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02.22.16

Links 22/2/2016: IceWeasel/Firefox Debian Debate, Linux-powered Microwave

Posted in News Roundup at 6:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • ETSI Launches Open Source Mano Group

    A total of 23 Service Providers and Solution Vendors have announced their intent to join the Open Source MANO (OSM) Community in the Mobile World Congress being held in Barcelona focused on delivering an open source Management and Orchestration (MANO) stack aligned with ETSI NFV Information Models. OSM has been created under the umbrella of ETSI and it is an operator-led community to meet the requirements of production NFV networks such as a common Information Model (IM) that has been defined, implemented and released in open source software.

  • OSM Demos First Steps to Open Source MANO

    A new ETSI-based open source community, launched this week, is demonstrating its model-based approach to management and orchestration for NFV here at Mobile World Congress, hoping to build consensus and speed practical deployment of virtualization by solving its most persistent problem.

  • How to choose a brand name for your open source project

    When it comes to developing a new open source software project, most developers don’t spend a lot of time thinking about brand strategy. After all, a great idea, solid code, and a passionate community are what really matter when you’re getting a project underway.

  • Web Log: Quitter appeals to Twitter deserters

    All the hoo-hah around Twitter tweaking its timeline, shortly after ditching ‘favourites’ for ‘likes’, along with its decision to censor certain content and accounts, has left some folks weary and wary of the microblogging platform.

    If you’re planning on quitting Twitter perhaps you plan on tweeting via Quitter?

    That’s a bit of a mouthful but Quitter is an ad-free, not-for-profit alternative that runs on a volunteer basis.

  • Mejiro Update: Responsive and Improved

    As always, a Mejiro demo is available for your viewing pleasure. And you can download the latest version of the app from the project’s GitHub repository.

  • Events

    • Connfa: An open source mobile app for conferences and events

      Connfa is an open source app for conferences and events aimed to make paper brochures a thing of the past. Yes, those large, clumsy brochures.

      Imagine you’re at a conference. A nice person at the reception desk checks your ticket and hands you one of these bright and shiny paper program guides. You walk off and start circling the events you want to attend. Everything goes fine until you miss the session you wanted to go to because you confused the date, or maybe you spent ages looking for the venue. To top it all off, you forget the brochure the next day and you’re pretty lost. Sound familiar?

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox: on the right fix, and why the Bugzilla breach made me proud

        At Mozilla, we keep security-sensitive bug reports confidential until the information in them is no longer dangerous. This week we’re opening to the public a group of security bugs that document a major engineering effort to remove the rocket science of writing secure browser code and make Firefox’s front-end, DOM APIs, and add-on ecosystem secure by default. It removed a whole class of security bugs in Firefox – and helped mitigate the impact of a bug-tracker breach last summer.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • ls output changes considered unacceptable

      There are some software changes that are simple accidents resulting in bugs; folks find them, fix them, and all is well. Then there are intentional changes, which don’t affect functionality, but instead change _essential aesthetics_. These are much more alarming issues, the kind of issues that get under your skin, that disrupt your relationship with the terminal, as though you suddenly woke up and all your countrymen but not you spoke with a hardly comprehensible accent. It’s a shock, a disruption, a psychological chasm. And, when such a change is made in software considered “core”, by a single individual unilaterally without extremely wide consultation of the larger community, it is clear that a grave an unacceptable thing has happened. The recent change to ls (commit 109b922) must be reverted immediately, a new package version released, and only after large multi-distro discussion might a similar change be made.

  • Programming

    • Don’t use the greater than sign in programming

      Has 15 other possible ways to be expressed if you include the greater than sign and don’t make your expressions conform to the number line.

    • Upgraded to Jekyll 3.0

      Github Pages now supports Jekyll 3.0 which has some backward incompatible features, so I have decided to upgrade. I was quite surprised when I realized I am still using Jekyll 1.0 and everything was working great so far!

    • GCC vs. Clang On POWER8 Is A Competitive Compiler Match

      Most often when running GCC vs. LLVM Clang compiler benchmark comparisons it’s done on Intel/AMD x86 hardware or occasionally on ARM when benchmarking an interesting ARMv7/ARMv8 system. However, in having remote access last weekend to the prototype of the Talos Secure Workstation powered by a POWER8 design, I was very anxious to run some compiler benchmarks to see how these open-source compilers compete on the alternative architecture.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Mercury Splatters the Central U.S.

      Several years after scientists thought they had put the problem to rest, they have once again discovered increasing concentrations of mercury, this time in rainwater. “It’s a surprising result,” says David Gay from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, who is a co-author on the new study. “Everybody expected [mercury levels] to continue going down. But our analysis shows that may not necessarily be the case.”

    • Flint’s Poisoned Children Deserve the Truth

      The Michigan Legislature must amend the state’s Freedom of Information law to include itself and the governor’s office.

      By now, you’ve surely heard about the Flint water crisis. And you probably know why it happened: After the state of Michigan suspended democracy in the impoverished, predominantly African-American city, emergency managers appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder were given absolute power to make unilateral decisions that resulted in the lead poisoning of the municipality’s water supply.

      Congress, the Department of Justice, and the FBI are all conducting investigations. And the ACLU of Michigan, along with the National Resource Defense Council, local pastors and residents, is litigating to force the state to replace lead service lines immediately.

    • US School Agrees to Pay $8,500 to Get Rid of Ransomware

      As criminal probes and lawsuits examine the Flint water crisis, some of the key decision makers have been reluctant to discuss their roles.

      But their e-mails, released under the Freedom of Information Act, offer contemporaneous accounts of the crisis as it was happening. Here are some of the e-mails exchanges that have been recently released and what they show about a crisis that has drawn international attention.

    • Russian doping official planned book before sudden death

      The former executive director of the Russian anti-doping agency planned to write a book on drug use in sports shortly before his sudden death, a former colleague and Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported Sunday.

      Sunday Times sports writer David Walsh, renowned for his coverage of cycling champion Lance Armstrong’s doping, reported that Nikita Kamaev wrote to him in November offering to reveal information on doping covering the last three decades since Kamaev began work for a “secret lab” in the Soviet Union.

  • Security

    • SMEs vulnerable through insufficient IT, data security

      Small businesses are particularly vulnerable to breaches of IT security, according to a newly published survey which finds that security of data and IT systems is a growing concern for business leaders across Australia.

      Despite facing the same online risks as larger corporates, research by recruitment agency Robert Half the shows that small and medium businesses typically use fewer data protection tools than large companies.

    • US School Agrees to Pay $8,500 to Get Rid of Ransomware [Ed: Microsoft Windows]

      Administrators of the Horry County school district (South Carolina, US) have agreed to make a $8,500 / €7,600 payment to get rid of a ransomware infection that has affected the school’s servers.

    • Linux Computers Targeted with Fresh Fysbis Spying Malware

      One fresh malicious program called Fysbis, whose other name is Linux.BackDoor.Fysbis has been created for targeting Linux computers through installation of a backdoor which reportedly opens the machine’s access to the malware owner, thus facilitating him with spying on the user as well as carrying out more attacks.

    • CVE-2016-2384: arbitrary code execution due to a double-free in the usb-midi linux kernel driver

      This post describes an exploitable vulnerability (CVE-2016-2384) in the usb-midi Linux kernel driver. The vulnerability is present only if the usb-midi module is enabled, but as far as I can see many modern distributions do this. The bug has been fixed upstream.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Gallup Poll Shows Americans Prefer Terrorist Nations Over Iran. Why?

      A February 17th Gallup Poll showed that Americans prefer the chief nation that sponsors international terrorism, when given a choice between that terrorist-sponsoring nation and Iran. The disapproval shown of Iran is 79%; the approval is 14%. Back in 2014, the disapproval / approval were 84%/12%. At that time, Saudi Arabia had figures of 57%/35%. Iran was seen by Americans as being even more hostile toward Americans than Saudi Arabia.

    • The Saudi Slaughter in Yemen

      Although the Saudis have promised a high-level committee to investigate civilian deaths from their airstrikes in Yemen, they continue to strike civilian targets with countless deaths and destructions.

    • Darkness at High Noon in Korea

      As the world focuses on the war in Syria, the refugee crisis in Europe, and the primary slugfest in the United States, the two Koreas are heading toward a catastrophe in the Far East.

      Although relations on the Korean peninsula have been deteriorating for the better part of eight years, the last six months have been particularly tense. North Korea recently conducted its fourth nuclear test and followed up with a satellite launch using a long-range rocket. The international community reacted in its customary fashion, with condemnations and the imposition of more sanctions. South Korea joined in the chorus of disapproval.

    • Jeb Bush Is Dropping Out of the GOP Race. Here’s Why I’ll Miss His Campaign.

      There were more than a few reasons for a libertarian (or, okay, anyone) to dislike Jeb Bush: his consistent support for his brother George W. Bush’s administration, his aggressive backing of awful government surveillance programs, his general air of hawkishness, and the easy, entitled comfort with which he slipped into his place as the early favorite of the Republican party establishment. Jeb Bush and his supporters stood for continuity with the GOP under his brother, and all that was wrong with it.

    • It Took Jeb $150 Million, 250 Days And 3 States To Figure Out Republicans Don’t Want More Bush

      The massive expenditure of funds earned him 2.8 percent of the vote in Iowa, 11 percent of the vote in New Hampshire and, at the time he announced his withdrawal from the race, about 8 percent of the vote in South Carolina.

    • Uber Driver Allegedly Responsible For Kalamazoo Shooting Spree That Killed 6

      Police have arrested a suspect for a six-hour shooting spree that started in an apartment complex parking lot and ended in a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

      Jason Brian Dalton, a 45-year-old Uber driver, is suspected of killing six people and injuring two at random with a semiautomatic handgun during multiple shootings Saturday night. The shootings started around 6 p.m. when a woman was shot four times while with her three children. CNN reported the woman is in serious condition but is expected to survive the attack.

    • Kosovo Chaos Undercuts Clinton ‘Success’

      President Bill Clinton’s Kosovo war of 1999 was loved by neocons and liberal hawks—the forerunner for Iraq, Libya, Syria and other conflicts this century—but Kosovo’s political violence and lawlessness today underscore the grim consequences of those strategies even when they “succeed,” writes Jonathan Marshall.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • South Florida’s Tourist Season From Hell

      February and March are the prime times for tourists to come to Florida for a respite from cold winter weather. So imagine the panic that people who run fishing charters, paddle board concessions, beachfront hotels and restaurants are feeling as dark agricultural swill gushes from the state’s center to the east and west coasts, killing marine life.

      “It’s brown, it stinks, it’s cold,” a tourist from New Mexico told a TV reporter in Fort Myers.”It doesn’t look very appealing to get into to go swimming in.”

    • Why I Support Dr. Jill Stein for President

      The political crisis in America is severe. The old ideas that buttressed the ruling class and promised democracy, growth and prosperity—neoliberalism, austerity, globalization, endless war, a dependence on fossil fuel and unregulated capitalism—have been exposed as fictions used by the corporate elite to impoverish and enslave the country and enrich and empower themselves. Sixty-two billionaires have as much wealth as half the world’s population, 3.5 billion people. This fact alone is revolutionary tinder.

      We are entering a dangerous moment when few people, no matter what their political orientation, trust the power elite or the ruling neoliberal ideology. The rise of right-wing populism, with dark undertones of fascism, looks set in the next presidential election—as it does in parts of Europe—to pit itself against the dying gasps of the corporate establishment.

    • NOAA Forecast for Red Tide in Florida

      A red tide, or harmful algal bloom, is the rapid growth of microscopic algae. Some produce toxins that have harmful effects on people, fish, marine mammals, and birds. In Florida and Texas, this is primarily caused by the harmful algae species, Karenia brevis. It can result in varying levels of eye and respiratory irritation for people, which may be more severe for those with pre-existing respiratory conditions (such as asthma). The blooms can also cause large fish kills and discolored water along the coast.

    • Preparing for the Collapse of the Saudi Kingdom

      For half a century, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been the linchpin of U.S. Mideast policy. A guaranteed supply of oil has bought a guaranteed supply of security. Ignoring autocratic practices and the export of Wahhabi extremism, Washington stubbornly dubs its ally “moderate.” So tight is the trust that U.S. special operators dip into Saudi petrodollars as a counterterrorism slush fund without a second thought. In a sea of chaos, goes the refrain, the kingdom is one state that’s stable.

  • Finance

    • An Open Letter To My CEO

      I haven’t bought groceries since I started this job. Not because I’m lazy, but because I got this ten pound bag of rice before I moved here and my meals at home (including the one I’m having as I write this) consist, by and large, of that. Because I can’t afford to buy groceries. Bread is a luxury to me, even though you’ve got a whole fridge full of it on the 8th floor. But we’re not allowed to take any of that home because it’s for at-work eating. Of which I do a lot. Because 80 percent of my income goes to paying my rent. Isn’t that ironic? Your employee for your food delivery app that you spent $300 million to buy can’t afford to buy food. That’s gotta be a little ironic, right?

    • Bank of Finland predicts country will be cash-free by 2029
    • More Than 100 State and Local Governments Considering Anti-TPP Resolutions

      More than 100 state and local governments have introduced or passed resolutions opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). In addition, more than 100 resolutions opposing the TPP were passed at recent precinct caucuses in Iowa.

    • TTIP reading room to open in the UK, but campaigners warn of lack of transparency

      The UK government has announced its plans to open a special ‘TTIP reading room’ where MPs are able to read the negotiating texts of the controversial trade deal being negotiated between the EU and the USA – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The announcement was made in response to a written parliamentary question by Caroline Lucas MP, in advance of the 12th round of the TTIP negotiations which start in Brussels on 22 February.

    • Secret TTIP talks resume Monday as EU-US rifts deepen

      EU and US resume their negotiations next week over the TTIP trade and investment deal. But deep rifts have emerged over the corporate courts in which investors can sue governments for any actions that reduce their profits. Meanwhile MPs are seething over their restricted access to draft texts and negotiating documents.

    • A New Infographic on TPP and Your Digital Rights

      Anyone familiar with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) may find that it can be challenging to explain to others, in simple terms, how it threatens our rights online and over our digital devices. We often begin by describing the secretive, corporate-captured process of the negotiations that ultimately led to the final deal, then go into some of the specific policies—including its ban on circumventing digital locks (aka Digital Rights Management or DRM), its copyright term extensions that will lengthen restrictions on creative works by 20 years, and its inclusion of “investor-state” rules that could empower multinational corporations to undermine new user protections in the TPP countries.

    • Canada’s first Chinese FIPA case in the making?

      You never know where the next huge story is going to come from. I remember the first time I saw Enbridge’s proposal for a West Coast oil tanker port mentioned in a tiny newspaper article 15 years ago, and we know what happened with that.

    • Globe & Mail columnist calls for scrapping ISDS to save CETA

      The Globe and Mail’s national business correspondent Barrie McKenna has a solution to getting the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) through the European Parliament – drop the controversial investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provision.

    • In Murky 2016 Contest, Clear Opposition to Trade Agreements

      One of the few things clarified by a presidential contest where much remains unclear is the diminished support for–and, in some quarters, outright hostility toward–more trade deals. This goes beyond candidates pledging support for “fair trade” rather than “free trade,” which is par for the course during campaign season. What’s happening this cycle has implications for not only the next administration but also the global economy.

    • Obama Punts On Trade Agreement With EU

      The Obama administration has all but given up on a trade agreement with the European Union.

      Negotiations on the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership continue, but the administration is so invested in saving its other free trade agreement – the Trans-Pacific Partnership – that it has punted the T-TIP to the next administration.

    • Majority of U.S. Public School Students Live in Poverty

      For the first time since the Great Depression, a majority of U.S. public school students come from low-income families, according to a new analysis of 2013 federal data, a statistic that has profound implications for the nation.

    • You Can’t Earn a Living on the Minimum Wage

      When presidential candidate Bernie Sanders talks about income inequality, and when other candidates speak about the minimum wage and food stamps, what are they really talking about? Whether they know it or not, it’s something like this.

    • Looking for ‘Revitalization’ in All the Wrong Places

      On the one hand, using the Kings arena as a hook to examine chronic homelessness (though the examination here doesn’t go much beyond “it exists”) isn’t the worst thing in the world, especially for local newscasts that almost never focus on the lives of the poor. But on the other, this report reveals how deeply messed up local development reporting can be.

      [...]

      The FOX40 reporters who put together this piece probably didn’t think that this was the message they were conveying, but that shouldn’t let them off the hook. If you’re going to be a journalist, it’s vitally important that you think about not only what you’re covering, but how you’re covering it, and what assumptions go into the way you frame your story.

    • Billionaire-Owned Observer Whines About Democratization of Media in 2016’s Worst Op-ed

      Second only to glib equivalencies between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, 2016’s most popular lazy media trope is the idea that rabid Sanders fans have unleashed dark populist forces that threaten our republic. Both are fairly common, and more or less write themselves if the author tosses coherence and intellectual honesty out the window. But it’s rare that both are on such stark display as with New York Observer‘s editor-at-large Ryan Holiday’s recent op-ed (2/17/16).

      The diatribe, “The Cause of This Nightmare Election? Media Greed and Shameless Traffic Worship,” poses as media criticism but is little more than petulant establishment gatekeeping. Let’s begin with the thesis, or what passes for one, which is that the democratization of media has created a “sub-prime market” for the media.

    • Presstitutes At Work

      Like the Supreme Court the presstitutes have aligned themselves with the rich and powerful. Fox “News” reported that Marco Rubio, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, declared that to make the poor rich requires making the rich poor and we shouldn’t make the rich poor. Apparently, Fox “News” believes that aligning Rubio with the One Percent is helpful to his political career. Fox showed Rubio’s audience cheering and applauding his defense of the One Percent.

      This is “democratic America” where the people have no representation.

    • ‘Nobody Asked a Worker!’
    • NYT Rounds Up ‘Left-Leaning Economists’ for a Unicorn Hunt

      With Hillary Clinton ramping up her attacks on Bernie Sanders as a budget-buster—in the February 11 debate, she claimed his proposals would increase the size of government by 40 percent—the New York Times (2/15/16) offered a well-timed intervention in support of her efforts: “Left-Leaning Economists Question Cost of Bernie Sanders’ Plans.”

      While the “left-leaning” is no doubt meant to suggest critiques from those who would be inclined to sympathize with Sanders, all the quoted economists have ties to the Democratic establishment. So slight is their leftward lean that it would require very sensitive equipment to measure.

      Opinion pieces critical of Sanders often begin with a pledge of allegiance to his “impracticality.”

    • Wall Street Analyst Says Hillary Clinton Would Be the Best President for Healthcare Investors

      Amidst a tense battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders over competing visions for health care, a leading Wall Street analyst has put out a report saying that Clinton would be the best candidate for healthcare investors.

    • Hillary Clinton Again Declines to Disclose What She Told Big Banks in Her Paid Speeches

      The guy in the audience said it was a matter of trust. “Please just release those transcripts so we know exactly where you stand,” he said.

