSolaris-derived operating system using the Illumos kernel is out with their first update in quite some time.

  • Hardware

    • Samsung, Google reportedly ink 3D NAND deal

      The Korea Times said Samsung had declined comment while Google was not available for its report. It noted that Samsung’s manufacturing plant in Xian, China, would grow its 3D NAND chips shipment to 960,000 wafers this year, up from 480,000 in 2014.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

    • Honduras’ Unfolding Socioeconomic Nightmare

      A five-year neoliberal program in Honduras has contributed to the country’s far-reaching civic and economic deterioration. The increased privatization of Honduras’ economic activity and militarization of its police force has exacerbated the country’s rapid decline into inequality, violence, and lawlessness. The US has backed many of developments with $65 million in aid since 2008.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Privacy

    • After Snowden, The NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge

      After Snowden’s revelations, Swann’s thinking changed. The NSA’s tactics, which include retaining data from American citizens, raise too many questions in his mind: “I can’t see myself working there,” he says, “partially because of these moral reasons.”

03.31.15

Links 31/3/2015: New BlackArch Linux, Mozilla Firefox 37.0

Posted in News Roundup at 8:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Writer on Linux philosopy opens up

    My favorite distributions are Fedora for my main workstation, laptop, and netbook. I generally use Centos for servers and firewalls. I have tried other distributions, but I prefer the Red Hat related ones because I started out with Red Hat 17 years ago, and I worked as a trainer for Red Hat for a while. It is what I know best.

    I also use Centos and, to a lesser extent, Fedora for teaching the classes I have written myself for the training portion of my business.

    I use LibreOffice Writer for writing documents like this article and the class lab projects, and I also keep records of the work I do for my customers; sort of a log of my activities. I use LibreOffice Calc for creating invoices, LibreOffice Impress for presentations, and GnuCash for my personal and business accounting needs.

    Thunderbird and Firefox provide for email and Internet browsing, respectively. I have added a few plugins to each to expand their capabilities to better meet my personal and business needs. For example, I use the Lightning calendar extension for Thunderbird and a Google extension to keep my calendar synchronized on multiple devices.

  • Desktop

    • Look Out World! China Is Giving Ubuntu GNU/Linux A Try

      For ages, China has been a world-leader in manufacturing and a tail-end-charlie in adoption of GNU/Linux on the desktop.

    • The Whole World Moves On To GNU/Linux
    • It’s Chrome OS’ turn for the Google Now upgrade

      Google has been increasingly pushing its Google Now virtual assistant and its “cards” convention across its different services and apps. The last one to get card-y was YouTube, where the cards will replace the older popups that relay additional information about videos. Now Google is teasing the next product to get a Google Now makeover, one that is probably long overdue anyway. The beta channel of its Chrome operating system has just gotten a new “Chrome Launcher 2.0″, and the most outstanding feature is the presence of Google Now.

    • Google Chrome OS Set to Get New Launcher

      Google is building a next generation interface for its Chrome OS operating system, which powers Chromebook laptop computers. Google is now offering users in its beta-channel the opportunity to preview features that are currently in development for Chrome OS, including a new launcher and a new look to the overall system.

    • Chromebook pilot tests open source learning resources

      Two teachers in Cumberland County are offering up their classrooms as testing ground for new technology. Students in Sarah Pharris’ seventh-grade language arts students and Jackie Hancock’s seventh-grade math students are using Chromebooks and a variety of Google learning tools to facilitate instruction in their classrooms.

  • Kernel Space

    • PulseAudio 7.0 To Enable LFE Remixing By Default

      Queued up in Git for the next version of PulseAudio, v7.0, is the enabling of LFE remixing by default after some upstream work was done by Canonical developers working on Ubuntu.

    • Linux Kernel 3.14.37 Is One of the Most Advanced LTS Version Available

      The latest version of the stable Linux kernel, 3.14.37, has been released by Greg Kroah-Hartman, making this one of the most advanced long-term support version available for download.

    • Systemd Developers Did NOT Fork The Linux Kernel
    • Community Developments: The systemd Project Forks the Linux Kernel

      The systemd project began as an alternative implementation of init, the software which brings an operating system on-line when a computer boots. Traditionally, Linux distributions have used either the SysV init software or Upstart. While these older init systems had their benefits, systemd developers saw room for improvement and the chance to leverage several underutilized features available to modern Linux distributions. Using systemd, distributions are able to more easily start services in parallel, simplify service dependencies and make easier use of cgroups.

