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10.28.16

Links 28/10/2016: NetBSD 7.0.2, Linux Mint 18.1 Will be “Serena”

Posted in News Roundup at 6:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux Voice / Linux Magazine Merge

    Issue 32 is the last issue of Linux Voice as a stand-alone magazine as we have joined Linux Magazine. This newly merged magazine will bring the best bits of Linux Voice and Linux Magazine together into a single volume. All four of us Linux Voice founders will still be here contributing to the newly merged magazine – you’ll find us in the aptly named Linux Voice section. We’ll continue to write about the things that excite us in the world of open source software and we’ll continue making our popular podcast.

  • Desktop

  • Server

    • Managing OpenStack with Open Source Tools

      Day 2 operations are still dominated by manual and custom individual scripts devised by system administrators. Automation is needed by enterprises. Based on the above analysis, Ansible is a leading open source project with a high number contributions and a diverse community of contributions. Thus Ansible is a well supported and popular open source tool to orchestrate and manage OpenStack.

    • Databricks Weaves Deep Learning into Cloud-Based Spark Platform

      Databricks, a company founded by the creators of the popular open-source Big Data processing engine Apache Spark, is a firm that we’ve been paying close attention to here at OStatic. We’re fans of the company’s online courses on Spark, and we recently caught up with Kavitha Mariappan, who is Vice President of Marketing at the company, for a guest post on open source tools and data science.

      Now, Databricks has announced the addition of deep learning support to its cloud-based Apache Spark platform. The company says this enhancement adds GPU support and integrates popular deep learning libraries to the Databricks’ big data platform, extending its capabilities to enable the rapid development of deep learning models. “Data scientists looking to combine deep learning with big data — whether it’s recognizing handwriting, translating speech between languages, or distinguishing between malignant and benign tumors — can now utilize Databricks for every stage of their workflow, from data wrangling to model tuning,” the company reports, adding “Databricks is the first to integrate these diverse workloads in a fast, secure, and easy-to-use Apache Spark platform in the cloud.”

    • OpenStack Building the Cloud for the Next 50 Years (and Beyond)

      Two OpenStack Foundation executives talk about what has gone wrong, what has gone right and what’s next for the open-source cloud.
      BARCELONA, Spain—When OpenStack got started in 2010, it was a relatively small effort with only two companies involved. Over the last six years, that situation has changed dramatically with OpenStack now powering telecom, retail and scientific cloud computing platforms for some of the largest organizations in the world.

    • The Myth of the Root Cause: How Complex Web Systems Fail

      Complex systems are intrinsically hazardous systems. While most web systems fortunately don’t put our lives at risk, failures can have serious consequences. Thus, we put countermeasures in place — backup systems, monitoring, DDoS protection, playbooks, GameDay exercises, etc. These measures are intended to provide a series of overlapping protections. Most failure trajectories are successfully blocked by these defenses, or by the system operators themselves.

    • How to assess the benefits of SDN in your network

      Software-defined networking has matured from a science experiment into deployable, enterprise-ready technology in the last several years, with vendors from Big Switch Networks and Pica8 to Hewlett Packard Enterprise and VMware offering services for different use cases. Still, Nemertes Research’s 2016 Cloud and Data Center Benchmark survey found a little more than 9% of organizations now deploying SDN in production.

  • Kernel Space

    • Applying the Linus Torvalds “Good Taste” Coding Requirement

      In a recent interview with Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, at approximately 14:20 in the interview, he made a quick point about coding with “good taste”. Good taste? The interviewer prodded him for details and Linus came prepared with illustrations.

      He presented a code snippet. But this wasn’t “good taste” code. This snippet was an example of poor taste in order to provide some initial contrast.

    • DTrace for Linux 2016

      With the final major capability for BPF tracing (timed sampling) merging in Linux 4.9-rc1, the Linux kernel now has raw capabilities similar to those provided by DTrace, the advanced tracer from Solaris. As a long time DTrace user and expert, this is an exciting milestone! On Linux, you can now analyze the performance of applications and the kernel using production-safe low-overhead custom tracing, with latency histograms, frequency counts, and more.

    • The initial bus1 patch posting
    • Linux 4.8.5

      I’m announcing the release of the 4.8.5 kernel.

      All users of the 4.8 kernel series must upgrade.

      The updated 4.8.y git tree can be found at:
      git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.8.y
      and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:

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

    • Linux 4.4.28
    • BFQ I/O Scheduler Patches Revised, Aiming To Be Extra Scheduler In The Kernel

      FQ developers had hoped to replace CFQ in the mainline Linux kernel with Budget Fair Queueing for a variety of reasons but it hadn’t ended up making it mainline. Now the developers are hoping to introduce BFQ back to mainline as an extra available scheduler.

      Paolo Valente on Wednesday published the latest patches dubbed “BFQ-v0″ for adding it as an extra scheduler. He began by saying, “this new patch series turns back to the initial approach, i.e., it adds BFQ as an extra scheduler, instead of replacing CFQ with BFQ. This patch series also contains all the improvements and bug fixes recommended by Tejun, plus new features of BFQ-v8r5…On average CPUs, the current version of BFQ can handle devices performing at most ~30K IOPS; at most ~50 KIOPS on faster CPUs. These are about the same limits as CFQ. There may be room for noticeable improvements regarding these limits, but, given the overall limitations of blk itself, I thought it was not the case to further delay this new submission.”

    • Graphics Stack

    • Benchmarks

      • Power Consumption & Efficiency Of The Linux Kernel For The Last Three Years

        Earlier this week I published Linux 3.9 through Linux 4.9 kernel benchmarks looking at the raw performance of various subsystems when testing each of the major kernel releases as far back as this Core i7 Haswell system was supported. From that same system, today is a look at testing the kernels going back to Linux 3.11 when Haswell graphics support was first in good shape for this Core i7 4790K box while looking at the raw power consumption and performance-per-Watt for these 19 major kernel releases.

      • The Idle Power Use Of The Past 19 Linux Kernel Releases

        This morning I published the Power Consumption and Efficiency Of The Linux Kernel For The Last Three Years article containing power consumption data for an Intel Haswell system going back to the Linux 3.11 kernel through Linux 4.9 Git. Those were some interesting power consumption numbers under load while here are the idle numbers.

        The idle tests were still running this morning so I opted to post them later since they’re interested in their own right. The same i7-4790K system was used for benchmarking all of these kernels from Linux 3.11 to Linux 4.9 (25 October Git). No other changes were made during the testing process. Each kernel was freshly booted to the Unity desktop and then launched the idle power consumption test for a period of three minutes while monitoring the AC power draw as reported by the WattsUp Power meter. Automating this with the Phoronix Test Suite: MONITOR=sys.power phoronix-test-suite benchmark idle.

      • Phoronix Test Suite 6.8 Milestone 1 Released

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • 6 Best Linux Desktop Environments [Part - 2]

      Linux has been developing at a good pace through this last years and with development comes better support for different hardware regarding support for proprietary drivers for video cards, better file systems, more choices in what operating system to use and one of the things that has it importance is distros graphical environment.

    • More Details On Enlightenment’s Ecore_Drm2 Atomic Modesetting

      Back in September the Enlightenment project’s EFL library added atomic mode-setting and nuclear page-flipping support to provide a “perfect rendering” and a “buttery smooth” experience. Earlier this month was then an update on the Ecore_Drm2 state while coming out this week is a Samsung OSG blog post explaining more about the atomic mode-setting details.

    • Ecore_Drm2: How to Use Atomic Modesetting

      In a previous article, I briefly discussed how the Ecore_Drm2 library came into being. This article will expand on that article and provide a brief introduction to the Atomic Modesetting and Nuclear Pageflip features inside the new Ecore_Drm2 library.

    • Papirus Icon Theme Scores Big October Update

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Qt Creator 4.2 Beta released

        Qt SCXML is a new module in Qt that allows you to create state machines from State Chart XML and embed them into Qt C++ and Qt Quick applications (Overview). It was released as Technical Preview in Qt 5.7 and will be released fully supported with Qt 5.8.

        Qt Creator 4.2 now supplements the module by offering a graphical editor for SCXML (experimental). It features editing states and sub-states, transitions, events, and all kinds of properties. The editor is experimental and the plugin is not loaded by default. Turn it on in Help > About Plugins (Qt Creator > About Plugins on macOS) to try it.

      • Qt Creator 4.2 Beta Released

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GObject and SVG

        GSVG is a project to provide a GObject API, using Vala. It has almost all, with some complementary, interfaces from W3C SVG 1.1 specification.

        GSVG is LGPL library. It will use GXml as XML engine. SVG 1.1 DOM interfaces relays on W3C DOM, then using GXml is a natural choice.

        SVG is XML and its DOM interfaces, requires to use Object’s properties and be able to add child DOM Elements; then, we need a new set of classes.

  • Distributions

    • Reviews

      • Chapeau Is Exactly What the Linux Desktop Needs

        That is where Chapeau comes in. Chapeau is a cutting-edge Linux distribution, built from Fedora Workstation, using the GNOME desktop environment, and intended to be an incredibly intuitive and easy to use, out-of-the box experience.

        Trust me when I say Chapeau is exactly that.

        Part of the Chapeau marketing states that it is “Fedora without the work.” I could not have said it better. With Chapeau, you get a desktop distribution in which everything works—in every way—out of the box.

    • New Releases

      • Maui 2 “Blue Tang” released

        The Maui team is happy to announce the release of Maui 2 – 64bit version.

        This is our second version of Maui which comes with plenty new features and fixes based on Plasma 5.8.2, KF 5.27 and Qt 5.7.0.
        We also provide the latest LTS Linux Kernel 4.4 together with an updated Ubuntu 16.04 LTS base system.
        Firefox was updated to version 49 and Thunderbird to version 45.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • New KNOPPIX Release, LibreOffice 5.1.6, Rosa Down

        In Linux news today KNOPPIX 7.7.1 was released to the public based on Debian with GNOME 3.22, KDE 5.7.2, and “Everything 3D.” The Rosa project is experiencing network issues and folks may experience problems trying to connect to their services the next few days. LibreOffice 5.1.6 was announced today by The Document Foundation, the sixth update to the Still branch for stable users, and a new vulnerability was disclosed in GNU Tar.

      • Network shutdown

        From our part we will try our best to make the migrating process as smooth and seamless as possible for our partners.
        Note that the most possible period for unavailability of our resources is this weekend, but there is some probability it may also occur on Friday 10/28/16.
        In the first place, this process is aimed to improve the quality of our services, so please be patient and cooperative.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • openSUSE Tumbleweed – Review of the Week 2016/43

        The magic number this week is 6: that’s how many snapshots have been published since the last weekly review (1020, 1022, 1023, 1024, 1025 and 1026). Some of them were a bit larger than average (1026 – a big rebuild due to bash 4.4).

      • Identify constraint problems

        Until now it was not possible to easily identify if the constraints are the reaseon for your job to hang in state scheduled and not switching to building. That caused a lot of confusion for it was not clear what the problem is and if the state would change.

    • Red Hat Family

      • ESDS Teams Up With Red Hat On Managed Cloud Hosting Services

        ESDS Software Solution has announced that it has joined hands with Red Hat to bring together the benefits of cloud solutions to legacy applications and enterprise databases. Customers can now avail managed data and cloud hosting services on ESDS eNlight Cloud platform that allows vertical auto scaling of virtual machines. ESDS can now offer needed agility to enterprises that may not otherwise reap the benefits of cloud, given the architecture of their systems.

        eNlight Cloud is a state-of-the-art cloud hosting solution with a built-in ability to automatically scale CPU and RAM on-the fly. Customers can now access the benefits of automatic load sensing and scaling, pay-per-consumption metered billing, root access to enterprise databases and managed OS, database and network services by using Red Hat Enterprise Linux on patented eNlight Cloud. This solution is targeted at customers across several verticals including aviation, banking, manufacturing, oil & gas, shipping and telecommunications.

      • Swisscom, UKCloud Adopt Red Hat OpenStack Platform

        Red Hat announced today that both Swisscom and UKCloud will be leveraging its OpenStack platform as the companies transition toward cloud computing. Swisscom will use the platform to develop its own cloud platform, and UKCloud will provide its customers with the ability to deliver digital services directly to UK citizens.

      • Red Hat named as visionary in Gartner’s 2016 Magic Quadrant

        Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, on Thursday announced that Gartner, Inc. has positioned Red Hat in the “Visionaries” quadrant of Gartner’s October 2016 Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage for Red Hat Ceph Storage and Red Hat Gluster Storage.

      • CentOS 6 Linux Servers Receive Important Kernel Security Patch, Update Now

        We reported a couple of days ago that Johnny Hughes from the CentOS Linux team published an important kernel security advisory for users of the CentOS 7 operating system.

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Bodhi 2.3.0 released

          Bodhi 2.3.0 is a feature and bug fix release.

        • Fedora at Ohio Linuxfest 2016

          We arrived at the our hotel around 1PM on Friday. After checking in we headed over to find the new site in the Hyatt Regency Hotel. The first things we noticed was the Columbus Convention Center is doing a major renovation and one of those renovations was they removed the escalators from the food court to the second floor. At first we thought this may be a issue to move the event stuff in but there was an elevator close by. Also no signage for OLF in the Food Court area. After getting off the elevator on the second floor there was a sign pointing around the corner to the Ohio Linuxfest registration table. This year Ohio Linuxfest charged $10 for general attendees (free to students with student ID). We checked in and out our badges (yes insert favorite Blazing Saddles joke here). We walked down to the Vendor Expo hall which this year had a grand total of 28 exhibitors (see website for vendor lists). While the Expo was setup ready for Vendors to move in but the Vendor Expo was not open to the public on Friday.

        • The Bugs So Far Potentially Blocking The Fedora 25 Release

          Adam Williamson of the Fedora QA team has sent out a list of the bugs currently outstanding that could block the Fedora 25 release from happening on its current schedule should they not be fixed in time.

        • Updated Fedora 24 ISO Respins Now Available with Dirty COW-Patched Linux Kernel

          It looks like a new set of updated Live ISO images for the Fedora 24 GNU/Linux operating system were published by Ben Williams, founder of the Fedora Unity Project and a Fedora Ambassador.

          Dubbed F24-20161023, the updated Live ISOs a few days ago and include up-to-date components from the official Fedora 24 Linux software repositories, with which was fully syncronized as of October 23, 2016. Of course, this means that they also include the latest Linux kernel update fully patched against the “Dirty COW” bug.

        • PHP version 5.6.28RC1 and 7.0.13RC1
        • Flock Stories 2016, Episode 1: Redon Skikuli

          Flock Stories by Chris WardIf you were wondering where Flock 2018 might be, today’s guest Redon Skikuli might just have your answer! Redon is not just a Fedora community contributor, he’s a Fedora community creator. I ask Redon what he’s up to these days and why he thinks we should also consider joining future Flocks.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Security-minded µQseven COM taps Allwinner A64

      Theobroma’s µQseven form factor “A64-µQ7”COM runs Linux 4.x on a quad-core -A53 Allwinner A64, and adds a security module.

      Austria-based Theobroma has released its second Allwinner-based computer-on-module using the half-size, 70 x 40mm µQseven form-factor. The A64-µQ7 follows the A31 µQ7, based on the quad-core, Cortex-A7 Allwinner A31. This time around the company has opted for the 64-bit, quad-core Cortex-A53 Allwinner A64.

    • Latest 96Boards SBC ships with GbE/PCIe add-on

      Fujitsu’s 96Boards CE compatible “F-Cue” SBC runs Linux on a quad-core Cortex-A15/A7 Socionext MB86S71 SoC, and offers a PCIe/GbE expansion board.

      The Fujitsu Electronics F-Cue is the latest Linux-driven 96Boards CE form factor SBC, following others like the uCRobotics Bubblegum-96 and Qualcomm DragonBoard 410c. The open-spec board uses the same 85 x 54mm CE spec, featuring standard 40- and 60-pin mezzanine expansion connectors. The board is pricier than most 96Boards entries, selling for $286, plus another for $48 an optional PCIe/GbE expansion board.

    • Rugged Qseven module runs Linux on Apollo Lake

      Seco unveiled a “Q7-B03” Qseven COM with Intel’s new Atom E3900 “Apollo Lake” SoC and optional onboard SATA flash and -40 to 85°C support.

    • 96Boards SBC adds “Giga” expansion and optional GbE card
    • Rugged Bay Trail boardset offers dual GbE and dual mini-PCIe

      The device supports Linux, Windows, Windows Embedded, and VxWorks, and offers five-year availability.

    • Tiny, open spec SBC offers wireless and 8GB eMMC

      FriendlyElec’s $45, 75 x 40mm “NanoPi S2” SBC runs Debian or Android on a quad-core A9 SoC, and offers RPi expansion, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 8GB eMMC.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Video: Introducing Samsung ARTIK Cloud with Samsung Gear S2

          Samsung Electronics have previously announced SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud™, which is an open data exchange platform designed to connect devices and applications. One of the goals of the SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud is to provide developers the tools they need to securely connect to Internet of Things (IoT) devices, collect data and react to it accordingly.

          Companies can benefit from using open APIs and tools in order to accelerate their “time to market” and ultimately start monetizing their Investment. SAMSUNG ARTIK Cloud has a tiered pricing model, but the great thing is that you can actually start using it for FREE.

        • Game: Group Play Drag Racing in Tizen Store for Samsung Z1, Z2 and Z3

          Remember the World Cricket Championship 2 game? The most rated cricket game in the Tizen Store by Nextwave Multimedia Pvt. Ltd. Today they have added a new game named “Group Play Drag Racing“. It’s a Racing game against 6 racers, and you have to use your gears to the best of your ability in order to be fast fast fast !

      • Android

        • NVIDIA rolling out Shield Android TV upgrade 3.3 with improved audio, updated Vulkan API, and more
        • Software Upgrade 3.3 Available For NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV
        • PlayStation Vue launches on Android TV
        • Google Assistant channel launches on IFTTT
        • Google Allo Update 2.0 Brings Android 7.0 Nougat Features To The Table: Split-Screen, Quick Reply Support
        • Android 7.0 Nougat OTA download for OnePlus 3, OnePlus 2, OnePlus X happening this December
        • In Tech News: Apple iPhone Quarterly Results Signal Yet Another Year of 15% Flat Market Share

          If you look at the above picture, you really need to come to grips, that there is not, and will never be, a global take-over of the smartphone space by Apple’s iPhone. It has a VERY steady slice of the market. A healthy, profitable and loyal slice, but it is not growing nor is it shrinking. Apple finds one in seven smartphone owners eager to own their devices, and six in seven smartphone buyers will not buy an iPhone, either they don’t want it, or can’t afford it. Deal with this reality. 15%. That is not the world

        • How I Use Android: EvolveSMS and Talon developer Luke Klinker

          Luke Klinker knows his way around app development.

          Klinker started building his Android app empire when he was a student at the University of Iowa. He embraced Google’s Material Design standard and worked with his brother to create clean and intuitive apps that were packed with features and yet easy to use.

        • LG V20 Review: For spec-hungry Android enthusiasts, it’s the best Android phablet you can buy [Video]

          2016 has been a tough year for the Android market. In previous years we couldn’t count on one hand the number of awesome devices, but this year there have only been a few to choose from. The Galaxy S7, specifically the Edge has stood out as a clear winner, despite the praise given to competing devices like the HTC 10. On the other hand, no one really cared about LG this year. The G5 was a flop by every definition.

          Now in late 2016, there still isn’t much to pick from. The Galaxy Note 7 was close to perfection, and then it literally exploded in Samsung’s face. Google’s Pixel aims to fill the void, and redefine what an Android smartphone can and should be. However, if you’re not looking to get a Pixel, the LG V20 is 100% what you should be looking at, especially if you’re aiming for a big phone. Let’s take a closer look.

        • Android 7.0 Nougat: 15 hidden tips and tricks

          WE’VE RAIDED THE release notes in pieces past, but this time around (and with Google’s Pixel XL in tow) we’re running through some of the more useful additions to have found their way into the latest Android build.

          And for those of you who’ve skipped to the end, cats and hamburgers both have their uses…

        • Why Apple-to-Android upgrade comparisons are utterly meaningless

          Android upgrades are a contentious topic. Bring ‘em up in any way, and you’re bound to see some riled up people.

          I should know: I’ve observed and analyzed Android upgrades for years now — all the way back to the now-ancient-seeming Android 2.2 Froyo era, when widespread rollouts for the platform were still an untested concept. And in all of that time, one thing has stayed pretty much the same: By and large, Android manufacturers suck at delivering timely and reliable OS updates.

          But hang on: Not everything about the Android upgrade situation has remained constant over these past several years. In fact, one very significant area has evolved considerably — and it’s an area that’s almost always overlooked as part of the Android upgrade discussion, particularly when iOS comparisons come into the picture.

          As we think about Google’s new Pixel phone and its unique position as the sole current handset guaranteed to get quick and regular Android updates, it’s important to step back and put the situation in perspective — because there really is much more to it than what we see on the surface. And while iPhone-to-Android upgrade comparisons are an inevitable side effect of the discussion (and one I’ve already heard brought up plenty in the context of the Pixel, especially when it comes to its short-seeming two-year window for support), the truth is that upgrades on iOS and Android are drastically different beasts.

        • BlackBerry reveals its LAST ever Android smartphone

          Marking BlackBerry’s third foray into Android devices, the DTEK60 has been designed to take on the likes of Samsung and HTC with a polished look and powerful hardware.

          The device features a 5.5-inch QuadHD display with a resolution of 2,560×1,440-pixels and a pixel density of 538ppi, which BlackBerry says can display up to 16 million colours.

          Inside, there’s a speedy quad-core Snapdragon 820 processor from Qualcomm, backed up by 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, which can be boosted up to 2TB via a microSD card.

        • Latest Strategy Analytics data shows Chinese Android manufacturers eating at Apple’s marketshare

          Apple just reported its latest earnings yesterday evening, and now Strategy Analytics is out with its latest report concerning the smartphone industry. The latest data shows the entire smartphone industry saw shipments rise 6 percent year over year to hit 375 million worldwide during Q3 2016.

          Shipment rose from 345.2 million units in Q3 2015 to 375.4 million in Q3 2016, which is the industry’s fastest growth rate for a year. Strategy Analytics attributes much of this growth to new product launches from Apple.

          Individually for Apple, though, the numbers weren’t as bright. The company saw its shipments fall from 48 million to 45.5 million, just as it reported during its earnings call. This fall pushed Apple’s marketshare from 13.6 percent to 12.1 percent, though Apple is holding strong to its #2 spot.

        • Android, Samsung Improve in Third Quarter

          Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) released analysis of the results of its research on mobile phone operating systems and brands for the calendar quarter that ended September 30, 2016. This analysis features findings about market share trends in mobile phone operating systems and brands in the US from July-September 2016.

          CIRP research shows that the two major mobile operating systems, Google Android and Apple iOS, controlled about 97% of US customer mobile phone activations in the third quarter (Chart 1). In the September 2016 quarter, Android accounted for 71% of US activations, the same share as the year-ago September 2015 quarter, and up from 63% in the June 2016 quarter. iOS accounted for 26% of activations, about the same as its 27% share in the year-ago September 2015 quarter, but down from its 32% share in the June 2016 quarter.

        • This Android keyboard trick fixes bad autocorrect suggestions
        • 11 things Android phone makers should copy from the Pixe
        • Review: 7 PDF editing tools for iOS and Android
        • Qualcomm acquires NXP Semiconductors for $47 billion
        • Moto M with metal body and Snapdragon 625 leaks

Free Software/Open Source

  • Pitt, partners create open source software for cancer genome data

    Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, UPMC and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center have created software to help investigators more easily navigate genomic cancer data.