      But Hillary Clinton wasn’t going there. At the MSNBC town hall with the Democratic presidential candidates on Thursday evening in Las Vegas, Clinton once again refused to release transcripts or recordings of the secret speeches she was paid millions of dollars to make to Wall Street banks.

    • Voodoo Journalism: Dr. Krugman Strikes Again—Risking His Credibility

      Paul Krugman is at it again. This time, he’s using his position as the leading progressive columnist in the “nation’s newspaper of record,” to ballyhoo a letter from four former heads of the Council of Economic Advisors.

      Their letter criticizes an economic analysis of Bernie Sanders’ policies performed by University of Massachusetts economist, Gerald Friedman, which found that Sander’s platform would increase growth by 5.3%.

      Krugman’s column this past Friday suggests that the former CEA chiefs’ letter puts Bernie in the same camp as the Republicans, who’ve been spouting voodoo economics such as trickle-down and the elixir of tax cuts for decades now, complete with magic asterisks designed to make nearly $6 trillion in deficits disappear.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Hillary is the foolish idealist: Clinton derides Sanders as naive, but has no plan for battling GOP obstruction

      Throughout this Democratic primary season, Hillary Clinton has repeatedly cast herself as “a progressive who likes to get things done,” and her opponent, Bernie Sanders, as a foolish idealist whose ideas “sound good on paper but will never make it in the real world.”

      “I want you to understand, I will not promise you something I cannot deliver,” she told a South Carolina crowd last Friday. “I will not make promises I know I cannot keep.”

      But, contrary to these assurances of realism and pragmatism, Clinton has actually set forth a bold, sweeping agenda to transform America.

    • This is the key to Bernie Sanders’ political revolution: Here’s how we beat GOP obstruction

      It is my belief that Sen. Bernie Sanders will be the next president of the United States — a belief I’ve held since he first announced. Bernie is one of the most gifted politicians I have ever observed. He’s a person of great integrity and very clever. Many thought that calling himself a democratic socialist doomed his presidential candidacy, initially causing “the powers that be” to dismiss him. It turned out to have been an asset because this lack of national attention from opinion-makers permitted Bernie to grow his movement below the radar.

    • Why Bernie Can Win

      The pundits are wrong. Bernie Sanders is the most electable candidate this November.

    • Team Clinton: Fools, Damn Fools and Democrats

      However, we Americans are bombarded relentlessly with mind numbing pro-regime, pro-status quo propaganda. This is why it is always worthwhile repeating information that is out there already.

    • WATCH: Amy Goodman Critiques Media Coverage of Election 2016 on CNN’s “Reliable Sources”

      “…it is astounding that Bernie Sanders is where he is today. Look at that Tyndall Center report that found in 2015, in the months leading up to December, you had 234 total network minutes, like almost four hours, CBS, NBC, ABC, covering Trump. That’s four hours and how much got coverage? Sanders got 10 minutes. On ABC World News Tonight in that year, Sanders got 20 seconds. Trump got like 81 minutes,” said Goodman.

    • Backed by Airline Dollars, Congress Rejects Effort to Address Shrinking Legroom

      An amendment to address shrinking legroom for airline passengers was defeated recently by members of Congress fueled by campaign dollars from the airline industry.

      An amendment proposed by Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., would have required the federal government to study the issue of shrinking legroom and allowed it to set a minimum dimension for commercial airline seats.

    • Hillary Wins a Squeaker in Nevada, But It’s a Rout in the Headlines

      In case you’ve ever wondered about the value of a narrow 5-point win in a state you were expected to take easily, just take a look at today’s headlines. The margin of victory doesn’t matter. The headlines in all four of our biggest daily newspapers were clear as a bell: Hillary won and her momentum is back. That’s the story everyone is seeing over their bacon and eggs this morning.

    • Sanders: ‘We Have Enormous Momentum’ Going Into South Carolina

      Despite a narrow loss in the Nevada presidential caucus on Saturday, Bernie Sanders is not slowing down, and neither are his supporters.

      A report filed over the weekend with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) shows the senator from Vermont has received more than four million contributions, raising a total of $94.8 million through January 31st after his campaign launched last April.

    • How Hillary Clinton Won Nevada

      It might have been closer than most people would have guessed a month ago, but Hillary Clinton’s long-term investment in Nevada paid off. The former secretary of state edged out Sen. Bernie Sanders by about five percentage points in the Nevada caucuses. It wasn’t quite the 20-point edge that Clinton had in polls from late last year, but it was a decisive win that backs up the Clinton campaign’s contention that Sanders won’t be able to maintain the same level of support he enjoyed in Iowa and New Hampshire as the contest moves to more diverse states.

    • [Old but republished] Clinton’s Experience: Fact and Fantasy

      From the Archive: Hillary Clinton’s win in Saturday’s Nevada caucuses and her big lead in South Carolina restore her status as Democratic frontrunner but lingering doubts about her honesty and her coziness to Big Money continue to dog her path to the White House, a problem that Barbara Koeppel identified during Clinton’s first run in 2008.

  • Censorship

    • February 22, 1976, Forty Years Ago: Court On Censorship

      “The press is not only an instrument for disseminating information but a powerful medium for moulding public opinion by propaganda. True democracy can only thrive in a free clearing house of competing ideologies and philosophies — political, economic and social — and in this, the press has an important role to play. The day this clearing-house closes down would toll the deathknell of democracy,” says a judgment by Justices D.P. Madon and M.H. Kania of the Bombay High Court. It adds: “It is not the function of the censor acting under the censorship order to make all newspapers and periodicals trim their sails to one wind or to tow along in a single file or to speak in chorus with one voice. It is not for him to exercise his statutory power to force public opinion in a single mould or to turn the press into an instrument for brainwashing the public. Under the censorship order, the censor is appointed the nursemaid of democracy and not its grave-digger. Dissent from opinions and views held by the majority and criticism and disapproval of measures initiated by a party in power make for a healthy political climate, and it is not for the censor to inject into this the lifelessness of forced conformity.

    • A culture of silencing

      A fortnight ago I was due to chair a session at the British Houses of Parliament organised by the Labour Friends of Palestine, in which MPs would “hear directly from four young Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and a Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, live via Skype”. As a Palestinian, born in a Gaza refugee camp, this opportunity to present lawmakers with the reality on the ground was dear to my heart.

      The session was cancelled at the last minute under extreme pressure from the Labour Friends of Israel parliamentary group and a campaign waged against me in the pages of the Jewish Chronicle. This is not the first, and I am certain it will not be the last, time I have been prevented from offering the Palestinian point of view by the powerful machinations of the Zionist lobby and the propaganda department of the state of Israel known as Hasbara (‘explaining’).

    • Call For Stories: User Uploads and Takedown Abuse

      EFF is filing public comments on a series of studies initiated by the U.S. Copyright Office, and we need your help. One of the studies focuses on the notice-and takedown procedures outlined in section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). We’d like to hear from you about your experience with those procedures, and the policies and practices that platforms have implemented to comply with them.

    • Don’t censor A-rated movies: Petition filed on change.org after the beeped-up screenings of ‘Deadpool’

      With a message echoing that Indian cinemagoers can handle mature content and a plea to release A-rated movies without any cuts, a petition has been started by Change.org, a technology platform, to submit before the Shyam Benegal Committee on censorship.

    • Cairo gallery bemoans unprecedented censorship as it prepares to reopen

      The director of one of Egypt’s most respected art galleries has warned it faces unprecedented censorship as it seeks to reopen to the public next month after being shut down by the authorities in December.

      William Wells, the director of Townhouse gallery, said staff were allowed to return last week, having been given two weeks to comply with new legal restrictions, some of which amounted to state control of its work.

    • Censorship & Localisation – Reasons To Be Cheerful

      Xenoblade Chronicles X is one of my favourite games of last year. It’s a bloody great game and you should all play it. But a few outspoken gamers caused a ripple on the social media ocean when it was discovered that the Western versions of the game would be subject to some censorship.

    • Twitter Meets Orwell — an FAQ by Daddy Warpig

      Twitter has introduced a brave new way of screwing with users, which some have taken to calling shadowbanning.

      Basically, this acts like a gag: you can send normal tweets normally, but people Following you won’t see them on their timeline. (However, people reading your profile will see them.)

      The following restrictions also apply:

      Your tweets won’t show up in certain hashtags (which and why is unknown).

      Your tweets won’t show up in Search, either by keyword or by account name.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Paul Rosenberg on Antonin Scalia, Darnell Moore on Black Futures Month

      This week on CounterSpin: The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia sent shockwaves through the political and media world; but for many the real shock was hearing a man eulogized as gracious and thoughtful who called the Voting Rights Act a “perpetuation of racial entitlement,” complained of the law profession’s “anti-anti-homosexual culture” and argued that mere “actual” innocence is no reason for the state not to kill someone.

    • Antonin Scalia’s death during secret junket points to new ethical violations

      Antonin Scalia died as he lived, indulging behind closed doors in the largess of the very wealthy, who could depend on the right-wing associate justice to defend their interests in the United States Supreme Court.

      The nauseating praise for Scalia as a towering judicial figure is exposed as all the more dishonest and absurd by the still emerging circumstances of his passing.

      On Friday, February 12, the start of the Supreme Court’s annual week-long President’s Day recess, Scalia took a chartered jet from Washington, D.C., accompanied by an unidentified lawyer friend, to the exclusive Cibolo Creek Ranch in the Chinati Mountains of West Texas, near the Mexican border. US marshals assigned as Scalia’s bodyguards were told not to make the trip.

    • Albert Woodfox, Last of the Angola Three, Is Free After 43 Years in Solitary Confinement

      Just moments ago, Albert Woodfox, the last remaining member of the Angola 3 still behind bars, was released from prison 43 years and 10 months after he was first put in a 6×9 foot solitary cell for a crime he did not commit. After decades of costly litigation, Louisiana State officials have at last acted in the interest of justice and reached an agreement that brings a long overdue end to this nightmare. Albert has maintained his innocence at every step, and today, on his 69th birthday, he will finally begin a new phase of his life as a free man.

    • ‘Where Are Your Guts?’: Johnny Cash’s Little-Known Fight for Native Americans

      In 1964, Johnny Cash faced a backlash for speaking out on behalf of native people — and he fought back.

      In 1964, Johnny Cash released a Native American-themed concept album, “Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian.” In an incredible but little-known story, Cash faced censorship and backlash for speaking out on behalf of native people — and he fought back.

      A new documentary airing this month on PBS, “Johnny Cash’s Bitter Tears,” tells the story of the controversy. For the album’s 50th anniversary, it was re-recorded with contributions from musicians including Kris Kristofferson and Emmylou Harris, and the documentary also chronicles the making of the new album.

      ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Stephen Pevar, author of “The Rights of Indians and Tribes,” had a chance to ask writer/director Antonino D’Ambrosio about the film.

    • Siding With Foreclosure Victim, California Court Exposes Law Enforcement Failure

      The California Supreme Court on Thursday ruled unanimously in favor of a fraudulently foreclosed-upon homeowner in a case that should serve as a wake-up call to state and federal prosecutors that mortgage companies continue to use false documents to evict homeowners on a daily basis.

    • 5 Questions for CIA Director John Brennan

      NPR national security reporter Mary Louise Kelley tweeted on Friday that she would be interviewing CIA Director John Brennan on Saturday. Brennan was just on 60 Minutes last weekend, where Scott Pelley tossed him softballs.

    • Labor Board Sides With Trump Hotel Workers In Union Battle

      Just days before Nevada’s Republican presidential caucus, a federal labor official weighed in on the ongoing dispute between Donald Trump’s signature luxury Las Vegas hotel and the hundreds of workers who voted in December to unionize. Trump Hotel management had asked the National Labor Relations Board to throw out the results of that election, claiming that organizers from the Culinary Workers Union intimidated and coerced employees into voting yes, which “interfered with their ability to exercise a free and reasoned choice.” But after weeks of reviewing the evidence, the labor board did not agree.

    • Albert Woodfox released from jail after 43 years in solitary confinement

      US’s longest-standing solitary confinement prisoner set free in Louisiana after more than four decades in form of captivity widely denounced as torture

    • A Hindu priest in Muslim-majority Bangladesh has been hacked to death and two devotees injured in an attack on a temple in the country’s north

      A Hindu priest in Muslim-majority Bangladesh was hacked to death and two devotees injured in an attack Sunday on a temple in the country’s north.

      Police said Jogeshwar Roy, 50, was attacked as he came out after people threw stones at the temple in the Deviganj area of Panchgarh district, on the border with India.

      Quoting local people and witnesses, police officer Kafil Uddin said the assailants on a motorbike attacked the priest with a sharp weapon, fired guns and exploded crude bombs, injuring two devotees who tried to help him. The attackers fled.

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • A Tale of Two Treaties: Marrakesh and Beijing Both Make Their Way to the Senate

        The White House has submitted two copyright treaties to the Senate for ratification: the Marrakesh Treaty, which would improve access to copyrighted works for people with visual and print disabilities; and the Beijing Treaty, which could create a new layer of monopoly rights for the creators of audiovisual works. International copyright treaties move slowly, so neither of these is a surprise. For years now, we’ve encouraged the adoption of Marrakesh and the rejection of Beijing.

02.21.16

Links 21/2/2016: Linux Mint Web Site Breaches, MWC 2016

Posted in News Roundup at 8:59 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Tencent and Why Open Source is About to Explode in China

    One of the pioneers of the internet in China gave a highly provocative talk – asking the audience why China had yet to birth a major open source project. The consensus in the audience (polled via WeChat platform) was that China’s culture inhibited open source. I heard this in my travels throughout China.

    Frankly I can see this both ways. While I see the cultural challenges everyone was telling me about, their awareness of the challenge is so tangible that it is driving leaders in the community like Tencent’s Marty Ma and TethrNet’s Kevin Yin to try just a little harder. Even if the majority of Chinese tech workers don’t quite fully get open source now, we’re seeing leaders emerge in the country willing to invest of their time and energy to change things. I wouldn’t bet against them.

  • IoT industry leaders announce open source standard group

    On Friday, a group of industry leaders making headway in the Internet of Things (IoT) market announced a cross-industry collaboration effort aimed at unlocking the massive opportunities for consumers and business with IoT devices, and ultimately a way to quickly get everyone to adopting a single open standard.

  • Coreboot Now Supports U-Boot As A Payload
  • Coreboot Receives Initial POWER8 Support
  • New Businessweek Comic Uses Open-Source Al Jazeera Code

    Businessweek just published a comic strip online by Peter Coy and Dorothy Gambrell, which also appeared in print today. It argues against Fed Chair Janet Yellen introducing negative interest rates. For online readers that find their view of the strip too constricted, the site offers a way to focus on one digestible bit at a time. Open-source software released by Al Jazeera America (AJAM) last year under the MIT license, called Pulp, allowed Bloomberg to better the reading experience without writing new code.

  • AquaJS framework for Node.js is open source and in beta

    AquaJS is a framework for Node.js that was created at Equinix, which provides carrier-neutral datacenters and Internet exchanges for interconnection. AquaJS was developed to provide a way to start microservice-based application development. It is built with open-source modules, along with a few in-house modules, such as including architecture and design, programming best practices, technology, and deployment and runtime.

  • Learn Why Node.js is an Open Source Juggernaut

    The Node.js Foundation was created last year to support the open source community involved with Node.js, which offers an asynchronous event driven framework designed to build scalable network applications.

  • Events

    • What Should We Stop Doing? (FLOSS Community Metrics Meeting keynote)

      One trend I see underlying a big chunk of FLOSS metrics work is the desire to automate the emotional labor involved in maintainership, like figuring out how our fellow contributors are doing, making choices about where to spend mentorship time, and tracking a community’s emotional tenor. But is that appropriate? What if we switched our assumptions around and used our metrics to figure out what we’re spending time on more generally, and tried to find low-value programming work we could stop doing? What tools would support this, and what scenarios could play out?

    • Comparing Codes of Conduct to Copyleft Licenses (My FOSDEM Speech)

      I will briefly mention my credentials in speaking about this topic, especially since this is my first FOSDEM and many of you don’t know me. I have been a participant in free and open source software communities since the late 1990s. I’m the past community manager for MediaWiki, and while at the Wikimedia Foundation, I proposed and implemented our code of conduct, which we call a Friendly Space Policy, for in-person Wikimedia technical spaces such as hackathons and conferences.

    • What to expect from QCon London 2016

      Actually, it’s mostly more of the same (in a good way)… but perhaps at a slightly amplified level — the only change we have reflected here is to profile QCon London in the open source blog category.

      Okay yes there will be your proprietary players there too, but open source will be especially strong this year… as it is everywhere.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Open Source Interview: Former Mozilla President Li Gong on the HTML5 OS

        In this article, I introduce our new series—the Open Source interview—inviting you to suggest questions to ask our interviewees in a follow-up email interview. The first candidate is Li Gong, former president of Mozilla, who is now heading Acadine Technologies. They are busy launching H5OS, an open source platform for mobile and IoT.

      • Servo Lands Its New GPU-Accelerated Rendering Backend

        Mozilla’s experimental Servo web layout engine written in Rust has landed its new “WebRender” back-end that leverages GPU rendering.

        WebRender is an experimental GPU rendering back-end for Servo. WebRender tries to offload as much of the rendering work to the GPU rather than having to draw the web content via the CPU.

      • Mozilla: Real Data Encryption Requires Political Action, Not Just Code

        Mozilla took a strong stance on online privacy this week by reiterating the need for more encryption — but also noting that, in our age of government backdoors, encryption software alone may not be enough to keep data secure.

        In a blog post, Mozilla, the organization behind Firefox and other popular open source software, declares that “encryption isn’t a luxury — it’s a necessity.” And it plays up the importance of projects like Let’s Encrypt, a partnership Mozilla helped launch in 2014 to create an open certificate authority for encrypting websites.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Analysts Find Hadoop Now Entrenched in Banking, Government

      The open source Hadoop Big Data platform is not only on the rise, but it is becoming more entrenched in important sectors, including business and government. That is just one of the findings in a Research and Markets report titled “World Hadoop Market – Opportunities and Forecasts, 2014 – 2021″.

      The report also finds that the global Hadoop market is expected to garner revenue of $84.6 billion by 2021, registering a CAGR of 63.4% during the period 2016 to 2021. That is nothing to shake a stick at.

      North America accounted for around 52% share of the overall market revenue in 2015, according to the report, owing to higher rate of adoption in industries such as IT, banking, and government. Europe is anticipated to witness the fastest CAGR of 65.7% during the forecast period.

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Joining The Document Foundation Board

      At the end of 2015 I was honoured to be elected to serve as a director of The Document Foundation — the charity that develops LibreOffice — for two years. The new Board commenced yesterday, February 18 and immediately started conducting business by selecting a Chair – Marina Latini from the LibreItalia community – and a vice-chair, the redoubtable Michael Meeks of Collabora.