    • Systemd Developers Fork Kernel, Docker Package Management

      A wave of minor myocardial infarctions were reported today as Linux users read the news of a systemd kernel fork. Most were treated and released with only one admitted to the hospital with more severe symptoms. Elsewhere, folks are beginning to discuss the feasibility of Docker replacing Linux package management solutions. But there are several obstacles to container package utopia.

      Systemd continues to be distrusted by many in the Open Source world while others have uncomfortably accepted its presence in their everyday lives. However, when news broke this morning that systemd developers have forked the Linux kernel and plan on developing a whole distribution around it, repercussions were felt community-wide. As Distrowatch.com reporter Jesse Smith said this morning, “It appears as though the systemd developers have found a solution to kernel compatibility problems and a way to extend their philosophy of placing all key operating system components in one repository.” Smith quoted systemd developer Ivan Gotyaovich saying, “There are problems, problems in collaboration, problems with compatibility across versions. Forking the kernel gives us control over these issues, gives us control over almost all key parts of the stack. We will soon have GNU/systemd, [a] much simpler, unified platform.”

    • Graphics Stack

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions

    • Reviews

      • Privacy and Tails 1.3

        Privacy and security are difficult to come by in our progressively connected world. Advertisers track our browsing habits, employers monitor productivity and government agencies monitor our communications. Most operating systems do not take steps to protect our privacy or our identities, two things which are increasingly difficult to guard. Tails is a Linux distribution that is designed to help us stay anonymous on-line and protect our identity. Tails is a Debian-based live disc that we can use to scrub our files of meta data, browse the web with some degree of anonymity and send private messages. According to the project’s website, “Tails is a live operating system, that you can start on almost any computer from a DVD, USB stick, or SD card. It aims at preserving your privacy and anonymity, and helps you to: use the Internet anonymously and circumvent censorship; all connections to the Internet are forced to go through the Tor network; leave no trace on the computer you are using unless you ask it explicitly; use state-of-the-art cryptographic tools to encrypt your files, emails and instant messaging.”

    • New Releases

    • Screenshots

    • Gentoo Family

    • Arch Family

    • Slackware Family

      • Long Term Support (LTS) for KDE 4

        Some folks asked whether the new KDE4-based packages in my KDE5 repository would also apply to KDE 4.14.3. The answer: no they probably won’t, so you better not try what happens.

    • Red Hat Family

      • SME Server 9.1 Beta 1 Is Now Available for Download, Based on CentOS 6.6

        The Koozali SME Server development team, through Terry Fage, was pleased to announce today, March 30, the immediate availability for download and testing of the SME Server 9.1 Beta 1 computer operating system, which is now based on the upstream CentOS distribution, which in turn is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

      • Red Hat Receives 2014 Global Partner of the Year: Technology Award

        Red Hat Inc(NYSE:RHT) announced that it was honored by Google for Work as the 2014 Global Partner of the Year: Technology. The award was presented to Red Hat at TeamWork 2015, the annual global partner summit of Google for Work, which took place in San Diego. The Technology partner of the year award that was awarded to the company emphasizes on the proven track record of Red Hat Inc(NYSE:RHT) of enabling the product adoption for its customers on Google Cloud Platform.

      • Fedora

        • Review: Lenovo X1 Carbon 3rd generation and Linux

          Considering that the fix for the first issue is widely available in most distributions and the second one is only a modprobe away, I’d say this laptop is pretty darned Linux compatible. I’m currently running Fedora 21 without any problems.

        • Fedora 22 Alpha Now Available For AArch64 & PowerPC64

          The alpha release of Fedora 22 was released a few weeks ago for the primary CPU architectures while finally coming out today is the F22 Alpha for 64-bit ARM and PowerPC architectures.

          Peter Robinson announced this afternoon the Fedora 22 Alpha release for AArch64 and Power64 architectures. These alternative architecture spins of the very promising Fedora 22 are primarily focused on the Server Edition of Fedora Linux.

          AArch64 and Power64 users of Fedora can learn more about this first Fedora 22 development release via the mailing list announcement. Fedora 22 is expected to be officially released in May.