    The free, open-source software, profiled Thursday in the journal PLOS ONE, processes data generated by The Cancer Genome Atlas project. Funding for the new software was provided by the Institute of Precision Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.

  • Starting a Career as an Open Source Developer

    “Disney, John Deere and Walmart. Any idea what these three companies have in common?”

    The question was asked on Wednesday by Brandon Keepers, GitHub’s head of open source. He was about three minutes into a session he was conducting called “Contributing to Your Career” at the All Things Open conference.

    “All three of these companies are actually software companies,” he answered after taking a moment to tease the audience. “They do other things. They build tractors, protect trademarks and build amusement parks, and sell groceraies and things that you need everyday. But they’ve also become software companies and they’ve become really active in open source — and they’re not alone.”

  • A look at how retail giant Walmart is becoming open source first

    It’s rare that we speak to large, global enterprises that are redesigning their technology stack and culture around an open source first policy. More often than not companies stick to their legacy vendors of choice, or they shift to ‘reliable’ cloud/digital vendors where similar buying rules apply.

    However, that’s exactly what Walmart is doing. Since acquiring performance lifecycle management start-up OneOps four years ago, in order to implement a DevOps approach to its e-commerce environment, the retailer is also prioritising open source over everything else – with it having made a big investment in OpenStack for its infrastructure.

  • Open source no longer scares the enterprise

    Open source breaks the rules on corporate procurement, but developers never play by the rules and now open source has sneaked in through the back door

    A study by Vanson Bourne for Rackspace reports that businesses are making big savings by using open source.

    In the survey of 300 organisations, three out of five respondents cited cost savings as the top benefit, reducing average cost per project by £30,146.

  • Defining MANO: Open Source vs. Standards

    As service providers are working to deploy NFV-based services, they are finding that management and orchestration (MANO) is a pain point. One of the big questions about MANO is how we go from a high-level architecture diagram to interoperable implementations. Do we take the traditional telco path and work through standards bodies? Or do we take a cloud-centric path and focus on open source development projects?

  • Eclipse Kapua IoT Project Gets Code from Eurotech and Red Hat

    The nascent Eclipse Kapua project got a big boost this week from its chief sponsors, open source solutions provider Red Hat and M2M/IoT platform provider Eurotech. The two companies announced their first official code contributions to the recently approved project, through which they are developing a modular, cloud-based platform for managing IoT gateways and smart edge devices. Red Hat and Eurotech collaborated to propose the project last June.

  • APIStrat Boston to highlight link between APIs and open source projects

    This year’s API Strategy and Practice (known as APIStrat)—to be held in Boston on November 2-4—has a strong open source component running throughout the event, and with little wonder. Successful API strategies more often than not either contribute new open source projects, or draw on the rich source of tools already built by the open source community.

    The API mindset has always lent itself to an open source ethos. APIs are all about opening up internal assets, data, and systems in order to connect and collaborate with a wider ecosystem of partners and end users. Amongst leadership businesses that have a strong API strategy, seeing so many contribute and use open source projects is not surprising, and this is reflected throughout this year’s APIStrat program. After all, two of the key specifications formats that are used across the industry to describe APIs—the Open API Initiative and RAML—are both open source projects. Projects like Mashape’s Kong and Tyk’s API Gateway are both open source and gaining greater recognition and uptake.

  • Phil Shapiro: Open Source and Social Justice Advocate

    If you visit the public library in Tacoma Park, Maryland, you might run into Phil Shapiro, who is in charge of their computer lab. Or if you visit Foss Force (you’ve heard of that website, right?) you’ll see his byline here, here, here, and many other places.

    According to my thesaurus, “Phil Shapiro” is a synonym for “prolific.” And then there’s Twitter, where Phil holds forth on many topics, often many times daily.

    For a change, this video is a story that’s not by Phil, but about Phil. How did he get into Linux? How well is Linux accepted by library patrons? How do the Open Source and Social Justice movements complement each other, and how they they work together better? All good questions for Phil, so they’re questions we asked him. And his answers are enlightening — but also light-hearted, because Phil is a light-hearted guy.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Our Role in Protecting the Internet — With Your Help

        Protecting the security of the Internet requires everyone. We talked about this theme in a recent post, and in this post we’ll expand on the role Mozilla plays, and how our work supports and relies on the work of the other participants in the Web.

      • Mozilla Hosts Seventh Annual MozFest in London this weekend

        Now in its seventh year, MozFest is the world’s go-to event for the free and open Internet movement. Part meeting place for like-minded individuals keen to share ideas; part playground for Web enthusiasts, hobbyist netizens and seasoned open source technonauts alike, part hack-a-thon; part living breathing creative brainstorm; part speaker-series; MozFest is a buzzy hive of activity. It attracts thousands of visitors each year (1,800 in 2015) from as many as 50 countries around the world, making it the biggest unconference of its kind.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice 5.1.6 Office Suite Released for Enterprise Deployments with 68 Fixes

      Today, October 27, 2016, we’ve been informed by The Document Foundation about the general availability of the sixth maintenance update to the LibreOffice 5.1 open-source and cross-platform office suite.

      You’re reading that right, LibreOffice 5.1 got a new update not the current stable LibreOffice 5.2 branch, as The Document Foundation is known to maintain at least to versions of its popular office suite, one that is very well tested and can be used for enterprise deployments and another one that offers the latest technologies.

    • LibreOffice 5.1.6 available for download

      The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 5.1.6, the sixth minor release of the LibreOffice 5.1 family launched in January 2016, targeted at individual users and enterprise deployments. Users of previous LibreOffice releases should start planning the update to the new version.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • FSF announces change in general counsel

      On Thursday, October 27, 2016, Eben Moglen stepped down as general counsel to the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Moglen, who in addition to being a professor of law and legal history at Columbia University, is the founder, president, and executive director of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), and a former FSF board member, has generously served as the FSF’s pro bono general counsel for the last 23 years.

    • Licensing resource series: How to choose a license for your own work

      We provide plenty of resources when it comes to picking a license. From our list of licenses to essays on copyleft, if you are looking to figure out what license is right for you there is plenty of information to rely upon. But this month’s resource helps to pull that information together in one place to make selecting a license simple.

      Our guide, “How to choose a license for your work” is one stop browsing for answering many of the questions you may have when it comes to finding the right license. It provides recommendations based on the state of the work, but also based on the type of work that it is. While the Affero GNU General Public License version 3 works great for server software, documentation would probably be better served with a license directed at such, like the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.3. Smaller works can often get away without a strong copyleft, but still need to address patents, and so Apache License version 2.0 might be appropriate. The guide explains the reasoning behind the different recommendation for these and more. It also links to all those other resources mentioned above in case you need to dive in deeper when picking out a license.

    • Friday ‘Frankenstein’ Directory IRC meetup: October 28th starting at 1pm EDT/17:00 UTC
    • Free Software Directory meeting recap for October 21st, 2016

  • Public Services/Government

  • Licensing/Legal

    • Conservancy’s First GPL Enforcement Feedback Session

      As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I had the privilege of attending Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELC EU) and the OpenWrt Summit in Berlin, Germany earlier this month. I gave a talk (for which the video is available below) at the OpenWrt Summit. I also had the opportunity to host the first of many conference sessions seeking feedback and input from the Linux developer community about Conservancy’s GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers.

      ELC EU has no “BoF Board” where you can post informal sessions. So, we scheduled the session by word of mouth over a lunch hour. We nevertheless got an good turnout (given that our session’s main competition was eating food :) of about 15 people.

      Most notably and excitingly, Harald Welte, well-known Netfilter developer and leader of gpl-violations.org, was able to attend. Harald talked about his work with gpl-violations.org enforcing his own copyrights in Linux, and explained why this was important work for users of the violating devices. He also pointed out that some of the companies that were sued during his most active period of gpl-violations.org are now regular upstream contributors.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Chemistry project raises up the next generation of researchers

      In 2007 I took part in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) developing the Avogadro application. As we were developing Avogadro, we founded The Open Chemistry project as an umbrella project to develop related tools for chemistry and materials science. Our goal is to bring high quality open source tools to research communities working in these areas, and to develop other tools to complement the Avogadro molecular editor.

      This year we were very pleased to be selected as a mentoring organization for GSoC; a few of our mentors are Geoff Hutchison, Adam Tenderholt, David Koes, and Karol Langner, who are all long-time contributors in related projects. And, we were lucky to get three slots for student projects. To get started, we lined up a number of mentors from related communities, and developed an ideas page.

  • Programming/Development

    • Getting Groovy with data

      Groovy is an almost perfect complement to Java, providing a compact, highly expressive and compatible scripting environment for my use. Of course, Groovy isn’t totally perfect; as with any programming language, its design is based on a series of trade-offs that need to be understood in order to produce quality results. But for me, Groovy’s advantages far outweigh its disadvantages, making it an indispensable part of my data analysis toolkit. In a series of articles, I’ll explain how and why.

Leftovers

  • Spreadsheets have ruled Earth for too long. Business must embrace the cloud [iophk: “the pie chart has already done untold damage, how much more when coupled with clown computing?”]

    The one certainty in business software and services is that there will always be more acronyms. At the moment, though, there’s more to the sector than just another jargon explosion: we’re moving towards a new way of looking at IT, one that applies best-practice business processes to any company—however small it may be, and however fast it may grow.

    This sounds good, but wading through websites full of perky lists of generic benefits can leave many IT managers still wondering exactly what they’re being sold.

  • Finland ranks in top 3 travel destinations for 2017

    In its annual ranking, independent-travel publisher Lonely Planet names Canada, Colombia and Finland as prime destinations for 2017.

  • 13 IT leaders confess their scary stories and deep, dark fears

    Today’s IT leaders are facing a world of unknowns and underlying fears on a daily basis – from the ransomware that could take down their organizations, to the emergence of new digital disruptors that could render their business obsolete, to the absence of quality IT talent they need to stay ahead of these and other threats. Although scary, it is comforting to know that you are not alone.

    We asked 13 IT leaders to share their stories of unexpected or frightening events in their career, or the threats on the horizon making them nervous for the future of IT. Read on for their tales from the IT crypt.

  • Science

    • Google’s neural networks invent their own encryption

      Computers are keeping secrets. A team from Google Brain, Google’s deep learning project, has shown that machines can learn how to protect their messages from prying eyes.

      Researchers Martín Abadi and David Andersen demonstrate that neural networks, or “neural nets” – computing systems that are loosely based on artificial neurons – can work out how to use a simple encryption technique.

      In their experiment, computers were able to make their own form of encryption using machine learning, without being taught specific cryptographic algorithms. The encryption was very basic, especially compared to our current human-designed systems. Even so, it is still an interesting step for neural nets, which the authors state “are generally not meant to be great at cryptography”.

  • Hardware

    • 2001: An Apple Odyssey

      A lot about Apple has changed since 2001, but one thing that hasn’t are the haters.

      Exactly 15 years ago this week, Apple released the iPod, a device that was met with a famously harsh one-line review from Slashdot founder Rob Malda: “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.”

      If you’re an Apple fan, you know that quote inside and out, because it was a great example of the haters being wrong and a nice quote to pull out of your hat.

    • The question about ‘grand strategy’ that made Tim Cook unhappy on Apple’s earning call was based on a Harvard professor’s theory that makes uncomfortable reading for Apple

      Last night, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave a terse, unhappy answer to this question from UBS analyst Steven Milunovich: “Does Apple today have a grand strategy for what you want to do?”

      Milunovich asked the question two different ways, and Cook gave only non-answers, one of which was “as usual, we’re not going to talk about what’s ahead.”

      There is a reason Milunovich asked that question. It’s not merely about Cook’s tradition of not giving clues about what Apple will do next. Rather, Milunovich’s question was based on a theory by Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen. The theory makes uncomfortable reading for observers of Apple, and perhaps for insiders too.

  • Security

    • Thursday’s security updates
    • Mirai will be dwarfed by future Android botnet DDoS attacks, Lookout warns

      THE MIRAI BOTNET will seem like nothing compared to the havoc that is caused when hackers turn their attention to hijacking Android smartphones, Lookout’s security research chief has warned.

      Speaking to the INQUIRER, Mike Murray said it would be easy for cyber crooks to take over millions of smartphones, noting how often the Android requires patching.

    • Deal Seeks to Limit Open-Source Bugs

      Seeking to spot potential security vulnerabilities in systems that increasingly rely on open source software, software license optimization vendor Flexera Software has acquired a specialist in identifying potentially vulnerable software components.

      Flexera, Itasca, Ill., said Thursday (Oct. 27) it is acquiring San Francisco-based Palamida Inc. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

    • Senator Wants to Classify Insecure Internet of Things Devices As ‘Harmful’

      A massive attack carried out with a zombie army of hacked internet-connected devices caused intermittent outages on Friday, preventing tens of thousands of people from accessing popular sites such as Twitter, Reddit, and Netflix.

      For many security experts, an attack like that one, which leveraged thousands of easy-to-hack Internet of Things such as DVRs and surveillance cameras—weaponized thanks to a mediocre but effective malware known as Mirai—is just a sign of things to come.

      That’s why Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) wants the US government to do something about it.

    • Senator Prods Federal Agencies on IoT Mess

      The co-founder of the newly launched Senate Cybersecurity Caucus is pushing federal agencies for possible solutions and responses to the security threat from insecure “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices, such as the network of hacked security cameras and digital video recorders that were reportedly used to help bring about last Friday’s major Internet outages.

      In letters to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Virginia Senator Mark Warner (D) called the proliferation of insecure IoT devices a threat to resiliency of the Internet.

    • European Parliament increases budget for EU-Fossa

      On Wednesday, the European Parliament agreed to a follow-up to the European Commission’s ‘EU Free and Open Source Software Auditing’ project (EU-Fossa). The plan for the next phase is included in the EU 2017 budget that was agreed upon by the European Parliament.

    • European Parliament votes to extend Free Software security audits

      Remember how I raised €1 million to demonstrate security and freedom aren’t opposites? Well here’s what happened next and how we are going to move forward with this.

      In 2014, two major security vulnerabilities, Heartbleed and Shellshock, were discovered. Both concerned Free Software projects that are widely used throughout the Internet, on computers, tablets, and smartphones alike. My colleague Max Andersson from the Swedish Greens and I proposed a so-called “pilot project”, the Free and Open Source Software Audit (FOSSA).

    • Princeton Upskills U on Open Source Security

      During Wednesday’s Upskill U course, lecturer Gary Sockrider, principal security technologist for Arbor Networks , explained the history of DDoS attacks, case studies of recent attacks, and the business impact of these security threats. DDoS attacks not only raise operational expenses, but can also negatively affect an organization’s brand, and result in loss of revenue and customers. (Listen to Security: Tackling DDoS.)

      “Having visibility is key, you can’t stop something you can’t see. Having good visibility across your own network is vital in finding and stopping these attacks,” said Sockrider. “You can leverage common tools and technology that are already available on the network equipment you own today such as flow technologies, looking at SIP logs … Obviously you’ll want to get to some specific intelligent DDoS mitigation in the end.”

    • GNU Tar “Pointy Feather” Vulnerability Disclosed (CVE-2016-6321)

      Last week was the disclosure of the Linux kernel’s Dirty COW vulnerability while the latest high-profile open-source project going public with a new security CVE is GNU’s Tar. Tar CVE-2016-6321 is also called POINTYFEATHER according to the security researchers.

      The GNU Pointy Feather vulnerability comes down to a pathname bypass on the Tar extraction process. Regardless of the path-name(s) specified on the command-line, the attack allows for file and directory overwrite attacks using specially crafted tar archives.

    • Let’s Encrypt and The Ford Foundation Aim To Create a More Inclusive Web

      Let’s Encrypt was awarded a grant from The Ford Foundation as part of its efforts to financially support its growing operations. This is the first grant that has been awarded to the young nonprofit, a Linux Foundation project which provides free, automated and open SSL certificates to more than 13 million fully-qualified domain names (FQDNs).

      The grant will help Let’s Encrypt make several improvements, including increased capacity to issue and manage certificates. It also covers costs of work recently done to add support for Internationalized Domain Name certificates.

      “The people and organizations that Ford Foundation serves often find themselves on the short end of the stick when fighting for change using systems we take for granted, like the Internet,” Michael Brennan, Internet Freedom Program Officer at Ford Foundation, said. “Initiatives like Let’s Encrypt help ensure that all people have the opportunity to leverage the Internet as a force for change.”

    • How security flaws work: SQL injection

      Thirty-one-year-old Laurie Love is currently staring down the possibility of 99 years in prison. After being extradited to the US recently, he stands accused of attacking systems belonging to the US government. The attack was allegedly part of the #OpLastResort hack in 2013, which targeted the US Army, the US Federal Reserve, the FBI, NASA, and the Missile Defense Agency in retaliation over the tragic suicide of Aaron Swartz as the hacktivist infamously awaited trial.

    • How To Build A Strong Security Awareness Program

      At the Security Awareness Summit this August in San Francisco, a video clip was shown that highlights the need to develop holistic security awareness. The segment showed an employee being interviewed as a subject matter expert in his office cubicle. Unfortunately, all his usernames and passwords were on sticky notes behind him, facing the camera and audience for all to see.

      I bring this story up not to pick on this poor chap but to highlight the fact that security awareness is about human behavior, first and foremost. Understand that point and you are well on your way to building a more secure culture and organization.

      My work as director of the Security Awareness Training program at the SANS Institute affords me a view across hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of employees trying to build a more secure workforce and society. As we near the end of this year’s National Cyber Security Awareness Month, here are two tips to incorporate robust security awareness training into your organization and daily work.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Britain, U.S. sending planes, troops to deter Russia in the east

      Britain said on Wednesday it will send fighter jets to Romania next year and the United States promised troops, tanks and artillery to Poland in NATO’s biggest military build-up on Russia’s borders since the Cold War.

      Germany, Canada and other NATO allies also pledged forces at a defense ministers meeting in Brussels on the same day two Russian warships armed with cruise missiles entered the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Denmark, underscoring East-West tensions.

      In Madrid, the foreign ministry said Russia had withdrawn a request to refuel three warships in Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta after NATO allies said they could be used to target civilians in Syria.

      The ships were part of an eight-ship carrier battle group – including Russia’s sole aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov – that is expected to join around 10 other Russian vessels already off the Syrian coast, diplomats said.

    • Yazidi women who escaped from Isis win EU human rights prize

      Two Yazidi women who survived sexual enslavement by Islamic State before escaping and becoming “inspirational” advocates for their community in Iraq have won the EU’s prestigious Sakharov human rights prize.

      Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar were abducted with other Yazidi women in August 2014 when their home village of Kocho in Sinjar, northern Iraq, was attacked by Isis jihadis. It was one of the darkest episodes Iraq has suffered at the hands of the terrorist group.

      The annual Sakharov prize for freedom of thought, established in 1988, is named after the Soviet physicist and outspoken dissident Andrei Sakharov and is awarded to “individuals who have made an exceptional contribution to the fight for human rights across the globe”. It has previously been awarded to the likes of Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela.

      The EU described Murad and Aji Bashar as “public advocates for the Yazidi community in Iraq, a religious minority that has been the subject of a genocidal campaign by IS militants”.

    • Assyrian Woman: ISIS Murdered My Son Because He Refused to Convert

      An Assyrian Christian woman has shared how members of the Islamic State terrorist group brutally murdered her son because he refused to deny his faith in Jesus Christ.

      During an interview with the Southern California-based human rights group Roads of Success, Syrian mother Alice Assaf recalled how ISIS overtook her hometown, the Damascus suburb of Adra al-Ummaliya, in 2014, and immediately began killing Christians.

      “Members of 200 different families were killed right before our eyes,” Assaf said, according to an English translation provided by Roads of Success in a YouTube video. “They shot them. We witnessed the shooting of so many. So I told my children [and thought] it was better for us to die in our own home so that our other family members would know our fate. When we got home, one person said to me, … ‘ISIS is killing Christians.’”

      Assaf shared how militants killed indiscriminately, massacring at least six men and about 250 children – all under four years old – at a nearby bakery.

    • ‘The day I killed my rapist’

      A young Tunisian woman was photographed naked by a friend of her father’s. He then used the images to silence her – until one day she snapped and took a bloody revenge.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • The strange tale of a dating site’s attacks on WikiLeaks founder Assange

      For an online dating site, toddandclare.com seems really good at cloak-and-dagger stuff. Disconnected phones. Mystery websites. Actions that ricochet around the globe.

      But the attention grabber is the Houston-based company’s target: Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, whose steady dumps of leaked emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign have given supporters of Donald Trump the only cheering news of the last few weeks.

      In some ways, toddandclare.com’s campaign against Assange is as revelatory as the leaked emails themselves, illustrating the powerful, sometimes unseen, forces that oppose WikiLeaks.

      Whoever is behind the dating site has marshaled significant resources to target Assange, enough to gain entry into a United Nations body, operate in countries in Europe, North America and the Caribbean, conduct surveillance on Assange’s lawyer in London, obtain the fax number of Canada’s prime minister and seek to prod a police inquiry in the Bahamas.

      And they’ve done it at a time when WikiLeaks has become a routine target of Democratic politicians who portray Assange as a stooge of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his reported efforts to disrupt the U.S. election.

      One part of toddandclare’s two-pronged campaign put a megaphone to unproven charges that Assange made contact with a young Canadian girl in the Bahamas through the internet with the intention of molesting her. The second part sought to entangle him in a plan to receive $1 million from the Russian government.

    • Hillary, Wikileaks, Russia – theater of absurd goes viral

      Can people STOP referring to Wikileaks as a news organization. They are a foreign agent, supported by Russia, publishing stolen data,” tweeted Michael McFall, who is considered among the most controversial former US ambassador in Russia. During his tenure in Moscow, McFall was surrounded by controversies and continues to air bombastic tweets.

      On the other hand, Wikileaks, which was launched 10 years ago, has turned out to be a unique phenomenon. It is redefining modern media by attempting to expose even media outlets, tabloids, and successful channels alongside their big bosses. The website has been publishing leaked documents to bring truth out in the open.

      The sad state of affairs of our times is that truth has to find its way to the public through questionable ways and instruments. In case of Wikileaks, most of their documents are accessed either via hacking or are supplied by whistleblowers.

      All these years Wikileaks has been revealing a lot of classified information on numerous subjects related to foreign and domestic policies of countries. Wikileaks publisher and journalists have won many awards. In 2015, it was nominated for the UN Mandela Prize and was nominated for six years in a row, from 2010 to 2015, for the Nobel Peace Prize.

    • Aide Said He Was Running ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’ in New WikiLeaks Dump

      A 12-page memo written by a former aide to President Bill Clinton illustrates how he and other advisers raised millions of dollars for the Clinton Foundation and the Clintons after they left the White House, according to a new batch of emails released by WikiLeaks.

      The purported memo from Doug Band details how he and his team locked in lucrative speaking deals for Bill Clinton and how Band leveraged his work at his global consulting firm, Teneo Strategies, to persuade clients to contribute to the Clinton Foundation. Band described his work as running “Bill Clinton Inc.”

      “We also have solicited and obtained, as appropriate, in-kind services for the president and his family – for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like,” Band allegedly said in the document.

    • The strange tale of a dating site’s attacks on WikiLeaks founder Assange

      For an online dating site, toddandclare.com seems really good at cloak-and-dagger stuff. Disconnected phones. Mystery websites. Actions that ricochet around the globe.