      While some doubted when it was formed, with a few even mounting campaigns to undermine it for reasons I still don’t understand, The Document Foundation has quickly developed into a model for new open source community charities.

    • Pondering the future of the Document Foundation

      This past week we had had the pleasure to welcome both our new marketing assistant and the new board of directors of the Document Foundation. I would like to say a few words on where the Document Foundation stands now – and I must stress that I’m confident the new board has the right people to handle the future of the foundation.

      The Document Foundation is still a small entity compared to the Mozilla or OpenStack Foundation. However, with several hundreds of thousands of euros/dollars of resources, it just happens to stand just behind these behemoths. It is not an easy task. Commonly held opinions often do not apply with us: “pay X to code feature Y”. That is somewhat possible, but we tend not to do it, unless there is a strategic reason (and enough money) to do it. We do fund, however, our entire infrastructure, the release management process, infrastructure and tools that help the community develop, improve and release LibreOffice. As the Document Foundation is now four years old, we are adjusting our internal processes and decision making structure in order to scale up and be more effective. There is no easy answer, because most of the ones that could be made were already found during the past four years.

  • CMS

    • Remember WordPress’ Pingbacks? The W3C wants us to use them across the whole web

      Something called Webmentions – which looks remarkably like the old WordPress pingbacks, once popular in the late 2000s – is grinding through the machinery of the mighty, and slow-moving, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

      But don’t be deceived. Lurking behind that unassuming name lies something that might eventually offer users a way of ditching not just Facebook and Twitter but also those other massive corporations straddling the web.

  • Google Openwashing

  • IBM

  • BSD

  • Public Services/Government

  • Licensing

    • Kuhn’s Paradox

      I believe this paradox is primarily driven by the cooption of software freedom by companies that ostensibly support Open Source, but have the (now extremely popular) open source almost everything philosophy.

      For certain areas of software endeavor, companies dedicate enormous resources toward the authorship of new Free Software for particular narrow tasks. Often, these core systems provide underpinnings and fuel the growth of proprietary systems built on top of them. An obvious example here is OpenStack: a fully Free Software platform, but most deployments of OpenStack add proprietary features not available from a pure upstream OpenStack installation.

      Meanwhile, in other areas, projects struggle for meager resources to compete with the largest proprietary behemoths. Large user-facing, server-based applications of the Service as a Software Substitute variety, along with massive social media sites like Twitter and Facebook that actively work against federated social network systems, are the two classes of most difficult culprits on this point. Even worse, most traditional web sites have now become a mix of mundane content (i.e., HTML) and proprietary Javascript programs, which are installed on-demand into the users’ browser all day long, even while most of those servers run a primarily Free Software operating system.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • GitHub is proprietary, therefore it is evil

      There has been a lot of noise recently on how GitHub is bad, and how developers should stop using it.

    • Hello, Kotlin: Another programming language for JVM and JavaScript

      Why Kotlin? JetBrains is a developer tools company whose IntelliJ IDEA IDE has been adapted by Google for Android Studio, and the short answer seems to be that the company wanted something better than Java with which to build its own products.

    • A Programmer’s Dream: This Is What Your Code Actually Looks Like On GitHub

      Codeology is an online visualization program that allows you to see your GitHub project in front of your eyes.

    • The RedMonk Programming Language Rankings: January 2016

      It’s been a very busy start to the year at RedMonk, so we’re a few weeks behind in the release of our bi-annual programming language rankings. The data was dutifully collected at the start of the year, but we’re only now getting around to the the analysis portion. We have changed the actual process very little since Drew Conway and John Myles White’s original work late in 2010. The basic concept is simple: we periodically compare the performance of programming languages relative to one another on GitHub and Stack Overflow. The idea is not to offer a statistically valid representation of current usage, but rather to correlate language discussion (Stack Overflow) and usage (GitHub) in an effort to extract insights into potential future adoption trends.

Leftovers

02.19.16

Links 19/2/2016: Samsung’s ARTIK, ZFS in Ubuntu 16.04

Posted in News Roundup at 8:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • The Power Of Open Source To Solve The Data Fragmentation Challenge

    Apache Arrow is a new open-source project that helps data analysts wrestle diverse data sets into a single format. Apache Arrow is a collaborative effort that spans many of the largest providers and users of data infrastructure today including Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Cloudera (Private:CLOUD), Databricks, DataStax, Dremio, Hortonworks (NASDAQ:HDP) MapR, Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM), Trifacta and Twitter (NYSE:TWTR). That so many different companies can collaborate on one initiative to improve data analysis industry-wide is a testament to the power of open source to inspire and engender great change.

  • Events

    • Akademy 2016 part of QtCon
    • Program Announced for Embedded Linux Conference and OpenIoT Summit

      The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today is announcing its full schedule of keynote speakers and conference sessions for Embedded Linux Conference and OpenIoT Summit, taking place April 4-6 in San Diego, Calif. These events are co-located, and one registration provides access to all sessions and activities for both events.

    • Embedded Linux and OpenIoT conference details emerge
    • Flock 2016 update: Submissions and lodging

      The call for submissions for talks and workshops is also open, and contributors may submit at the same registration site. The deadline for call for submissions is Friday, April 8, 2016. In a change from previous Flocks, talk and workshop selection will be driven by a Flock Scheduling panel. The panel members will work with the Flock staff and the Fedora Council to determine which talks and workshops are accepted.

    • DevConf 2016: community and containers

      This year it was even more difficult to decide how to spend my time at DevConf, the annual Fedora, Red Hat, JBoss developers’ conference in Brno. There were several good presentations in parallel, often I wished I could be in two separate rooms at the same time. There were also developers from all over the world, and I have missed quite a few talks due to some very good in-depth discussions about syslog-ng. As a community manager for syslog-ng, I have tried to focus on community-related presentations and on technologies related to syslog-ng: containers, security and packaging.

  • Web Browsers

    • The future of loading CSS

      Chrome is intending to change the behaviour of link rel=”stylesheet”, which will be noticeable when it appears within body. The impact and benefits of this aren’t clear from the blink-dev post, so I wanted to go into detail here.

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox for iOS is Faster with 3D Touch and More

        We recently released the first version of Firefox for iOS. It’s a great browser and we’re excited to bring you more new features today. The latest release of Firefox for iOS brings improvements to make browsing simpler and more fun by taking advantage of the latest iOS hardware and software features.

        Firefox for iOS on iPhone 6S and 6S Plus now offers 3D Touch to help you access commonly used features faster than ever before. Simply press the Firefox app icon to open the Quick Access menu which has shortcuts to Open Last Bookmark, open a New Private Tab or a New Tab.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Apache Arrow to Accelerate Open Source Big Data Analytics

      The Apache Software Foundation is rolling out a new top level project this week, and it’s one that didn’t first have to undergo the typical project incubation phase. Apache Arrow, an effort to build columnar in-memory analytics technology that could dramatically accelerate Big Data analytics, is launching with support from 13 major open source Big Data projects.

    • Spark 2.0 will offer Interactive Querying of Live Data

      The next version of Apache Spark will expand on the data processing platform’s real-time data analysis capabilities, offering users the ability to perform interactive queries against live data.

      The new feature, called structured streaming, will “push Spark beyond streaming to a new class of application that do other things in real time [rather than] just analyze a stream and output another stream,” explained Matei Zaharia, Spark founder and Databricks chief technology officer, at the Spark Summit East, taking place this week in New York. “It’s a combination of streaming and interactive that isn’t really handled by current streaming engines.”

  • CMS

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD, Variants Not Affected by Recent GNU Bug

      Much has been made about a vulnerability in a function in the GNU C Library. And searching far and wide over the Internet, there was little — actually nothing — I could find regarding how this affected BSD variants.

      However, you can rest easy, BSDers: Not our circus, not our monkeys.

      Dag-Erling Smørgrav, a FreeBSD developer since 1998 and the current FreeBSD Security Officer, writes in his blog that “neither FreeBSD itself nor native FreeBSD applications are affected.”

  • Public Services/Government

    • Dutch Gov: ‘Our lack of knowledge hinders open source’

      A lack of understanding of free and open source software is hindering its uptake by Dutch public administrations, writes Minister for the Central Government Sector Stef Blok in a letter to the country’s House of Representatives. Not knowing how to deal with software errors, is a service risk that “multiple organisations have experienced”, the minister says.

    • Govt’s Move To ‘Open Source’: Firm support system a necessity for adoption

      Switching over to open source software across all Central departments, as per a policy decision taken by the NDA government last year, could entail substantial savings on the Centre’s software expenses as most open source alternatives are free. Experts, though, caution that the obvious financial advantages of adopting open source notwithstanding, concerns pertaining to security and operational efficiency may have to be addressed concomitantly.

    • France involves public to draft support contract

      France’s ministries are involving free software communities and the public in writing their next multi-year framework contract for services and support on free and open source software. It is the first time that an IT services support contract will be co-written by administration and citizens.

    • Tallinn Saves A Bundle Using GNU/Linux

      Schools in the city of Tallinn (Estonia) are gradually moving to PC workstations running on free and open source software. A pilot in March 2014 switched 3 schools and 2 kindergartens. Students, teachers, school administration and kindergartens’ staff members are using LibreOffice, Ubuntu-Linux and other open source tools.

  • Licensing

    • Canonical Says There Is No ZFS and Linux Licence Incompatibility

      Canonical announced that support for the ZFS (Z File System) will be available in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, but a lot of users have been asking about a possible license conflict. Canonical’s Dustin Kirkland explained why that’s not a problem.

      ZFS (Z File System) is described as a combination of a volume manager (like LVM) and a filesystem (like ext4, xfs, or btrfs), and it’s licensed under CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License). Don’t worry if you didn’t hear about it. It’s not something that’s commonly used.

    • ZFS Licensing and Linux

      We at Canonical have conducted a legal review, including discussion with the industry’s leading software freedom legal counsel, of the licenses that apply to the Linux kernel and to ZFS.

      And in doing so, we have concluded that we are acting within the rights granted and in compliance with their terms of both of those licenses.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Google green-lights Go 1.6

      In a blog post, Google’s Andrew Gerrand called the HTTP/2 support “the most significant change” in the release, with the revision bringing the new protocol’s benefits to projects like the Go-based Caddy Web server. He otherwise described the upgrade, the seventh major stable release of the language, as more incremental than Go 1.5, which was released last August.

      The team has tinkered with garbage collection, featuring lower pauses than version 1.5, particularly for large programs, but programs may not necessarily run faster. “As always, the changes are so general and varied that precise statements about performance are difficult to make. Some programs may run faster, some slower,” according to release notes.

    • Version control isn’t just for programmers

      So that’s why I’ve personally chosen Mercurial. That said, there’s an analogous process in most of these other systems for what I’m going to describe here. So if you’d prefer to use Git or Fossil, I say that’s great. At least you’re using something. That puts you a step ahead of most other creatives.

    • Supporting Beep Beep Yarr!

      Some of you may be familiar with LinuxVoice magazine. They put an enormous amount of effort in creating a high quality, feature-packed magazine with a small team. They are led by Graham Morrison who I have known for many years and who is one of the most thoughtful, passionate, and decent human beings I have ever met.

      Well, the same team are starting an important new project called Beep Beep Yarr!. It is essentially a Kickstarter crowd-funded children’s book that is designed to teach core principles of programming to kids. The project not just involves the creation of the book, but also a parent’s guide and an interactive app to help kids engage with the principles in the book.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • EU Parliament Members Seek To Curb Antibiotics In Animals, Boost New Research

      In the fight against antimicrobial resistance, members of the European Parliament’s Environment and Public Health Committee have advocated banning collective and preventive antibiotic treatment of animals, and supported measures to stimulate research into new antibiotics, including longer data protection.

      Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have been working on the update of a European Union law on veterinary medicine. According to a European Parliament press release, MEPs took a vote yesterday on draft plans for legislation on antimicrobial resistance.

    • Voices From the Front Lines of the Flint Water Crisis

      Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s successive emergency managers are now gone from Flint, but the wreckage of their rule there still pollutes many homes. The crisis in Flint is, on the surface, about water. In April 2014, the city switched from the Detroit water system, which it had used for more than 50 years, to the Flint River, ostensibly to save money. The Flint River water made people sick, and is likely to have caused disease that killed some residents. The corrosive water, left untreated, coursed through the city’s water system, leaching heavy metals out of old pipes. The most toxic poison was lead, which can cause permanent brain damage. The damage to the people of Flint, the damage to the children who drank and bathed in the poisoned water, is incalculable. The water is still considered toxic to this day.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Nitro Zeus: USA’s Secret Cyber War Plan To Destroy Iran’s Complete Infrastructure

      Alex Gibney is known for his investigative documentaries that garner a unanimous applause from the critics. During the reporting for his latest cyber warfare-focused film Zero Days, the US government’s secret plan called Nitro Zeus was uncovered. This plan deals with a massive cyberattack on Iran’s infrastructure if the nuclear negotiations with Iran would have fail.

    • FBI Won’t Explain Its Bizarre New Way of Measuring Its Success Fighting Terror

      The Federal Bureau of Investigation has quietly developed a new way to measure its success in the war on terror: Counting the number of terror threats it has “disrupted” in a year.

      But good luck trying to figure out what that number means, how it was derived, or why it doesn’t jibe with any other law-enforcement statistic, most notably the number of terror suspects actually charged or arrested.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Climate Change Panel Seeks To Improve Communication, Open Doors To Private Sector

      The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seeks to improve its communication to promote its reports, its chair said at a briefing yesterday. Working on its next assessment report expected to be released in five or six years, the IPCC seeks to increase participation of the private sector as a major stakeholders upon which depends the investment to find solutions to climate change he said.

    • Indonesia to continue easing restrictions on foreign investors: President Widodo

      Indonesia will continue opening up its market, making it easier for foreign investors to enter the country.

      Speaking to about 300 business leaders and other stakeholders at an ASEAN Economic Community conference in San Francisco on Wednesday (Feb 17), President Joko Widodo said even though Indonesia is doing more to attract investments, and announced a number of deregulation packages, he is still not satisfied.

      “I’m not satisfied; please understand we are still only at the beginning,” he said. “We will continue to simplify, continue to open up, continue to modernise our rules and regulations. There are still many excessive permits, licenses, and protections.”

      Mr Widodo gave a key note address at the conference after attending the US-ASEAN Leaders Summit in Sunnylands which ended on Tuesday. He said Indonesia’s investment climate is still not conducive enough and the country needs to deregulate more.

    • Shockingly, authorities arrest activists instead of people responsible for the Aliso Canyon methane gas leak

      The California State Patrol has arrested two people in connection with the massive methane leak in Southern California’s Aliso Canyon, but many residents who had to leave their homes near the leaking underground gas storage site think the wrong people are in custody. Instead of busting company executives and engineers who are responsible for the massive methane gas leak, the CSP arrested two protesters who draped banners on the headquarters of the California Public Utilities Commission. The protesters draped banners to highlight the lax regulatory environment that enabled the spill — similar to the political culture that enabled the water poisoning in Flint. But unbelievably, the activists are now the ones going to jail.

  • Finance

    • Minimum wage, minimum chance of a future: This is how horrible living on the minimum wage has become

      When presidential candidate Bernie Sanders talks about income inequality, and when other candidates speak about the minimum wage and food stamps, what are they really talking about?

    • Listen to interviews with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples discussing the Trans Pacific Partnership

      The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, if approved, would be the largest trade agreement in history involving 11 countries including the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru Singapore, and Vietnam.

      Cultural Survival staff caught up with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, to discuss the trade deal’s implications for Indigenous Peoples in these countries, based on her recent research and report on this topic.

    • TTIP: Alternative ISDS No Real Alternative, NGOs Warn

      Malmstroem’s ICS proposal did not address most of the problems of the extra-judicial redress mechanisms for foreign investors, the study explains in a detailed comparison of ISDS and ICS. Instead, “it arguably grants investors even more rights than many existing investment treaties, which have already led to hundreds of investor-state lawsuits around the world,” the study states.

      A specific provision (section 2, article 3.4) of the proposed new system would allow for complaints when investors feel their “legitimate expectations” have been violated by regulatory acts of states. But “explicit protections of investors’ legitimate expectations are generally not part of existing treaties,” CEO and its partners warn.

      [...]

      Nevertheless, ISDS is expected to be back on the agenda of negotiators next week after the EU Commission’s DG Trade after Malmstroem had taken it off the agenda while the public consultation in the EU was ongoing.

    • MPs can view TTIP files – but take only pencil and paper with them

      MPs have won access to documents covering controversial and secretive trade talks between Brussels and Washington, but can only take a pencil and paper into the room where the files can be viewed.

      Confidentiality rules mean no electronic devices – including phones, tablet and laptop computers, or cameras – are allowed in the room at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in Westminster. This is fuelling concerns about a “cloak of secrecy” surrounding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations between the EU and the US government.

      UK business minister Anna Soubry agreed to provide the room in BIS’s offices on the condition that MPs keep the TTIP documents private. Soubry said pressure on Brussels officials from EU governments had won the concession, but the department was obliged to maintain secrecy.

    • Expanded Version: The Us Economy Has Not Recovered and Will Not Recover

      Jobs offshoring benefitted Wall Street, corporate executives, and shareholders, because lower labor and compliance costs resulted in higher profits. These profits flowed through to shareholders in the form of capital gains and to executives in the form of “performance bonuses.” Wall Street benefitted from the bull market generated by higher profits.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Sanders tops Clinton in a national poll for the first time

      Bernie Sanders has passed Hillary Clinton at the top of a national poll for the first time in the 2016 race.

      A Fox News poll of the Democratic presidential race released Thursday shows Sanders with 47 percent support to Clinton’s 44 percent.

      That’s a gain of 10 percentage points for Sanders a January version of the poll. Clinton’s support declined 5 points.

      Clinton posted leads as high as 30 points over the summer, but Sanders has been steadily closing the gap. While no other poll of the race going back to 2014 has ever showed Clinton trailing a rival, she led Sanders by just 2 points in the last two Quinnipiac University tracking polls.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • FCC votes to “unlock the cable box” over Republican opposition

      The Federal Communications Commission today approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that seeks to give consumers more choices in the set-top boxes they use to watch cable TV.

      The vote was 3-2, with Chairman Tom Wheeler and fellow Democrats Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel voting in favor of the proposal, while Republicans Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly voted against. An NPRM is not a final vote. Instead, this will kick off a months-long public comment period leading up to a final vote that is likely to happen before the end of this year.

      The FCC is essentially trying to create a software-based replacement for CableCard. Pay-TV operators from the cable, satellite, and telco industries would have to provide content and programming information to makers of third-party hardware or applications. Theoretically, customers could then watch their TV channels on various devices without needing to rent a set-top box from their cable company and without buying equipment that is compatible with a physical CableCard.