        • Fedora 22 Alpha Is Now Available for the AARCH64 and POWER64 Architectures

          Peter Robinson, on behalf of the Fedora Project, has announced today, March 30, that the recently announced Fedora 22 Alpha Linux kernel-based operating system is now available for the AARCH64 and POWER64 (PPC64/PPC64LE) architectures.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Linux Mint 18 Will Arrive in 2016, Linux Mint 17.2 and LMDE 2 Coming Very Soon

          The Linux Mint developers have announced today, March 30, in their monthly newsletter, that the team works hard these days to release the final version of the LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) 2 (codename Betsy), as well as to implement its awesome new features to the upcoming Linux Mint 17.2 update of the current stable distribution of the project, Rebecca.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition First-Time Boot – Video

            Today we take a quick look at the first time boot and configuration of the BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition smartphone. Those of you who watched our unboxing video of the first ever Ubuntu Phone device, would know that it takes some time for the operating system to start when used for first time.

          • Canonical Eyes Telecom, NFV Innovation with Ericsson Cloud Partnership

            Canonical and Ericsson have announced a partner deal that will bring Ubuntu Linux, in conjunction with OpenStack and OPNFV, to a new cloud platform for the telecom market.

          • Creating a Unified Ubuntu Experience

            On it’s own, Ubuntu is a solid desktop Linux experience. It offers ample application choices and it’s easy to use. But one area I would like to see greater focus is mirroring one desktop to another. That is, being able to find the same documents and other files I use on both desktop machines. In this article I’ll explore options I’ve found useful in creating a unified Ubuntu Experience.

          • The big lesson from Ubuntu, Windows and Coca Cola

            Parallels of the New Coke can be drawn with Microsoft’s efforts with Windows 8 and Ubuntu’s Unity desktop. Contrary to what has been said by some so-called technology blogs, both initiatives were not pulled out of the thin air and forced on unwitting users. They were both outcomes of research.

            Unity was a desktop that had previously shipped as part of the Ubuntu Netbook Remix flavor of the Ubuntu operating system for a while before it supplanted GNOME to become Canonical’s default user interface on the Ubuntu Desktop in Ubuntu 11.10. It is important to note that Unity was, just like New Coke, a result of “secret research” in computer user habits and an attempt to better serve the user based on these habits.

          • Here’s How to Create the Perfect Ubuntu Origami Unicorn – Video

            After announcing last week the Ubuntu Origami Unicorn contest, which can bring an awesome new BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition phone to a user that folds the best-looking Unicorn, today Canonical decided that it’s finally time to show the world how to make the perfect origami unicorn.

          • There Are Now More than 1,000 Apps and Scopes for Ubuntu Touch

            The Ubuntu Touch platform is still young and it’s only available “officially” on a single phone, that was made available only sporadically through flash sales, but the number of apps in the store has been increasing on a constant basis, so much so that there are now more than a 1,000 apps available.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Black Lab Linux Wants Ubuntu 10.04 Users to Upgrade to Their Professional Desktop

              Black Lab Software, the creator of the Black Lab Linux series of computer operating systems based on the world’s most popular Linux distribution, Ubuntu, announced earlier today, March 30, on their Twitter account, that they will offer customers who use Ubuntu 10.04 LTS a fully supported upgrade path to their Professional Desktop edition.

            • Cinnamon Developers Working to Improve Loading Times for the Desktop

              The Linux Mint developers are also working on the Cinammon desktop environment, so the distribution is not their entire focus. They are now trying to make it load faster and they say they already had some success.

            • Monthly News – March 2015

              The release candidate for LMDE 2 “Betsy” was announced. Bugs were fixed and we’re now getting ready for a stable release. Working on Betsy was very exciting and it paved the way for some of the work planned for Linux Mint 18 (in 2016). It also highlighted a few areas where things could be improved further, so some of Betsy’s improvements will also find their way into Linux Mint 17.2. I’d like to thank all the people who helped us test Betsy and who sent us their feedback.

            • Linux Mint Needs a Huge, Modern Overhaul, More Artists and Web Developers Are Needed

              We’ve announced earlier today, March 30, that the Linux Mint developers have released their monthly newsletter where they’ve reported the changes implemented in the upcoming releases of the LMDE 2 (Linux Mint Debian Edition), dubbed Betsy, as well as the Linux Mint 17.2 (Rebecca) operating systems.