      But the attention grabber is the Houston-based company’s target: Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, whose steady dumps of leaked emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign have given supporters of Donald Trump the only cheering news of the last few weeks.

      In some ways, toddandclare.com’s campaign against Assange is as revelatory as the leaked emails themselves, illustrating the powerful, sometimes unseen, forces that oppose WikiLeaks.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • World wildlife ‘falls by 58% in 40 years’

      The Living Planet assessment, by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and WWF, suggests that if the trend continues that decline could reach two-thirds among vertebrates by 2020.

      The figures suggest that animals living in lakes, rivers and wetlands are suffering the biggest losses.

      Human activity, including habitat loss, wildlife trade, pollution and climate change contributed to the declines.

      Dr Mike Barrett. head of science and policy at WWF, said: “It’s pretty clear under ‘business as usual’ we will see continued declines in these wildlife populations. But I think now we’ve reached a point where there isn’t really any excuse to let this carry on.

    • World facing biggest mass extinction since dinosaurs – with two thirds of animals wiped out in 50 years

      The world is facing the biggest extinction since the dinosaurs, with seven in 10 mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles wiped out in just 50 years, a new report warns.

      The latest Living Planet report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) estimates that by 2020 populations of vertebrates will have fallen by 67 per cent since 1970.

      Extinction rates are now running at 100 times their natural level because of deforestation, hunting, pollution, overfishing and climate change.

    • World on track to lose two-thirds of wild animals by 2020, major report warns

      The number of wild animals living on Earth is set to fall by two-thirds by 2020, according to a new report, part of a mass extinction that is destroying the natural world upon which humanity depends.

      The analysis, the most comprehensive to date, indicates that animal populations plummeted by 58% between 1970 and 2012, with losses on track to reach 67% by 2020. Researchers from WWF and the Zoological Society of London compiled the report from scientific data and found that the destruction of wild habitats, hunting and pollution were to blame.

      The creatures being lost range from mountains to forests to rivers and the seas and include well-known endangered species such as elephants and gorillas and lesser known creatures such as vultures and salamanders.

    • Hectare by hectare, an indigenous man reforested a jungle in Indonesia’s burned-out heartland

      The road from this inland provincial capital in southern Borneo to the delta city of Banjarmasin is littered with degraded forests and peat swamps, hallmarks of a region at the epicenter of last year’s nationwide fire and haze crisis.

      Amid this arid landscape, however, lies an oasis: the peat forest of Jumpun Pambelom, whose name means “life source” in the local Dayak Ngaju language.

      The jungle here is largely the work of a Ngaju man named Januminro. Since 1998, when Indonesia experienced one of the worst episodes of uncontrolled burning in recorded history, the 54-year-old has bought up and reforested degraded land in the area — a hectare here, a few there.

      Today Jumpun Pambelom spans 18 hectares (44 acres) and bustles with with plant and animal life, from rare ulin trees (Eusideroxylon) and towering ramins (Gonystylus) to endangered Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) and sun bears (Helarctos malayanus), not to mention plenty of swamp fish and game.

    • Two-Thirds of Wild Animal Populations Could Be in Decline by 2020

      Around the world, more than two-thirds of wildlife populations could be in decline by the year 2020 because of human activity on the planet, says a new report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London, a conservation charity.

      The Living Planet Report, which the WWF puts out every two years, says that populations of vertebrates (including mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles) dropped by 58 percent between 1970 and 2012. Of course, quantifying biodiversity loss around the planet is no easy task, and there are long-raging debates about how much species loss spells disaster. The picture will get even worse if we don’t take steps now, the WWF says.

      “Within one generation, we’ve seen drastic declines in global wildlife populations,” James Snider, vice-president of science, research and innovation at WWF-Canada, told me. “One of the more troubling facts is that it seems, based on reporting [every two years], that the decline is worsening.” The 2014 report showed a 52 percent decline over the same period, he noted. “Based on that, we expect that by 2020, If no significant action is taken, it could be as much as two-thirds of populations that have declined since the 1970s.”

    • What the elk is that? Animal in SC for 1st time in centuries

      A wild elk has been spotted roaming the woodlands of South Carolina for the first time in more than 200 years.

      News outlets report that wildlife biologists are warning Upstate residents and tourists to stay away from a young bull elk that was seen in several places in Pickens County over the weekend.

      In response to social media posts showing people feeding the animal, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission biologist Justin McVey warned the public that the animal can cause serious injuries.

    • Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere Has Passed a Worrying Threshold

      The World Meteorological Organization’s greenhouse-gas bulletin shows that 2015 was the first year in which levels of carbon dioxide reached 400 parts per million on average across the globe. Part of what pushed the planet over this threshold was El Niño, which, according to the WMO, “reduced the capacity of ‘sinks’ like forests, vegetation and the oceans to absorb CO2.”

      But even when those sinks regain their ability to absorb carbon dioxide, warns the WMO secretary-general, Petteri Taalas, emissions will still need to be cut. “The El Niño event has disappeared. Climate change has not,” he explained. “Without tackling CO2 emissions, we cannot tackle climate change and keep temperature increases to below 2 °C above the preindustrial era.”

    • Officials say no drinking water impacted by Sunoco pipeline rupture

      The state Department of Environmental Protection and the EPA continue to sample water downstream from a gasoline pipeline break in Lycoming County, and say so far no levels of petroleum have been detected that would risk public health. Terry Maenza, a spokesman for American Water, which serves about 12,000 customers in the area near the accident says their sampling has also found no traces of the contaminant. American Water had shut down its intake valves and asked customers to conserve water on Friday after an estimated 55,000 gallons of gasoline spilled into a tributary of the Loyalsock Creek. The Loyalsock runs into the Susquehanna River. Officials speculate that the flood waters that likely caused the pipeline rupture were so heavy, that the leaked fuel was quickly diluted as it flowed downstream.

      “Everything is back to normal,” said Maenza. He says the company lifted it’s conservation request and resumed operations on Sunday.

      The flood waters have receded and Sunoco has removed the broken section of pipe, which was about 10 feet downstream from a bridge washed out by heavy rains. Sunoco officials say the bridge washed into the exposed pipe, which had been buried 5 feet below the creek.

      “Given the position of the pipe and the location of the bridge before and after the event, it’s clear that the bridge was responsible for the damage to the pipe,” said David R. Chalson, Sunoco Logistics senior vice-president for operations.

    • Clinton campaign declines to support Dakota pipeline protesters

      Hillary Clinton’s silence on the Dakota Access Pipeline has not gone unnoticed.

      On Thursday morning, young water protectors from Oceti Sakowin, the Seven Council Fires, and the Standing Rock Sioux Nation traveled to the Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, demanding that she speak out against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).

      The Hillary Clinton campaign has thus far remained silent about the 1,172-mile pipeline, which would cross both the Missouri River and the Ogallala Aquifer, threatening sacred indigenous land and water supplies. The group also called for solidarity actions at Clinton campaign offices across the country.

  • Finance

    • Twitter Failing? 5 Signs The Company Is In Trouble

      Twitter Inc. announced its quarterly results Thursday, which showed the company’s growth has slowed for the second consecutive quarter. The social network company has struggled to maintain a positive outlook as it faces competition from apps such as Instagram and Snapchat.

    • Twitter slashes jobs, Vine as it seeks profits

      Twitter appeased Wall Street by restructuring to chart a course to profitability and by showing early signs its business is perking up.

      User growth and revenue climbed more than analysts expected as the struggling social media company announced 350 job cuts, or about 9% of its workforce. It also said it would shutter mobile video app Vine.

      “The current quarter results were ahead of expectations and user figures provided some promising elements as well,” said Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser, who is maintaining his price target of $26 and a buy recommendation on the stock.

      The effort to right the company comes as potential buyers such as Google, Salesforce and Walt Disney declined to pursue an acquisition. The lack of interest has cranked up pressure on Twitter’s embattled management.

      Jack Dorsey, the Twitter chief executive who returned to the helm last year to reinvigorate growth, declined to comment on the takeover discussions, saying only that Twitter’s board is committed to “maximizing long-term shareholder value.”

    • Twitter to Cut 9% of Workforce as Q3 Earnings Top Expectations

      Twitter will lay off 9% of its employees as the company struggles to achieve profitability, while the social-media company’s third-quarter 2016 revenue and earnings exceeded Wall Street expectations.

      Twitter said the job cuts will focus primarily on reorganizing its sales, partnerships and marketing operations. The company had 3,910 employees as of the end of September, meaning Twitter is pink-slipping about 350 staffers.

      The layoffs come as Twitter showed some slight improvement in financial performance for Q3. The company posted quarterly revenue of $616 million, up 8% year-over-year, and adjusted net income of $92 million, or 13 cents per share. Wall Street expected Twitter to post revenue of $606 million and adjusted EPS of 9 cents. Factoring in stock-based compensation and other items, Twitter’s net loss in the quarter was $103 million, an improvement from a net loss of $132 million in the year-earlier period.

    • [Old] CETA: The Canadian TTIP nobody noticed until it was (almost) too late

      Since Ars wrote about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) last year, it has gradually moved up the UK’s political agenda, culminating in the recent pledge by Jeremy Corbyn to scrap it if he is elected as prime minister before it is completed, and to fight it if he is not. But while many people are increasingly worried about what might happen with TTIP, there’s another trade agreement, one which has already been signed, which is about to bring in many of the same controversial measures almost unnoticed.

    • Here’s Why Amazon Stock Just Collapsed

      Shares fell over 6% in after-market trading Thursday

      Amazon.com Inc reported a lower-than-expected quarterly profit on Thursday as expenses rose and the company provided a disappointing fourth-quarter revenue forecast.

      Amazon, whose shares were down 6.8 percent in after-hours trading, said its net income rose to $252 million, or 52 cents per share, from $79 million, or 17 cents per share, a year earlier. It was company’s sixth straight profitable quarter.

    • ‘We’re Not Helping Our Kids by Keeping the Deficit Down’ – CounterSpin interview with Dean Baker on the debt boogeyman

      The announcement that one agenda item for the final presidential debate would be “debt and entitlements” was not surprising. “Debt and entitlements,” linked together that way, are always on corporate media’s agenda, but though the terms are tossed around a lot, they’re rarely unpacked or explained. In place of facts, we get fear. The Chicago Tribune said if they could inject one debate question, it would be: “Secretary Clinton, Mr. Trump, you have children. Why aren’t you scared?”

      Well, Americans face many serious challenges. Are runaway national “debt and entitlements” one of them? We’re joined now by Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, where you’ll find his blog, Beat the Press, and he’s the author of, most recently, Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Dean Baker.

    • UN rights expert urges States not to sign the ‘flawed’ CETA treaty and put it to referendum

      The trade deal set to be signed by the European Union and Canada is a corporate-driven, fundamentally flawed treaty which should not be signed or ratified without a referendum in each country concerned, a United Nations human rights expert says.

      Alfred de Zayas, the UN Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, deplored the pressures brought on the Belgian regional parliament of Wallonia, which initially said it would not approve the treaty but later said its concerns had been met. “A culture of bullying and intimidation becomes apparent when it comes to trade agreements that currently get priority over human rights,” the expert said.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Jill Stein: The Best Way to Boost the Economy Is by Saving the Planet

      I believe the U.S. economy needs a Green New Deal: an ambitious yet secure economic and environmental program that will revive the economy, turn the tide on climate change, and make wars for oil obsolete—allowing us to cut our bloated, dangerous military budget in half. Building on the concept of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Green New Deal calls on communities, government, and ordinary people on the scale of World War II to transition our energy system and economy to 100% clean, renewable energy by 2030.

      The author of the best-known series of studies on transitioning to 100% clean energy, Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson, asserts that it is technologically and economically feasible. Bill Nye and others note that we have the technology to make this transition possible—and the science shows that we must. The only missing ingredient is political will.

    • Be A Realist – Vote Jill Stein

      It cracks me up whenever I see pawns of the Democratic Party like Robert Reich try to argue that supporting Hillary Clinton is the “realistic and practical” way to forward the progressive agenda. It always makes me wonder what reality they’re referring to when they call such creative fabrications “realistic.” Does Mr. Reich hail from Narnia, perhaps? Some magical gumdrop fantasy land where everyone walks backward and M. Night Shyamalan’s movies keep getting better and better?

    • ‘Ethical deficit’: New concerns over foundation

      Hillary Clinton’s top aides worried about foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation ahead of 2016, according to a NYT report based on a new Wikileaks release.

    • Memo shows Bill Clinton’s wealth was tied to Clinton Foundation

      In a 2011 memo, an aide to Bill Clinton laid out the messy relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the former president’s personal interests, detailing how some foundation donors also paid Clinton to speak and provide consulting services.

      The memo was released on Wednesday as part of a Wikileaks dump of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta’s hacked emails.

      Doug Band, a long-time aide to Bill Clinton, wrote the 2011 memo as part of an internal audit at the Clinton Foundation. In trying to explain his role in the Foundation, Band also brought up a series of instances he and his consulting company, Teneo Holdings, helped Bill Clinton secure for-profit contracts.

      The memo, which was being circulated to some in Clinton’s inner circle including Podesta, reinforces Republican criticisms of the blurred lines between the foundation and professional interests of the Clintons and their associates.

      “Independent of our fundraising and decision-making activities on behalf of the Foundation, we have dedicated ourselves to helping the President secure and engage in for-profit activities — including speeches, books, and advisory service engagements,” Band wrote. “In that context, we have in effect served as agents, lawyers, managers and implementers to secure speaking, business and advisory service deals. In support of the President’s for-profit activity, we also have solicited and obtained, as appropriate, in-kind services for the President and his family — for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like.”

      At one point, Band even referred to the former president’s money-making enterprises as “Bill Clinton, Inc.”

      Band said and Justin Cooper, another long-time aide, weren’t separately compensated for helping Bill Clinton profit.

    • Wikileaks: Damaging analysis of Sanders’s single payer plan was likely a coordinated Clinton hit

      A search through Wikileaks’s database reveals that a week before a damaging, highly critical analysis of Bernie Sanders’s single payer healthcare plan was released by healthcare expert Kenneth Thorpe, with no disclosure of any affiliation with any campaign, the Clinton campaign was floating Thorpe’s name out as a vehicle to attack the Senator’s Medicare-for-all plan.

      Thorpe’s analysis was reported by Vox on January 28th, in an article titled “Study: Bernie Sanders’s single-payer plan is almost twice as expensive as he says.” A flurry of articles and editorials touting the study followed — for example, Paul Krugman’s January 28th editorial “Single Payer Trouble,” or the New York Time’s report “Left-Leaning Economists Question Cost of Bernie Sanders’s Plans.” These articles all fed the notion that Sanders was a pie-in-the-sky, puppies and rainbow dreamer, with no real grasp on reality.

      Others, however, such as single payer advocates David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, (“On Kenneth Thorpe’s Analysis of Senator Sanders’s Single-Payer Reform Plan”), claimed convincingly that Thorpe’s analysis rested on highly questionable, or flatly incorrect, assumptions and that it also contradicted previous studies that Thorpe himself had done. Sanders’s campaign, meanwhile, called the analysis “a total hatchet job.”

      As it turns out, a week before Thorpe’s analysis was released, in a January 19th thread discussing the merits of attacking Sanders on healthcare, Jake Sullivan, a top Clinton advisor, floated the idea of using Thorpe to attack Sanders on healthcare…

    • Eric Garner’s Daughter Slams Clinton Campaign Over Emails Confusing Police Brutality And Gun Violence

      Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, a black man who was killed by a NYPD officer in 2014, is slamming Hillary Clinton’s campaign over leaked emails from the server of John Podesta, the campaign’s chairman.

      “I know we have Erica Garner issues but we don’t want to mention Eric at all? I can see her coming after us for leaving him out of the piece,” wrote Nick Merrill, a spokesman for the campaign, in the email leaked from Podesta’s private server and posted on WikiLeaks.

      The email correspondence was a discussion about whether the death of Garner’s father should be used in a Clinton opinion piece for New York Daily News on gun violence.

      “It was obvious that the two white men that were on the email chain didn’t even know that my dad wasn’t shot,” Garner told The Huffington Post via Twitter direct message. “It was clear that he was just a dead body for them to manipulate for their use. White liberals have been trying to cram racism into the box of gun violence for a while now.”

    • Erica Garner Slams Clinton Campaign, Staffers for ‘Exploiting’ Father’s Death in Wikileaks Emails
    • Why would you want to “use” my dad?’: Eric Garner’s daughter slams Clinton campaign over WikiLeaks emails

      Erica Garner, whose father died in a chokehold by a New York City police officer in 2014, scolded the Clinton campaign in a series of tweets Thursday over hacked internal emails published by WikiLeaks that mentioned her and her father.

      The emails, exchanged between several Clinton staffers, had discussed a draft of a Clinton op-ed on gun violence that was eventually published in the New York Daily News in late March.

    • Neo-McCarthyism masks the US’s real problems

      AMID a tense stand-off in the Middle East between Russia and the United States, it is not surprising that tensions are rising by the day. Rhetoric coming out of the White House and the Kremlin is increasingly antagonistic, which has had damaging implications for the battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

      This election can be characterised by the blatant red scare tactics by Clinton and the Democrats, largely aimed at insinuating that Trump, WikiLeaks, and even Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein are de-facto Kremlin agents.

      It feels like we are in the 1960 election rather than 2016.

      The neo-McCarthyism adopted by the Clinton campaign to deflect any reasonable criticisms one may have of her flawed candidacy is unnecessary and paranoid.

      Not only this, but it draws attention away from the real issues and problems that the US faces as a nation — many of which Clinton and fellow centrists have been the root cause of.

    • Hacker-founded Pirate Party could win Iceland election

      Iceland’s radical Pirate Party, run by a former WikiLeaks worker who wants to be a political “Robin Hood,” could lead the Nordic nation’s next government after Saturday’s election.

      The Pirate Party, started four years ago, is part of a wave of populist groups gaining ground in Europe, from Austria to Italy, amid discontent with political scandals and a stalled economic recovery. Iceland’s economy collapsed after the 2008 financial crisis, and in April the prime minister resigned after being named in the Panama Papers scandal.

      “We stand for enacting changes that have to do with reforming the systems, rather than changing minor things that might easily be changed back,” said Birgitta Jónsdóttir, 49, the party’s leader and self-described “poetician.” “We do not define ourselves as left or right but rather as a party that focuses on the systems. In other words, we consider ourselves hackers.”

      Formed in 2012 to lobby for Internet copyright reform, the Pirate Party has broadened its platform to include advocating for direct democracy, total government transparency, decriminalizing drugs and even offering asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

    • Iceland’s ‘Pirate’ Jonsdottir: an accidental politician

      The public face of the Icelandic Pirate Party, Birgitta Jonsdottir is a hacker, cyberspace anarchist, poet — and a rather reluctant politician.

      However, she could find herself strutting the corridors of power if the Pirate Party emerges as expected as the strongest group in Saturday’s election in the North Atlantic island nation.

    • The Truth About Donald Trump’s Hair
    • The Greens are a movement party

      The Greens have elected hundreds of people to office at the local level, and Greens win about 34 percent of the time that we run in local elections. So please do not allow Pacifica to repeat a myth that the corporate media creates.

    • National Geographic Rebrands, Drops ‘Channel’ From Its Name

      NatGeo is finally dropping “Channel” from its name. A year after bringing all the other National Geographic entities — the magazine, the National Geographic Society — under the 20th Century Fox corporate umbrella, National Geographic Partners is going to start acting like one big adventurous family, and it’s giving itself a new tagline to boot: “Further.”

      “[‘Channel’] suggests this linear television destinations and increasingly that’s not the way people are consuming us,” explained National Geographic Global Networks CEO Courtney Monroe. “We are one, and we are working more closely together.” Monroe put forth the upcoming NatGeo series “Mars”, premiering Nov. 14, as an example: Yes, it’s a big event series, a hybrid of documentary-style interviews interwoven with a fictional narrative about the mission to colonize the Red Planet. But, she pointed out, it’s also the cover story of the November issue of the National Geographic magazine, as well as the topic of two books — one for kids, and one for adults.

    • WikiLeaks drops another tranche of #PodestaEmails from Clinton campaign chair

      There will be a total of 50,000 emails released in the lead up to November 8, according to WikiLeaks. So far, 35,594 have been published.

    • WikiLeaks Releases 21st Batch of Clinton Campaign Chair Podesta’s Emails

      WikiLeaks uploaded on Friday the 21st batch of emails of the US Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.

    • Clinton’s camp feared Joe Biden run, worked hard to kill it

      Biden would have sailed away from Trump much earlier and faster than Hillary Clinton did. But beyond the easy victory she’s likely to win anyway all told, he doesn’t have much to recommend him over her, and lacks many of her — yes, I know! — her scruples.

    • Why 5% for the Green Party is a win for America

      In 1854, a few thousand people gathered in Jackson, Michigan to launch an independent challenge to a national political system dominated by two parties. “Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements,” a party leader later recalled, “we gathered from the four winds…[with] every external circumstance against us.” This challenge was fueled by the radical abolitionist movement that united white workers and formerly enslaved Africans against the criminal institution of slavery, as a response to the political crisis caused by the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

      In just two years, this insurgent third party — created by movement activists — had gained ground across the Northern states, challenging the Whig Party. In short order this insurgent “third party” had become a major opposition party. By 1858 they had won an influential foothold in Congress, and by 1860, that party leader — Abraham Lincoln — was elected President of the United States.

      It’s painfully obvious that the Republican Party has strayed dramatically from its early radical roots in abolitionism, equality, and peace. But it’s also quite fitting that, in 2016, as that party is declining into dangerous reactionary know-nothingism, the opening for a new party rooted in radical equality, environmental justice, and peace to rise up is bigger than ever. Amid the raging flames of austerity, endless war, impending climate change, and the most polarized election in modern memory, a record 57 percent of Americans are yearning for another choice, and for an independent political party that will truly represent their interests, according to a recent Gallup poll.

      [...]

      Our grassroots, people-powered campaign has achieved incredible gains in this election cycle, despite having had a fraction of the media coverage and an even smaller fraction of the vast resources of the two major parties. With the material benefits that come with 5 percent of the popular vote, we will have unprecedented resources to continue building this movement for progressive change, shoring up power from below, and paving the way for a new, sorely needed politics of integrity and transformation.

    • The Best Ballot Plan Now? ‘Strategic’ Voting for the Stein-Baraka Green Party Ticket

      Donald Trump is campaigning to win 40 percent of the vote for president—and he’s close, with recent polls showing him in the high 30s. But his final performance will not help.

      Trump is focusing on topics that will prevent him from broadening his base, such as the women he accuses of lying about his alleged sexual assaults, and what he calls the rigged election. He is fighting with other Republicans, like Paul Ryan, and with Republican state leaders, most notably in Ohio. His refusal to say he will accept the outcome of the election is creating more conflict with Republicans and raising doubts with voters.

      Outlets predicting the results of the election say Clinton will be the next president, with astoundingly lopsided odds. The Huffington Post gives Trump only a 3.1 percent chance of winning and puts Clinton’s likelihood at 96.8 percent. The New York Times gives Clinton a 93 percent chance.

    • Podesta relative earned six-figure fees lobbying Clinton’s State Dept. during his tenure there
    • Eric Garner’s daughter blasts Clinton campaign after WikiLeaks emails

      The daughter of a New York City man who died after he was put in a police chokehold blasted Hillary Clinton’s campaign Thursday when WikiLeaks revealed email conversations about using her father’s death to protest gun violence.