    • FCC Votes to Dismantle Cable’s Monopoly Over The Set Top Box

      The FCC voted 3-2 today to begin dismantling the cable industry’s long-standing monopoly over ye olde set top cable box. As noted previously, the FCC is pushing a proposal that would require cable operators make their programming accessible to third-party set top manufacturers, without requiring the use of a CableCARD. The goal is to create competition in the set top box market, giving consumers a choice of better and cheaper gear, in the same way consumers can buy their own cable modems. 99% of consumers currently pay about $231 annually in rental fees for hardware that’s generally worth about half that much.

    • AT&T Makes It Clear: It Bought DirecTV So It Doesn’t Have To Upgrade Its Lagging Networks

      When AT&T originally announced the company wanted to spend $69 billion on a satellite TV company on the eve of the cord cutting revolution, even M&A bullish Wall Street thought AT&T was a little nuts. After all, AT&T’s refusal to seriously upgrade its aging DSL networks to full fiber have left it at a serious disadvantage to faster cable broadband. Given Verizon’s FiOS fiber build clocked in somewhere around $24 billion, the $69 billion AT&T spent on DirecTV could have gone a long way toward bringing those customers into the modern fiber to the home era.

    • AT&T, Time Warner Cable Hope Incessant Whining Will Keep Google Fiber From Louisville

      For fifteen years now, companies like AT&T and Time Warner Cable (and their various PR and policy tendrils) have whined incessantly about the “burdensome regulations” that saddle the U.S. broadband industry. Less regulation, they argue, will pave the path to broadband nirvana, opening the door to immense innovation and more competition in the sector. So Louisville recently set about reworking its city broadband ordinances to streamline both the pole attachment and franchise agreement processes dramatically, something you’d assume would thrill both companies.

    • Zero Rating: What It Is and Why You Should Care

      Zero-rating has become the bleeding edge of the net neutrality debate. India recently decided to reject zero-rating plans such as Facebook’s Free Basics, while in the United States carriers push boundaries with zero-rating experiments such as T-Mobile’s Binge-On plan (which led to a public spat with EFF over our criticism of the service, for which Legere has since apologized), as well as AT&T’s Sponsored Data, Verizon’s FreeBee, and Comcast’s Stream TV.

      What is zero-rating and why should you worry about it? In a nutshell, zero-rating plans exempt particular data from counting against a user’s data cap, or from accruing any excess usage charges. The most dangerous of these plans, such as the AT&T and Verizon offerings, only offer their users zero-rated data from content providers who pay the carriers money to do so. Such “pay for play” arrangements favor big content providers who can afford to pay for access to users’ eyeballs, and marginalize those who can’t, such as nonprofits, startups, and fellow users.

  • DRM

    • Let’s Unlock the Set-Top Box–For Real

      Imagine traveling back to 1996 in a typical American living room. What’s changed? The TV is three feet thick and weighs 150 pounds. There’s a VHS videocassette recorder underneath, but no Internet-connected devices to be seen.

      Now, what hasn’t changed?

      The cable or satellite tuner box. It’s a black or grey plastic slab. You have to lease it from your pay-TV provider for a monthly fee. It doesn’t add much functionality to your living room setup, except that your TV subscription doesn’t work without it.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Disclosure Requirement In IP Applications Necessary To Comply With Obligations, Speakers Say

      Carlos Correa, special advisor on trade and intellectual property at the South Centre, said the obligation to disclose the source of genetic resources is necessary if the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity are to be implemented.

    • Trademarks

      • The Indonesian IKEA case: what happened and why it might actually be good for foreign companies

        Based on a literal interpretation of the Trademark Law’s non-use provisions, the decision appears to have a sound basis in law: while IKEA’s two original applications were registered in October 2006 and 2010, the first IKEA store selling Class 20 and 21 goods did not open in Indonesia until October 2014, with no ‘acceptable reason’ to excuse the non-use. Interestingly, the Supreme Court’s ruling was a 2-1 decision, with Judge I Gusti Agung Sumanatha filing a rare dissent, arguing that because IKEA had proven that it was the owner of a legitimately registered well-known trademark, the non-use provisions should not apply. While not explicitly supported by the Trademark Law’s text, Judge Sumanatha’s dissent speaks more to the spirit and purpose of the Law and is a welcome development. Troubling, however, is that both courts ruled PT. Ratania’s applications for the mark “IKEA INTAN KHATULISTIWA ESA ABADI” were “legitimate” (“sah”). Such a ruling is as unclear as it is unnecessary and ignored clear evidence presented during the trial that PT. Ratania knew about IKEA prior to filing their own applications, strongly implying that the applications were impermissibly filed in bad faith. While the courts’ unclear language and meaning likely lead to the confusion in reporting on this case, neither the Commercial Court nor the Supreme Court said that PT. Ratania is now the true and legitimate owner of the IKEA mark in Indonesia.

    • Copyrights

02.18.16

Links 18/2/2016: New Ubuntu Phone, Go 1.6

Posted in News Roundup at 10:34 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 7 Reasons Why Open Source Code is Better Than Proprietary

    I’m always surprised when users wish that Microsoft Office or PhotoShop would be ported to Linux. Probably, some just want to be able to use standard industry software on their favorite operating system. But so far as I am concerned, applications like LibreOffice Writer or Krita are not just substitutions — even without my ideals, I would choose them as the highest quality software available for my needs.

  • Top 4 open source issue tracking tools

    So let’s take a look at four excellent choices for managing bugs and issues, all open source and all easy to download and host yourself. To be clear, there’s no way we could possibly list every issue tracking tool here; instead, these are four of our favorites, based on feature richness and the size of the community behind the project. There are others, to be sure, and if you’ve got a good case for your favorite not listed here, be sure to let us know which is your favorite tool and what makes it stand out to you, in the comments below.

  • How to make sense of any open source mess

    Open source development and collaboration takes place online, in places made of information. From individual commit messages to project websites and even larger digital structures, each piece of information we create is part of a mess. This is not a slight against open source; all human endeavors are messy, because that is just the way we are as human beings. We all bring our own strengths and failings, wisdom and ignorance, to everything we do.

  • ONF Offers OpenDaylight Support in Latest Atrium SDN Stack

    The embrace of the OpenDaylight SDN controller follows the support of the ONOS controller in the first release of the Atrium software last year.
    Open Networking Foundation officials are hoping to accelerate the adoption of network virtualization by including support for the OpenDaylight SDN controller in the latest release of its open-source Atrium software distribution.

  • Wikimedia: We’re Building Something, But It’s Not A Search Engine To Challenge Google

    The Wikimedia Foundation has rejected the media reports that claimed that the non-profit is working on some search engine that will be a one-click replacement of Google.

  • ReactOS 0.4.0 Released
  • Open source Windows-clone ReactOS hits version 0.4 (ten years after 0.3)

    The developers of ReactOS have been working to develop an open source operating system capable of running Windows software since 1998.

    It’s been slow going: version 0.3.0 was released in 2006. Nearly 10 years later, ReactOS 0.4.0 is available for download.

  • Skytap Supports the Modern Developer Toolchain with Vagrant, Open Source Contributions
  • Here’s why Bottle Rocket is contributing open-source code

    Bottle Rocket has stepped out from behind its proprietary code and expanded its reach into the open-source market.

    The Addison-based company, which creates custom mobile applications for business customers, has released its first few pieces of code for Android and plans to build on the code it has shared with the development community.

  • IBM Contributes Thousands of Lines of Code to Blockchain Efforts
  • IBM Goes Open-Source For Better IoT Apps

    Putting limits on what the Internet of Things can do to transform everything from in-store retail operations to multinational logistics is a great way to hamstring a potentially revolutionary technology. So too is keeping the way IoT apps and services are developed locked away behind the closed doors of intellectual property laws.

    Fortunately, IBM has seen the light of publicly supported solutions and is releasing a new open-source IoT development tool by the name of Quarks. Supported by the IBM Streams platform that specializes in compiling and analyzing gigabytes of live data in real time, Quarks might be used alternatively by hospitals to share designs for vitals monitoring apps that can be used with wearables and by industrial companies outfitting their workers’ uniforms with safety sensors, TechCrunch reported.

  • IBM’s Open Source Quarks Pushes IoT Analytics to the Edge

    IBM has open sourced new technology called Quarks to push Internet of Things (IoT) analytics from centralized systems out to the actual edge devices that are collecting and spewing out vast amounts of data.

  • The Grid: Web Design by Artificial Intelligence

    Flow-Based Programming (FBP) is a software development paradigm where applications are built by “wiring together” various reusable components inside a graph.

    Since running into the concept in 2011, I’ve built the NoFlo environment, which brings Flow-Based Programming to the universal runtime of JavaScript, allowing flows to be run on both Node.js and the browser.

  • Google’s TensorFlow Serving Goes Open-Source
  • Google ups the ante in the machine learning wars
  • Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google Introduces TensorFlow Serving
  • Google Delivers TensorFlow Serving, Advancing Machine Learning
  • Google’s TensorFlow Serving goes open source for large scale machine learning model creation

    Google has released TensorFlow Serving to the open-source community, a fresh addition to computer learning software for large-scale modeling projects.

  • Events

    • Devconf – Amazing place for a developer

      As a fresh start of 2016, I got a chance to be part of Devconf – an annual conference which takes place in the beautiful Brno city of Czech Republic. From past three years, its been happening in February month’s first Friday to Sunday and hence this year it was from 5th to 7th February.

    • Get ready to Fork the System at LibrePlanet

      Hundreds of people from around the world will meet at LibrePlanet 2016: Fork the System, March 19-20, 2016 at MIT in Cambridge, MA. This year’s conference program will examine how free software creates the opportunity of a new path for its users, allows developers to fight the restrictions of a system dominated by proprietary software by creating free replacements, and is the foundation of a philosophy of freedom, sharing, and change. Sessions like “Yes, the FCC might ban your operating system” and “GNU/Linux and Chill: Free software on a college campus” will offer insights about how to resist the dominance of proprietary software, which is often built in to university policies and government regulations.

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice 5.1 Offers Reorganized User Interface for Its Apps

      The Document Foundation (TDF) released LibreOffice 5.1 on Feb. 10, providing users with a new milestone update of the popular open-source office suite. LibreOffice originated as a fork of the open-source OpenOffice suite in 2011 and has been downloaded more than 120 million times since then. LibreOffice includes Writer document, Calc spreadsheet, Impress presentation, Base database and Draw drawing programs as part of the integrated suite. In the LibreOffice 5.1 update, a key area of improvement is the user interface throughout the suite’s programs, which all benefit from a reorganization as well as menu additions. With the 5.1 update, the office suite’s integrated programs can now load and save files from remote locations directly through menu dialog box. LibreOffice is the default standard office suite in many mainstream Linux distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE and Ubuntu. LibreOffice is also available for both Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the highlights of the new LibreOffice 5.1 release.

    • LibreOffice Is Getting Better GTK3 Support

      Last year LibreOffice made much progress in receiving GTK3 support that it also began running on Wayland. The battle though is not over and more GTK3 improvements are still forthcoming.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Public Services/Government

    • Tallinn schools piloting open source software

      Schools in the city of Tallinn (Estonia) are gradually moving to PC workstations running on free and open source software. A pilot in March 2014 switched 3 schools and 2 kindergartens. Students, teachers, school administration and kindergartens’ staff members are using LibreOffice, Ubuntu-Linux and other open source tools.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • 2016 Open Source Awards Finalists Named

      The Benjamin Franklin Award is a humanitarian/bioethics award presented annually by Bioinformatis.org to an individual who has, in his or her practice, promoted free and open access to the materials and methods used in the life sciences.

    • Open Data

      • Geography students bring open-source mapping group to State College

        Two geography students have started a Maptime chapter in State College to support community cartography and teach people how to use and create maps. The endeavor is co-sponsored by The Peter R. Gould Center for Geography Education and Outreach in Penn State’s Department of Geography.

        “I really want to put State College on the map—literally,” geography graduate student Carolyn Fish said. “So much open-source mapping is centered in large cities, such as New York, Washington and San Francisco.”

    • Open Access/Content

    • Open Hardware

      • Open Source CowTech Ciclop 3D Scanner Kit Available on Kickstarter for $99

        Montana-based startup CowTech launched an affordable 3D scanner kit on Kickstarter and they easily breezed past their funding goal in the first 24 hours. The CowTech Ciclop is a $99 3D laser scanner kit that was designed specifically with owners of 3D printers in mind. The buyer can print most of the scanner parts out on their own 3D printer and the parts were designed to fit on virtually any desktop 3D printer with a print bed volume of 115 x 110 x 65 mm (4.5 x 4.3 x 2.6 in) or higher. Once all of the components have been printed, the assembly process is quick and simple, and the Ciclop can start scanning in less than 30 minutes.

  • Programming

    • Go 1.6 is released

      Today we release Go version 1.6, the seventh major stable release of Go. You can grab it right now from the download page. Although the release of Go 1.5 six months ago contained dramatic implementation changes, this release is more incremental.

      The most significant change is support for HTTP/2 in the net/http package. HTTP/2 is a new protocol, a follow-on to HTTP that has already seen widespread adoption by browser vendors and major websites. In Go 1.6, support for HTTP/2 is enabled by default for both servers and clients when using HTTPS, bringing the benefits of the new protocol to a wide range of Go projects, such as the popular Caddy web server.

    • Go 1.6 Released
    • Women write better open source code on GitHub than men [Ed: conveniently (and wrongly) concludes from that it’s FOSS (not CS) that discriminates against women]

      Woman may be more competent than men at writing code but still there is evidence that they are discriminated against in open source communities because they are women.

    • A New Study Suggests That Women Write Better Code Than Men

      A recent study conducted by researchers from the computer science departments at Cal Poly, San Luis, Obispo and North Carolina State University reports that women write better code than men.

    • If Women Are Better at Coding, It’s Because They Have to Be

Leftovers

02.17.16

Links 17/2/2016: Vulkan 1.0, GNU C Library Vulnerability

Posted in News Roundup at 7:35 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • What’s in the Box? Interrogate Your Linux Machine’s Hardware

    I recently had a problem trying to install the NVIDIA driver for my machine. It seemed the latest driver had stopped supporting my graphics card, and after updating my kernel, I was out of a driver. The question, obviously, was “which card did I have?” But, I didn’t remember. If you have to name the chipset of your motherboard, specify the CPU in your box or get any other kind of hardware-related information, Linux provides several utilities to help you. In my case, I quickly could get the full ID of my graphics card, confirm that it really was getting a bit long in the tooth and decide that a newer one wasn’t such a bad idea.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Endless and GNOME

        As you may have heard, Endless joined the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board last week. We appreciate all the kind words of welcome we have received and are looking forward to strengthening our ties with this community. This has been a coming for a bit, and I’m looking forward for us to contribute more over the coming year!

        [...]

        We can’t do this alone. We are looking for some great engineers to join our team. If this mission sounds great and you’re interested in working with us, let us know! We are looking for people who are passionate about bringing a great desktop to the rest of the world while developing some high-quality Free Software.

      • You Can Now Edit OpenStreetMap Info In GNOME Maps

        OpenStreetMap is a free, collaborative project to create an easily editable map of the world — the Wikipedia of maps, if you will.

        Version 3.20 of the desktop mapping tool will see other improvements too, including improved translation behaviour and support for custom geo-json map layers.

      • GNOME Maps 3.20 Now Available for Beta Testing with OpenStreetMap Editing

        The GNOME Project is about to come up with the first Beta build of the upcoming major release of the open source desktop environment for GNU/Linux operating systems, GNOME 3.20, so they’re updating most of the core apps and components.

  • Distributions

    • Four Linux Distributions For Chromebook Lovers

      Chromebooks have been generated quite some buzz in the last couple of years. The main advantage for Chromebooks is that these are inexpensive laptops with modest hardware and are good looking as well.

      Chromebooks are based on Google’s web-oriented Chrome OS. While Chrome OS itself is based on the Linux kernel, it is not really the same experience as full desktop Linux. There are ways to install Linux on Chromebook, but I am not going to talk about those today. Instead, I am going to list four Linux distributions which are either meant for Chromebooks or they imitate the looks of Chrome OS.

    • Lay down a beat with LMMS

      One thing that confuses some new Linux users is just how modular Linux can be, and on nearly every level. It turns out to be liberating in the end, but it can be overwhelming at first. That’s why it’s nice, sometimes, to come across a project that brings a bunch of modular technology and binds them together nice and neatly for users. In the world of digital audio workstations, the project that does this most profoundly is the Linux Multimedia Studio, better known as LMMS.

    • Reviews

      • Top 5 Best Security-Centric Linux Distributions Of 2016

        Staying anonymous on the Internet might not necessarily mean the same as surfing the web safely but rather keeping yourself safe from prying eyes that may otherwise take advantage of the vulnerability of your system thereby exposing you and your data for whomever might just be up for the grabbing – especially some hacker snooping around for sensitive data to hoard (particularly if you’re being targeted) and use for otherwise evil purposes that can have some serious effects on the violated individual.

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • PCLinuxOS: the walking dead

        If you thought that this review would continue with the usual sections like keyboard setup, list of applications, network drive connectivity and so on, I must disappoint you.

        My time with PCLinuxOS KDE 2014.12 finished at that point. I see no reason to test a distribution that is so narrow-minded that it cannot allow users outside of the US to use it out of the box, and that does not bother with updating their core ISO image. There are plenty of distributions that work much better than PCLinuxOS.

      • PCLOS Rebuttal, Live Long and Game, TDF@4

        The big story today in Linux news was the release of the long awaited Vulkan graphics API. The news was carried by just about everyone. Elsewhere, blogger DarkDuck said PCLinuxOS is “the walking dead” and a critical vulnerability in glibc has experts warning to upgrade immediately. SUSE announced SUSECon today and Charles-H. Schulz blogged about the “unusual” LibreOffice 5.1 release on this The Document Foundation’s fourth birthday.

    • Ballnux/SUSE

    • Red Hat Family

      • Rackspace Adds Hosted Red Hat OpenStack to Cloud Services

        Rackspace has added a new OpenStack-as-a-Service option in partnership with Red Hat (RHT), whose enterprise Linux distribution powers the new cloud platform.

        Rackspace announced the platform Thursday. It’s pitching it as a key step in the “company’s strategy to deliver the most reliable and easy-to-use OpenStack private and hybrid clouds in the world.”

      • Tech Stocks to Focus: Intuit Inc. (INTU), Red Hat Inc (RHT)
      • Red Hat Inc (RHT) Cut to “Hold” at TheStreet

        TheStreet lowered shares of Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research report report published on Thursday morning, Marketbeat reports.

      • What Analysts say about Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT)?

      • Fedora

        • Neville Cross: How do you Fedora?

          Neville Cross is a Nicaraguan hotel manager who has a passion for technology. He has an Amateur Radio license, and was doing stuff with packet radio (ax.25 protocol) in 2008. That made him look for help in the local Linux community. As he used Red Hat Linux for a while in 2000, it was natural for him to take a look at Fedora. Instead of getting help, he got involved in the local FOSS community, especially in the Fedora local group. At that moment, others Linux distributions had strong support from the international community, but Fedora did not. So he took on the challenge to close the gap. That is how Cross originally showed up in Fedora landscape many years ago.