            • Pre-order Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu 15.04

              You can pre-order your own copy of Ubuntu 15.04 (or Xubuntu, or Lubuntu, or Kubuntu), including Ubuntu 15.04 GNOME and Ubuntu 15.04 MATE right now. It means that a DVD with your favourite OS will be burnt to you as early as possible, and dispatched on the 23rd of April 2015, or soon after. Dispatched to anywhere in the world.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Netflix has more than 50 open source projects

    We’ve released over 50 open source projects, with several more in the pipeline. We also host regular public NetflixOSS meetups in the Bay Area.

  • Will voting systems adopt open source?

    In my recent interview with Brent Turner, from the California Association of Voting Officials (CAVO), we heard about the public interest case for making voting machines open source. In this article, I further explore the unfortunate trend for vendors in this space to “openwash” their offerings; that is, to misrepresent proprietary products as if they were open source, with the intent of making them more appealing.

  • OpenMRS joins Open Source Initiative as Affiliate Member

    The Open Source Initiative ® (OSI), recognized globally for their work in promoting and protecting open source software and development communities, announced today the Affiliate Membership of OpenMRS®, a free and open source health IT platform.

  • Q&A: Ulf Lundgren on how open source is just the ticket

    Transticket provides the ticketing and commerce platforms used by Sweden’s biggest sporting and entertainment events such as the ATP Tennis Tour, the Swedish Hockey League and SkyView, the rail system taking visitors to the top of Ericsson Globe in Stockholm, the world’s largest spherical building.

  • Will open source save the Internet of Things?

    To some degree, open source is already present throughout the Internet of Things value chain. Cloud apps that collect and analyze data are heavily dependent on open source software and standards, for example.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla Firefox 37.0 Is Now Available for Download

        We’re happy to announced that the final builds of the popular Mozilla Firefox 37.0 web browser were published on Mozilla’s download servers for all supported computer operating systems, including GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Is Hadoop Replacing the Data Warehouse? Survey Says Not So Much

      Snowflake Computing, a cloud data warehousing company that only recently emerged from startup stealth mode, has announced the results of an independent, national survey of more than 315 technology and analytics professionals with responsibility for corporate data initiatives. Conducted by Dimensional Research, the goal of the research was to understand the state of the data warehouse and Big Data initiatives – including experiences, challenges and trends in data warehousing and data analytics.

    • Q&A: StackStorm’s Evan Powell Talks DevOps, Automation and OpenStack

      StackStorm’s toolset is 100 percent open source and used to tie together environments with the aid of a rules engine, workflows, audit and access controls, and more.

    • ​Apache Spark-based ClearStory ramps up its analytics software

      Silicon Valley startup ClearStory Data says the new release of its Apache Spark-based analytics software significantly speeds up complex analyses based on multiple sources.

  • Databases

    • Apple’s FoundationDB Deal Sends Waves of Concern Across Open Source World

      Apple’s recent acquisition of formerly open source FoundationDB has stirred a larger debate. Even before news of the acquisition went public, the startup reportedly turned off software downloads from its website and announced to users that it would no longer provide support for the NoSQL database software, leaving those who were using it and engaged in the open source project in a tight spot. FoundationDB didn’t have many known customers, but the open source world was upset.

  • Business

    • EspoCRM: A lightweight open source customer relationship manager

      Customer relationship management (CRM) tools come in many different flavors, though not every application can meet the need of every customer. Often, large and complicated tools are overkill for smaller businesses, while some smaller tools require customization to meet specific needs. I would like to share with you the open source tool EspoCRM, which is designed to meet the needs of small and medium businesses.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Brave GNU world

      WHEN I wrote about free software guru Richard Stallman last week, I didn’t realize I would have the opportunity to hear him speak just a few days later. Fortuitously, I got that chance when I attended the RightsCon Southeast Asia Summit at the Crowne Plaza Manila Galleria Hotel, where Stallman was a guest speaker.

      The summit, which drew 600 participants from over 50 countries, focused on protecting human rights online and fighting for an open Internet, which seemed to be a good fit for Stallman, who remains an activist at the age of 62.

      His talk, entitled “Brave GNU World,” was a play on the free operating system that became the centerpiece of his free (as in freedom, not as in zero-cost) software movement.

      Stallman began his talk with the four essential freedoms that computer users ought to have: the freedom to run a program; the freedom to study and change it in source code form; the freedom to redistribute exact copies of it; and the freedom to distribute modified versions of the program.