      “I’m troubled by the revelation that you and this campaign actually discussed ‘using’ Eric Garner … Why would you want to ‘use’ my dad,” tweeted Erica Garner, who endorsed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.

    • Goodlatte Statement on the FBI’s Decision to Reopen the Clinton Investigation
    • WikiLeaks Dumps Mean Hillary’s Presidency Would Be Tainted from Day One
    • How Neera Tanden Works

      Emails released by WikiLeaks reveal the maneuverings of a liberal think-tank president and member of Hillary Clinton’s inner circle.

    • Hillary headache: Even Chelsea ripped ‘hustling’ at lucrative family foundation

      Did the Clinton Foundation, for all its good works, serve as a giant slush fund?

      That question has surged to the forefront of the campaign in the wake of another Wikileaks dump, and one of the biggest accusers turns out to be Chelsea Clinton.

      The Chelsea criticism is a bombshell, one that exploded with enough force that it propelled the lead story in both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and an above-the-fold piece in the Washington Post.

    • State Dept Told ‘Friendly’ AP Reporters About Missing Hillary Emails Before Congress

      Department of State officials told Hillary Clinton campaign staffers they would leak a story about missing Benghazi investigation emails to a “friendly” Associated Press reporter before Congress “has a chance to realize what they have.”

      “Just spoke to State a little more about this,” Clinton’s travelling press secretary Nick Merrill wrote to campaign staffers on June 24, 2015, regarding emails sent between the former secretary of state and her longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthal.

      The Department of State told Merrill they would be tipping off AP reporters that at least 15 emails between Clinton and Blumenthal were missing from 55,000 pages of emails handed over to a House committee investigating the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

    • If Clinton Campaign Believes WikiLeaks Emails Are Forged, Why Don’t They Prove It?

      Top Democrats have repeatedly waved off substantial questions arising from their hacked emails by falsely implying that some of them are forgeries created by Russian hackers.

      The problem with that is that no one has found a single case of anything forged among the information released from hacks of either Clinton campaign or Democratic Party officials.

      The strategy dates all the way back to a conference call with Democratic lawmakers in August. Politico reported that a number of Democratic strategists suggested that Russian hackers — who have been blamed by U.S. intelligence agencies for supplying the emails to Wikileaks and other web sites — could sprinkle false data among the real information.

      Since then, despite the complete lack of evidence to support such a claim, it’s become a common dodge among leading Democrats and the Clinton campaign when asked questions about the substance of the emails.

    • WikiLeaks shows Clinton hid email scandal from her own staff

      Hillary Clinton’s closest aides hid the private email scandal from her campaign team in the months before the official launch of her presidential campaign, emails made public by WikiLeaks show.

      Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chair, and Neera Tanden, co-chair of Clinton’s transition team, each expressed shock at the revelations about her private server as they emerged in early March 2015.

      Although Clinton’s team had performed research on her in 2014 as staff prepared for her campaign, Clinton’s inner circle apparently steered Mook and others away from the issue until it was too late.

      When Podesta asked Mook if he had “any idea of the depth of this story,” Mook answered simply, “Nope.”

    • Is there a deeper network behind the ‘Catholic Spring’?

      Washington D.C., Oct 27, 2016 / 12:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A reputed “Catholic Spring” is in the news after hacked emails from John Podesta, now Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, indicated plans for an effort to sow revolution within the Church.

      But grants to the think tank Podesta founded also suggest links to other efforts targeting religion. The Center for American Progress appears to be part of an influence network that advocates restrictions on religious freedom while promoting dissent within Christianity on sexual morality, especially LGBT issues.

      Podesta co-founded the Center for American Progress in 2003 after serving as White House Chief of Staff in President Bill Clinton’s final term. He served as the center’s CEO until 2011. He became a special adviser to President Barack Obama in 2013, and joined the Hillary Clinton campaign in early 2015.

    • Propaganda Alert! Misleading Article About Jill Stein in the Daily Beast

      A particularly misleading article, titled “Jill Stein’s Ideology Says One Thing — Her Investment Portfolio Says Another,” is being peddled by the Daily Beast, which accuses the Green Party’s presidential candidate, Jill Stein, of being a hypocrite for investing in certain mutual funds which hold assets with energy, tobacco, & pharmaceutical companies. The accusation is, like much of what the Clinton-controlled Daily Beast spews from it’s slimy propaganda-machines, a poorly-constructed pile of journalistic garbage.

      I shall provide a link to the article at the bottom of this page but I’d like to discourage my readers from clicking it because I hate the thought that these jerks will get any amount of ad-money from web-traffic out of my site. I’d also like to note that the Daily Beast is owned by IAC, a media corporation whose board of directors includes — [drumroll, please…] Chealsea Clinton! So — please click sparingly!

    • New Emails in Clinton Case Came From Anthony Weiner’s Electronic Devices

      Federal law enforcement officials said Friday that the new emails uncovered in the closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server were discovered after the F.B.I. seized electronic devices belonging to Huma Abedin, a top aide to Mrs. Clinton, and her husband, Anthony D. Weiner.

      The F.B.I. is investigating illicit text messages that Mr. Weiner sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The bureau told Congress on Friday that it had uncovered new emails related to the Clinton case — one federal official said they numbered in the thousands — potentially reigniting an issue that has weighed on the presidential campaign and offering a lifeline to Donald J. Trump less than two weeks before the election.

      In a letter to Congress, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said that emails had surfaced in an unrelated case, and that they “appear to be pertinent to the investigation.”

      Mr. Comey said the F.B.I. was taking steps to “determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” He said he did not know how long it would take to review the emails, or whether the new information was significant.

    • October surprise: FBI reviewing new emails in Clinton server case

      The FBI on Friday said it is assessing new emails “pertinent” to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, a stunning and unexpected move that comes more than a week before the presidential election.

      In a letter sent to lawmakers on Friday, FBI Director James Comey said the bureau has learned of the existence of more emails “that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.” The messages were found “in connection with an unrelated case,” Comey wrote without further explanation.

      Law enforcement officials told The New York Times that the emails were uncovered after the FBI seized devices belonging to longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her husband, Anthony Weiner, who is under investigation for allegedly sending sexually explicit messages to an underage girl.

      After being briefed by his team, Comey “agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps” to determine whether the emails “contain classified information, as well as to asses their importance to our investigation.”

      Comey said he could not predict how long it would take the bureau to assess whether the new emails are “significant,” meaning the investigation could hang over Clinton’s head through the election.

    • Advocating a ‘Split Ticket,’ WaPo Columnist Parts Ways With Reality

      I’m glad, truly I am, that Samuelson (7/9/97) is no longer writing in regards to climate change, “It’s politically incorrect to question whether this is a serious problem that serious people ought to take seriously.” But if he’s not in denial about climate change, he’s in denial about denialism: Ryan says “I don’t know” whether humans are warming the Earth’s climate, “and I don’t think science does either.” He does know whether the federal government can do anything about climate change, though: “I would argue the federal government, with all its tax and regulatory schemes, can’t.”

      As for McConnell, he says that “for everybody who thinks [the planet is] warming, I can find somebody who thinks it isn’t.” His own position? “I’m not a scientist, I am interested in protecting Kentucky’s economy, I’m interested in having low-cost electricity.”

      These are the people that Samuelson suggests will do something about the climate catastrophe if you make sure they don’t lose control of Congress.

      Finally, a historical note: Setting up his argument, Samuelson notes, “At its peak in 1972, ticket splitters represented 30 percent of voters.” Hmm—why do you suppose that 1972 was the peak of ticket-splitting? While the parties on the presidential level had definitively switched sides on civil rights by 1972, with Democrat George McGovern an ardent advocate and Republican Richard Nixon pursuing his “Southern strategy,” congressional representatives throughout the South were still overwhelmingly Democratic—mostly the same people who had been fighting civil rights for years.

    • Why It All Matters for Hillary

      The arguments of “everybody does it” and “well, it wasn’t illegal” in regards to the email server, the Clinton Foundation, pay-for-play, donor access, dirty tricks against Sanders, the many well-timed coincidences of Trump revelations, and more, are strawman logic.

      Leaving aside the idea that people usually say “everybody does it” and “well, it wasn’t illegal” only when their own candidate gets caught doing something, what was done matters.

    • Anthony Weiner Investigation Leads FBI Back To Clinton Email Server Case

      Newly discovered emails being examined by the FBI in relation to Hillary Clinton’s email server came to light in the course of an unrelated criminal investigation of Anthony Weiner, a source familiar with the matter tells NPR’s Carrie Johnson.

      Weiner is the estranged husband of close Clinton aide Huma Abedin; he has been under scrutiny for sending illicit text messages to an underage girl.

      Earlier Friday FBI Director James Comey notified members of Congress that the FBI had reopened its investigation into the handling of classified information in connection with the Democratic presidential candidate’s use of a private email server while secretary of state.

      In a letter to the leaders of congressional oversight committees, Comey wrote: “In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation. I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”

    • Clinton Campaign Worried About Bill Cosby Clinton Foundation Ties

      Hillary Clinton’s campaign worried that she would face scrutiny over the thousands of dollars the Clinton Foundation accepted from accused rapist Bill Cosby, a newly leaked memo reveals.

      The memo, dated July 16, 2015, also reveals that Hillary was instructed to give a non-answer if pressed over whether the foundation would return Cosby’s donations.

    • Limbaugh: FBI wants focus off WikiLeaks

      Rush Limbaugh says the FBI is starting a new review of Hillary Clinton’s emails to distract voters from WikiLeaks’s revelations about her.

      “[FBI Director James] Comey is just doing this to take everybody’s attention off of the WikiLeaks email dump,” Limbaugh said on his radio broadcast Friday.

      “The cynical view is that Comey is still carrying water for Clinton and is trying to get everybody to stop paying attention on the WikiLeaks dump because it’s starting to have an impact,” he continued.

      “So you announce you’re opening the inquiry, get everybody all hot and bothered and focused on it, and after three or four or five days, you announce it’s a false alarm, nothing to see her, investigation now officially over, and meanwhile, in that five day period, everybody’s forgotten about WikiLeaks.”

      Limbaugh said WikiLeaks emails are exposing the Democratic presidential nominee’s secrets and damaging her White House bid.

    • ‘Bill Clinton, Inc.’ Memo Reveals Tangled Business, Charitable Ties

      A 2011 memo made public Wednesday by Wikileaks revealed new details of how former President Bill Clinton made tens of millions of dollars for himself and his wife, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, through an opaque, ethically messy amalgam of philanthropic, business and personal activities.

      The memo was written by Bill Clinton’s longtime aide, Doug Band, and is among tens of thousands of emails apparently stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief, John Podesta, in what U.S. officials believe is part of a massive Russian-backed attempt to disrupt the U.S. election.

      The Band memo came in response to an investigation undertaken by a law firm, Simpson Thatcher, into the activities of the Clinton Foundation at the behest of its board. The board was concerned that some of the activities undertaken by Band and others on behalf of the President could threaten the Foundation’s IRS status as a charity, according to Band’s memo. Chelsea Clinton had also reported concerns to Podesta and other Clinton advisors that Band and his recently-launched consulting firm, Teneo, were using her father’s name without his knowledge to contact British lawmakers for clients, including Dow Chemical.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Comedy writer has exactly the right response to his kid’s Fahrenheit 451 permission slip

      Daily Show writer Daniel Radosh’s son came home from school with a permission slip that he’d have to sign before the kid could read Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, which is widely believed to be an anti-censorship book (Bradbury himself insisted that this was wrong, and that the book was actually about the evils of television).

      Fahrenheit 451 has been the frequent subject of parental challenges on the flimsiest of grounds, as when fundamentalist Christian Alton Verne, of Conroe, Texas, demanded to have the book removed from the curriculum because the characters occasionally blaspheme and say “damn” (“If they can’t find a book that uses clean words, they shouldn’t have a book at all”).

      Radosh responded to the permission slip — which mentioned these parental challenges — with a wry note congratulating the teacher for using permission slips to convey the awfulness of heavy-handed attempts to control peoples’ access to information.

    • Copyright conundrum: Tweeting this may cost you

      Be careful if you tweet this story: It might cost you.

      The European Commission created a legal minefield for billions of internet users with a well-intentioned but poorly worded proposed law to help struggling publishers guard against digital attrition by Google and other news aggregators.

      As people read the fine print in plans released last month to strengthen publishers’ rights over their articles, they discovered the Commission may have accidentally exposed tweeters, facebookers and even LinkedIn users to the whims of the world’s most powerful media organizations.

      Under the Commission’s proposal, copyright lawyers could chase down citizens for sharing sentences or snippets of articles on social media.

      “Users would be breaking the law if they use snippets of articles whether it is enforced or not,” said Julia Reda, a Member of the European Parliament. The law is intended to help traditional publishers survive the digital age but, she said, “it applies to everyone, and if we pass this legislation, it will be in the hands of the publishers to decide whether they want to enforce it.”

    • Clinton Campaign Scrambled To Kill NYT Report She Flipped On Gay Marriage, WikiLeaks Shows

      Members of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign sought to discredit reports over her shifting stance on same sex marriage, the latest batch of WikiLeaks emails show.

      On April 15, 2015, press secretary Nick Merrill started an email chain with policy spokesman Jesse Lehrich over a New York Times article written by Alan Rappeport titled, “Shifting Position, Clinton Says Gay Marriage Should Be A Constitutional Right.”

    • Milo speech at U-Md. canceled because security fee was too high; supporters call it censorship

      A scheduled speech by conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of Maryland was canceled because a student group was unable to raise enough money to cover fees the university required shortly before the event, including more than $2,000 for security.

      The costs led to complaints from students and others that the university was silencing a potentially contentious speech rather than encouraging free and open debate. But a spokeswoman for the school countered that the security fee included the speaker’s request to have officers present, and that university officials had worked to help the students.

    • Colleges Cancel Milo Yiannopoulos Appearances
    • Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos’ U. of Md. appearance canceled due to security costs

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Privacy Shield legal spat puts EU-US data flows at risk again

      Europe’s Privacy Shield faces a legal challenge from an Irish civil liberties group.

      Digital Rights Ireland (DRI) has brought a complaint against the Safe Harbour successor that governs the transfer of personal data between the European Union and the US.

    • AT&T is (allegedly) making millions of dollars selling your data to cops
    • Big data grab: Now they want your car’s telemetry

      This isn’t simply a market for one Uber to dominate, suggests McKinsey in its new report, “Monetizing Car Data.” As the report authors conclude, the opportunity to monetize car data could be worth $450 billion to $750 billion within the next 13 years.

    • We’re seeing yet another election cycle where privacy is of no concern to candidates

      Yet another election campaign is passing without privacy and other fundamental rights being discussed. While candidates certainly have different stances, judging on public discourse, they’re not what makes or breaks the election. The conclusion remains that in absence of political importance, technical measures are necessary to maintain privacy at the individual level.

      When I founded the Swedish Pirate Party in 2006, which would go on to win seats in the European Parliament, it was on a key insight: nothing political happens unless it’s positive for a politician’s career. This can either take the form of looking good in media, when they take a rare initiative of their own, or of not being fired, when their job is under threat from challengers.

    • Search Risk – How Google Almost Killed ProtonMail

      In the past two months, many of you have reached out to us to ask about the mysterious tweets we sent to Google in August. At ProtonMail, transparency is a core value, and we try to be as transparent with our community as possible. As many people have continued to point out to us, we need to be more transparent here to avoid continued confusion and speculation. Thus, we are telling the full story today to clarify what happened.

    • Why did ProtonMail vanish from Google search results for months?

      If you’re the maker of a popular, zero access encrypted webmail product and suddenly discover your product is no longer featuring in Google search results for queries such as “secure email” and “encrypted email,” what do you conclude?

      That something is amiss, for sure.

      But the rather more pertinent question is whether your product’s disappearance is accidental or intentional — given that Google also offers a popular webmail product, Gmail, albeit one that does not offer zero access because users “pay” the company with their personal data, which feeds into Alphabet’s user profiling and ad targeting engines.

      So, in other words, Google is not an entirely disinterested bystander when it comes to a rival email product’s success.

    • Encryption no bar to giving govt data, Apple told Democrats

      A senior Apple official reassured the chairman of the Clinton presidential campaign that the tech giant would co-operate with the US government when it came to handing over “meta-data or any of a number of other very useful categories of data”, as “strong encryption does not eliminate Apple’s ability to give law enforcement” such data.

      Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice-president for environment, policy and social initiatives, sent an email to John Podesta on 20 December 2015, thanking him for “the principled and nuanced stance the Secretary took last night on encryption and the tech sector. Leadership at Apple certainly noticed and I am sure that is true throughout the Valley”.

      Her comments about handing over data to the government are in marked contrast to the strong pro-customer statement on encryption made by Apple chief executive Tim Cook earlier this year when the FBI demanded that Apple hand over data on an Apple iPhone 5C belonging to one of the two people who participated in a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California.

    • AT&T actually sells leads to DEA and local law enforcement using Project Hemisphere

      AT&T has been running a for-profit mass surveillance program, called Project Hemisphere, since 2007. Everybody already knows about AT&T cooperation with NSA mass surveillance metadata database… This is a separate program that allows law enforcement to access all of AT&T’s data at will, even though the information is never handled by law enforcement, which apparently makes it legal. The Project Hemisphere mass surveillance program was created by AT&T and specifically marketed to law enforcement as an easy-to-use system

      If you’re wondering what information that AT&T could possibly have on you if you’ve never been an AT&T customer, AT&T has compiled all the relevant phone metadata that passed through their hardware that they possibly could since the 1980s. AT&T has a metadata record of everything from Skype calls to text messages to phone calls on LTE, not just the ones that were made to or from AT&T networks; either, but all of them that ever touched an AT&T owned switch. If you’re wondering what percentage of American switches are owned by AT&T, the answer is over 75%.

    • AT&T reportedly spies on its customers for government cash

      AT&T controls a big chunk of America’s cellular infrastructure, and it turns out that it’s been using that power for super-creepy purposes. The Daily Beast is reporting that the telco has essentially turned itself into a spy-for-hire in the pay of the government. According to the piece, the company’s Project Hemisphere is providing warrantless surveillance, thanks to some legal gray areas, that score it millions of dollars from taxpayers.

      The existence of Project Hemisphere has been known since the New York Times reported on it way back in 2013. Back then, it was presented as a minor tool that was only employed in a handful of states for specialized anti-drug operations. If these new revelations are accurate, then Hemisphere’s being used for a wide variety of crimes all across the country ranging from murder all the way through to Medicaid fraud. AT&T’s information is good enough that it can tell investigators where someone was when they made a call, who they were speaking to and, as we know from the EFF, it’s easy to divine intention just from those two pieces of information.

    • Beijing threatens legal action over webcam claims

      The Chinese Ministry of Justice has threatened legal action against “organisations and individuals” making “false claims” about the security of Chinese-made devices.

      It follows a product recall from the Chinese electronics firm Hangzhou after its web cameras were used in a massive web attack last week.

      The attack knocked out sites such as Reddit, Twitter, Paypal and Spotify.

      The Chinese government blamed customers for not changing their passwords.

      Its legal warning was added to an online statement from the company Xiongmai, in which the firm said that it would recall products, mainly webcams, following the attack but denied that its devices made up the majority of the botnet used to launch it.

      The firm later told Reuters that the recall would effect “less than 10,000″ devices.

      It also noted that users not changing their default passwords were contributing to weak security.

      This was reiterated by the Ministry of Justice which said Xiongmai’s products “cannot be manipulated by criminals”, again blaming users who “do not change the initial password”.

    • AI-powered body scanners could soon be inspecting you in public places

      A startup bankrolled by Bill Gates is about to conduct the first public trials of high-speed body scanners powered by artificial intelligence (AI), the Guardian can reveal.

      According to documents filed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Boston-based Evolv Technology is planning to test its system at Union Station in Washington DC, in Los Angeles’s Union Station metro and at Denver international airport.

      Evolv uses the same millimetre-wave radio frequencies as the controversial, and painfully slow, body scanners now found at many airport security checkpoints. However, the new device can complete its scan in a fraction of second, using computer vision and machine learning to spot guns and bombs.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Fury over Bosnian town built by Middle East investors which has Arabic as its ‘official’ language – and locals can only enter if they work as servants

      Angry locals are protesting about a Bosnian town built by Middle Eastern investors which has Arabic as its ‘official’ language – and where locals can only enter if they work as servants.

      The 160 homes have been constructed in a luxury enclave near Tarcin, five miles west of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo.

      But furious locals say that their only way of accessing the area is through being hired as servants or cleaners – and claim most of the homes contain the wives of wealthy businessmen.

    • Sex Before Marriage: Indonesia Proposed Islamic Law Would Put Sexually Active People In Prison

      Anyone engaging in sex outside of marriage in the world’s third-largest democracy could soon face up to five years in prison. Indonesia’s highest court is deliberating whether to broaden existing law to make all casual sex illegal in the latest bid by conservative Islamists in the country to revise a relatively secular legal code.

      A decision by the Constitutional Court is expected in December or early next year, with indications that the court is leaning toward enacting the tougher legislation. While adultery is currently punishable by up to nine months in prison, if the new law goes through it would make gay sexual relations illegal in Indonesia for the first time. It has already received backlash from human rights organizations.

    • Jaipur: After losing bet, man forces ex-wife to sleep with friend

      A 42-year-old mother-of-two from Jaipur filed a rape complaint after her former husband tricked her into sleeping with his friend. She claimed that her ex-husband drugged her and took her to his friend’s house after losing a bet.

      The man, however, claims it was all for Nikah Halala, a Sharia law that requires the divorced woman to marry and consummate with another man before she can remarry her former husband.

      A Hindustan Times report says he has a fake nikahnama with the stamp of the Jaipur city qazi, which states his ex-wife and the friend were married.

    • The Mayor of London’s “My Side”

      Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, addressed the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA) on September 15. Although his topic was “The Breakdown of Social Integration – The Challenge of Our Age,” some crucial components of that challenge were notably absent from his presentation.

      Even though Mayor Khan said he believes that, “London is the powerhouse” for his country and is “proud that London was the only region in England to vote to remain in the European Union” (some boroughs voted 80% “Remain”), when it came to the United Kingdom as a whole, he said that “my side” lost the referendum.

      That strikes one as an odd way for the mayor of any city to talk. Isn’t he the Mayor of all of London? Aren’t the Londoners who voted for Brexit included on his “side”?

    • Email To Podesta: Germany Imported Its Own Immigrant Crime Wave

      Nobody tells it like it is like they do when they don’t know the world will be tweeting their emails. Here’s a Wikileaked February 2016 email to Hillary Clinton presidential campaign chairman John Podesta.

    • 36-year-old Pennsylvania man gets 18 months for phishing nude celebrity pics

      A 36-year-old Ryan Collins from Pennsylvania was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to hacking the Apple and Google accounts of more than 100 celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence, Aubrey Plaza, Rihanna, and Avril Lavigne. Collins stole personal information, including nude photos, from the celebrities.

      The photos were famously posted on 4Chan and Reddit in 2014. Collins pleaded guilty to hacking the celebrities’ accounts in May, but he did not plead guilty to posting the images on the Internet. “Investigators have not uncovered any evidence linking Collins to the actual leaks or that Collins shared or uploaded the information he obtained,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) noted.

      According to The Guardian, Collins ran a phishing scheme from November 2012 to September 2014, sending celebrities e-mails that appeared to be from Apple and Google, requesting their user names and passwords.