    • Debian Family

      • FOSSASIA 2016, pgDay Asia 2016 and MiniDebConf Singapore

        The FOSSASIA 2016 conference is taking place next month, 18-20 March at the Science Centre Singapore. The FOSSASIA community has also offered to host a MiniDebConf Singapore 2016 and pgDay Asia 2016. With sufficient interest from volunteers and participants, these events could do a lot to raise the profile of free software in the region.

      • Open Source Maru OS Promises Debian Linux for Smartphones and Tablets

        The open source ecosystem for mobile devices has grown larger with the announcement of a new Linux-based operating system for smartphones in the form of Maru OS, which is now open source.

        Maru is a Debian-based operating system that lets you run a complete desktop environment from a smartphone. By connecting it to an external display, you get what looks like a traditional, full-blown Debian GNU/Linux system, while still having access to your Android phone.

      • Emmabuntüs 8 Debian Based Beta Released

        Emmabuntüs is a desktop GNU/Linux distribution based on Xubuntu 12.04 and 14.04 LTS (Long Term Support) made specifically for refurbished computers destined for humanitarian organisationsand to promote the discovery of GNU/Linux by beginners, as well as to extend the lifespan of hardware and to reduce over consumption & waste in electronics. Emmabuntus 8 Beta is the first distro based on Debian in the memory of Ian Murdock, the founder of the Debian Project.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • FairPhone 2 with Ubuntu Touch Is Making Progress

            FairPhone 2 is just one of the phones that are betting on Ubuntu Touch community ports, and it looks like the project is coming along.

            The ability to port Ubuntu Touch for various devices has been promoted by Canonical ever since the start of the project, more than three years ago but little has come of it. The community tries to make this happen, but it’s not like making Android run on other devices. It’s a complex problem that usually revolves around device drivers.

            The main problem that developers face when trying to make Ubuntu Touch run on various devices is the lack of driver support. We’ve seen many popular phones running Ubuntu over the years, but most projects stop when having to implement GSM or Bluetooth support. For example, one of the first phones to get Ubuntu Touch was a Samsung Galaxy S3, but nothing came of it.

          • ZFS Will Be Baked Directly into Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Supported by Canonical

            We are only a couple of months away from the next major release of the world’s most popular free operating system, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), and some of its neat new features are yet to be revealed.

            Canonical’s Dustin Kirkland writes today about one of the awesome things that will be implemented by default in the upcoming Linux-based distribution, ZFS, the robust file system that everyone talks about these days, which Canonical will bake directly into Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

          • Ubuntu Touch OTA-9.1 Hotfix Still in the Works, Dekko Might Come with OTA-10

            Łukasz Zemczak of Canonical informs us earlier about the latest work done by the Ubuntu Touch development team in preparation for the soon-to-be-released OTA software updates for Ubuntu-powered devices.

          • Canonical Patches Severe Glibc DNS Vulnerability in All Supported Ubuntu OSes

            If you’ve been reading the news lately, you may know that Google Security Team and Red Hat have disclosed a severe Glibc (GNU C Library) vulnerability, which could affect a huge number of devices and computers.

          • ConsenSys, BlockApps, Canonical partner to deliver biometric digital identity tools on Ubuntu phones

            ConsenSys and BlockApps announced they have partnered with Canonical to deliver Nimbus uPort biometric digital identity tools on Ubuntu mobile phones and tablets.

            Canonical is the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu project and the leading provider of support services for Ubuntu deployments in the enterprise.

          • Canonical’s ZFS Plans Are Lining Up For Ubuntu 16.04

            Ubuntu developers have been working on ZFS support for Ubuntu 16.04 and all of that file-system support is getting squared away.

          • [Older] New Ubuntu tablet claimed to serve as PC too

  • Devices/Embedded

    • How to build a $200 smart drone with the Pi Zero

      Erle Robotics, which I mentioned in last week’s piece about the increasingly important role of Linux in robotics, supplies cheap components for DIY Raspberry Pi projects. I got in touch with the makers at Erle this week to come up with a great tutorial for our readers.

    • Add a battery pack to your Raspberry Pi

      Your Raspberry Pi’s mobility is usually restricted by the length of the power lead. Rather than limiting it to your desk or living room, however, you can use it for mobile projects as diverse as launching it into near-Earth orbit or monitoring and automating your garden.

      Of course, to do this you will need batteries, but adding battery power to your Raspberry Pi is simpler than you might have imagined. All that is required are six rechargeable AA batteries (or single-charge alkaline), a battery box with space for the batteries and a UBEC. The latter is a Universal Battery Elimination Circuit, a voltage regulator that will regulate the power supply and prevent damage to the Raspberry Pi, and can be bought for under £10.

    • Reference platform simplifies wearable security camera designs

      Intrinsyc announced a reference design for wearable law enforcement and security cameras, featuring a Snapdragon 410 SoC running Android and a 13-MP camera.

    • Online dev tool adds DIY baseboard for RPi Compute Module

      Gumstix has added a Raspberry Pi Compute Module baseboard design to its online DIY board dev tool, and is selling working units based on the design for $49.

      Back in November, Gumstix opened up its Geppetto online DIY design tool and quick-turn prototype manufacturing service to the development of carrier boards for third-party SBCs and COMs based on TI Sitara AM335x SoCs. Supported non-Gumstix processor boards initially included BeagleBoard.org’s BeagleBone Black single-board computer, as well as Critical Link’s MitySOM-335x, and DAVE’s Diva AM335x computer-on-modules.

    • Phones

      • Tizen

        • Tizen smartphone sold 3 million units in 2015

          Samsung’s strategy of making its initial Tizen smartphones fall under the budget category seems to be working out quite well, as a recent report from market research agency Strategy Analytics claims that Samsung sold over 3 million Tizen smartphones in 2015! While the numbers may look huge, Samsung’s very own android devices from the J series proved to be a problem for the sales of Tizen based Z3 and Z1 launched in India.

      • Android

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

02.16.16

Links 16/2/2016: FOSS Search Engine of Wikipedia, Street Fighter V on GNU/Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 6:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Year of Linux Depends on How You Define Linux

    It didn’t happen slowly. On the contrary, it was a thunderbolt…a deep, thrumming, resounding sense of being right, of being at the right place at the right time. A sense of finding something that you knew without doubt would be important in your life. There wasn’t any need to “think it through” or “evaluate the situation.” The moment I realized the power under my fingertips, even my self-identity changed. With that moment growing like a supernova inside of me, I fully took on that new identity. As that blazing power exploded from within me, I knew who I was. I was now a firebrand. It was six years ago this month that I knew who I was.

  • LXer Suffering From Scattered Outages

    If you’ve been trying to get on LXer and having no luck, it’s not just you. Today the site is unreachable for at least much of the U.S.

    The popular Linux and FOSS website LXer seems to be unreachable in many parts of the U.S. today. In the areas affected, users trying to reach the site are taken to a Network Solutions holding page instead.

    We first became aware of the problem at about 7 a.m. EST when an attempt to access the site took us to a Network Solutions landing page. We had visited the site several times in the previous hour without difficulty. At about 8 a.m., access to the site returned briefly, but by 9 a.m. the site was again unreachable. We haven’t been able to access the site since.

  • Desktop

    • If you’re a developer and not using Linux, I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems but Linux ain’t one.

      It was sometime in late 2014 during my internship where I finally made the decision to switch to doing all my personal development projects on a Linux distro. I had been using a Ubuntu virtual machine while working as an intern and after a couple of weeks of using it properly and not like the way I was taught at University I began understanding why exactly so many people prefer Unix based systems over Windows for development.

    • Full Migration from Windows to Linux – Report #2 Software

      But I’ve made a move and started using Kdenlive on Linux Mint 17.3 to edit videos of my sister and I playing video games (not original sure, but we have fun doing it). The first thing I tried was to simply load in the recorded video plus audio from the mic and dive face first into editing it and attempting to do all the same things I do with my editing style with Premiere. This includes just simple stuff as fading from and to black, audio dips in keyframe moments (when coughing) splicing the video when cuts are needed and fading into other video (example on a video here) and laying video over other video in a lower corner. Simple things sure but I found all of these things and more within Kdenlive, even a few things I wish Premiere had but I guess that isn’t a problem any more! As for diving in face first you’ll just waste time, find someone who has put up a tutorial (I found this guy who goes into some nice detail but do look at several videos). Even if you know how non-linear video editing works in practice the software is an entirely different tool even if it’s doing the same thing.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • GSoC 2016 Project Survey, help me make Dolphin a better File Manager!

        I am a first year computer science undergraduate from BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus. I am looking forward to working for KDE for the GSoC.

      • Interview with Wes Nunes

        What I love about Krita? Just everything. Tools, brushes, it does not weigh on my computer, it was extremely easy to learn how to work on and it is a well-organized program. Not to mention that it has a beautiful interface. What else could I want in software?

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Distributions

    • distribution specific details

      To state the obvious: my personal preference is to run Debian GNU/Linux. My current workplace is a CentOS shop and usually I’m the first to claim that it doesn’t matter at all, and distribution specific implementation details are irrelevant for what we do (running a JVM).

    • Reviews

      • More distro tests on Lenovo G50

        How are we doing here? Well, okay. Not stellar, but not bad either. New technology will always take time getting adopted and implemented properly. For instance, UEFI is no longer an issue. But I am more worried about in-between-release inconsistency in the quality of drivers for the network and power management rather than the fact something works or not. Things that suddenly break are far more serious.

        Provided they work in the first place. Of the three major distro families, Red Hat is out of the picture. Ubuntu suffers from Wireless hiccups. Well, all of them really, to be honest. Bluetooth remains unreliable. And there are some other issues and problems. I won’t be comparing to Windows, because it really makes no sense. In fact, early on, Windows 10 had some major difficulties with the hardware, too.

        All in all, if you are keen on using Linux, statistically, your initial boot luck stands at about 75%, the probability of failing when it comes to networking is about 0.3, and if you need strong smartphone or Bluetooth support, you will be disappointed. Ubuntu clearly leads overall, which is kind of expected, haters be hating. Anyhow, this is where we stand, end of 2015 early 2016, a laptop that is less than one year old. If you are looking for the latest and greatest, hardware and Linux wise, the initial ride could be a little rough and tough. But definitely quite doable and fun. Provided you choose Ubuntu. Hard facts, 30+ distros tested. Hint: This is not the end of it. Far from it. We’ll get some more funky distros under our belt, or my name isn’t Sam. Maybe even Fedora. Who knows. Hint. See you around, fellas.

      • XStream Desktop 153

        Launching XStream’s system installer brings up a series of text screens. Each screen displays a group of fields or menus we a can navigate with the page up/down keys and the function keys. The installer begins by asking us on which hard disk we want to install XStream. We are then given the option of using the entire disk or installing XStream on a specific partition. Once we have selected a free partition, we are asked to provide a hostname for our computer. We are then given the option of automatically setting up networking using DHCP or we can set up our network card by manually providing network settings. We then select our time zone from a list and confirm the system clock has the correct time. The following screen gets us to create a password for the root account and set up a new user account for ourselves. The installer copies its files to our hard drive and then gives us the option to either view the installation log or quit. Taking the latter option returns us to the menu where we can run the installer, access a command line shell or reboot.

    • New Releases

      • Emmabuntüs Linux Debian Edition Announced, Dedicated to the Memory of Ian Murdock

        Patrick Emmabuntus informs Softpedia today about the immediate availability for download of the first Beta release of his future Emmabuntüs Debian Edition Linux operating system.

        Dedicated to the memory of Ian Murdock, the founder of the Debian Project, and based on the latest Debian GNU/Linux 8.3 operating system, Emmabuntüs Debian Edition 8 Beta is built around the lightweight Xfce desktop environment and includes all the latest software packages for educational use.

      • Black Lab Linux 7.0.3 GNOME Edition Officially Released with LibreOffice 5.1

        Softpedia has been informed today, February 16, by Roberto J. Dohnert, CEO of Black Lab Software, about the immediate availability for download of the Black Lab Linux 7.0.3 GNOME Edition computer operating system.

      • Linux Top 3: Clonezilla, Raspbian and LPS

        Raspbian is often considered to be the *default* distro for the Raspberry Pi (though of course the Pi has no true default as it’s just hardware..). Raspbian is based on Debian, optimized for the ARM chipset and small memory of the Raspberry Pi. The Raspbian 2016-02-03 milestone update is the latest release and according to Rapsbian developer Simon Long, “For most people, this is primarily updates and bug fixes to the existing Jessie image .”

        [...]

        The Lightweight Portable Security (LPS) distribution is intended to be used as a live CD to help users remain private. While the idea of a privacy focused distro is not unique (think Tails), LPS is developed by the U.S. Department of Defense.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • Playing on OpenMandriva LX 2014.2

        I reinstalled OpenMandriva LX 2014.2 today. Last time I did, I had some problems updating: many packages were not found but, even so, I proceeded with the upgrading.

        The OS was working perfectly except for the performance of games on Steam.

        Today, I followed what I learned yesterday and, when I hit the first problem, I stopped the update and deleted all the repos. Then, I retrieved them again (they were marked as phosphorous 2014.0, which I believe was the previous version), but the update went on smoothly and I got the most recent packages, like Firefox 44.

      • Is PCLinuxOS Is the Best Rolling Release Distro?

        I realize the title of this article has already set some of you into a state of confusion. How dare I suggest that anything besides Arch could be the “best” rolling release distro, right?

        Well I’d counter with this: Arch is indeed awesome, it has dizzying fast performance and documentation that is second to none…however it’s modeled around the “Arch Way.” Meaning, if you want to learn more about Linux and its underpinnings, Arch is for you.

        On the other hand if you simply want an operating system that you install once and it’s ready for you right out of the box, then perhaps Arch isn’t for you. This is where I believe PCLinuxOS comes in.

      • LibreOffice 5.0.5, Distro Wars, PCLOS’s the Best

        LibreOffice 5.0.5 was released today for conservative users and larger organizations bring code clean-up as well as bug and security fixes. Elsewhere, Andrew Powell said no one distribution is any better than another – it’s all Linux. Matt Hartley declared PCLinuxOS the best rolling release distribution and Bruce Byfield said maybe free software is too good.

    • Slackware Family

      • Security update for Chromium 48

        Google released an update for Chrome/Chromium – their version 48 of the browser is now at “48.0.2564.109“. The chromium sources are still not available six days after the announcement, even though the official Chrome binary distributions were available right from the start. I think that this is inexcusable for a big company like Google, but this is not the first time that their autobots falter and no one cares enough to fix the release process. Notwithstanding some complaints by fellow application packagers.

    • Red Hat Family

      • NethServer 7 alpha2 released

        After a few months of hard work I’m proud to announce that NethServer 7 alpha2 has been released and is publicly available.

        Alpha2 is a big step forward on the path of innovation, now we can finally take full advantage of the power of Centos 7. At long last, many modules have been updated to last release available and some small features that were requested often have been added.

        We’re thrilled to share it with you and hear your feedback. We’ve got a lot of news to share with you, so let’s jump right into it.

      • NethServer 7 Linux Server OS Enters Development, Finally Based on CentOS 7

        Alessio Fattorini today, February 15, 2016, informs Softpedia about the availability for download and testing of the second Alpha builds of the upcoming NethServer 7 Linux-based, server-oriented operating system.

        Finally based on the stable and reliable CentOS 7 series of operating systems, NethServer 7 Alpha 2 comes today with over 100 rebuilt packages, as well as some of the latest server-oriented software, including, but not limited to, ownCloud 8.2, Roundcube Webmail 1.1.4, and Snort 2.9.8, which includes OpenAppID support.

      • Red Hat Inc (RHT) Stock Rating Lowered by TheStreet

        Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) was downgraded by research analysts at TheStreet from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report released on Thursday, MarketBeat.Com reports.

      • Red Hat Inc. (RHT) Pops 3.45% for February 15

        One of the S&P 500’s big winners for Monday February 15 was Red Hat Inc. (RHT) as the company’s stock climbed 3.45% to $64.11 on volume of 1.8 million shares.

      • Red Hat Certifies Rackspace to manage Their OpenStack deployments

        This development will invigorate Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform (RHEL OSP), to a certified option that enables customer organizations to automate the testing and deployment of in-house applications using a variety of languages. The distinction of RHEL OSP comes from the services that Red hat provides. In the recent move, the entire software deployment program was reinforced by Red Hat, around Docker containers and Google’s Kubernetes orchestration system in order to make their services more efficient.

      • Theater group finds success by acting like an open organization
      • Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) Receives Consensus Recommendation of “Buy” from Analysts

        Shares of Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) have been given an average rating of “Buy” by the thirty-six research firms that are presently covering the stock, MarketBeat Ratings reports. Two analysts have rated the stock with a sell recommendation, eight have issued a hold recommendation and twenty-five have issued a buy recommendation on the company. The average 12-month price objective among analysts that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is $89.33.

      • Fedora

        • Contribute! Get your wallpaper into Fedora 24

          The development of Fedora continues, nearly each 6 months a new release. With a new release of Fedora just on the horizon, it also means it’s time to start submitting and voting on new supplemental wallpapers for Fedora 24.

        • Pungi 4: the new generation of the Fedora compose tools, and what it means for QA

          Currently we have three distinct types of Fedora composes. Probably everyone knows about ‘nightly composes’ and TCs/RCs. You may not know about the post-release nightly Cloud composes. (I’m not counting the live respins, which are demi-semi-official and not produced by releng).

    • Debian Family

      • Debian 6.0 about to take flying leap off long term support cliff

        2016 is a leap year so we’re all blessed with an extra day to use. And the folks behind Debian Linux are using it to end support for the sixth version of the distro.

        The outfit’s announcement reminds users that Debian 6.0 debuted back on February 6th, 2011. That little piece of history means the project’s Long Term Support goal “ to extend the lifetime of all Debian stable releases to (at least) 5 years” can and will be invoked.

      • Derivatives

        • Debian-Based Elive 2.6.14 Linux Distro Is a Special Valentine’s Day Beta Release

          While Valentine’s Day is passed us now, it looks like some are a little bit late to the party, as the developers of the Debian-based Elive Linux distribution announced today, February 15, 2016, the release of yet another Beta build.

        • Debian/TeX Live 2015.20160215-1

          About one month has passed and here is the usual updated of TeX Live packages for Debian. While I am not really calling for testers at the moment, building of preliminary packages for TeX Live 2016 has begone. The binaries are already uploaded to experimental, and arch=all packages for experimental will follow soon.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Touch Devs Work on OTA-10 and OTA-9.1 Updates, Ubuntu Tablet Enablement

            Łukasz Zemczak of Canonical has sent in his daily email report today, February 15, 2016, informing us all about the latest work done in the Ubuntu Touch world in preparation for the upcoming OTA updates and devices.

          • Ubuntu Phone To Gain Biometric Security Features

            Canonical has partnered with ConsenSYS and BlockApps to provide “web wallet and biometric identity tools on Ubuntu devices” using Ethereum, the decentralized public blockchain protocol.