    • Excorporate 0.6.0: Exchange integration for Emacs

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • Use of Open Source Software Is Now Mandatory In Indian Government Offices

      According to a new policy issued by the Indian Government, all employees will have to use open-source software on their computers. The new policy encourages the adoption of open source software across all Indian Government offices, on both desktop and server stations, in order to reduce the costs for acquiring computer software.

  • Licensing

    • How the current intellectual property landscape impacts open source

      Meet Doug Kim. He’s a computer engineer-turned-lawyer who chairs the Intellectual Property Practice Group at McNair Law Firm in Columbia, South Carolina. Doug’s practice includes patent preparation and prosecution, trademark, service mark preparation and prosecution, and securing copyright registrations in areas that include Geographical Information Systems (GIS), software, books, music, product packaging, and distribution. He has expertise in software, method, and mechanical patents as well as open source licensing.

    • The GitHub kids still don’t care about open source

      But rather than eschew the mountains of code being released on GitHub, would-be adopters of GitHub code need to start asking that code be licensed. It may be the only way to change the seemingly permanent shift toward completely open source.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

      • Open Data: Slovakia holds public consultation

        Slovakia has held a public consultation to build its Open Government Partnership’s Action Plan for 2015. The consultation, organized by the Office of the Plenipotentiary of the Slovak Government for the Development of Civil Society (ÚSVROS) and the National Agency for Network and Electronic Services (NASES), was opene to “the public, the business sector, non-profit organizations, public institutions and local government”, the organisers said in a statement. The public consultation is now closed (on March 17th).

  • Programming

    • GitHub Under Sustained DDoS Attack

      Since March 26, GitHub has been under attack, but users are likely not even noticing as the site continues to be highly available.

    • Open Source Github under Chinese attack

      Open source coding site GitHub said it was fending off a days-long DoS attack that had caused intermittent outages for the social coding site.

      China has been identified as the source of the attack and the software being hit is banned behind the bamboo curtain. It would appear that someone is taking pro-active censorship steps by taking down the entire site..

    • Why do web developers choose OS X instead of Linux?

      Apple’s OS X operating system for the Mac seems to be a very popular choice among web developers. But why have so many of them forsaken Linux in favor of OS X? A Linux redditor asked about this and got some interesting answers from fellow redditors.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • COIS, the UK arm of Open Forum Europe distributes ODF toolkit for Document Freedom Day week

      A new toolkit is being launched to target faster public sector adoption of Open Document Format. Released today by the Community for Open Interoperability Standards (the UK arm of Open Forum Europe), the toolkit contains a folder of principles and infographic for Government Technology leaders to use in educating public sector workers on the options and opportunities for ODF use. This publication joins global Document Freedom Day week celebrations of Open Standards, which numbers 58 events in 30 countries this year. The toolkit arrives as UK Government moves to comply with use of ODF 1.2 across departments, following a change in Cabinet Office policy in July last year.

    • “I’d Rather Not Rewrite All the HTTP Stuff Myself”

      Fascinating early posts from the founders of eBay, Amazon, Google, and others.

Leftovers

  • German pro basketball team relegated to lower division due to Windows update

    A second-tier German professional basketball team has been relegated to an even lower tier as a result of being penalized for starting a recent game late—because the Windows laptop that powered the scoreboard required 17 minutes to perform system updates.

  • Science

  • Security

    • “Black Box” brouhaha breaks out over brute forcing of iPhone PIN lock

      A bit of a brouhaha has broken out about a “Black Box” that can brute force your iPhone PIN by trying every possible combination, from 00..00 to 99..99.

      [...]

      Even if you only set a 4-digit PIN, that gives a crook who steals your phone just a 10 in 10,000 chance, or 0.1%, of guessing your unlock code in time.

      But this Black Box has a trick up its cable.

      Apparently, the device uses a light sensor to work out, from the change in screen intensity, when it has got the right PIN.

    • Security advisories for Monday

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • One dead, two injured in incident outside NSA headquarters

      An unidentified car attempted to ram the entrance gate at the NSA’s Fort Meade headquarters this morning, with shots fired in the wake of the collision. Authorities say one person is dead and two men (a 20-year-old and 44-year-old) have been airlifted to a Baltimore trauma center with serious injuries. CNN is reporting that two assailants were involved in the attack — one killed, the other wounded — citing a federal law enforcement official who had been briefed on the matter.