    • Dakota Access Pipeline protesters arrested and pepper sprayed

      Authorities began arresting people at a Dakota Access Pipeline protest site in Morton County, North Dakota today, according to the Associated Press and the Guardian. Protesters report being pepper sprayed by authorities on a live stream hosted by Cempoalli Twenny on his Facebook page. There have also been reports that authorities are using beanbag guns. Protesters could be heard calling for a medic in the live stream.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • The City That Was Saved by the Internet

      The “Chattanooga Choo Choo” sign over the old terminal station is purely decorative, a throwback. Since the Southern Railroad left town in the early 1970s, the southeastern Tennessee city has been looking for an identity that has nothing to do with a bygone big band song or an abandoned train. It’s finally found one in another huge infrastructure project: The Gig.

      The first thing you see at the Chattanooga airport is a giant sign that says “Welcome to Gig City.” There are advertisements and flyers and billboards for the Gig in the city’s public parks. The city’s largest building is dedicated to the Gig. Years before Google Fiber, Chattanooga was the first city in the United States to have a citywide gigabit-per-second fiber internet network. And the city’s government built it itself.

      At a time when small cities, towns, and rural areas are seeing an exodus of young people to large cities and a precipitous decline in solidly middle class jobs, the Gig has helped Chattanooga thrive and create a new identity for itself.

    • This Guy Has the Fastest Home Internet in the United States

      For reference, the Federal Communications Commission officially classifies “broadband” as 25 Mbps. His connection is 400 times faster than that.

  • DRM

    • Apple’s new MacBook Pro kills off most of the ports you probably need

      Apple just introduced a shiny, super thin new MacBook Pro. But for what was birthed, a lot of widely-held standards had to die.

      Today, Apple removed the MagSafe 2 charging port type, they stripped away the HDMI port, they ripped out the SD card slot, they shuttered the Thunderbolt 2 ports (which you probably used like three times) and they most notably killed the standard USB port. All these ports, which power data transfer and charging for most everything you likely use, have been replaced by four Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports. Surprisingly the folks at Apple saw it fit to give the headphone jack a stay of execution on the new model.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • “MPAA and RIAA’s Anti-Piracy Plans Harm The Internet”

        The Internet Infrastructure Coalition is urging the U.S. Government not to blindly follow the RIAA and MPAA’s input regarding online piracy threats. The group, which represents tech firms including Google, Amazon and Verisign, warns that the future of the Internet is at stake.

      • Repeat Infringers Can Be Mere Downloaders, Court Rules

        A 10-year-old copyright case has prompted an interesting opinion from a US appeals court. In determining the nature of a “repeat infringer” (which service providers must terminate to retain safe harbor), the court found these could be people who simply download infringing content for personal use.

      • When the FCC asked about unlocking set-top boxes, the Copyright Office ran to the MPAA

        It’s been more than 20 years since Congress told the FCC that it should do something about the cable and satellite companies’ monopolies over set-top boxes (American households spend more than $200/year to rent these cheap, power-hungry, insecure, badly designed, trailing edge, feature-starved boxes), but it wasn’t until this year that the FCC announced its Unlock the Box order and asked for comments.

        The US Copyright Office is a branch of the US government, and its job is to help regulate the entertainment industry. That industry is one of the principle advocates for keeping the set-top box dumpster fire burning without any changes, because the lack of competition lets them call the shots with the cable/satellite companies (some entertainment companies are also major satellite/cable companies — Comcast/Universal, Time-Warner Cable, etc).

        But newly released internal documents from the Copyright Office reveal that literally the first thing it did when it learned that the FCC was seeking comments on unlocking set-top boxes was to call on the MPAA and its member companies — and shortly thereafter, it released a highly controversial comment stating that movie companies should have the right to dictate the features of these devices and exercise a veto over the them.

The EPO’s Balkan Express Keeps Chugging Along Despite Predictions of Derailment

Posted in Europe, Patents at 5:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Balkan Express crossing the Isar in Bavaria
Balkan Express crossing the Isar in Bavaria

Balkan Express

WELCOME TO RS

Summary: The latest part in the series regarding the reappointment of the two Vice-Presidents, Casado and Topić

THE EPO‘s management makes things worse before it makes things any better. The reappointment of two Vice-Presidents, Casado and Topić, is quite revealing. We already wrote about Casado; see part one (photos addendum) and part two (photos addendum). Today we deal with Topić, having published a leaked letter this morning and a teaser with accompanying photographs.

The latest official Communique issued by the EPO Administrative Council on the 14th of October 2016 confirmed that “on a proposal from the President” the Council had decided to extend the appointment of Željko Topić as Vice-President of Directorate-General 4 until the 31st of December 2018.

Topić’s contract was due to expire in April 2017 and in June of this year rumours were already circulating that there was strong opposition inside the Administrative Council to a prolongation. But after persistent and intensive lobbying on behalf of his “winning team” it appears that “Il Duce” was ultimately able to prevail against his opponents. The news that the EPO Balkan Express is now scheduled to remain in service until the end of 2018 probably came as an unpleasant surprise to those who had expected this particular “gravy train” to be decommissioned at the end of its current term.

“Topić’s contract was due to expire in April 2017 and in June of this year rumours were already circulating that there was strong opposition inside the Administrative Council to a prolongation.”To mark the occasion it seems like a good idea to revisit this controversial “Topic” (if you’ll excuse the pun) and to provide Techrights readers with an update concerning Battistelli’s “Balkan Connection”.

Topić originally comes from Banja Luka which is in the Republic Sprksa region of Bosnia-Herzegovina. After the former Republic of Jugoslavia split up it seems that he moved to Zagreb some time in the early 1990s and pursued a career in the Croatian civil service where he eventually became Director General of the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) and head of the Croatian delegation to the EPO’s Administrative Council.

Although he is officially a Croatian national for EPO purposes it is rumoured that he also claims Bosnian-Herzegovinian citizenship by virtue of his roots in Banja Luka. Nobody can say for certain whether or not he has declared any additional citizenships which he might hold to the Administrative Council of the EPO (which is his appointing authority).

“Although he is officially a Croatian national for EPO purposes it is rumoured that he also claims Bosnian-Herzegovinian citizenship by virtue of his roots in Banja Luka.”EPO insiders say that the “Balkan Connection” forms an important link in Battistelli’s pan-European political network. It seems that the links between Battistelli and Topić go back at least as far as 2008 when as heads of their respective national IP Offices they signed a bilateral agreement between France and Croatia [PDF] (see photograph in our “teaser” article).

Topić also appears to have long established links to the Danish Patent and Trademark Office (DKPTO) which was involved in two EU-sponsored twinning projects with the Croatian SIPO between 2003 to 2005 and again in 2009 to 2010. Sources include the DKPTO’s own site (more here). In our “teaser” we showed Topić a decade ago (2006), meeting the DKPTO for the twinning project [PDF]. The head of the DKPTO is now the Chinchilla Man of the Administrative Council, Mr. Kongstad.

Back in 2014 Techrights reported about an alleged "Protection Triangle" involving Battistelli, Kongstad, and Topić.

“The head of the DKPTO is now the Chinchilla Man of the Administrative Council, Mr. Kongstad.”In his current position as a key member of “Team Battistelli” at the EPO, Topić is said to be useful for drumming up support amongst the delegations from the territory of the former Jugoslavia and its neighbouring states. He seems to be an old hand at this kind of political lobbying game. The source is Wikileaks diplomatic cable 07ZAGREB597, which reveals that he previously assisted the efforts of the US to unseat Kamil Idris as the Director General of the WIPO in 2007. To quote from the Wikileaks cable: “Topić said he would raise the issue there and urge those states that are also EU members to lobby the other EU member states to take a firm position on Idris at the September WIPO General Assembly.”

Background to the Kamil Idris affair is in Wikipedia.

Following his appointment as EPO Vice-President, Topić is said to have maintained close links to the Croatian delegation on the Administrative Council which is now headed by Ljiljana Kuterovac (see the leaked letter we published this morning), the current Director General of the Croatian SIPO. Kuterovac is reputed to be Topić’s protégée having previously served under him at the SIPO as an Assistant Director.

According to sources in Croatia, during Topić’s time as Director General from 2004 to 2012 Kuterovac was one of five Assistant Directors. From among the group of five, Kuterovac seems to have been the Director General’s favorite Pet Chinchilla and she is reported to have regularly accompanied him on official trips to the WIPO and other IP “junkets” around the globe. It is further alleged that an upmarket Skoda Octavia Combi 1.9 TDI limousine which was acquired by the SIPO in 2007 as one of three luxury cars for its official fleet was placed at the exclusive disposal of Kuterovac. Apparently she was the only one of the five Assistant Directors to receive such perks. It has been reported from Zagreb that a long overdue audit of the SIPO which was belatedly completed by the Croatian Ministry of Finance in March 2016 confirmed that, as has long been suspected, the luxury cars used by the SIPO during Topić’s term of office were acquired in breach of the applicable official budgetary regulations.

“It has been reported from Zagreb that a long overdue audit of the SIPO which was belatedly completed by the Croatian Ministry of Finance in March 2016 confirmed that, as has long been suspected, the luxury cars used by the SIPO during Topić’s term of office were acquired in breach of the applicable official budgetary regulations.”Between Topić and Kuterovac there appears to be a “synergy” comparable to that which has been recently noted in the case of the Spanish Vice-President Alberto Casado and the head of the Spanish delegation, Patricia Garcia-Escudero. In both cases the head of an Administrative Council delegation got appointed to a position as EPO Vice-President and his successor as head of delegation was his former subordinate and deputy. As with Casado and Garcia-Escudero, this is another case in which an EPO Vice-President appears to be in a position to exert an inappropriate level of influence over an individual member of the oversight body because of the previous professional relationship.

Shortly before the Administrative Council met in Munich on the 12th and 13th of October and decided to renew Topić’s contract, sources in Croatia reported on an interesting development in a civil lawsuit which is being pursued in Zagreb against the Croatian SIPO and its former Director General by former SIPO employees as previously reported by Techrights. See our earlier report on this.

The lawsuit which concerns claims of harassment and other SIPO management misconduct was filed a long time ago in 2008 and it is still working its way through the painfully slow Croatian legal system. The good news for those affected is that the last hearing took place on the 10th of October 2016 when one of the lead plaintiffs, Jadranka Oklobdžija, was heard as a witness. Ms Oklobdžija was the Chairperson of the staff union at the SIPO at the time in question. Now that the court hearings are finished a judgment is expected fairly soon. People who have been following the case say that this is not likely to be in Topić’s favour.

“Due to these developments it now seems that Topić no longer enjoys the high-level political “protection” that he is once reputed to have had in his adopted homeland.”At the same time other sources in Croatia have pointed out that a number of criminal complaints against Topić are still sitting on the desk of the Public Prosecutor in Zagreb. It is rumoured that during the time when Ivo Josipovic was President of Croatia (January 2010 to January 2015), he colluded with the then Chief State Attorney Mladen Bajic to obstruct the processing of criminal charges against Topić. However Josipovic failed to secure re-election in 2015 and he has since faded from the political scene in Croatia. Due to these developments it now seems that Topić no longer enjoys the high-level political “protection” that he is once reputed to have had in his adopted homeland.

Following the recent snap parliamentary elections in September 2016 a new Croatian government is expected to be formed soon.

It remains to be seen how effective the new government will be in clearing up the various messes left behind by previous administrations but many people in Croatia are hopeful that a new and less corrupt era may finally be dawning in Croatian politics. It could be that the Public Prosecutor finally starts to take action in relation to certain cases concerning alleged irregularities in the management of the SIPO which appear to have got stuck in the legal pipeline over the last decade.

“Only time can tell whether Team Battistelli will ride off intact into the sunset in 2018 as planned or whether it is in danger of being prematurely “balkanised at sunrise” by the slow but inexorable grinding of the mills of the Croatian legal system.”In view of these developments observers of the EPO are recommended to keep a watchful eye on Team Battistelli’s south-eastern flank over the coming months.

At the moment it is too early to say whether the Balkan Express will continue to chug along on its merry way until its recently rescheduled end of service or whether it might not be suddenly derailed if the prevailing political winds in Croatia happen to shift in an unfavourable direction.

At this juncture we will not risk making any predictions either way. Only time can tell whether Team Battistelli will ride off intact into the sunset in 2018 as planned or whether it is in danger of being prematurely “balkanised at sunrise” by the slow but inexorable grinding of the mills of the Croatian legal system. █

Advice to Journalists: Stop Repeating Propaganda of the EPO, a Serial Liar With a Track Record

Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 4:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

French BattistelliSummary: The EPO is weaponising its propaganda and pushing hard for media across Europe to repeat this propaganda while severely punishing anyone who ‘dares’ contradict it

THE EPO is a chronic liar. It’s no exaggeration to say this; it is lying even to journalists and to staff (we covered many examples of that).

“Apparently, for some at WIPR no fact-checking was seen as necessary, just copy-paste-edit-publish.”Watching the EPO in Twitter is like an exercise in humour. Watch this new tweet for example. The term “IPR-intensive” is a meaningless, misleading term. It’s not so-called ‘IPR’ that ‘created’ these jobs at all. That’s just the EPO trying to associate itself with the success of industries, even if the EPO itself had nothing to do with those industries and their successes. There are tweets like these every day, attempting to associate the EPO with space travel, cures, and just about anything that attracts positive attention. “IPR-intensive industries generated 28% of all jobs in the EU during the period 2011-2013,” says the EPO (half a decade later), using an old EPO link perhaps because there’s nothing positive to talk about after that. Recently, EUIPO and EPO covertly joined hands for propaganda (they only mentioned this days before the propaganda’s official release), soon to see very few puff pieces (we found only one!) and then paid press releases, probably intended to compel news sites to repeat the nonsense (as few did).

Last night we spotted a new puff piece in WIPR, titled “IP generates €5.7tn for EU economy, says report” (commissioned for propaganda purposes by the very entities it is about). They went along with the totally bogus number, right there in the headline (we already debunked this earlier this week).

“IP generates €5.7tn for EU economy”?

That’s a lie. Outright lie. It’s actual products that generate revenue, not “IP” (whatever it is, too vague a term to be worth entertaining).

Apparently, for some at WIPR no fact-checking was seen as necessary, just copy-paste-edit-publish.

What next?

X generates $578.7tn for US economy, says think tank’s report.

“These so-called ‘studies’ are so dishonest that the media should disregard them altogether.”CEO Smith deserves $578,000 per hour, says Smith.

These so-called ‘studies’ are so dishonest that the media should disregard them altogether. Never mind the fact that the EPO is a serial liar. The EPO is in pure propaganda mode these days, as we noted earlier this month. Almost every single thing says now is a lie. Sad to see EUIPO getting dragged into this as well..

Watch this EPO tweet which says “The EQE pre-examination course is supported by a selection of experienced epi tutors” (link omitted).

That’s the same epi that criticised/slammed the EPO and then took down its own criticism (because truth is not allowed and always frowned upon by the EPO). Truth is treason at the EPO, staff faces disciplinary action (even dismissal!) for communicating truths, and Tony Tangena from epi got ‘gagged’ (we suppose he was compelled to take down his polite letter) even though he doesn’t work for the EPO.

“These attempts to suppress the truth need to end.”The EPO has truly become the Ministry of Truth of Eponia and well beyond Eponia, taking into account its corruption of the media and threats to the media, including threats to critical bloggers like myself. These attempts to suppress the truth need to end. If European media barely writes about the EPO anymore (only negative things to say), this is probably why.

In the next post we shall explore and expose some gory details which the EPO would rather never see published (for reasons that will become apparent). █

Leaked: Ljiljana Kuterovac Covering Željko Topić’s (EPO) Back

Posted in Europe, Patents at 4:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Letter about Željko Topić

Summary: Leaked E-mail from June 2012 regarding Željko Topić, an EPO Vice-President who reportedly faces many criminal charges in Croatia

THE EPO‘s management insists on tarnishing whatever is left of its reputation. It refuses to accept that Topić is a liability to the Office and even — reportedly at the request of Battistelli — extends the contract of this ‘bulldog’ of his.

As we noted here before, Topić allegedly used SIPO’s Web site to throw in some face-saving announcement. He also uses old buddies to accomplish something similar, never mind the fact that he has lost his defamation case repeatedly. The judge found merit in very serious allegations against him.

The above E-mail is from the 6th of June 2012 and it might be of interest ahead of today’s feature article, which we shall publish later today.

“The E-mail from June 2012 was written by Ljiljana Kuterovac who was at that time the acting Director General of the SIPO following Željko Topić’s departure to Munich and it is addressed to the Administrative Council delegates and to the President of the EPO.”Recall that the decision to appoint Željko Topić as an EPO Vice-President was taken by the EPO’s Administrative Council in March 2012 and he took up his appointment soon afterwards in April 2012.

Around that time rumours were already circulating about Željko Topić’s previous track record in Croatia and some members of the Administrative Council were beginning to ask awkward questions.

So it seems that Željko Topić relied on his former protegée at the SIPO to defuse the situation and silence the critics.

The E-mail from June 2012 was written by Ljiljana Kuterovac who was at that time the acting Director General of the SIPO following Željko Topić’s departure to Munich and it is addressed to the Administrative Council delegates and to the President of the EPO. █

10.27.16

Leaked: Budget and Finance Committee Outcomes That Jeopardise What’s Left of the EPO’s Future

Posted in Europe, Patents at 2:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Battistelli with his sausage factory mentality keeps grinding the EPO for quick cash…

Meat grinder
Image credit: Seydelmann, published under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

Summary: A look at the latest reckless step from the Budget and Finance Committee of the Administrative Council (chaired by Battistelli's pet chinchilla), which marginalises yet more oversight or a branch which facilitates patent quality control (thereby concealing the effect of Battistelli’s ruinous sausage factory mentality)

MATERIAL continues to trickle out of the EPO and each day we learn something new about the decision to send the appeal boards to exile (see this week's coverage so far). It’s depressing for me to see and I don’t even work for the EPO. Battistelli is — pardon the pun — absolutely butchering the EPO. Insiders know it and even outsiders like patent attorneys are quickly catching on. They would be right to panic as valuation of their largest clients’ patent portfolios must have collapsed (some of them don’t know this yet).

“It’s an internal announcement and the rest of it includes a lot of budget numbers, which is the sort of thing that they would not like leaked and probably serve no purpose for this post.”Here are the outcomes from the meeting of the 26th of October (that’s yesterday): “Continuing the implementation of the Boards of Appeal reform, the contract related to the lease of a building in Haar / Munich, which will be the new location of the Boards of Appeal Unit, was submitted to the BFC. Although several delegations requested additional technical information, the BFC gave a positive opinion (13 in favour, 8 against and 15 abstentions).”

“The boards have in fact shrunk in recent years, as no new openings (or hardly any) get advertised, probably because of the UPC fairy tales so deeply ingrained in Battistelli’s little mind and Big Head.”It’s an internal announcement and the rest of it includes a lot of budget numbers, which is the sort of thing that they would not like leaked and probably serve no purpose for this post. We therefore omit those numbers — not because they are anything special but because it is more sensitive information which there’s little for the public to gain from. Remember that office space is shrinking with this relocation (or ‘exile’ as we call it), so don’t fall for the spin of accommodating more staff (the EPO experiences brain drain and cannot recruit fast enough!). The boards have in fact shrunk in recent years, as no new openings (or hardly any) get advertised, probably because of the UPC fairy tales so deeply ingrained in Battistelli’s little mind and Big Head.

It is worth mentioning that the Budget and Finance Committee only issues an opinion. The decision about ‘exile’ (they use this term, they prefer euphemisms) to Haar will be made at the next Administrative Council (AC) meeting, which is due to happen on the 14th and 15th of December. So far, as was implied above, only financial matters have been considered. It might not be too late to stop this separation.

“In our view, Battistelli was put in place for fiscal reasons.”One might ask, why does the Haar relocation matter so much? Well, from what we are able to gather, there may be an untold purpose to it. My personal hypothesis for a couple of years now is that EPO management clutches any pretext to dismiss staff representatives to rob the staff of their voices before layoffs. Something very, very big is happening at the EPO (more so this year and last year). The management says too little about it, but one can see some signs on the wall.

Looking at what the EPO has in store at IPSDM, it looks as though Battistelli's so-called "economist" from France is gaining influence. To quote IP Australia: “Yann Ménière, Chief Economist @EPOorg will chair a session on International patent protection & trade at #IPSDM https://www.ipsdm2016.com/”

In our view, Battistelli was put in place for fiscal reasons. He’s not a scientist, he’s pretty clueless about patents, but he sure attempts to cut costs, increase so-called ‘production’ (no matter the cost to quality and reputation) and this appointment of a French “economist” (the word pertains to a pseudo-science with fake ‘Nobel’ [sic] prize that’s banksters’ blatant means for rewarding complicit academics) lends some evidence to our longstanding suspicions.

“Battistelli should be thought of more like an EPO liquidator (trying to squeeze out whatever money is left in it before it implodes), not a manager and certainly not a President.”According to this new comment, the EPO’s HR department (managed by the wife of Battistelli’s buddy) is pushing out longtime staff, replacing these people with temporary or short-term workers with limited skills (hence more likely to just grant patents with little scrutiny, having failed to identity prior art). Sending the appeal boards away while understaffing them, threatening their independence (deterrence) and significantly increasing the cost of their service further complements this strategy or this modus operandi. Here is what today’s comment says (“Latest HR trend says…”): “Publishing new Euro contract vacancies and forcing at the same time Eponians to leave their permanent positions for the sake of gaining excessive HR control (temporary contracts and probation periods galore!). Trust me I am your HR manager!… see you at the next social conference.”

This perfectly agrees with everything we’ve been hearing, publishing and reading (without publishing). Battistelli should be thought of more like an EPO liquidator (trying to squeeze out whatever money is left in it before it implodes), not a manager and certainly not a President. Battistelli is to the EPO what Elop was to Nokia. █

Links 27/10/2016: Major Changes in Unity 8, Nextcloud Targets Phones

Posted in News Roundup at 1:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Linux and the Imaginary New User

      Linux has always had a reputation for being difficult to use. Consequently, when developers began improving users interfaces, they concentrated on what they imagined that new users needed. They rarely had the actual opportunity to observe new users, but the new user they imagined became a standard figure among developers, often surviving to this day.

      Yet after observing this habit for over a decade, I wonder more than ever if the imaginary new user still exists, or ever existed at all. I suspect, too, that the emphasis on this figure has been a detriment to other types of users.

    • Awwh, This Linux Wallpaper Is Adorable

      I pimped some Fedora community wallpapers yesterday, there was that (rather gorgeous) Ubuntu Timeline wallpaper a few weeks back, and the steam from hype-train that brought the “new” Ubuntu default wallpaper still lingers in the air a bit.

      So — honestly — I wanted so bad not to write about yet another wallpaper.

  • Server

    • The Point Of Docker Is More Than Containers

      Spending time with Docker during Cloud Field Day about a month ago opened my eyes to the larger ecosystem that Docker is building, and that others are building around it. There is so much more to Docker than just the idea of immutable containers.

      For a start, Docker made using containers easy. That’s no small feat for a tricky piece of technical infrastructure. Making it easy, and specifically easy for developers, to use removed a lot of friction that was no small contributor to the pain of other, earlier methods. It gave developers are really simple way to create a fully functional development environment, isolated from all other dependencies, with which to work.

    • What are the Top NFV Risks for Carriers?

      What are the risks of network functions virtualization (NFV)? As with any emerging technology, moving fast or picking the wrong components can do more harm than good. Let’s spend some time breaking down the NFV risks in building a virtual network.