            As part of the collaboration BlockApps’ Nimbus uPort Biometric Digital Identity tool have been ported to run on Ubuntu phones and tablets.

          • Ubuntu’s Convergence and What it Means for Linux

            A device that essentially merges two operating systems while running both effectively without any fail has for long been a sorted technology – it existed however, in a somewhat mediocre fashion that is well, very unimpressive but still appealed to those that fancied it – to the extent necessary.

          • Meizu New Ubuntu Phone To Launch on February 22

            For quite some time now, the phone manufacturer has been building up suspense about its latest offering. The device is said to be the upgrade of its previous device, the MX4. A teaser regarding its latest device is posted on Weibo and with has the date Feb. 22; confirming the launch will happen at the MWC 2016 event in Barcelona, reports Phones Review.

          • Meizu PRO 5 Mini Leaks And Gets Compared To Meizu PRO 5
          • Rumor: Meizu MX6 To Sport A 4,000mAh Battery & Cost $276
          • Ubuntu Leadership Team Is Now Apart Of Ubuntu Community Team

            I few weeks ago, I tried to reboot the Ubuntu Leadership team but quickly found out that there is no one or anyone in the mood to do it. I have decided to merge the Leadership Team’s efforts with the Ubuntu Community Team because of the reason above and also for the reason that Ubuntu Community is an organic community with no hard lines. The Ubuntu Leadership team’s Lauchpad page, wiki pages, and mailing-list will stay but I stated that, “Ubuntu Leadership Team has merged with Ubuntu Community Team in order to keep resources focused on leadership”.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • FAO Symposium On Agricultural Biotech Raises Lobbying Concerns

      At issue, according to a joint press release (Via Campesina, Grain, and ETC Group), is the agenda, which they find unbalanced as it includes speakers from industry such as, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, CropLife International, and CEVA among others, which they say are promoting GMOs, while they found only one speaker openly critical of GMOs.

    • Jeremy Hunt launches doctor morale inquiry – here’s a sneak preview of its findings…

      Before a politician can ride off into the multimillion pound corporate sunset, he or she has to be ruthless – but also astute enough to convince the public that mangling public services is NOT about corporate capture.

      As the Junior Doctors stood up to protect patients and expose the government’s latest NHS misadventures, one could almost see the beads of sweat flow on Jeremy Hunt’s brow.

    • Chair Of WIPO Committee On Genetic Resources Issues Draft Plan For The Week

      The World Intellectual Property Organization committee working on policy solutions to protect genetic resources and traditional knowledge from misuse and misappropriation resumed its work today after a year hiatus. The newly elected chair, from Australia, issued an indicative methodology and programme for the week.

    • 7-Day NHS

      This drive for changing the way the NHS operates has been frequently used by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt as the reason why a change to junior doctor and consultant contracts is needed. But what does it actually mean? John Ware explores what a seven-day NHS would look like, what evidence there is that it’s needed, and, crucially, whether we can afford it.

    • Seven-day NHS may not cut death rates, say Hunt’s own officials

      Jeremy Hunt’s key argument in his demands for a seven-day service in NHS hospitals has been called into question by his own department, in a leaked report which says it is not able to prove that fuller staffing would lower the numbers of weekend-admitted patients dying.

      The report also admits it will be “challenging” to meet the government’s promise to recruit 5,000 more GPs by 2020, a Conservative pledge during the election campaign, and that 11,000 new staff will be needed to run a seven-day service in hospitals.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • GOP Frontrunner: ‘Bush Lied, People Died’

      Pardon me while I sit back and enjoy the panic of the Republican – and media – elites as the GOP frontrunner takes up that old left-wing antiwar slogan: “Bush lied – people died!” That’s the essence of what Donald Trump said at Saturday’s South Carolina GOP presidential debate when moderator John Dickerson – who smirked his way through the entire debate – asked Trump if he still thought George W. Bush should be impeached as he supposedly said in a long ago interview…

    • [Russian media] Time for Washington to Admit ‘Russia Is Right on Syria’

      Moscow warned the US about the consequences of interfering in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and happened to be right. In the Syrian conflict, Russia also turned out more clear-sighted. Washington has to admit that both countries will benefit from cooperation and start supporting Moscow’s strategy in Syria, a US analyst wrote.

    • Assad Explains Why He is Not Ruling Out Turkish, Saudi Invasion of Syria

      Syrian president Bashar al-Assad spoke to AFP news agency in an exclusive interview on the developments in Syria and the region.

    • Pro-War GOP Boos Donald Trump

      His bigoted comments about Mexicans and Muslims aside, billionaire Donald Trump actually makes some common sense when he talks about working with Russia, Iran and other powers to bring the Mideast wars to an end, rather than pushing for endless “regime change,” Sam Husseini notes.

    • Hillary Clinton and the Syrian Bloodbath

      This is the kind of compulsive misrepresentation that makes Clinton unfit to be President. Clinton’s role in Syria has been to help instigate and prolong the Syrian bloodbath, not to bring it to a close.

    • Just Say No to Draft Registration for Women – and Men

      Testifying before the US Senate’s Armed Services Committee in early February, Generals Mark A. Milley (the US Army’s chief of staff) and Robert B. Neller (commandant of the US Marine Corps) endorsed extending mandatory Selective Service registration to women. Because, you know, equality.

      I have a better idea. It’s time to end draft registration for everyone. Because, you know, freedom.

      The US hasn’t involuntarily inducted men into military service since 1973, but reinstated mandatory registration in 1980. Ever since, the shadow of legal slavery has loomed over the lives of American males aged 18 through 26.

    • Obama Proposes Removing Human Rights Conditions on Aid to Egypt

      The budget proposal released by the Obama administration Tuesday seeks to roll back restrictions Congress has placed on foreign aid to Egypt’s military regime and the sale of crowd control weapons to “emerging democracies.”

      Under current law, 15 percent of aid to Egypt is subject to being withheld based on human rights conditions — although even that can be waived if it is deemed to be in the national security interest of the United States, as it was last year.

    • Are British values really Islamic values?

      The critic and commentator Ziauddin Sardar has been addressing such issues since the 1980s. He has been an outspoken proponent of the view that it is the English who must compromise to make room for others. For him, Muslims can live compatibly in Britain because what is good and civilised in British values is indebted to Islam. I concentrate on his comments in the introduction to his recent book, Muslims in Britain, which he co-authored with Waqar Ahmad.

    • Four Hospitals Bombed In One Day In Syria, Including Doctors Without Borders Facility

      Airstrikes hit a hospital in northern Syria Monday, leaving seven dead and at least eight missing, according to Doctors Without Borders, which manages the hospital located in Maarat al-Noaman.

      No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. According to the New York Times, both Russian and Syrian planes operate in the area where it took place.

      A second hospital in Maarat al-Noaman was also hit by airstrikes on Monday, killing three and wounding six. And in Azaz, located in the northwestern province of Aleppo, two more hospitals and a school building housing displaced people were also hit by airstrikes on Monday. Those attacks killed 15 people, and wounded up to 40 others.

    • Trump is Right About Iraq, and That Should Stick to Clinton

      Last night, he screamed an anti-war stance to the boos of Bush’s and Rubio’s and Kasich’s one percent donors. It’s only half of what needed to be said, but it was a measure of reality that’s desperately needed.

    • Erdogan uses ISIS to suppress Kurds, West stays silent – Turkish MP

      President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been using ISIS to advance his Middle East policy and suppress the Kurds, and Ankara’s elite maintains vibrant economic ties with the terror group and harbors its militants, a Turkish MP has told Russian media.

    • Turkey Uses the Islamic State as Strategic Resource

      Ankara, Feb 15 (Prensa Latina) Turkish deputy Selma Irmak said today that the president of his country, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, used the terrorist group Islamic State against the Kurds in Syria and as a resource for strategic purposes in the Middle East.
      The People’s Democratic Party legislator told media that the Turkish president has a great Ottoman Empire in his head and uses the IS as a tool for such purposes.

      Irmak also said that Erdogan cannot send the Turkish army directly into Syrian territory and that is why he uses the IS as a weapon against the Kurds on the grounds that the Kurdish advance threatens national security because it strengthens the pro-independence purposes of Turkish Kurdistan.

    • Erdogan’s Cruel Calculus: Killing Kurds at Home and in Syria Means Votes

      Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has attacked Kurds in neighboring Syria in order to win popular support at home and because he was wary about the gains they had been making against anti-government groups, according to Selma Irmak, a Turkish parliament deputy from the Democratic Party of Peoples (DPN).

    • Erdogan’s Domestic War for a Presidential System in Turkey

      The current war against the Kurds and oppositional voices is being waged to push an autocratic presidential system.

      The surprising electoral success of the pro-Kurdish HDP in last year’s June 7 elections denied the ruling AKP a majority for the first time since 2002 – a majority the AKP needs in order to make President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s dream of regime change come true. Early elections were set for Nov. 1, 2015. In the lead up, the Turkish state stepped up repressions against the HDP and its supporters, violently imposed military curfews in predominantly Kurdish cities, while ending the peace process with the PKK had ended.

    • Over 500, Including Children, Killed in Turkey’s Kurdistan Since Sept 2015

      Over 500 people, including 50 children and 120 women, have been killed in armed clashes between the Kurds and the Turkish military over the past six months, Selma Irmak, a co-chair of the Pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Congress (DTK) and a lawmaker from the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), said.

    • The NSA’s SKYNET program may be killing thousands of innocent people

      In 2014, the former director of both the CIA and NSA proclaimed that “we kill people based on metadata.” Now, a new examination of previously published Snowden documents suggests that many of those people may have been innocent.

      Last year, The Intercept published documents detailing the NSA’s SKYNET programme. According to the documents, SKYNET engages in mass surveillance of Pakistan’s mobile phone network, and then uses a machine learning algorithm on the cellular network metadata of 55 million people to try and rate each person’s likelihood of being a terrorist.

      Patrick Ball—a data scientist and the executive director at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group—who has previously given expert testimony before war crimes tribunals, described the NSA’s methods as “ridiculously optimistic” and “completely bullshit.” A flaw in how the NSA trains SKYNET’s machine learning algorithm to analyse cellular metadata, Ball told Ars, makes the results scientifically unsound.

    • Trump Booed For Saying Bush ‘Lied’ About WMD In Iraq
    • Obama’s Most Momentous Decision

      President Obama must decide if he will let the Syrian civil war come to an end with Russian-backed President Assad still in power or if he will escalate by supporting a Turkish-Saudi invasion, which could push the world to the brink of nuclear war, writes Joe Lauria.

    • Indonesia’s Jihadi Extremist Group Is Rebounding, Experts and Members Say

      Since last month, when supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) launched an attack with guns and bombs at a bustling Jakarta intersection, attention has returned to the jihadist threat in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country. JI was for many years the face of extremism in the nation, responsible for a series of bombings in the early 2000s that killed hundreds and prompted a crackdown that successfully jailed many of the group’s leaders.

    • REVEALED: Mark Zuckerberg now has 16 bodyguards working at his $7million Palo Alto home after ‘death threats’ from unstable users

      When Mark Zuckerberg got his first bodyguard in 2011, it made headlines. But those days must seem quaint to the Facebook founder, who is now reported to have no less than 16 people protecting him at his $7million home in Palo Alto, California.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Fossil fuels are now a bad bet, investors told

      Investors in fossil fuels are being warned that they may risk losing their money, because the markets for coal and liquefied natural gas are disappearing.

      In both cases it is competition from renewables, principally wind and solar power, that is being blamed for the threat. The cost of electricity from renewables continues to fall in Europe and Asia as the numbers of wind and solar installations grow in both continents, cutting demand for imported gas and coal.

      Two separate reports on coal and gas were published at the same time as a round of annual financial reports from oil companies showed that this third fossil fuel could be in serious trouble too.

      Despite massive cutbacks on exploration and development, companies like Shell and BP still need a price of US$60 a barrel by the end of this year if they are to break even on many of their current projects – almost double the current market price.

    • Water Scarcity Crisis Even Worse than Previously Thought

      When the World Economic Forum, a Swiss non-profit dedicated to “improving the state of the world,” released its annual Global Risks Report last year it cited “water crises” as the number one global risk in terms of impact. This is significant because for the past 8 years, the number one global risk in terms of impact had been financial in nature (either asset price collapse, fiscal crises, or major systemic financial failure), but 2015 was the first year that saw a climate related issue top the list of risks.

    • Don’t drink the water: Flint is just the latest in a long line of disposable communities. It’s time to act

      To explain why fossil fuels are both a health issue and a justice issue, let’s start with coal. Whole communities have been destroyed in Appalachia, where they literally blow up mountaintops to extract hard-to-reach coal. The process, called mountaintop removal, poisons area streams, causing high rates of cancer and birth defects among the people who live nearby.

      [...]

      There are many, many more examples of water being poisoned as a result of fossil fuels, whether in the production, transportation or disposal of the waste. There have been devastating oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico and the Kalamazoo River. There’s water so polluted it’s flammable in Pennsylvania, where natural gas is extracted through hydraulic fracturing, a process that injects chemical-laden water deep into the earth. Afterward the toxic brew has to be disposed of somewhere. A new study of fracking waste water wells in south Texas shows that they are most likely to be in communities of color, most frequently Hispanic.

    • Impact of forest fires on Papua on climate change agenda

      Avenues for recourse against so-called climate crimes by Indonesia are limited, a speaker at a climate change conference at New Zealand’s Victoria University says.

  • Finance

    • Decentralized Media: Devon Read on Alexandria

      Ever feel bogged down by ads when trying to access media? Ever get upset that content has been censored by governments or businesses? Ever wish people had more power in regards to how content is monetized? These problems may be solved with this new decentralized media project.

    • UK inflation rises to 0.3% in January

      UK inflation edged up to a 12 month high in January, as a fall in petrol prices eased.

      Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index, rose by 0.3%. It was helped by smaller falls in food and fuel prices than a year ago.

      Annual inflation has been below the Bank of England’s 2% target for two years, and last year it was zero.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • The Latest 60 Minutes Propaganda: We Need a Crypto Back Door because ISIS Is “Coming Here” with WMD

      It has been clear for several years now that 60 Minutes has become a propaganda vehicle for the intelligence community (post, post, post). So it was unsurprising that John Brennan was given an opportunity to fearmonger last night without pesky people like Ron Wyden around pointing out that CIA itself poses a threat, even according to the terms laid out by the Intelligence Community.

      I find the timing and content of John Brennan’s appearance of note.

    • Bernie Sanders’ Phantom Movement

      Bernie Sanders, who has attracted numerous young, white, college-educated supporters in his bid for the presidency, says he is creating a movement and promises a political revolution. This rhetoric is an updated version of the “change” promised by the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama and by Jesse Jackson’s earlier National Rainbow Coalition. Such Democratic electoral campaigns, at best, raise political consciousness. But they do not become movements or engender revolutions. They exist as long as election campaigns endure and then they vanish. Sanders’ campaign will be no different.

      No movement or political revolution will ever be built within the confines of the Democratic Party. And the repeated failure of the American left to grasp the duplicitous game being played by the political elites has effectively neutered it as a political force. History, after all, should count for something.

    • Playing the Victim Card, Hillary Clinton Betrays Women

      Meanwhile, the popular trivialization of Sanders’ supporters as “Bernie bros” and “Bernie-splainers” perpetuates Steinem’s misrepresentation of Sanders’ supporters as “boys” followed by brainless female groupies. Both Albright and Steinem accuse young women of treachery and abandonment for having their own political opinions, encouraging them to reverse their position out of a sense of shame and guilt.

    • Trump and Sanders Offer Illusions of Solutions

      Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are the antithesis of the conventional politician. They are not programmed, their lines are not focus-group tested, and they take positions far outside the mainstream. But the victory speeches they gave in New Hampshire Tuesday night showed they have mastered the oldest political trick of all: promising things they can’t deliver.

  • Censorship

    • Russian Purge: Putin Doesn’t Need to Censor Books. Publishers Do It for Him.

      Really, he insists. Danishevsky has an I’m-on-top-of-the-world demeanor that is rapidly going out of style in Moscow. He wears a hipster beard and a most daring combination of stripes in his shirts and jackets, and he schedules his meetings at an ostentatiously overpriced central Moscow cafe frequented by celebrities of the vaguely oppositional ilk. At 25, he may be forgiven for being a little slow to realize that the era of fabulous flaunting is ending: The oil boom in Vladimir Putin’s Russia is the only life he has known. This makes him all the more remarkable — at his age, he is editor of his own imprint at one of the country’s publishing conglomerates, and he takes more literary and political risks than all of his mainstream colleagues combined. He says that this is because no one tells him what to do.

    • Legislator calls for movie censorship

      Movies should be reviewed for discriminatory and offensive comments toward Aborigines before being approved for release, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Ying (陳瑩) said yesterday, following controversy over the new film David Loman 2 (大尾鱸鰻2).

      “If there is any discriminatory wording, it should be revised or deleted before the film is allowed to be released,” said Chen, who is a Puyuma community representative for Plains Aborigines.

    • A letter to our readers: On censorship

      From military censorship to the government deciding who is and isn’t a journalist, Israeli authorities use various tools to interfere with the press. An important disclosure to our readers.

    • Portugal: Waves of layoffs hollow out press

      If there was any room left for doubt, the closing months of 2015 were enough to prove that Portuguese journalism is facing a serious challenge from which it probably won’t emerge the same. From October to December 2015, four media groups announced that they preparing to lay off workers, including journalists.

      These recent cuts are a continuation of the long-term trend: between 2007 and 2014, more than 1,200 journalists — about 20 per cent of the total number of media professionals — have lost their jobs in Portugal, according to a study by Observatório da Comunicação.

    • The tech industry’s greater responsibility

      Today, Internet censorship is becoming a growing concern among dozens of developing countries. In the mid-1990s, China began blocking foreign websites and saw successful results, proving to other authoritarian countries wishing to control their constituents that these types of regulations are well worth the effort. Since then, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Azerbaijan, Syria and others have followed China’s footsteps and began implementing regulations censoring Internet activity.

      This means that the people living within these countries are unable to access information from the outside world. Thus, they are fed filtered information that praises their leadership and government, and because they are not exposed to varying and contrary opinions, are susceptible to believing and accepting their government’s authoritarian policies. In western countries we often take our first amendment right for granted. We are allowed to say, write, and scream whatever we’d like about our government without the risk of being jailed or beaten. We’re allowed, even encouraged, to question policies and think differently. If only this were the case worldwide.

    • Censorship has no place among college administration

      At the start of the Fall 2015 semester, freshmen arrived at Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland hoping to receive a top-notch education. As a part of their orientation, students were given a survey in an effort to help them discover more about themselves. This survey would later become the center of huge controversy involving the university’s president, faculty terminations and censorship.

      When the university’s president Simon Newman came into office in December 2014, he promised to “start the university on a more aggressive growth trajectory,” according to the Baltimore Sun. In light of recent events, this statement is probably truer than intended—or at least the aggressive bit.