    • Leading Papers Incite ‘Supreme International Crime’

      Advocating for war is not like advocating for most other policies because, as peace activist David Swanson points out, war is a crime. It was outlawed in 1928 by the Kellogg-Briand Pact, in which the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Britain, Germany, France, Japan and 55 other nations “condemn[ed] recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce[d] it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.”

    • Muslim Terrorism a Result of Western Imperialism

      Corporate media typically portray Muslims as cruel monsters driven by unexplainable hate for the West…

    • US National Security Strategy Confirms Drive for World Domination

      Though widely reported in corporate media, the largely aggressive thrust of the text has been overlooked in most mainstream coverage. The text emphasizes, for example, that the US must continue to remain the world’s preeminent superpower, an ominous assertion particularly in light of the recent standoff with Russia concerning Syria and Ukraine.

    • A look at those involved in Saudi-led airstrikes on Yemen

      A Saudi-led coalition is targeting Shiite rebels and their allies in Yemen in a campaign of airstrikes that began last week.

    • Strike on Refugee Camp in Yemen Kills 45

      An air strike killed at least 40 people at a camp for displaced people in north Yemen on Monday, humanitarian workers said, in an attack which apparently targeted a nearby base for Houthi fighters battling President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

      Yemen’s state news agency Saba, which is under the control of the Houthis, said the camp at Haradh was hit by Saudi planes. It said the dead included women and children, and showed the bodies of five children laid out on a blood-streaked floor.

    • Yemen: Saudi-Led Airstrikes Take Civilian Toll

      The airstrikes targeted Ansar Allah, the armed wing of the Zaidi Shia group known as the Houthis, that has controlled much of northern Yemen since September 2014. In January, the group effectively ousted the government of President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi. Human Rights Watch found that on March 26 warplanes struck populated urban neighborhoods in Sanaa and observed Ansar Allah forces who appeared to be firing anti-aircraft weapons from residential neighborhoods.

    • Euro Rights Blog: Defining the Word ‘Terrorism’ – A Classroom Experiment – by Sarah Kay

      Beyond legitimacy, the second most apprehended criterion was fear: inducing fear, manufacturing fear, exploiting and manipulating fear, and this, both present in the intent to commit the terrorist act and into the intended consequences of the terrorist action. The complexity of whether all political violence is terrorism, while all terrorism is political violence, was sometimes exhilarating to debate, sometimes frustrating to unravel. Most of them of European upbringing, the reference to ‘simple terrorism’ – ethno-political terrorism – was fast weighed against the current wave of religious extremism. This was not the only instance of questioning legitimacy of political action.

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Pearson, ETS, Houghton Mifflin, and McGraw-Hill Lobby Big and Profit Bigger from School Tests

      School testing corporations have spent at least $20 million on lobbying along with wining and dining or even hiring policymakers in pursuit of big revenues from federal and state testing mandates under “No Child Left Behind” measures and the Common Core curriculum, according to a new analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

    • The ALEC-Backed War on Local Democracy

      After the town of Denton, Texas passed a ballot initiative banning fracking in November 2014, the oil and gas industry reacted with outrage and swiftly filed suit. Politicians in the state capitol responded with a fusillade of bills to preempt local authority over public health and safety and to subject local ballot initiatives to pre-approval by the state attorney general. There was even a bill to end local home rule altogether.

  • Privacy

    • Smart meters are a ‘costly mistake’ that’ll add BILLIONS to bills

      A report from the Institute of Directors (IoD) warns that the government’s rollout of smart meters “should be ‘halted, altered or scrapped’ to avoid a potentially catastrophic government IT disaster.”

      The report, entitled “Not too clever: will Smart Meters be the next Government IT disaster?” describes the £11bn scheme as “unwanted by consumers, over-engineered and mind-blowingly expensive.”

    • Warning to the Public: Your Smart Televisions are Listening
    • Europe’s law enforcement chief joins in crypto panic

      The director of Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, has warned about the growing use of encryption for online communications. Speaking to BBC Radio, Rob Wainwright said: “It’s become perhaps the biggest problem for the police and the security service authorities in dealing with the threats from terrorism.” Wainwright is just the latest in a string of high-ranking government officials on both sides of the Atlantic that have made similar statements, including FBI Director James Comey, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, the head of London’s Metropolitan Police, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, and UK Prime Minister David Cameron.