      I have spent the few months gathering feedback from various service providers to get their view on whether NFV and its cousin software-defined networking (SDN) are ready for prime time. Even though many service providers expressed optimism that NFV technology is moving toward maturity, there are definitely cautionary tales on what to look out for.

      This article serves as an introduction to the challenges of NFV component selection – later articles will refer in more detail to the challenges in selecting NFV hardware and software components such as OpenStack and Open vSwitch.

    • “DevOps is a management problem”

      Improving your own organization’s performance – from where they are now to performance levels equal to the industry leaders – seems like a very long and difficult road. What is missing in most organizations? We talked to Damon Edwards, co-founder and managing partner of DTO Solutions and DevOpsCon speaker, about the challenges that accompany DevOps and how a repeatable system that empowers teams to find and fix their own problems looks like.

    • Manage disk image files wisely in the face of DevOps sprawl

      A disk image is simply a file, but that seemingly innocuous file contains a complete structure that represents applications, storage volumes and even entire disk drives.

    • TNS Guide to Serverless Technologies: The Best Frameworks, Platforms and Tools

      Even if you don’t need the servers themselves, serverless technologies could still require plenty of supporting software. Frameworks are needed to codify best practices, so that everyone is not out to reinvent the wheel, especially when it comes to interfacing with various languages such as Go, JavaScript and Python. And platforms are needed to help people avoid spending too much time on configuring the underlying infrastructure, perhaps by handing the work off to a service provider.

      Just in time for the Serverless conference in London, this post highlights some of the most widely used frameworks and platforms, as well as other supporting tools, that make successful serverless-based workloads happen.

  • Kernel Space

    • BUS1 Kernel Message Bus Posted For Review

      David Herrmann has posted the initial patches for review of the BUS1 kernel message bus, the successor to KDBUS as an in-kernel IPC mechanism.

      Herrmann announced, “This proposal introduces bus1.ko, a kernel messaging bus. This is not a request for inclusion, yet. It is rather an initial draft and a Request For Comments. While bus1 emerged out of the kdbus project, bus1 was started from scratch and the concepts have little in common. In a nutshell, bus1 provides a capability-based IPC system, similar in nature to Android Binder, Cap’n Proto, and seL4. The module is completely generic and does neither require nor mandate a user-space counter-part.”

    • Linux 4.9 Is Going To Be The “Biggest Ever” Linux Release

      The next Linux kernel release, i.e., Linux 4.9, could be the biggest ever Linux release in terms of the commits. Linus Torvalds shared this news in the release announcement of Linux 4.9-rc2. He also hinted at the possibility of turning 4.9 into an LTS release. The final build of the kernel is expected to arrive in December.

    • Why Is The Penguin Tux Official Mascot of Linux? Because Torvalds Had Penguinitis!

      The official mascot of the Linux kernel developed by Linus Torvalds is a penguin named Tux. You might have thought about the probable reasons why a penguin has been used as the face of the Linux kernel. Some people believe that Torvalds was bitten by a penguin that’s why he chose one to represent his kernel.

    • Graphics Stack

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Dual-GPU integration in GNOME

        Thanks to the work of Hans de Goede and many others, dual-GPU (aka NVidia Optimus or AMD Hybrid Graphics) support works better than ever in Fedora 25.

        On my side, I picked up some work I originally did for Fedora 24, but ended up being blocked by hardware support. This brings better integration into GNOME.

      • ‘GNOME To Do’ App Picks Up New Features

        GNOME To Do is one of those apps you’ve probably heard of, but do not use. And with a bunch of rivals task managers and to-do list apps available on Linux — from Simplenote to Remember the Milk — and online, the little app that might has its work cutout.

  • Distributions

    • Benefits Of Using Lightweight Linux Distributions

      There are quite a few lightweight linux distributions around but why should you care especially when most of our PCs that are on the market boast some very fast multi-core processors, large volumes of RAM and very fast Solid State Drives. Sure they can bring new life to old machines but there are many other reasons why they could be awesome for you.Let me give you a few reasons you would so much benefit from going with a Lightweight Linux distribution.

    • New Releases

      • TheSSS 20.0 Server-Oriented Linux Distro Ships with Linux Kernel 4.4.17, PHP 5.6

        4MLinux developer Zbigniew Konojacki informs Softpedia today, October 26, 2016, about the release and immediate availability of version 20.0 of his server-oriented TheSSS (The Smallest Server Suite) GNU/Linux distribution.

      • Quirky 8.1 Linux Is Built with Ubuntu 16.04 Binary DEBs, Supports Raspberry Pi 3

        Puppy Linux developer Barry Kauler was happy to announce the general availability of his Quirky 8.1 “Xerus” GNU/Linux distribution built with binary DEB packages from the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system.

        Quirky 8.1 “Xerus” is here to replace the old “April” series, and while it is indeed built using the binary DEBs of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, it stays true to being a distro from the Puppy Linux family and not an Ubuntu clone. However, it lets users install packages from the official Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) software repositories, a feature that was not available in the Quirky “April” releases.

      • Alpine Linux 3.4.5 released

        The Alpine Linux project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 3.4.5 of its Alpine Linux operating system.

        This is a bugfix release of the v3.4 musl based branch, based on linux-4.4.27 kernels and it contains important security fixes for the kernel and for musl libc.

      • Alpine Linux 3.4.5 Released with Linux Kernel 4.4.27 LTS, Latest Security Fixes

        A new maintenance update of the server-oriented Alpine Linux 3.4 operating system has been released, bringing a new Linux kernel version from the long-term supported 4.4 series and the latest security patches.

        According to the release notes, Alpine Linux 3.4.5 is now available as the most up-to-date version of the GNU/Linux distribution based on musl libc and BusyBox, it’s powered by the Linux 4.4.27 LTS kernel, which was fully patched against the “Dirty COW” vulnerability, and includes numerous updated components and applications.

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • Gentoo Family

      • Gentoo Miniconf 2016

        As I noted when I resurrected the blog, part of the reason why I managed to come back to “active duty” within Gentoo Linux is because Robin and Amy helped me set up my laptop and my staging servers for singing commits with GnuPG remotely.

        And that happened because this year I finally managed to go to the Gentoo MiniConf hosted as part of LinuxDays in Prague, Czech Republic.

    • Arch Family

      • ArchBang – Best Arch based distro for old or low-end hardware with high performance and low resource utilization

        Arch Linux is very unique, compare with other Linux distributions because it doesn’t comes with live ISO & Desktop Environment. Arch gives you the full freedom to customize the installation as you wish, When you boot up, you’ll be end up with a terminal and most of the people panic here because they don’t want to build from scratch.

        There are many, Actively developed Arch derived Linux distributions are available with pre-installed Desktop environment. I would advise you to go with any one distribution as you wish.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Why does software development take so long?
      • Debian’s New Look, Red Hat Giveaways, Ubuntu Advantage

        The newest eye candy to grace the default desktops of Debian 9 users is very tasteful and beautiful. The color palate is easy on the eyes while providing warmth and a professional aura. This year’s winner is a remarkably wonderful job by returning designer Juliette Belin, who just happened to have designed last version’s theme. 3,479 folks voted and Laura Arjona explained the vote gathering and counting methodology. I started getting a headache trying to understand that, so suffice to say the prettiest won. The other submissions are being combined into one package for easy installation.

      • Derivatives

        • DebEX Distro Now Lets You Create an Installable Debian 9 Live DVD with Refracta

          After informing us of the release of Exton|OS Light Build 161021, today, October 26, 2016, GNU/Linux developer Arne Exton sent an email to announce the availability of DebEX Barebone Build 161025.

          The latest version of the DebEX Barebone GNU/Linux distribution, build 161025, is here, based on the soon-to-be-released Debian GNU/Linux 9 “Stretch” (Debian Testing) operating system and kernel 4.8.0-21-exton, a specially crafted Linux kernel package based on the latest stable Linux 4.8 kernel.

        • KNOPPIX 7.7.1 Public Release

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu 17.04 Daily Builds Are Now Available to Download

            Ubuntu 17.04 Daily Builds Are Now Available to Download http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/10/ubuntu-17-04-daily-iso

          • Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) Daily Build ISO Images Are Now Available for Download

            Now that the upcoming Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) operating system is officially open for development, the first daily build ISO images have published in the usual places for early adopters and public testers.

          • Infographic: Ubuntu Advantage explained

            Ubuntu Advantage is the commercial support package from Canonical. It includes Landscape, the Ubuntu systems management tool, and the Canonical Livepatch Service, which enables you to apply kernel fixes without restarting your Ubuntu 16.04 LTS systems.

            Ubuntu Advantage gives the world’s largest enterprises the assurance they need to run mission-critical workloads such as enterprise databases, virtual/cloud hosts or infrastructural services on Ubuntu.

            The infographic below gives an overview of Ubuntu Advantage, it explains the business benefits, why Ubuntu is #1 in the cloud for many organisations and includes a selection of Ubuntu Advantage customers.

          • New Video Shows Changes Headed to Unity 8

            A new YouTube video claims to show an ‘quick overview of what’s to come to Unity 8’ in a future update.

            Uploaded by Kugi Javacookies (not sure if that’s his real name), the clip is described as offering a “quick overview of what’s to come soon to Unity 8. Since the silo has now been signed-off by QA, so it will probably land really soon.”

            Kugi adds that he finds it “awesome to actually follow projects even up to the small details. Codes in launchpad, actual projects in bileto and queued silos for QA testing in Trello. Really cool! :D”.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • New Cortex-M chips add ARMv8 and TrustZone

      ARM launched its first Cortex-M MCUs with ARMv8-M and TrustZone security: the tiny, low-power Cortex-M23 and faster Cortex-M33.

      At the ARM TechCon show in Santa Clara, ARM unveiled two new Cortex-M microprocessors that will likely emerge as major Internet of Things workhorses over the coming decade, supplanting most existing Cortex-M designs. The Cortex-M23 and Cortex-M33 are also the first Cortex-M processors with ARMv8-M technology, enabling ARM TrustZone security, among other benefits. The TrustZone support is enabled via a new IoT-oriented CoreLink SIE-200 network-on-chip, which adds IP blocks on top of the AMBA 5 AHB5 interface. ARM also announced a TrustZone CryptoCell-312 technology for creating secure SoCs based on ARMv8-M.

    • Open Source Operating Systems for IoT

      Over the past decade, the majority of new open source OS projects have shifted from the mobile market to the Internet of Things. In this fifth article in our IoT series, we look at the many new open source operating systems that target IoT. Our previous posts have examined open source IoT frameworks, as well as Linux- and open source development hardware for IoT and consumer smart home devices. But it all starts with the OS.

      In addition to exploring new IoT-focused embedded Linux-based distributions, I’ve included a few older lightweight distributions like OpenWrt that have seen renewed uptake in the segment. While the Linux distros are aimed primarily at gateways and hubs, there has been equivalent growth in non-Linux, open source OSes for IoT that can run on microcontroller units (MCUs), and are typically aimed at IoT edge devices.

    • Congatec’s first Apollo Lake COMs include SMARC 2.0 model

      Congatec announced three Linux-friendly COMs based on Intel’s new Atom E3900 SoC: a Qseven, a COM Express Compact, and one of the first SMARC 2.0 modules.

      Congatec is one of the first vendors to announce a major product lineup based on Intel’s newly announced, 14nm-fabricated Atom E3900 “Apollo Lake” SoCs. In addition to the Qseven form-factor Conga-QA5 and the COM Express Compact Type 6 CongaTCA5 modules, the company unveiled the Conga-SA5, which is billed as Congatec’s first SMARC 2.0 module. In fact, the Conga-SA5 appears to be the company’s first SMARC COM ever, and one of the first SMARC 2.0 models to be fully announced. (See more on SMARC 2.0 below.)

    • Intel launches 14nm Atom E3900 and spins an automotive version

      The Linux-ready Atom E3900 series, which was formally announced at the IoT Solutions World Congress in Barcelona on the same day as the start of ARM TechCon in Silicon Valley, has already started rolling out to some 30 OEM customers, some of which have already announced products (see below). The first Apollo Lake based products will ship 2Q 2017, says Intel.

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

  • Chain Releases Open Source Blockchain Solution for Banks

    Chain, a San Francisco-based Blockchain startup, launched the Chain Core Developer Edition, which is a distributed ledger infrastructure built for banks and financial institutions to utilize the Blockchain technology in mainstream finance.

    Similar to most cryptocurrency networks like Bitcoin, developers and users are allowed to run their applications and platforms on the Chain Core testnet, a test network sustained and supported by leading institutions including Microsoft and the Initiative for Cryptocurrency and Contracts (IC3), which is operated by Cornell University, UC Berkeley and University of Illinois.

  • Netflix Upgrades its Powerful “Chaos Monkey” Open Cloud Utility

    Few organizations have the cloud expertise that Netflix has, and it may come as a surprise to some people to learn that Netflix regularly open sources key, tested and hardened cloud tools that it has used for years. We’ve reported on Netflix open sourcing a series of interesting “Monkey” cloud tools as part of its “simian army,” which it has deployed as a series satellite utilities orbiting its central cloud platform.

    Netflix previously released Chaos Monkey, a utility that improves the resiliency of Software as a Service by randomly choosing to turn off servers and containers at optimized tims. Now, Netflix has announced the upgrade of Chaos Monkey, and it’s worth checking in on this tool.

  • Coreboot Lands More RISC-V / lowRISC Code

    As some early post-Coreboot 4.5 changes are some work to benefit fans of the RISC-V ISA.

  • Nextcloud Advances with Mobile Moves

    The extremely popular ownCloud open source file-sharing and storage platform for building private clouds has been much in the news lately. CTO and founder of ownCloud Frank Karlitschek resigned from the company a few months ago. His open letter announcing the move pointed to possible friction created as ownCloud moved forward as a commercial entity as opposed to a solely community focused, open source project.

    Karlitschek had a plan, though. He is now out with a fork of ownCloud called Nextcloud, and we’ve reported on strong signs that this cloud platform has a bright future. In recent months, the company has continued to advance Nextcloud. Along with Canonical and Western Digital, the partners have launched an Ubuntu Core Linux-based cloud storage and Internet of Things device called Nextcloud Box, which we covered here. Now, Nextcloud has moved forward with some updates to its mobile strategy. Here are details.

  • Enterprise Open Source Programs Flourish — In Tech and Elsewhere

    If you cycled the clock back about 15 years and surveyed the prevailing beliefs about open source technology at the time, you would find nowhere near the volume of welcome for it that we see today. As a classic example, The Register reported all the way back in 2001 that former CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer made the following famous statement in a Chicago Sun-Times interview: “Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.”

  • 5 More Reasons to Love Kubernetes

    In part one of this series, I covered my top five reasons to love Kubernetes, the open source container orchestration platform created by Google. Kubernetes was donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation in July of 2015, where it is now under development by dozens of companies including Canonical, CoreOS, Red Hat, and more.

    My first five reasons were primarily about the project’s heritage, ease of use, and ramp-up. The next five get more technical. As I mentioned in part one, choosing a distributed system to perform tasks in a datacenter is much more complex than looking at a spreadsheet of features or performance. And, you should make your decision based on your own needs and team dynamics. However, this top 10 list will give you my perspective, as someone who has been using, testing, and developing systems for a while now.

  • Bankers plan to give Corda blockchain code to Hyperledger project
  • Are European Banks Falling Behind in Blockchain Development?
  • Hyperledger adds 10 new members to support open source distributed ledger framework

    The Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger project has announced that 10 new members have joined the project in order to help create an open standard for distributed ledgers for a new generation of transactional applications.

  • The Blockchain Created By Ethereum’s Fork is Forking Now

    A blockchain that was born out of the rejection of a contentious technical change is on the cusp of making a decision some argue contradicts its core values.

    That’s the situation the developers behind ethereum classic face ahead of a hard fork expected to be enacted on its blockchain on 25th October (should network participants approve the upgrade). Originally formed in reaction to a decision by the ethereum community to edit its “immutable” ledger, the fork caused an ideological schism among its enthusiasts.

    Alarmed by the action (or seeing a chance to profit by continuing the original network), miners and speculators began running its blockchain, which developers named “ethereum classic”. Other investors then bought into the vision, and today, there are currently 85m classic ethers (ETC) worth $87m.

  • Events

    • Science Hack Day India 2016

      Few months back Praveen called to tell me about the new event he is organizing along with FOSSASIA, Science Hack Day, India. I never even registered for the event as Praveen told me that he just added mine + Anwesha’s name there. Sadly as Py was sick for the last few weeks, Anwesha could not join us in the event. On 20th Hong Phuc came down to Pune, in the evening we had the PyLadies meetup in the Red Hat office.

    • Science Hack Day, Belgaum

      It started quite early with Kushal telling me that Praveen Patil was organizing a Science Hack Day with Hong Phuc’s help and that it might be an interesting place to come to. He mentioned that there were many interesting people coming in and that Nisha and I would have a good time. I wasn’t very keen though because of my usual reluctance to get out and meet people. This was especially an issue for me with Cauldron and Connect happening back to back in September, draining most of my ‘extrovert energy’. So we were definitely not going.

    • FOSDEM 2017 Real-Time Communications Call for Participation

      FOSDEM is one of the world’s premier meetings of free software developers, with over five thousand people attending each year. FOSDEM 2017 takes place 4-5 February 2017 in Brussels, Belgium.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • From OpenStack Summit, Red Hat Reports That the Deployment Era is Here

      As noted here yesterday, OpenStack is here to stay in enterprises. A new study by 451 Research analysts shows that about 72 percent of OpenStack-based clouds are between 1,000 and 10,000 cores and three fourths choose OpenStack to increase operational efficiency and app deployment speed.

      Meanwhile, in conjunction with OpenStack Summit in Barcelona, Red Hat is out with very notable results from its polling of its OpenStack user base. Its study found that production deployments increased hugely in the last year, according to a survey of 150 information technology decision makers and professionals carried out by Red Hat.

    • You can run the same programs on 16 different OpenStack clouds

      Cloud companies like to talk about about how you can avoid vendor lock-in. And OpenStack just showed how to make it happen.

      Sixteen different vendors did a live demo at OpenStack Summit showing that you could run the same software stack on 16 separate OpenStack platforms.

    • ​Where OpenStack cloud is today and where it’s going tomorrow

      The future looks bright for OpenStack — according to 451 Research, OpenStack is growing rapidly to become a $5-billion-a-year cloud business. But obstacles still remain.

    • ​Mirantis OpenStack: The good news and the bad news

      Mirantis recently signed a major deal with NTT, but the company is also laying off some of its employees.

    • The World Runs on OpenStack

      The OpenStack Summit keynotes got underway the morning of October 25, with Mark Collier, Chief Operating Officer of the OpenStack Foundation, declaring that the world runs on OpenStack.

    • Study: OpenStack is Marching Forward in Enterprises

      How fast is the OpenStack global cloud services market growing? Research and Markets analysts came out with a new report recently that forecasts the global OpenStack cloud market to grow at a CAGR of 30.49% during the period 2016-2020. Many enterprises now have large scale OpenStack deployments, and in conjunction with this week’s OpenStack Summit in Barcelona, new study results are shedding light on exactly how entrenched this open cloud platform is in enteprises.

      The bottom line is: OpenStack is here to stay in enterprises.

      OpenStack deployments are getting bigger. Users are diversifying across industries. Enterprises report using the open source cloud software to support workloads that are critical to their businesses. These are among the findings in a recent study by 451 Research regarding OpenStack adoption among enterprise private cloud users. About 72 percent of OpenStack-based clouds are between 1,000 and 10,000 cores and three fourths choose OpenStack to increase operational efficiency and app deployment speed. The study was commissioned by the OpenStack Foundation.

      Here are some of the companies discussing their OpenStack deployments in Barcelona: Banco Santander, BBVA, CERN, China Mobile, Comcast, Constant Contact, Crowdstar, Deutsche Telekom, Folksam, Sky UK, Snapdeal, Swisscom, Telefonica, Verizon, Volkswagen, and Walmart. You can find some of the specific deployment stories from the companies at the OpenStack User Stories page.

    • OpenStack Adoption and Revenues on the Rise

      One thing you can count on at the semiannual OpenStack Summits are new studies and reports about OpenStack. And that’s the case at the OpenStack Summit going on in Barcelona, Spain, now through Oct. 28. A number of studies are being discussed at the event, including the October 2016 OpenStack User Survey and new analysis on the state of OpenStack from analyst firm 451 Group. According to the 451 Group, the OpenStack software market will generate $1.8 billion in revenue in 2016 and grow to $5.7 billion by 2020. The firm is forecasting that the five-year compound annual growth rate for OpenStack from 2015 through 2020 will be 35 percent. The semiannual OpenStack User Survey is also a topic of discussion at the OpenStack Summit, providing insight into the state of OpenStack deployment. Among the high-level findings is that 71 percent of OpenStack clouds are now in production and fully operational, up from 59 percent in 2015. Also of note is how well-regarded the Kubernetes orchestration system has become, outpacing CloudFoundry in terms of user interest. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the highlights of the latest OpenStack research studies.

    • ​HPE backs off from OpenStack development

      HPE still supports OpenStack in its Helion cloud program, but it’s cutting way back on how much it’s spending on helping create OpenStack.

    • Is OpenStack Cloud Interoperability a Myth?

      Boris Renski, co-founder of Mirantis, argues that interoperability doesn’t start at the infrastructure layer. It starts with applications, he said.
      BARCELONA—A keynote highlight on Oct. 26 at the OpenStack Summit here was a live, onstage demonstration with 16 OpenStack vendors, all showing a degree of interoperability. The demonstration was part of an interoperability challenge, though, according to Boris Renski, co-founder of Mirantis and member of the OpenStack board of directors, the infrastructure layer is not necessarily the right place to emphasize interoperability.

    • Communications Leaders Choose Red Hat OpenStack Platform for Powering Cloud Deployments to Deliver New Services
    • Red Hat: OpenStack moving beyond the proof-of-concept phase

      Red Hat’s annual poll found that 43 percent of respondents have deployed the cloud platform in production, compared to just 16 percent one year ago. The company reckons the increase reflects efforts by the community to address complexity and deployment issues that were previously known to have been a major roadblock to adoption.

      The study also noted that the steep learning curve for deploying OpenStack is being addressed as a growing number of engineers become certified to operate the platform. In addition, Red Hat cited cloud native application development as another driving force in enterprise adoption of OpenStack.

    • OpenStack Summit Emphasizes Security, Interoperability

      From security to interoperabilty to use cases and everything in-between, this week’s OpenStack Summit from Oct. 25 to 28 in Barcelona, is set to illuminate the cloud. This year’s event, which brings together vendors, operators and developers of the open-source cloud platform, will offer more sessions than ever before on securing OpenStack clouds.

      The Barcelona Summit follows the release of the OpenStack Newton milestone, which debuted on Oct. 6. While discussions about the most recent release are always part of every OpenStack Summit, so too are case-studies from operators of OpenStack clouds.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • FSF Blogs: Who in the world is changing it through free software? Nominate them today!

      Nominations for the 19th annual Free Software Awards opened at LibrePlanet 2016, right after the most recent Free Software Awards were presented — and we need you to nominate more projects by November 6th, 2016 at 23:59 UTC. For details see instructions below.

      If you know a free software contributor or project that deserves celebration, don’t hesitate to nominate them! This is your opportunity to publicly recognize people and projects that have inspired you. Your nominations will be reviewed by our awards committee and the winners will be announced at LibrePlanet 2017.