    • Standing Against Henrico County’s Censorship of Multicultural Education

      The African American Policy Forum (AAPF) and the National Association for Ethnic Studies (NAES) express grave concerns about the recent decision of the Board of Education in Henrico County, Virginia to censor educational material pertaining to racial inequality. The actions of the Board represent a troubling trend in public education that undermines the goals of promoting a healthy democratic society.

    • Racial inequality cartoon banned after parents complain, Washington Post reports
    • Online movement against film censorship

      The indiscriminate cuts introduced by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) in the recent Hollywood superhero film Deadpool have prompted an online movement against film censorship inspired by and modelled on the SaveTheInternet.in coalition’s recent successful campaign for Net neutrality.

      Not long ago, after the latest Bond film was badly “mutilated” by the censors, ‘Sanskari James Bond’ had became a buzzword online. When the Deadpool censoring news broke, it prompted a discussion on the online forum Reddit on the cruel butchering of the film. One of the participants in that discussion, Sharath C.George, who describes himself as a regular corporate guy working in social media analytics in Bangalore, happened to see a web page on which the CBFC revamp committee, headed by filmmaker Shyam Benegal, was soliciting public opinion and comments on censorship.

    • Pro-Israel Fraternity Scandal Erupts at U of Chicago, Where Authorities Have Long Ignored Its Culture of Racism

      Exposed by an anonymous whistleblower and published by Buzzfeed, the emails were sent on a listserv of the AEPi fraternity between 2011 and 2015. The communications contained racist rants trashing Martin Luther King Jr., referred to an abandoned lot as “Palestine,” and maligned a Muslim student activist as a “terrorist.”

    • Turkish Journalists Make a Stand Against Erdogan’s Censorship

      A group of journalists from Istanbul are confronting the propaganda of the Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan by forcing their way to the unofficial Kurdish capital of Turkey, Diyarbakir, in an attempt to tell the truth about what’s happening on the battlefield.

    • Google Really Messes Up: From “Muslims Support Terrorism” To “Islam Does Not Support Terrorism”

      After the Google search suggestion issue of ‘Muslims Support Terrorism’ was first raised by Hind Makki, it looks like Google has seriously worked on its search algorithm. Now, the search engine recommends ‘Islam does not support Terrorism’ after that incident.

    • Why Is Facebook Taking Down Marijuana Dispensary Pages?

      The social network is going after what it claims are violations of its “Community Standards”

  • Privacy

    • New Survey Suggests U.S. Encryption Ban Would Just Send Market Overseas

      If the U.S. government tries to strong-arm American companies into ending the sale of products or applications with unbreakable encryption, the technology won’t disappear, a group of researchers conclude in a new report. It would still be widely available elsewhere.

      Some U.S. law enforcement officials argue that unbreakable encryption is interfering with legal surveillance of suspected criminals and terrorists. And some members of Congress are pushing for a nationwide requirement that encryption allow for law-enforcement access.

    • The real colonialism of Silicon Valley

      When the Indian government decided to say “thanks but no thanks” to Facebook’s Free Basics service, some folks associated with the company seemed upset by the very, well, freedom of such a decision.

      Free Basics, aka Internet.org, is Facebook’s attempt to give free Internet to people in developing countries, with the slight catch that Facebook decides which parts of that Internet they can have.

      How dare a government tell its people what they can or can’t have? That’s Facebook’s job.

      Indeed, Facebook board member Marc Andreessen was so upset that he called the decision “morally wrong.”

    • Why Internet Advertising Needs to Be Regulated

      Back in the late 1980s, cigarette smoking was permitted in supermarkets where I live, but there was a move afoot — a ballot issue I believe — to put an end to that. At the time I was doing a four hour daily stint at the local newstalk radio station, and the proposed ban was, of course, a major topic of on-air conversation with our listeners. Pretty much, most of our audience was against the ban, as we have a sizable and vocal minority — maybe a majority — of folks here in North Carolina who think they should be able to do whatever they like, whenever they like, without much regulation. There was something of a consensus among our listeners that smoking or no should be up to the store owners.

      [...]

      We’re all tired of being followed around as we travel on the web. Advertisers know this, and some might even agree with us. Even if they do, however, there’s not much they can do about it. If a large ad network were to act on some better instinct and quit placing tracking cookies for the targeting of ads, their earnings would tank and they’d lose their shirts because they’d no longer be offering what the industry thinks it needs. Ad buyers would abandon them, and those who stay would demand greatly reduced rates for what is perceived as a less effective product.

    • Access to Connection Data: French Council of State Flees EU Debate

      The French Council of State has released an eagerly awaited decision (fr) on the validity of administrative access to connection data. La Quadrature du Net, French Data Network and the FDN Federation have been calling into question the Military Programmation Law (LPM) and its application decree that enables the administration to access connection data without requiring any judicial control. By refusing to repeal the decree and to transmit the question to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for a preliminary ruling, the Council of State avoids any judicial debate and isolates French vis-à-vis EU case law.

    • Self Hosting – The good and the bad.

      When it comes to website hosting, the need for a stable site is crucial so picking the right hosting company to go for is something you need to think long and hard about. In my case I’ve been very lucky and when funds dictate, i’ll go with UK based company Memset. When funds are an issue I’ll self host. This for me is a good and bad thing, here let me explain.

      I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked in the web hosting industry for a while, so being able to setup my own server and webhosting system, is a godsend, but it also has it’s own problems.

    • GCHQ phone and computer hacking is legal and fine

      Privacy International, which was behind the challenge, is understandably disappointed at the ruling that surveillance is A-OK, and will challenge it again.

      “The IPT today held that GCHQ hacking of computers, mobile devices and networks is lawful, wherever it occurs around the world. We are disappointed that the IPT has not upheld our complaint and we will challenge its findings,” said Scarlet Kim, legal officer at Privacy International, in a statement.

      “Our complaint is the first UK legal challenge to state-sponsored hacking, an exceptionally intrusive form of surveillance. We contended that GCHQ hacking operations were incompatible with democratic principles and human rights standards.

      “We further argued that GCHQ, which until these proceedings was hacking in secret, had no clear authority under UK law to deploy these capabilities.”

      Privacy International has plenty to challenge, and will invoke European human rights as it pushes this forward through other, hopefully, more receptive, courts.

    • NSA: National Security, Art

      “Artists work within political realities, no matter what the content or focus of the work,” says artist Laura Poitras, whose exhibition, “Astro Noise,” opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art on February 5. “Art is alive. It’s vital.”

      Poitras made headlines with her 2014 documentary, Citizenfour, which details her trip to Hong Kong to speak to NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden. “Astro Noise” explores many of the issues in Poitras’s films: surveillance, the American response to 9/11, the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, and the drone wars. She denies that her work takes a “stance” and is hesitant to claim that her work is any more political than other artists’. When “Astro Noise” opened, the Whitney was hosting a Frank Stella retrospective on its fifth floor, filled with large abstract works. Certainly, Stella lived within a political reality, but it’s hard to tell from what’s mounted on the walls. For Poitras to deny that she’s working in a particularly political mode seems querulous and evasive. Some works are certainly more politically and socially engaged than others. To deny that just seems silly.

    • GCHQ information security arm CESG awards six firms Certified Cyber Security Consultancy status

      CESG, the Information Security arm of GCHQ, has announced the first group of firms to be certified under its new Certified Cyber Security Consultancy scheme.

  • Civil Rights

    • What has happened to the West and its men? The hypnotic dance of death

      In my correspondence regarding the events in Cologne, an editor of a Russian newspaper asked me a natural, but discouraging question; “Where were the German men?”, he inquired of me, perplexed.

      Indeed, for us who grew up in Soviet Russia, it would be inconceivable that some drunk young people could publicly mock and harass girls on New Year’s Eve in the very center of Moscow or Saint Petersburg. If they dared to do this, they wouldn’t survive until the morning, they would become “martyrs” and would have their way with 72 virgins in a completely different realm.

    • ‘Preserving the Balance’ by Maintaining a Conservative Supreme Court

      On CNN‘s State of the Union today (2/14/16), Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward laid out the “potential minefield” posed by a liberal Supreme Court appointment to “everyone, including Hillary Clinton and the Obama White House.”

    • Elizabeth Warren Rips Into Republicans For Pledging To Block Supreme Court Process
    • Supreme Court Contention: It Didn’t Start With Bork

      It’s true that there was an era when the Senate almost always gave near-complete deference to presidents’ judgment in naming Supreme Court justices; from William McKinley through John F. Kennedy, almost all nominees were confirmed, generally by voice vote. When there was a recorded vote, margins of confirmation were typically wide, as with FDR’s William Douglas (confirmed 62–4) or Eisenhower’s John Harlan (71–11). The only nominee to be rejected during this seven-decade era was Herbert Hoover’s choice of Judge John Parker in 1930, whom the NAACP lobbied against because of his opposition to African-American suffrage. (Parker was also seen as anti-labor.)

    • How America Was Lost

      Once upon a time, the death of a Supreme Court justice wouldn’t have brought America to the edge of constitutional crisis. But that was a different country, with a very different Republican Party. In today’s America, with today’s G.O.P., the passing of Antonin Scalia has opened the doors to chaos.

      In principle, losing a justice should cause at most a mild disturbance in the national scene. After all, the court is supposed to be above politics. So when a vacancy appears, the president should simply nominate, and the Senate approve, someone highly qualified and respected by all.

    • El Nino Scalia

      Antonin Scalia is dead. Say what you will, there is no rejoicing from me. Was Nino a malefactor in Supreme Court jurisprudence over the decades since his confirmation on September 26, 1986? Yes, and an irascible one as well. Once Bork got Borked, Scalia was the whipping post for all liberals, on the continuity of the spectrum. Did he earn that status? Yes, and maybe then some.

    • Ted Cruz’s Definition of Torture Is So Extreme, His Father’s Torture Might Not Even Qualify

      Ted Cruz, who has long been an outspoken opponent of torture, reversed himself during Saturday’s Republican presidential debate when he endorsed an extreme and discredited definition of torture: that anything that inflicts less pain than losing an organ doesn’t count.

      That definition, which Cruz said was “generally recognized,” is anything but. It comes from a 2003 Justice Department memo that the department later rescinded, acknowledging that it was full of slipshod legal arguments, clouded by ideology, and written under pressure from CIA officials who had already begun to torture terror suspects.

    • British Bill of Rights: Today at the Ministry of Justice

      There is speculation that the long-awaited proposals for a British Bill of Rights will be published this week.

    • Israel boycott ban: Shunning Israeli goods to become criminal offence for public bodies and student unions

      Local councils, public bodies and even some university student unions are to be banned by law from boycotting “unethical” companies, as part of a controversial crackdown being announced by the Government.

      Under the plan all publicly funded institutions will lose the freedom to refuse to buy goods and services from companies involved in the arms trade, fossil fuels, tobacco products or Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

      Any public bodies that continue to pursue boycotts will face “severe penalties”, ministers said.

    • After Seven Long Years, the Question Remains: Who Killed Rafael Solis in a Texas Jail?

      In 2009, Rafael Solis, a 38-year-old father of two, was taken into custody in Webb County, Texas, for falling behind on child support payments. Within days, he died in jail in Laredo after suffering extensive physical injuries, and the Webb County coroner ruled the death a homicide. After seven years with no prosecutions, Solis’ mother is crying out for justice.

      Maria Escamilla says she learned of her son’s death after the Webb County jail phoned and asked her to go to a gas station. It was there that two deputies gave her the news. They would say only that “[h]e was just lying on the [jail] floor,” according to Escamilla.

    • The Islamic extremists taking over UK prisons: Muslims make up just one in 20 Britons – but one in SEVEN inmates. As Levi Bellfield embraces Islam, we reveal how fanatics recruit behind bars in ‘jihadi jails’

      Friday morning in Wakefield Prison and Yusuf Rahim joins 60 other Muslim prisoners as they head to the jail’s gym to say their prayers. If nothing else, it is a chance to get out of his cell and take a break from the normal routine.

      The same goes for the halal food the 47-year-old is served every mealtime — Rahim is particularly partial to the spicy vegetable curry — an improvement on the normal prison fare.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • The surprising truth about Facebook’s Internet.org

      You may have heard that Internet.org is a nonprofit organization launched by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and dedicated to bringing Internet access to people who can’t access it, or can’t afford it.

      But this isn’t true — not any of it.

      The realities of Internet.org came into question last week when India banned it from the country. If the Internet is good, and Internet.org simply exists to get people on it, why was it banned?

      Let’s start with a basic question.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • UN Panel On Access To Medicines Extends Deadline For Contributions

      The panel is calling for contributions from “all related stakeholders in, but not limited to, government, the private sector, research institutions, non-profit organizations, academic institutions, legal experts and patient groups that address the policy incoherence between international human rights law, trade rules and public health objectives.”

    • Trademarks

    • Copyrights

      • Openclipart: a library of public domain images

        In the past five years, I’ve contributed more than 300 clip art graphics to Openclipart.org. There were some works I liked more than others, of course, but I believe sticking with it is important.

        All of the clip art on the site is public domain, so there are no rights reserved. And, you can use the images however you want—even for commercial purposes—with no need to acknowledge the original creator (though I always appreciate it when someone does that for me).

        Openclipart’s site encourages remixing with features like commenting, collections, and links to derivative works and original material. It’s exciting to see another person latch on to an idea from one of my clips and make it their own.

02.15.16

Links 15/2/2016: Zorin OS 11 Lite and Business, Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu

Posted in News Roundup at 6:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Windows 10 calls home a lot; Russia hikes tech tax and intends to switch to Linux

    When it comes to high tech, American companies dominate the Russian market and, perhaps not surprisingly, that doesn’t site well with the Russian government which would prefer to see homegrown offerings such as Yandex and Mail.ru get more market traction. The consequence, according to Bloomberg, is a plan by the Russian government to increase the taxes the American tech giants by 18 percent.

  • Unixstickers sent me a package!

    There’s an old, popular saying, beware geeks bearing gifts. But in this case, I was pleased to see an email in my inbox, from unixstickers.com, asking me if I was interested in reviewing their products. I said ye, and a quick few days later, there was a surprise courier-delivered envelope waiting for me in the post. Coincidentally – or not – the whole thing happened close enough to the 2015 end-of-the-year holidays to classify as poetic justice.

    On a slightly more serious note, Unixstickers is a company shipping T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, posters, pins, and stickers to UNIX and Linux aficionados worldwide. Having been identified one and acquired on the company’s PR radar, I am now doing a first-of-a-kind Dedoimedo non-technical technical review of merchandise related to our favorite software. So not sure how it’s gonna work out, but let’s see.

  • Linux goes to Washington: How the White House/Linux Foundation collaboration will work

    No doubt by now you’ve heard about the Obama Administration’s newly announced Cybersecurity National Action Plan (CNAP). You can read more about it on CIO.com here and here.

    But what you may not know is that the White House is actively working with the Linux and open source community for CNAP. In a blog post Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation said, “In the proposal, the White House announced collaboration with The Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) to better secure Internet ‘utilities’ such as open-source software, protocols and standards.”

  • Why Linux?

    Linux may inspire you to think of coders hunched over their desks (that are littered with Mountain Dew cans) while looking at lines of codes, faintly lit by the yellow glow of old CRT monitors. Maybe Linux sounds like some kind of a wild cat and you have never heard the term before. Maybe you have use it every day. It is an operating system loved by a few and misrepresented to many.

  • These 3 things are trying to kill Linux containers

    For nearly two years, Linux containers have dominated the world of enterprise IT, and for good reason — among others, they take on issues that virtualization simply cannot within application development and computing at scale and allow for the enterprise world to truly embrace concepts like devops and microservices (the Service Oriented Architecture dream from years gone by). That sound you hear is IT vendors stampeding towards the container bandwagon, but, as with every emerging tech trend, this isn’t always a good thing, as not everyone is walking the walk, regardless of what the business might actually say.

  • Desktop

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux kernel bug delivers corrupt TCP/IP data to Mesos, Kubernetes, Docker containers

      The Linux Kernel has a bug that causes containers that use veth devices for network routing (such as Docker on IPv6, Kubernetes, Google Container Engine, and Mesos) to not check TCP checksums. This results in applications incorrectly receiving corrupt data in a number of situations, such as with bad networking hardware. The bug dates back at least three years and is present in kernels as far back as we’ve tested. Our patch has been reviewed and accepted into the kernel, and is currently being backported to -stable releases back to 3.14 in different distributions (such as Suse, and Canonical). If you use containers in your setup, I recommend you apply this patch or deploy a kernel with this patch when it becomes available. Note: Docker’s default NAT networking is not affected and, in practice, Google Container Engine is likely protected from hardware errors by its virtualized network.

    • Performance problems

      Just over a year ago I implemented an optimization to the SPI core code in Linux that avoids some needless context switches to a worker thread in the main data path that most clients use. This was really nice, it was simple to do but saved a bunch of work for most drivers using SPI and made things noticeably faster. The code got merged in v4.0 and that was that, I kept on kicking a few more ideas for optimizations in this area around but that was that until the past month.

    • Linux 4.5-rc4

      It’s Valentine’s day, so here I am, making a valentine for everybody in the form of the usual rc release.

      Things look fairly normal – there’s some pending and yet unexplained problem with some of the VM changes in this release cycle (the transparent huge-page cleanups in particular), but at least for now it seems to be s390-specific, so it shouldn’t hold up testing for anybody else.

    • Linus Torvalds Announces a Valentine’s Day Linux Kernel 4.5 Release Candidate 4

      Another week has passed and it’s once again Sunday afternoon here in the US, which means that Linus Torvalds has prepared yet another RC (Release Candidate) build of the upcoming Linux 4.5 kernel.

    • Linux 4.5-rc4 Is A Valentine’s Day Kernel

      Linus Torvalds has announced the release today of the Linux 4.5-rc4 kernel.

      Linux 4.5-rc4 remains rather a normal release and comes with a number of AMDGPU DRM fixes, Btrfs fixes, audio tweaks, and more.

    • Linux Kernel 3.2.77 LTS Has Crypto, x86, and CIFS Improvements, Updated Drivers

      Linux kernel maintainer and developer Ben Hutchings was happy to announce this past weekend the release and immediate availability for download and update of the seventy-seventh maintenance build of the long-term supported Linux 3.2 kernel.

    • New FD.io Open Source Project Offers IO Services Framework for Network and Storage Software

      The newly launched FD.io (“Fido”) initiative is an open source project to provide an IO services framework for the next wave of network and storage software. The project is also announcing the availability of its initial software and formation of a validation testing lab.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Compute Shader Code Begins Landing For Gallium3D

        Samuel Pitoiset began pushing his Gallium3D Mesa state tracker changes this morning for supporting compute shaders via the GL_ARB_compute_shader extension.

        Before getting too excited, the hardware drivers haven’t yet implemented the support. It was back in December that core Mesa received its treatment for compute shader support and came with Intel’s i965 driver implementing CS.