      Wainwright told the BBC that the use of encrypted services “changed the very nature of counter-terrorist work from one that has been traditionally reliant on having good monitoring capability of communications to one that essentially doesn’t provide that anymore.” What that overlooks is that the “good monitoring capability” was of very few channels, used sporadically. Today, by contrast, online users engage with many digital services—social media, messaging, e-mail, VoIP—on a constant basis, and often simultaneously. Although the percentage of traffic that can be monitored may be lower, the volume is much higher, which means that, overall, more information is available for counter-terrorism agencies.

    • Digital rights and freedoms: Part 1

      Under the rubric of state security on the one hand and commercial openness on the other, we are being lulled into an online world of fear and control where our every move is monitored in order to more efficiently manage us.

    • Who Knows What Evils Lurk in the Shadows?

      The story of the powerful spy agency most Canadians still don’t know, and the security bill that would expand its resources and reach

    • NSA Tried to Roll Out Its Automated Query Program Between Debates about Killing It

      None of that explains why the NSA wasn’t able to ingest some cell phone production. But it may explain why NSA accepts moving the phone dragnet to the telecoms.

  • Civil Rights

    • Watch A Fox News Anchor Debunk His Network’s Defense Of Indiana’s “Religious Freedom” Law

      Fox News anchor Bret Baier debunked the network’s defense of Indiana’s discriminatory “religious freedom” law, explaining that the law is broader than both federal law and similar measures in other states.

    • Whistleblower panel discussion at Logan Symposium

      Here is a panel discussion I did about whistleblowing at the Logan Symposium in London last November. With me on the panel are Eileen Chubb, a UK health care whistleblower who runs Compassion in Care and is campaigning for Edna’s Law, and Bea Edwards of the US Government Accountability Project. With thanks to @newsPeekers for filming this.

    • Inquiry of Silk Road Website Spurred Agents’ Own Illegal Acts, Officials Say

      On the so-called dark web, drug dealing and other illicit sales have thrived in recent years, the authorities have said, through hidden websites like Silk Road and hard-to-trace digital currencies like Bitcoins.

      On Monday, the government charged that in the shadows of an undercover investigation of Silk Road, a notorious black-market site, two federal agents sought to enrich themselves by exploiting the very secrecy that made the site so difficult for law enforcement officials to penetrate.

    • Spokesman found dead weeks after Missouri auditor Tom Schweich’s suicide

      The tragedy in the office of late Missouri state auditor Tom Schweich has deepened.

      A month after Schweich died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound amid an alleged political smear campaign focused on his faith, a top aide appears to have committed suicide by the same means, police said.

      Robert “Spence” Jackson, who served as Schweich’s media director, was found dead in his bedroom Sunday, Jefferson City police said in a statement. Police have not released any details about the timing of Jackson’s death, but they did say that there were no signs of a struggle or forced entry into the home.

    • Senators Disregard Security Agencies’ Calls to Close Guantanamo, One Says Prisoners Can ‘Rot in Hell’

      At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on policies related to the release of prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, a Pentagon official and an intelligence official testified on how closing the prison is a national security imperative. Yet, their expertise did not seem to matter.

      Senators rejected the expertise of military and intelligence agencies preferring to believe that releasing anyone from Guantanamo will endanger Americans and President Barack Obama’s administration is engaged in a conspiracy of mass deception that is putting the United States at great risk.

    • Intercept Reporter Files Suit Against Ferguson Police

      An Intercept reporter is suing the St. Louis County Police Department after he was shot with rubber bullets and arrested while reporting on protests in the suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, over the shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown last August.

    • New Canadian Counterterrorism Law Threatens Environmental Groups

      Geraldine Thomas-Flurer, who campaigns for environmental protection on behalf of indigenous First Nations in Canada, wasn’t surprised when, in 2012, she found out that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been keeping tabs on her. The Toronto Star that year obtained documents showing that federal police had monitored private meetings held between her coalition and local environmental groups.

      Now she just laughs when asked whether she’s comforted by assurances from government officials that new surveillance and policing powers outlined under a proposed Canadian Anti-Terror Law wouldn’t be aimed at peaceful protesters.

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