    • denemo @ Savannah: Version 2.0.14 is imminent, please test
    • Development of a New MetaHTML

      MetaHTML is being ported to modern GNU/Linux systems by a small team of eager contributors. We are happy to announce the new developments in the world of GNU MetaHTML.

    • guile-curl v0.4 released

      I am pleased to announce an small update of guile-curl, which is a library for fetching files by URL from the internet in the GNU Guile dialect of the Scheme programming language. It supports many protocols, such as https, ftp, tftp, and, most importantly, gopher.

  • Public Services/Government

    • While Other Cities Go Linux, Toronto Bets Big on Microsoft Software [Ed: Toronto joins the Dark Forces]

      The partnership between Microsoft and the city of Toronto certainly comes at the right time, as other authorities across the world already announced decisions to give up on Windows and Office and replace them with open-source alternatives.

      Munich is the city that started the entire trend, but it wasn’t at all a smooth transition. Some of the local officials proposed a return to Microsoft software, claiming that training and assistance actually impacted productivity and explaining that in the end it all pays off to use Microsoft software because of the familiarity that users experience, which translates to a substantial productivity boost.

      And yet, the transition off Microsoft products is happening and more authorities are willing to do it, not necessarily because of the costs, but also due to security concerns, as is the case of Russia.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Data

      • Using Open Source for Data

        Bryan Liles, from DigitalOcean, explains about many useful open source big data tools in this eight minute video. I learned about Apache Mesos, Apache Presto, Google Kubernetes and more.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Open-Source Toolkit Lets Communities Build Their Own Street Furniture

        Despite the vast amount of customization options technology has allotted us, it can still be difficult to create projects that are community-centric. For example, though 3D printing can help us personalize our own jewelry, it has limited use for outfitting parks with trash cans or equipping bus stops with comfortable seating. Still, hyper-customizable tech has taught us the convenience of managing our own products, eliminating the bureaucratic complications of mass produced, production-line assembly.

        Leveraging this ideology to better the community, the Better Block Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to building local communities, has developed an open-source toolkit for creating a variety of fixtures for communities. The platform, called Wikiblock, allows designs ranging from benches to beer garden fences to be downloaded and taken to a maker space where a computer-aided machine can print the design from plywood. Similar to Ikea’s simplistic, DIY approach, the printed wood can be assembled by hand, without glue or nails.

      • How to make a lighted, porch bag for Halloween

        While I typically go all out for Halloween decorations every year, I’ll admit I’m feeling tired this year. I still wanted to delight the neighborhood kids with simple details, so I decided to make lighted bags for my front porch railing this year.

        If you are someone who has a paper cutting machine like the Silhouette, this project will likely be a lot easier. Simply import the SVG file, resize for whatever size box you want, cut out, and assemble. However, for those of you who don’t have one, I’ve included instructions on how to make this project without any machine at all.

        The box was created with the help of artists who share their art at OpenClipArt. I also used Inkscape to create the SVG file. If you don’t like bats, you could modify the SVG file to include other types of clipart in the center of the bag.

Leftovers

  • Science

  • Hardware

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Antimicrobial Resistance Should Not Overshadow Broader Issue Of Access To Medicines, Some Say

      While the issue of antimicrobial resistance has arrived in high-level discussions, and there is a consensus that the problem must be tackled one way or another to avoid slipping back into a pre-antibiotic era, some voices are highlighting the need to remember that other health issues remain unmet, and access to medicines is still an acute problem.

      On 25 October, the World Health Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization and the World Trade Organization organised a joint technical symposium on antimicrobial resistance. The symposium sought to achieve a better understanding of the global challenge of antibiotic resistance and examine possible ways forward.

      Most speakers invited to the event presented possible solutions to boost research and development for new antibiotics and the need to restrict the use of existing antibiotics to prevent the building up of microbe resistance. However, some speakers insisted on the fact that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is only a part of the issue of access to medicines.

    • Between Quick Wins And Long Roads Ahead On Antimicrobial Resistance

      Raising awareness, creating effective stewardship, national action plans on antimicrobial resistance, building trust and getting onto the agenda of the G20 are critical to fostering access and appropriate use of antibiotics, according to speakers at yesterday’s joint technical symposium on antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

      The annual trilateral cooperation event between the World Health Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization and World Trade Organization was held on 25 October. The first panel of the symposium discussed the balance between fostering access to antibiotics whilst ensuring their appropriate use.

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Why Clinton’s plans for no-fly zones in Syria could provoke US-Russia conflict

      The former strategists spoke to the Guardian as Clinton’s Republican rival Donald Trump warned that Clinton’s proposal to establish “safe zones” to protect beleaguered Syrian civilians would “lead to world war three”.

      The proposal of no-fly zones has been fiercely debated in Washington for the past five years, but has never attracted significant enthusiasm from the military because of the risk to pilots from Syrian air defenses and the presence of Russian warplanes.

      Many in US national security circles consider the risk of an aerial confrontation with the Russians to be severe.

      “I wouldn’t put it past them to shoot down an American aircraft,” said James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, on Tuesday in response to a question from the Guardian at the Council on Foreign Relations.

    • Why Is the Foreign Policy Establishment Spoiling for More War? Look at Their Donors.
    • UK deploys hundreds of troops and aircraft to eastern Europe

      The UK is deploying hundreds of troops, as well as aircraft and armour to eastern Europe as part of the biggest build-up of Nato forces in the region since the cold war. The deployment is taking place during growing tensions over a series of high-profile Russian military manoeuvres.

      RAF Typhoon aircraft from RAF Coningsby will be sent to Romania for up to four months, while 800 personnel will be sent with armoured support to Estonia, 150 more than previously planned, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said. France and Denmark will also commit more troops, the British government said.

    • Looking Ahead: Clinton’s Plans for Syria

      Hillary Clinton has a plan for defeating Islamic State in Syria. Donald Trump has one, too. With the conflict in Syria spreading beyond its borders, it’s essential to understand the new president’s strategies – and how they may need to be adjusted over the next four years.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • WikiLeaks ‘sowing the seeds of its own destruction’ says former NSA chief [Ed: repeats the “Russia” smear]

      A former deputy director of the US National Security Agency (NSA), John C Inglis, believes that WikiLeaks – the whistleblowing platform led by Julian Assange – has become “internally confused” in recent years and that “natural forces” may soon wipe it out.

      “WikiLeaks might be in fact be sowing the seeds of its own destruction,” Inglis told IBTimes UK in an exclusive interview on 25 October, indicating the organisation has overstepped a boundary by leaking material which has the potential to influence the upcoming US presidential election.

    • Former NSA deputy director opens up about Snowden, Trump and mass surveillance

      To the former deputy head, Snowden is not a whistleblower and may indeed be an unwitting pawn of the Kremlin. Sitting calmly in the British Museum, London, Inglis exclusively told IBTimes UK how the agency was “stunned” by the leak now commonly known as the ‘NSA files’.

    • Roundtable: Former Deputy Director of NSA Talks Insider Threats

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • ‘Reads like you’re punting’: Why Clinton chopped a Keystone XL reference from her book

      A reference to the Keystone XL pipeline was chopped from Hillary Clinton’s memoir due to political considerations, according to the latest batch of stolen emails posted Thursday on Wikileaks.

      While writing the book Hard Choices, Clinton initially included a reference to the pipeline at the urging of her daughter, Chelsea, according to a 2014 email purportedly sent to her current campaign chair John Podesta.

      “She decided to write about Keystone because her daughter suggested that it would be a glaring omission and look like an even worse dodge if she left it out,” said the note from Clinton speechwriter Dan Schwerin.

      The note said the passage was crafted with some help from Podesta, then edited by Bill and Hillary Clinton. The ill-fated phrases referred to Keystone XL as a tough choice amid the transition to a clean-energy economy. They concluded with Clinton refraining to take sides, out of respect for her successor John Kerry, who led the project review as Secretary of State.

      Her book editor apparently wanted the section dropped — because it read like a political dodge.

  • Finance

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Worldwide Solidarity with a Green Party POTUS

      ES, “that Sea Shepard Captain, Paul Watson.” YES, “that Woodstock.” Sea Shepard Captain Paul Watson cast his vote the other day, and shared his experience about his experience as an early voter.

    • The Radical, Grassroots-Led Pirate Party Just Might Win Iceland’s Elections

      Though she’s grown out the blue-dyed coiffure, Birgitta Jónsdóttir still brightens up the anodyne halls of the Althing, Iceland’s parliament in Reykjavík, the country’s capital. In stockinged feet, a white-cotton hippie skirt, and a dark-blue embroidered waistcoat, the 49-year-old Jónsdóttir refuses to fit the classic mold of politician, even though she’s occupied a parliamentary seat for seven years, since 2012 as the front person of the Pirate Party. Jónsdóttir, the former WikiLeaks spokesperson and a published lyricist, calls herself a “poetician,” since verse is her true calling, she says, not the daily grind of politics. Yet if Iceland’s national elections were held today and not on October 29, the Pirates could head up a new government on this rugged island of 330,000 souls—possibly with Jónsdóttir as prime minister.

      Iceland’s political status quo—a Nordic-style parliamentary democracy, dominated for decades by pro-NATO conservatives—was shattered when the country went bust in the 2008 financial crisis, pitching Iceland into its deepest crisis since full independence and the republic were declared in 1944. This year, Iceland was rocked again when the Panama Papers leak exposed corruption among top politicos, including the prime minister, who resigned under fire. “People here are angry and frustrated,” says Karl Blöndal, deputy editor of the center-right Morgunbladid. “In the minds of many voters, the Pirates are the only untainted party, and with them Birgitta carries authority. She’s been the face of the opposition since the crash.”

      Although the Pirates began surging in polls more than a year ago, peaking at 43 percent in April, Jónsdóttir has been coy about whether she’d take the country’s highest post if elections go in the party’s favor and supporters insist on her as prime minister. (Iceland’s Pirates have slipped considerably in surveys since early this year; currently, they’re neck and neck with the ruling Independence Party.) The object of her desire, she says, is the Althing’s presidency, an office from which she could reinvest power in the legislature—one means of bringing politics nearer to the people, a cause close to Pirate hearts.

    • The Pentagon’s ‘Terminator Conundrum’: Robots That Could Kill on Their Own

      No humans were remotely piloting the drone, which was nothing more than a machine that could be bought on Amazon. But armed with advanced artificial intelligence software, it had been transformed into a robot that could find and identify the half-dozen men carrying replicas of AK-47s around the village and pretending to be insurgents.

      As the drone descended slightly, a purple rectangle flickered on a video feed that was being relayed to engineers monitoring the test. The drone had locked onto a man obscured in the shadows, a display of hunting prowess that offered an eerie preview of how the Pentagon plans to transform warfare.

      Almost unnoticed outside defense circles, the Pentagon has put artificial intelligence at the center of its strategy to maintain the United States’ position as the world’s dominant military power. It is spending billions of dollars to develop what it calls autonomous and semiautonomous weapons and to build an arsenal stocked with the kind of weaponry that until now has existed only in Hollywood movies and science fiction, raising alarm among scientists and activists concerned by the implications of a robot arms race.

    • The Clinton Campaign Should Stop Denying That The Wikileaks Emails Are Valid; They Are And They’re Real

      Being interviewed by Megyn Kelly, here’s how Brazile tries to claim that the emails are not real, but basically comes out with a word salad of nothing, rather than simply admitting that the email is legit.

    • Jill Stein: The Best Way to Boost the Economy Is by Saving the Planet

      Our nation—and our world—face a perfect storm of economic and environmental crises that threaten not only the global economy, but life on Earth as we know it. The dire, existential threats of climate change, wars for oil, and a stagnating, crisis-ridden economic system require bold and visionary solutions. In this election, we are deciding not just what kind of a world we want, but whether we will have a world at all.

      There is a growing concern in advanced economies that governments are running out of options to stabilize a precarious and volatile global economic system. Since the onset of the Great Recession in 2008, the Fed’s large-scale bond purchases, called quantitative easing, have helped push interest rates close to 0% and have done more to serve Wall Streets’ interests by way of propping up the stock market than by boosting the overall economy for average Americans.

      These have proven to be temporary fixes, providing a semblance of “recovery” without addressing the underlying problems in the real economy: stagnating demand, lack of productive investment, staggering inequality and concentration of wealth—not to mention the climbing cost of climate-related disasters, like floods and wildfires, which have cost $26.9 billion dollars in 2016 alone. As recent warning signs in the U.S. market have shown, we are hardly out of the woods when it comes to preventing another big crash. Keeping interest rates super low has only produced the illusion of a healthy economy. Without sound fiscal policies targeted to help ordinary Americans, economic growth will stagnate.

    • Chris Hedges vs. Eddie Glaude: Should Progressives Vote for Hillary Clinton or Jill Stein?

      Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges and Eddie Glaude, chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University, debate the issue of strategic voting and the role of third-party candidates.

    • WikiLeaks memo exposes ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’

      He dubbed those for-profit pursuits “Bill Clinton, Inc.” The resulting deals often involved a mix of foundation donations, paid speeches and consulting contracts for Bill Clinton, lumping charitable and personal financial work together in ways that may have crossed ethical boundaries.

      Bill and Hillary Clinton have both defended the work of the Clinton Foundation as completely independent of their family’s finances or political ambitions. Critics have frequently accused the Clintons of using their foundation to enrich themselves and grow their political clout in anticipation of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.

      However, the Band memo makes clear the inextricable ties between Bill Clinton’s personal profits and his eponymous charity. What’s more, it reveals the fact that Teneo’s operation, at least in the early months of its existence, was heavily dependent on the Clinton name and foundation to build relationships with its clients.

      One example found in the memo involves GEMS Education, a for-profit education corporation that has been linked to the teaching of Sharia Law. The group paid Bill Clinton nearly $6.2 million between 2011-15, when the former president ended his contract with the firm ahead of Hillary Clinton’s campaign launch.

    • WikiLeaks: Clinton Team Leaked Creepshot of Bernie Sanders in His Swimming Suit

      The Clinton campaign buzzed over a picture of Bernie Sanders in his swimming suit, at the same time they were pushing stories about the Vermont Senator attending a fundraiser for Democrats with wealthy supporters.

      Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, Tina Flournoy, emailed the attached photo of Sanders relaxing by the pool at the DSCC retreat to Brian Fallon, Clinton’s national press secretary.

    • Memo reveals interplay between Clinton Foundation, personal business

      An internal memo released Wednesday by WikiLeaks reveals new details about the interplay between the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton family’s personal business interests.

      The 12-page document is penned by Doug Band, a longtime Clinton confidant who had been the Clinton Foundation’s primary fundraiser for a decade.

      Band wrote the memo as a principal for Teneo, a private consulting firm that raised tens of millions of dollars for the Clinton Foundation while also acting as a personal in-house agency for Bill Clinton.

      In the memo, Band describes his “unorthodox” role in raising money for the nonprofit foundation while simultaneously securing for-profit opportunities for the former president.

      The document argues that Band’s dual lines of work were “independent” of one another. The memo came after criticism from Chelsea Clinton — revealed in a separate email published by WikiLeaks — over Band’s role within the family’s network of interests.

      The memo states that as of November 2011, Teneo had raised tens of millions for the foundation and produced between $30 million and $66 million in revenue for Bill Clinton through various “business arrangements,” including paid speeches.

    • Aide: He arranged for $50M in payments for Bill Clinton

      A close aide to Bill Clinton said he arranged for $50 million in payments for the former president, part of a complicated mingling of lucrative business deals and charity work of the Clinton Foundation mapped out in a memo released by WikiLeaks on Wednesday.

      The report was written by Doug Band, who has transitioned from his job as a Clinton aide to a partner in Teneo Consulting, a company whose client roster now includes some of the biggest companies in the world. Along the way, Band wrote, he also pushed his clients and contacts to donate millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, and to help win business deals for Bill Clinton.

    • WikiLeaks does good work. It’s not Assange who’s gone off the deep end, it’s us

      What, the world’s most ardent defenders of freedom want to know, has happened to Julian Assange? Just a few years ago, he was such an earnest fellow, who spoke all truth to power. Well-known liberals gave him airtime, centrist trade organisations gave him membership and middle-brow humourists gave him plaudits and harbour. Now, all that the honourable can offer him is their disgust. He’s a Russian collaborator, a spiteful traitor, a pussy-grabbing narcissist whose leaks on Clinton place him in precisely the same deplorable basket that emits the stink of Trump.

    • Hacked memo offers an angry glimpse inside ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’

      As a longtime Bill Clinton adviser came under fire several years ago for alleged conflicts of interest involving a private consulting firm and the Clinton Foundation, he mounted an audacious defense: Bill Clinton’s doing it, too.

      The unusual and brash rejoinder from veteran Clinton aide and Teneo Consulting co-founder Doug Band is scattered across the thousands of hacked emails published by WikiLeaks, but a memo released Wednesday provides the most detailed look to date at the intertwined worlds of nonprofit, for-profit, official and political activities involving Clinton and many of his top aides.

    • The Green Party in the U.S. is a “Movement Party”
    • ‘There’s no good answer’: Podesta leaks show Clinton campaign stumped by email server debacle

      With the whistleblowing site promising the release of around 50,000 emails from Podesta, Wednesday’s dump brings to 33,042, the number of messages published by WikiLeaks so far.

    • WIKILEAKS: Clinton Camp Asked For Money From Donor With Russian Oil Ties

      Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign pitched a small group of wealthy liberals worried about global warming to become “climate policy donors,” according to a leaked email chain.

      One of those donors, however, has taken money from a Bermuda-based law firm with extensive ties to Russia. The email chain was one of thousands published online by WikiLeaks from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s hacked Gmail account.

    • Clinton campaign chair John Podesta gave his email login info to hackers after clicking on phishing link

      How did alleged hackers get access to the email account of John Podesta, the chair of the Hillary Clinton campaign? Apparently he just gave them his password.

      This is according to a leading cybersecurity firm, which says Podesta fell for a simple phishing scam frequently used in spam mail.

      A researcher at the company SecureWorks told Motherboard that Podesta was sent an email on March 19 that appeared to have come from Google. In the email was a link using Bitly, a URL shortening service. Podesta clicked on this link, which took him to a fake Google page, where he then typed in his login information.

      According to the cybersecurity firm, this is how the email account of former secretary of state Colin Powell was also hacked.

      The alleged hackers appear to later have sent Podesta’s emails to the whistleblowing journalism organization WikiLeaks, which has published them this month in installments. WikiLeaks says it has 50,000 messages to and from Podesta, and has published roughly 2,000 per day.

    • WikiLeaks: Clinton’s Campaign Chairman Lost His Cell Phone Getting Out Of Cab, Leaked Podesta Email Shows

      John Podesta lost his cell phone getting out of a cab, the latest dump of WikiLeaks‘ “The Podesta Emails” indicates. Podesta, the chairman for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, appears to have sent an email to Eryn Sepp on July 19, 2015, in which he asks for help finding his lost phone.

      “[I] lost my phone this am. It must have fallen off my belt getting in or out of the cab. I used Diamond and had a 4:45 pick up at Brandywine. Can you call Diamond Cab and see if the cab driver found it. They should be able to figure it out given the pickup. The receipt says #Diamond 444 C502,” Podesta appears to have written, according to the allegedly leaked email in WikiLeaks’ Podesta files.

      Readers have speculated that this incident might have been the way whoever delivered the Podesta files to WikiLeaks was able to access Podesta’s emails.

    • ‘Take the Money!!’ and other highlights from the Podesta email leak

      Throughout the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton’s campaign presented her as a crusading reformer who would take on powerful corporate interests and curb the role of big money in American politics.

      But the recent WikiLeaks dump of campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails offers revealing snapshots that tell a somewhat different story. Top aides plot to “scare our people into giving bigger sums.” They debate whether to take cash from registered foreign agents: “Take the money!!” one senior campaign official advises. A top corporate lobbyist, pressed to “hit up” his clients for Clinton campaign coffers, asks for high-level help to advance one of those client’s interests. And there are new details about the overseas cash that rolled into the Clinton Foundation — including a $12 million commitment from the king of Morocco that Hillary Clinton personally helped facilitate.

      The emails also disclose just how nervous top Clinton advisers were that Vice President Joe Biden might get into the race (Podesta himself was convinced he was getting in.) And they fretted about their own candidate’s limitations. “Almost no one knows better [than] me that her instincts can be terrible,” wrote one longtime Clinton aide.

    • Why Bernie Was Right

      Wikileaks’ latest document dump vindicates Bernie Sanders’ critique of Hillary Clinton and the Washington establishment.

    • The FBI’s Clinton Probe Gets Curiouser

      Hillary Clinton may win the election in two weeks, but the manner of her victory will bedevil her in the White House. Specifically, evidence keeps turning up suggesting that the FBI probe into her emails was influenced by political favoritism and double standards.

    • Pirates Could Rule Iceland After Upcoming Legislative Elections

      The Pirate Party promises to clean up corruption, grant asylum to Edward Snowden and accept the bitcoin virtual currency.

      Riding a wave of anger over perceived corruption among Iceland’s political elite, the Pirate Party is doing well in the polls ahead of Saturday’s general election.

    • WikiLeaks shows Clinton hid email scandal from her own staff

      Hillary Clinton’s closest aides hid the private email scandal from her campaign team in the months before the official launch of her presidential campaign, emails made public by WikiLeaks show.

      Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chair, and Neera Tanden, co-chair of Clinton’s transition team, each expressed shock at the revelations about her private server as they emerged in early March 2015.

      Although Clinton’s team had performed research on her in 2014 as staff prepared for her campaign, Clinton’s inner circle apparently steered Mook and others away from the issue until it was too late.

      When Podesta asked Mook if he had “any idea of the depth of this story,” Mook answered simply, “Nope.”

    • 2016 The Choice: Washington Post reporter on a WikiLeaks hacked memo and ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’

      On Thursday, Oct. 27, 2016, Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric speaks with Washington Post political investigations reporter Rosalind Helderman about her article detailing a hacked memo released by WikiLeaks that appears to implicate former President Bill Clinton in a pay to play scenario.

      Yahoo News Now Special Edition: “2016 The Choice” — Every weekday until the election, we’ll be coming to you live from the Yahoo Studios in New York City, bringing the latest information and analysis of the day’s most compelling storylines in the race for the White House.

    • Erica Garner blasts Clinton campaign over discussions staffers had about her father’s death in WikiLeaks emails

      Erica Garner, the daughter of police chokehold victim Eric Garner, ripped the Hillary Clinton campaign in a series of tweets Thursday after new campaign emails released by WikiLeaks showed how the Democratic nominee’s staffers discussed the death of her father.

      “I’m troubled by the revelation that you and this campaign actually discussed ‘using’ Eric Garner … Why would you want to ‘use my dad?” Garner tweeted along with a link to emails released by WikiLeaks. “These people will co opt anything to push their agenda. Police violence is not the same as gun violence.

    • WikiLeaks: Team Hillary Feared Clinton-Cosby Comparisons

      Political operative Ron Klain in January sent an “urgent” email to Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff warning of possible questions she might face, including how her husband’s sexual indiscretions might compare to disgraced comedian Bill Cosby.

      Klain’s insights became public Thursday thanks to the latest dump by WikiLeaks of campaign Chairman John Podesta’s hacked emails.

      Klain, who served as chief of staff to Vice Presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden, wrote that the campaign needed to set aside time to discuss the political questions, which now seem to be really owning the coverage.”

      Klain had several under the heading “WJC Issues.”

      One was particularly harsh: “How is what Bill Clinton did different from what Bill Cosby did?”

    • Wikileaks Reveals How Bill Clinton Profited From the Clinton Foundation

      A new cache of hacked e-mails, released Wednesday by WikiLeaks, is shedding new light on how Bill Clinton made millions of dollars while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state, and raising questions about whether there may have been conflicts of interest between foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and the former president’s personal business.

      In one 2011 memo written by Doug Band, a longtime aide to Bill Clinton, Band explains how he worked for years to raise $46 million for the Foundation through the Clinton Global Initiative, while also leveraging his relationships with corporate sponsors to secure lucrative speaking arrangements and consulting gigs for the former president. Band, who wrote the 12-page memo in response to an internal audit being conducted by lawyers for the Clinton Foundation, described the money-making endeavor as “Bill Clinton, Inc.”

      Those for-profit activities largely involved “speeches, books, and advisory service engagements” in which Band and his private consulting firm, Teneo, acted as “agents, lawyers, managers, and implementers.” Teneo also negotiated “in-kind services for the President and his family—for personal travel, hospitality, vacation, and the like.” By 2011, Bill Clinton had secured over $50 million in compensation and received an additional $66 million in future contracts, according to the memo. Among the deals were a number of paid speeches to corporations including banks like UBS and Barclays, and an $18 million arrangement to serve as “honorary chancellor” for Laureate International Universities, a for-profit college. Some foundation donors were also clients of Teneo, although there is no evidence of any quid pro quo.

    • WikiLeaks-released memo outlines Bill Clinton’s lucrative speeches

      In the memo, Band details how he set up for-profit deals for the former president, both involving money and “as appropriate, in-kind services for the President and his family — for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like.”

      Band’s memo covers 2001 to 2011, during which time “President Clinton’s business arrangements have yielded more than $30 million for him personally with $66 million to be paid out over the next nine years, should he choose to continue with the current engagements.”

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Musical Space: Censorship

      As you can imagine, the Nazis and the Soviet Union clamped down hard on music. Not only were many pieces permanently taken from society, but their composers as well. Modern Russia has also done its share; witness the imprisonment of the feminist Russian protest-punk band Pussy Riot in 2012.

    • Internet Celebrity ‘Bardock Obama’ Talks Censorship, ‘Dragon Ball Super’ In Interview [Exclusive]

      Censorship isn’t fun. Sure, some things need to be censored, but the politically correct world that we live in now has caused many people to fear expressing their opinions, even if it’s something harmless or backed by facts. You have a political view? Well, maybe you should hold it back because others may disagree. You don’t like a certain athlete’s protest of the national anthem? Delete that Instagram post because you’re going to get death threats. Fear has consumed us like a fire in a time of needing to please everyone, and it’s causing both panic and frustration among social media users.

    • With Interest In Profile Defenders’ Questionable Lawsuits Rising, The Lawsuits Start Falling

      Earlier this year, we were among the first to write about the highly questionable practice of “reputation management” companies filing clearly bogus lawsuits against unknown defendants, only to magically have those “defendants” show up a day or two later with an agreement that they had posted defamatory content. The goal of these lawsuits was obvious: get a court order. That’s because many platform websites, including Google, won’t take down or delink content based on a claim of defamation, but will do so if there’s a court order. Of course, filing a real lawsuit has all sorts of problems, including money and actually needing to have a real case. These reputation management lawsuits got around all of that by basically faking defendants, having them “agree” to a settlement admitting to defamation, and getting a court order saying that the content is defamatory. Neat and clean. And total abuse of legal process.

      Last month, Public Citizen’s Paul Levy (who has helped defend Techdirt against some legal bullies) picked up on this thread and found evidence of more bogus lawsuits. A few weeks ago, he and famed law professor Eugene Volokh teamed up to reveal more details on a series of such lawsuits, which all seemed to be connected back to a guy named Richart Ruddie and an operation that goes by a bunch of names, but mainly Profile Defenders. It appears that Ruddie/Profile Defenders is not the only one filing these kinds of lawsuits, but he’s been prolific. So far, Ruddie’s only response is a bizarre press release touting his “anti-cyberbullying skills.”

    • Pissed Consumer Sues Reputation Management Firms Over Their Bogus Lawsuit/Fake Defendant/Takedown Scams

      In the last few weeks, we’ve written a few posts about Richart Ruddie’s company, Profile Defenders, which appears to be “improving reputations” online by filing bogus defamation lawsuits, finding a bogus made-up “defendant” to “admit” to posting defamatory information, reaching a “settlement” and getting a court order. The whole scheme is about getting that court order, which is then sent on to Google and others (mainly Google). The whole point: if Google sees a court order saying that some content is defamatory, it will de-index that page. That the whole process to get that court order is a total sham is basically ignored. That may be changing. We were just noting that some of Profile Defenders’ cases are in trouble, and at least one has had the court order vacated.

    • Facebook’s Arbitrary Offensiveness Police Take Down Informational Video About Breast Cancer Screening

      Stories of Facebook’s attempt at puritanical patrols of its site are legion at this point. The site has demonstrated it cannot filter out parody, artwork, simple speech in the form of outrage, iconic historical photos, or sculpture from its prude-patrol censorship. As a private company, Facebook is of course allowed to follow its own whim when it comes to what is allowed on its site, but as an important tool in this era for communication and speech, the company is also a legitimate target for derision when it FUBARs this as badly as it does so often.

      So queue up the face-palming once more, as Facebook has decided to remove a video posted by a Swedish cancer charity informing women how to check for breast cancer, because the video included animated breasts, and breasts are icky icky.

    • Amazon slammed for censoring female erotica writer Anais Nin

      THERE’S a new book out by 20th century erotica pioneer Anais Nin — but you won’t find it if you search on Amazon.

      The world’s largest bookseller has black-listed erotica collection Auletris, the latest posthumous Nin work, after its publisher refused to edit the text to remove its more salacious details.

      But Nin’s literary cult following has slammed the retailer for “hypocrisy”, arguing that its censorship policy is haphazard and nonsensical.

      Long before the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon brought erotic fiction to the mainstream, French bohemian Anais Nin penned the writings that would see her hailed by critics as among the best authors of female erotica.

      Delta of Venus and Little Birds, erotica collections published in the late 1970s after Nin’s death,can both be searched and bought on Amazon.

    • Putting a muzzle on the right to disagree
    • Read This Dad’s Perfect Response To An Ironic School Permission Slip
    • This Kid Needed A Permission Slip To Read ‘Fahrenheit 451′, & Dad’s Response Was Perfect
    • Daily Show Writer’s Reaction Letter On Censorship Goes Viral
    • 8th Grader Has to Have a Permission Slip Signed to Read ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ Dad Responds Epically

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Alibaba’s Boss Says Chinese Government Should Use Big Data Techniques On Its ‘Citizen Scores’ Surveillance Store

      He gave a concrete example of how big data techniques could be used in this context (original in Chinese). He said that there was nothing suspicious about somebody buying a pressure cooker or a clock, nor anything suspicious about someone buying ball bearings. But if somebody buys all of them together, you have a suspicious pattern. His suggestion that data mining techniques applied to everyday purchases might help the authorities to spot these patterns and to stop criminals before they act — a familiar enough idea — indicates that he is thinking of China’s plans to track every transaction from every shop as part of its “citizen scores” project.

      Once that data is gathered, it would indeed be possible to start applying big data techniques as a matter of course in order to spot correlations — something already being used on Internet data by the NSA and GCHQ. But Ma’s suggestion is to go even further, and to analyze every digital breadcrumb people drop for possible significance when combined with more data points, whether their own or of others.

    • Google’s Quiet, Confusing Privacy Policy Change Is Why We Need More Transparency & Control

      Last week, I wrote about how privacy is about tradeoffs, and despite what some people claim, there’s no such thing as “absolute privacy,” nor would you actually want something approximating what people think they mean by it. The real issue is the tradeoff. People are quite willing to trade certain information in exchange for value. But, the trade has to be clear and worth it. That’s where the real problems come in. When we don’t know what’s happening with our data, or it’s used in a sneaky way, that’s when people feel abused. Give people a clear understanding of what they’re giving and what they’re getting and you eliminate most of the problem. Then give end users greater control over all of this and you eliminate even more of the problem.

      This was our thinking in designing a Privacy Bill of Rights for companies to abide by in designing their services (along with EFF and Namecheap).

      It appears that Google would fail to meet the standards of that bill of rights. Last week, ProPublica wrote about how Google quietly changed the privacy policy related to how it connects DoubleClick advertising to other data that it has about you, allowing the company to actually link your name and other identifying information to you as you surf around the web. And, on top of that, it apparently includes tying what you type in Gmail to the ads you might see.

    • Pardoning Edward Snowden

      New attention is being paid to American exile Edward Snowden these days with the release of a movie by filmmaker and screenwriter Oliver Stone. Titled “Snowden,” it looks into what drove the National Security Agency (NSA) contract worker to take top secret documents from his workplace.

      More attention to Snowden is also being generated with the calls by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union for President Barack Obama to pardon him.

    • Former NSA contractor again asks to be released from jail after alleged document theft

      A former National Security Agency contractor charged with stealing government property and taking classified information appealed to be released from prison in a motion Tuesday as he awaits trial.

      Harold T. Martin III, 51, of Glen Burnie, was charged in August with stealing 50 terabytes of information over two decades. Martin’s lawyers have not denied the theft but have characterized him as a hoarder who started taking documents home to help him get better at his job.

      On Friday, Martin’s lawyers tried to convince a judge to release him, but Magistrate Judge A. David Copperthite ruled he was a flight risk and had to remain in jail.

    • “He’s not Edward Snowden,” lawyers for accused NSA contractor tell judge

      Defense attorneys representing Harold Martin, the former National Security Agency contractor accused of stealing a vast quantity of classified materials, have asked a more senior judge to review the decision that kept their client in federal custody.

      On Tuesday, Martin’s federal public defenders filed a “motion to review detention order,” asking US District Judge Richard D. Bennett to overrule his more junior colleague’s decision last Friday to keep Martin behind bars.

      In August, when Martin was arrested, investigators seized 50 terabytes’ worth of data and many other printed and classified documents from Martin’s home in suburban Maryland. If all of this data was indeed classified, it would be the largest such heist from the NSA, far larger than what former contractor Edward Snowden took.

      During last week’s hearing, James Wyda, one of Martin’s lawyers, told US Magistrate Judge A. David Copperthite that his client “is not Edward Snowden. He’s not someone who, due to political ideas or philosophical ideas or moral principles, thinks he knows better than everybody else.”

    • Yahoo Asks James Clapper To Please Let It Talk About The Email Scanning It Did For The Government

      “Does not exist” is not nearly the same thing as “did not exist.” This means Yahoo is no longer scanning emails in this fashion, not that it never performed this scanning.

      The letter does make a good point about transparency. Currently, Yahoo is unable to defend itself against any allegations because it is likely under a gag order. Yahoo would like Clapper’s office to share in the public pain, especially since it had a problem sharing in the communications gathered on its behalf by the email provider.

      Public embarrassment or not, Clapper’s office is probably not rushing through a declassification review of this Section 702 FISA order. It could still be months or years before the government produces this document and/or allows Yahoo to speak openly about its email scanning program.

      Perhaps recognizing that a displeased letter to the ODNI doesn’t create much leverage, the company appears to be making this a global issue, rather than simply a domestic one. Marcy Wheeler points out that the letter mentions Yahoo’s global reach and users several times and namechecks the EU’s Privacy Shield agreement. This may be the key that loosens the Intelligence Community’s Glomarred lips.

    • ACLU Sues Government Over Unreleased FISA Court Opinions

      The US government is still holding onto its opacity ideals while publicly touting transparency directives. The FISA court — which presides over the NSA’s surveillance programs — has normally been completely shrouded in darkness. Things changed in 2013 after Ed Snowden began leaking documents.

      Forced into a conversation about domestic surveillance, the administration responded with more transparency promises and the signing of the USA Freedom Act into law. The new law curtailed the collection of domestic business records (phone metadata and other third-party records) and required the court to make its opinions public following declassification reviews.

      All well and good, but the government has apparently decided the new law only requires transparency going forward. FISA opinions dating back to 2001 still remain locked up, despite transparency promises and reform efforts.

    • Kuwait Backtracks On Mandatory DNA Database Of All Citizens And Visitors

      A few weeks ago, we reported on a move by some public-spirited lawyers in Kuwait to challenge an extraordinary new law that would require everyone in the country — citizens and visitors like — to provide their DNA for a huge new database. It seemed like a quixotic move, since the Kuwaiti authorities were unlikely to be intimidated by a bunch of lawyers.

    • Cyber after Snowden

      The damage, scar tissue, and cleanup process in a post-Snowden world

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Netflix CEO Wary That AT&T’s Latest Merger Could Hurt Streaming Competitors

      Streaming video competitors are justifiably nervous about AT&T’s $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. Consumer advocates have been raising alarm bells since the deal was announced, warning that AT&T could make it more difficult than ever for streaming providers to gain access to the content they’ll need to compete with AT&T’s upcoming DirecTV Now streaming service. They’re also concerned that AT&T will continue to use zero rating to give its own content a distinct advantage, while penalizing streaming competitors like Netflix and Amazon.

    • Google Fiber Announces Layoffs & Deployment Pause, Will Likely Pivot To Wireless

      Back in August a report emerged claiming that Google Fiber executives were having some second thoughts about this whole “building a nationwide fiber network from the ground up” thing. More specifically, the report suggested that some executives were disappointed with the slow pace of digging fiber trenches, and were becoming bullish on the idea of using next-gen wireless to supplement fiber after acquiring fixed wireless provider Webpass. As such, the report said the company was pondering some staff reductions, some executive changes, and a bit of a pivot.

      Fast forward to this week when Access CEO Craig Barrett posted a cheery but ambiguous blog post not only formally announcing most of these changes, but his own resignation as CEO. According to Barrett, Google will continue to serve and expand Google Fiber’s existing markets (Austin, Atlanta, Charlotte, Kansas City, Nashville, Provo, Salt Lake City, and The Triangle in North Carolina), and will also build out previously-announced but not yet started efforts in Huntsville, Alabama; San Antonio, Texas; Louisville, Kentucky; and Irvine, California.

    • Alphabet Cutting Jobs in Google Fiber Retrenchment

      Google in the past two years put in place plans to expand its Fiber fast internet service to more than 20 cities. Inside the company, executives harbored bigger ambitions: to deliver service nationwide and upend the traditional broadband industry.

      Google parent Alphabet Inc. reset the project on a more humble footing on Tuesday. Craig Barratt, head of the Access unit that includes Google Fiber, is leaving, and about 9 percent of staff is being let go, according to a person familiar with the situation. The business has about 1,500 employees, meaning there will be more than 130 job losses.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • As The Cubs Head To The World Series, The Team Is Also Raging Against Single-Word Trademarks

        On the bright side, I suppose, if the plan by the Cubs was to undertake an overly aggressive stance on trademark protection every round of the playoffs, there’s only one round left, so this should be it. We had just been discussing that as the team entered the League Series to attempt to make the World Series, it had filed a lawsuit against the many street vendors that line the path to Wrigley Field for selling counterfeit merchandise. This suit, while perfectly within the rights of the team, bucked a decades-long trend of allowing those sales. It was part of the tradition of going to a game, walking by these vendors and seeing their kooky designs. Another tradition for the team is raising a blue “W” flag whenever they win. That “W” was part of trademark opposition by the Cubs and MLB when a business unrelated to the professional sports market dared to use the single letter in a logo for its financial services product.

        And now it seems that, on the eve of the World Series, the Cubs are going after more than one kind of W still, as well as the letter C.

      • Car-Freshener Wields Little Trees Trademark To Bankrupt Non Profit That Helped Ex-Cons And Recovering Addicts

        Back in August, Mike wrote about a trademark case between Car-Freshner Corp., the company that makes those ubiquitous tree-shaped air-fresheners, and Sun Cedar, a tiny non-profit that made real-wood fresheners while employing at-risk folk in the form of the homeless, ex-cons and recovering addicts. It was a strange case for any number of reasons, including the dissimilar appearance between the product of the two companies, the wide delta of size of the two companies, and the very nature of the work Sun Cedar was attempting to do as a social good. Sadly but unsurprisingly, Car-Freshner trotted out the excuse that it had to sue this small non-profit or risk losing its trademarks.

        And now it seems like, rather than working out some other kind of arrangement that would have allowed Sun Cedar’s good work to continue, the trademark dispute has resulted in the end of the non-profit entirely, at least in its current iteration. Even with an attorney agreeing to represent the non-profit for free, the costs of taking on the suit in far-off NYC simply killed the whole operation.

      • Trademark Suit Dashes Hopes Of Lawrence Company That Hired The Homeless

        The company that filed the suit, Car-Freshner Corp. of Watertown, New York, is known for its aggressive defense of its trademark. It once sued a greeting card company for using a scratch-and-sniff air freshener shaped like a tree.

        Mediation efforts between Sun Cedar and Car-Freshner were unsuccessful and last month Sun Cedar filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Its shop, a converted garage, now sits idle. The equipment Adams purchased will be sold to pay off Sun Cedar’s debts.

    • Copyrights

      • The Reason The Copyright Office Misrepresented Copyright Law To The FCC: Hollywood Told It To

        There was some oddity over the summer, when the Copyright Office flat out misrepresented copyright law to Congress and the FCC with regard to the impact on copyright of the FCC’s (now dead) proposal to create competition among set top box providers. As we’ve explained over and over again, there were no copyright implications with the FCC’s proposal. All it said was that if an authorized user wanted to access authorized content via a third party device, that authorized user should be able to do so. And yet, the Copyright Office, incorrectly, seemed to make up an entirely new exclusivity in copyright law (one that would outlaw DVRs) that basically said not only could a content provider license content to a cable TV provider, but it could also limit the devices on which end users could view that content.

        Simply put: that’s wrong. That’s not how copyright law works, and we’ve known that since the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Betamax case decades ago.

        But why would the Copyright Office so misrepresent copyright law? That was the perplexing part. Even with a bunch of copyright professors explaining how wrong the Copyright Office was, the Office still went ahead with its letter. Of course, as with so many policy issues, it really seemed like the Copyright Office was just acting like a lobbying arm of Hollywood.

      • Linking to unlicensed content: Swedish court applies GS Media

        In 2012 the claimant (Rebecka Jonsson) filmed a bungee jumping session gone wrong in Africa.

        Someone (not Ms Jonsson) uploaded the video on YouTube. On 9 January 2012 the YouTube video was embedded on the L’Avenir website run by the defendant, in the context of an article describing the incident.

        The claimant had neither authorised the publication of the video on YouTube, nor its embedding in the L’Avenir article.

        In her action before the Attunda District Court, Ms Jonsson claimed that L’Avenir had infringed copyright in her video by both embedding it on its website and publishing a frozen still of the video. She sought damages for EUR 1931 against the defendant, as well as award of litigation costs.

        The Swedish court stated at the outset that the video is protected by Swedish copyright law, and noted how the circumstance for which the claimant’s video was (and still is) available on YouTube does not mean that no copyright infringement has occurred. This is because the claimant had not authorised the publication of the video on YouTube, nor – apparently – anywhere else on the internet.

      • Shameful: Perfectly Reasonable Academic Book On Gene Kelly Killed By Bogus Copyright Claims

        Remember when a copyright maximalist think tank guy insisted that copyright would never, ever be used for censorship? Well, about that…

        Earlier this year, we wrote about a crazy lawsuit filed by Gene Kelly’s widow, after finding out that a college professor named Kelli Marshall was working on a book collecting interviews with Gene Kelly. Marshall and her publisher reached out to a number of people associated with those interviews to clear any legitimate copyright claims (interview collection books are pretty common, and the copyright issue rarely gets in the way). Kelly’s widow, Patricia Ward Kelly, claimed that she held the copyright on all of Gene Kelly’s interviews, and sued Marshall for infringement. This was crazy for a variety of reasons, starting with the fact that the person being interviewed very rarely holds a copyright in the words they said (and Kelly’s widow made a mad dash to the copyright office to try to register these interviews right before suing). There’s also the whole fair use thing.

‘Balkan Express’ Teaser: EPO’s Željko Topić, Kuterovac, Campinos, Gurry, Battistelli and the DKPTO (Kongstad)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 4:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Various photos of Topić and Kuterovac. Some more photos with other IP “luminaries” such as Campinos of the EUIPO and Gurry of the WIPO.

Photos of Topić and Kuterovac etc. will become relevant to our upcoming long article as they visually demonstrate some of the points made therein (readers can see where we’re going with this based on this teaser).

Here are Topić and Campinos (EUIPO), who some believe will take over the EPO one day.

Topić Campinos 2011

Welcome Kuterovac.

Kuterovac

Kuterovac and Gurry from the abusive WIPO (both Battistelli and him wanted and applied for this job).

KUTEROVAC GURRY WIPO 2014

Kuterovac with Campinos.

Kuterovac Campinos

Kuterovac Campinos 2013

Yes, that’s Topić and Battistelli, way back almost a decade ago (2008).

FR-HR-BILATERAL 2008

Here is Topić a decade ago (2006), meeting the DKPTO for the twinning project [PDF]. The head of the DKPTO is now the Chinchilla man of the Administrative Council.

PHARE_closure 2006 - twinning project with DKPTO

Kuterovac and Topić in tandem (2010).

Kuterovac Topić WIPO 2010

More of Kuterovac (WIPO, 2012).

KUTEROVAC WIPO 2012

Also the following year (WIPO, 2013).

KUTEROVAC WIPO 2013

Also a photo of Jadranka Oklobdžija who is a lead plaintiff in the civil lawsuit against the SIPO and Topić.

Jadranka Oklobdzija

A lot of the above will be tied together in our upcoming article on the subject (the gallery of accompanying photos isn’t as critical to the message we’ll tell and the evidence we’ll present). █

10.26.16

The United States Pressures India to Broaden Patent Scope and Other Monopolies

Posted in Asia, Intellectual Monopoly, Patents at 6:52 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Shades of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which can bring software patents to India

Gandhi spinning
Non-cooperation movement is needed here

Summary: The envoy of the US is trying to tell India how to run the country (stricter laws regarding copyrights, trademarks, and patents), as a condition for foreign investment by multinational corporations

PUTTING aside the EPO for a moment (we plan to cover Željko Topić later this week and USPTO over the weekend), earlier today we found some articles from Indian news sites. The US is, quite frankly as expected (see Cablegate to understand how it works), trying to bully India into the entrapment which is patent maximalism, maybe even software patents which are currently not legal in the country (and less so in the US as well, taking Alice into account).

“The US is, quite frankly as expected (see Cablegate to understand how it works), trying to bully India into the entrapment which is patent maximalism, maybe even software patents which are currently not legal in the country (and less so in the US as well, taking Alice into account).”Based on reports like this one [1, 2] (cross-posted), the US makes improving relationships with India contingent upon bending over to US corporations, changing patent laws for them. To quote one key paragraph: “He said that on the persuasion of the US government the present government of India has taken some initiatives to amend and make stronger IPR laws.” Other news reports [1, 2] look at another angle and the “USPTO continues to move forward with its Enhanced Patent Quality Initiative (EPQI),” says Patently-O today, “and is hosting a set of five Quality Forum events over the next month in DC, Milwaukee, KC, Baton Rouge, and Portland.”

So while the US itself acknowledges the problem with too broad a patent scope (see the recent report from GAO [1, 2]), it seems perfectly fine screwing around with patent scope in other continents, including Europe. Guess whose economies would be harmed and for whose benefit. █

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