      • Libav Finally Lands VDPAU Support For Accelerated HEVC Decoding

        While FFmpeg has offered hardware-accelerated HEVC decoding using NVIDIA’s VDPAU API since last summer, this support for the FFmpeg-forked libav landed just today.

        In June was when FFmpeg added support to its libavcodec for handling HEVC/H.265 video decoding via NVIDIA’s Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix interface. Around that same time, developer Philip Langdale who had done the FFmpeg patch, also submitted the patch for Libav for decoding HEVC content through VDPAU where supported.

      • More Nouveau GL4 Feature Patches Published
      • It Looks Like AMD Will Support FreeSync With Their New Linux Display Stack

        While NVIDIA has long supported G-SYNC on Linux as their adaptive sync technology for eliminating screen tearing, AMD hasn’t supported their FreeSync tech via their open or closed-source Linux drivers. Fortunately, it’s looking like that will change.

      • Got tearing with proprietary NVIDIA? Try this.

        If you’re using a reasonably modern NVIDIA graphics card on your Linux box with the proprietary driver, there’s a fair chance you may encounter that nasty thing called ‘screen tearing’. There is a little setting worth trying in NVIDIA’s blob driver called ‘ForceCompositionPipeline’ that can severely reduce tearing to a minimum, perhaps even completely. Here’s how to do it.

      • R600g+SI Dota 2 Benchmarks With Mesa 11.2, Linux 4.5 Show Open Driver Progress

        With now having a workaround for Dota 2 for my benchmarking needs, here are some benchmarks finally of this popular multiplayer online battle arena under Linux when using the R600g and RadeonSI Gallium3D drivers with the latest Linux 4.5 and Mesa 11.2 components.

      • Prevent Horizontal Tearing for NVidia GPUs on KDE Plasma
      • AMDGPU’s xf86-video-amdgpu vs. Mode-Setting DDX Performance
      • VIA OpenChrome X.Org Driver Getting Ready For First Release In Over Two Years

        With a new developer stepping up to the plate, it’s looking like the OpenChrome DDX driver will see its first release in more than two and a half years.

        For those still relying upon the OpenChrome X.Org driver for VIA x86 graphics hardware support, Kevin Brace is hoping to soon release a new version. Kevin started a new mailing list thread to encourage interested VIA hardware enthusiasts to begin testing the latest driver code and reporting their feedback.

    • Benchmarks

      • Radeon vs. Nouveau Gallium3D Driver Performance On Mesa 11.2-dev, Linux 4.5

        Here are some fresh comparison benchmarks on Linux 4.5 and Mesa 11.2 when comparing the Radeon and Nouveau (NVIDIA) open-source Linux driver performance.

        Following on from the Nouveau vs. NVIDIA comparison using the latest code and the AMDGPU/Radeon vs. Proprietary Driver benchmarks on the latest code, here are some Radeon vs. Nouveau results using the Linux 4.5 kernel with Mesa 11.2 Git code for a bleeding-edge experience. The NVIDIA hardware tested for this article included the GeForce GTX 460, GTX 550 Ti, GTX 650, GTX 680, and GTX 780 Ti. With all of the NVIDIA GeForce 600/700 Kepler graphics cards, they were re-clocked to their highest power-state manually prior to testing. Unfortunately, there still isn’t any working GeForce 400/500 Fermi re-clocking support with this open-source driver.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GNOME: Maps shaping up for 3.20

        So, we’re soon approaching the UI freeze for GNOME 3.20. It’s looking quite good when it comes to OpenStreetMap editing in Maps (among other things).

        But first I thought I was going to show-case another improvement, namely the expanded place bubbles (show information about places you search for on the map).

      • GNOME Maps Is Looking Better In GNOME 3.20

        While not yet as versatile as say Google Maps, GNOME Maps for GNOME 3.20. is looking to be a nice upgrade.

        Maps in GNOME 3.20 is making progress with OpenStreetMap editing, expanded place bubbles, adding new places to OSM, support for printing routes, and more.

      • GNOME Maps 3.20 to Allow for OpenStreetMap Editing

        GNOME 20 is almost upon us, and it’s going to be a really impressive release, especially since many of its components are getting important upgrades, like GNOME Maps, for example.

      • My Updated 3.18 Packages for GNOME Extensions

        I started releasing extension updates in 2014 due to a lot of extensions being unmaintained and seemingly break every time GNOME releases a new version of the Desktop Environment (DE). This is my third batch release post for GNOME extensions and these extension packages are for GNOME 3.18.

  • Distributions

    • Distro Wars: It’s All Linux

      This is likely a topic covered plenty of times, and as such I won’t make this a too in-depth article, but I feel it’s something always worth reiterating and remembering that no matter what distribution of Linux (or GNU/Linux if you prefer) you use… it’s all Linux.

      You only have to whiz around the internet in message boards, YouTube comments and the like in regards to any Linux topic and you’ll probably come across a “distro war” often enough. It can happen easy enough – someone mentions their distro of choice, someone else then mentions theirs and then comparisons start. From there, with personal experiences being shared, which quite frankly can differ quite a bit depending on one’s hardware, software choices (or sometimes even luck) a discussion can quite quickly descend into a flame war over ‘my distro is better than your distro’.

    • Reviews

      • RebeccaBlackOS 2016-02-08 Review. Why? Because it’s Friday.

        These are the types of problems found in an independent distro build from scratch. I cannot understand how a system built on Debian could be this buggy and apparently have zero VM support which Debian comes with by default. I can take some solace in the fact that it was built by one person and that one person is a Rebecca Black fan but as far as a Linux Distribution is concerned there is not much here. Some could say “Well its not supposed to be taken as a serious Distribution.” True except it is listed and kept up with on DistroWatch therefor it should be held as a system ready distribution especially when it was not released as a beta or an RC. If this distribution is ever going to be considered a real platform it has a long way to go. I give it about as many thumbs down as the Rebecca Black Friday video.

    • New Releases

      • Welcome to Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5r0 Release Notes

        Parsix GNU/Linux is a live and installation DVD based on Debian. Our goal is to provide a ready to use and easy to install desktop and laptop optimized operating system based on Debian’s stable branch and the latest stable release of GNOME desktop environment. Users can easily install extra software packages from Parsix APT repositories. Our annual release cycle consists of two major and four minor versions. We have our own software repositories and build servers to build and provide all the necessary updates and missing features in Debian stable branch.

      • Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5 (Atticus) Officially Released, Based on Debian 8 “Jessie”

        The development team of the Debian-based Parsix GNU/Linux computer operating system has announced today, February 14, 2016, the release and immediate availability for download of Parsix GNU/Linux 8.5r0.

      • 4MParted 16.0 Distrolette Ships with GParted 0.25.0, Now Ready for Beta Testing

        Zbigniew Konojacki, the developer of the 4MLinux project, has sent us an email earlier today, February 14, 2016, informing Softpedia about the availability for download and testing of his 4MParted 16.0 Beta Live CD.

      • Zorin OS 11 Lite & Business Get Valentine’s Day Release for Windows Refugees

        Only ten days after the release of the Zorin OS 11 Core and Ultimate editions, the development team of the Windows lookalike Linux-based operating system are proud to announce the release of the Lite and Business flavors.

        While the Zorin OS 11 Lite Edition is based on the Lubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) operating system and built around the lightweight LXDE desktop environment, Zorin OS 11 Business is pretty much the same as the Ultimate Edition, but with more advanced tools and improved hardware support.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • Sound problems in Mageia 5

        Long time ago, I experienced a problem with the sound in Mageia 5. Some videos would play without sound after I applied an update.

        Back then, I discovered the problem was caused because ffmpeg had been updated but, I never found out why, the tainted repository did not pick up the correct package, so I was using the common ffmpeg package, not the tainted version that allows me to play sound for the videos.

    • Arch Family

    • Slackware Family

      • LibreOffice 5.1.0 for slackware-current

        The Document Foundation statement about this release: “LibreOffice 5.1 represents the bleeding edge in term of features for open source office suites, and as such is targeted at technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users. For enterprise class deployments, TDF maintains the more mature 5.0.x branch (soon at 5.0.5)“.

      • taper.alienbase.nl mirror will lose rsync access

        For the sixth time in just 5 days I had do a system_reset on my virtual machine which runs “taper.alienbase.nl” as well as “docs.slackware.com“. The virtual machine is crashing under the load that is put on it by demanding rsync processes. According to my pal who donated the use of this VM to me for free, the rsync download rate is at a continuous 100 Mbit/sec for most of the time. This is apparently too much for the server, as well as for my pal who had not anticipated this kind of bandwidth consumption. He has been paying quite a bit of extra money for the excess bandwidth during the past months.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Inc (RHT) Position Raised by Chevy Chase Trust Holdings

        Chevy Chase Trust Holdings raised its stake in shares of Red Hat Inc (NYSE:RHT) by 4.9% during the fourth quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The fund owned 407,946 shares of the open-source software company’s stock after buying an additional 19,132 shares during the period. Chevy Chase Trust Holdings’ holdings in Red Hat were worth $33,782,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

      • Market View On Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT)

        Few brokerages covering Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) have recently released its earnings and stock price target. As per the experts, the stock can touch 89.63 in the coming twelve months. The company’s earnings in the past one year was recorded at 1.03 per share. Now, in the coming quarter, First Call anticipates the company to deliver EPS of 0.50. The EPS estimates for the ongoing fiscal and the next year is reported to come at 1.86 and 2.19 respectively.

    • Debian Family

      • Debian LTS Work January 2016

        This was my ninth month as a Freexian sponsored LTS contributor. I was assigned 8 hours for the month of January.

        My time this month was spent preparing updates for clamav and the associated libclamunrar for squeeze and wheezy. For wheezy, I’ve only helped a little, mostly I worked on squeeze.

      • Reproducible builds: week 42 in Stretch cycle

        What happened in the reproducible builds effort between February 7th and February 13th 2016:

      • Freexian’s report about Debian Long Term Support, January 2016

        Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS.

      • I love Free Software Day 2016: Show your love for Free Software

        Today February 14th, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) celebrates the “I Love Free Software” day. I Love Free Software day is a day for Free Software users to appreciate and thank the contributors of their favourite software applications, projects and organisations.

      • Derivatives

        • Tails 2.0 Debian-Based Linux OS Will Keep You Anonymous Online

          Tails, a Live operating system that is built for the declared purpose of keeping users safe and anonymous while going online, is now at version 2.0.1 and is ready for download.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Early Ubuntu 14.04 vs. Ubuntu 16.04 Intel Xeon E5 Benchmarks

            This morning I posted some Ubuntu 14.04 vs. 16.04 LTS Radeon graphics benchmarks while if open-source AMD graphics driver evolution doesn’t get you excited, in this article are results from other non-graphics benchmarks in comparing the Ubuntu 14.04 vs. 16.04 performance for these long-term support releases in their current form.

            For getting an idea how the overall Ubuntu Linux performance has evolved over the past two years for those solely riding Long-Term Support releases, I compared the performance of Ubuntu 14.04.0 to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS in its current daily ISO form. The tests were done on the same Intel Xeon E5-2687W v3 (Haswell) system with MSI X99S SLI PLUS motherboard, 16GB of RAM, and AMD FirePro V7900 graphics.

          • ‘Android OEMs Will Ship Ubuntu Phones This Year’, Say Canonical

            Several Android phone makers will release Ubuntu phones this year, Canonical’s CEO has revealed.

          • Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu prospect for February 22 launch

            In September last year Meizu officially introduced the Pro 5 flagship, an Android smartphone running the 5.1 Lollipop-based Flyme OS 5.0. Although Android and iOS are the dominant operating platforms there are always those who want to try something different. Now there’s a Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu prospect for a February 22 launch.

          • Meizu teases new Ubuntu device for MWC 2016

            Chinese smartphone manufacture Meizu will likely unveil a new Ubuntu-powered phone at the Mobile World Congress next week. The company recently released a teaser that suggests the same, although it doesn’t reveal anything specific about the device.

          • Meizu Might Unveil a New Ubuntu Phone Device at MWC 2016

            Meizu, the popular Chinese consumer electronics company, which most Ubuntu users better know for its awesome Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition smartphone, has teased us earlier on Twitter with what it would appear to be the launch of a new device.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Events

    • A Selection of Talks from FOSDEM 2016

      It’s that time of the year where I go to FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting). The keynotes and the maintracks are very good, with good presentations and contents.

    • Tech experts guide workshop on open source software

      “The potential of open-source software is huge. For instance, a lot of people in our country cannot afford to purchase MS Office because they are very expensive. OSS can be a boon to people in software development and even in the field of education in general,” said Lalit Kathpalia, director of Symbiosis Institute of Computer Science and Research (SICSR), which organised the seminar along with the Pune Linux Users Group.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

  • Education

    • Open source is now ready to compete with Mathematica for use in the classroom

      When I think about what makes SageMath different, one of the most fundamental things is that it was created by people who use it every day. It was created by people doing research math, by people teaching math at universities, and by computer programmers and engineers using it for research. It was created by people who really understand computational problems because we live them. We understand the needs of math research, teaching courses, and managing an open source project that users can contribute to and customize to work for their own unique needs.

    • The scarcity of college graduates with FOSS experience

      In the education track at SCALE 14x in Pasadena, Gina Likins spoke about the surprisingly difficult task of getting information about open-source development practices into undergraduate college classrooms. That scarcity makes it hard to find new college graduates who have experience with open source. Although the conventional wisdom is that open source “is everywhere,” the college computer-science (CS) or software-engineering (SE) classroom has proven to be a tough nut to crack—and may remain so for quite some time.

      Likins works on Red Hat’s University Outreach team—a group that does not do recruiting, she emphasized. Rather, the team travels to campuses around the United States and engages with teachers, administrators, and students about open source in the classroom. The surprise is how little open source one finds, at least in CS and SE degrees. Employers expect graduates to be familiar with open-source projects and tools (e.g., using Git, bug trackers, and so forth), she said, and incoming students report expecting to find it in the curriculum, but it remains a rarity.

  • BSD

    • Our 2016 Fundraising Campaign

      The OpenBSD Foundation needs your help to achieve our fundraising goal of $250,000 for 2016.

      Reaching this goal will ensure the continued health of the projects we support, will enable us to help them do more, and will avoid the distraction of financial emergencies that could spell the end of the projects.

      2015 was a good year for the foundation financially, with funding coming almost equally from corporate and community donations. While the total was down significantly after 2014′s blockbuster year, we again exceeded our goal.

      [...]

      If a penny was donated for every pf or OpenSSH installed with a mainstream operating system or phone in the last year we would be at our goal.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Winning the copyleft fight

      Bradley Kuhn started off his linux.conf.au 2016 talk by stating a goal that, he hoped, he shared with the audience: a world where more (or most) software is free software. The community has one key strategy toward that goal: copyleft licensing. He was there to talk about whether that strategy is working, and what can be done to make it more effective; the picture he painted was not entirely rosy, but there is hope if software developers are willing to make some changes.

      Copyleft licensing is still an effective strategy, he said; that can be seen because we’ve had the chance to run a real-world parallel experiment — an opportunity that doesn’t come often. A lot of non-copyleft software has been written over the years; if proprietary forks of that software don’t exist, then it seems clear that there is no need for copyleft; we just have to look to see whether proprietary versions of non-copyleft software exist. But, he said, he has yet to find a non-trivial non-copyleft program that lacks proprietary forks; without copyleft, companies will indeed take free software and make it proprietary.

    • The Trouble With the TPP, Day 27: Source Code Disclosure Confusion

      Another Trouble with the TPP is its foray into the software industry. One of the more surprising provisions in the TPP’s e-commerce chapter was the inclusion of a restriction on mandated source code disclosure. Article 14.17 states:

      No Party shall require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition for the import, distribution, sale or use of such software, or of products containing such software, in its territory.

    • I love Free Software Day 2016

      In the Free Software society we exchange a lot of criticism. We write bug reports, tell others how they can improve the software, ask them for new features, and generally are not shy about criticising others. There is nothing wrong about that. It helps us to constantly improve. But sometimes we forget to show the hardworking people behind the software our appreciation. We should not underestimate the power of a simple “thank you” to motivate Free Software contributors in their important work for society. The 14th of February (a Sunday this year) is the ideal day to do that.

  • Programming

    • Why I am not touching node.js [Ed: from Ferrari]

      Dear node.js/node-webkit people, what’s the matter with you?

      I wanted to try out some stuff that requires node-webkit. So I try to use npm to download, build and install it, like CPAN would do.

      But then I see that the nodewebkit package is just a stub that downloads a 37MB file (using HTTP without TLS) containing pre-compiled binaries. Are you guys out of your minds?

      This is enough for me to never again get close to node.js and friends. I had already heard some awful stories, but this is just insane.

    • The next Generation of Code Hosting Platforms

      The last few weeks there has been a lot of rumors about GitHub. GitHub is a code hosting platform which tries to make it as easy as possible to develop software and collaborate with people. The main achievement from GitHub is probably to moved the social part of software development to a complete new level. As more and more Free Software initiatives started using GitHub it became really easy to contribute a bug fix or a new feature to the 3rd party library or application you use. With a few clicks you can create a fork, add your changes and send them back to the original project as a pull request. You don’t need to create a new account, don’t need to learn the tools used by the project, etc. Everybody is on the same platform and you can contribute immediately. In many cases this improves the collaboration between projects a lot. Also the ability to mention the developer of other projects easily in your pull request or issue improved the social interactions between developers and makes collaboration across different projects the default.

    • Choose GitLab for your next open source project

      GitLab.com is a competitor of GIthub. It’s a service provider for git-based source code repositories that offers much more than it’s bigger brother. In this post I will try to convince you to try it out for your next project.

      GitLab is not only a simple git hosting; its features impact the whole development process, the way of contributing to a project, executing and running tests, protecting source code from changes, more and more.

    • Write code that is easy to delete, not easy to extend.

      Every line of code written comes at a price: maintenance. To avoid paying for a lot of code, we build reusable software. The problem with code re-use is that it gets in the way of changing your mind later on.

      The more consumers of an API you have, the more code you must rewrite to introduce changes. Similarly, the more you rely on an third-party api, the more you suffer when it changes. Managing how the code fits together, or which parts depend on others, is a significant problem in large scale systems, and it gets harder as your project grows older.

Leftovers

  • Billion-dollar mistake: How inferior IT killed Target Canada

    Additionally, the idea of trying to open an entire nation of stores, rather than opening them incrementally, was bound to fail. Scaling everything at once doesn’t allow for flaws to be discovered and mediated, but instead leads to cascading failures like the ones that overtook Target Canada’s supply chain.

  • Science

  • Data Loss

    • Vellum: UK’s last producer of calf-skin parchment fights on after losing Parliament’s business

      In the company’s original office, with its 1855 safe, overlooked by a photograph of the firm’s founding father, the general manager of parchment and vellum makers William Cowley receives a steady stream of phone calls from sympathisers and customers.

      Paul Wright tells them how parchment and vellum are “the earliest writing materials, in use since man stepped out of a cave, wrapped some skins round a few sticks to make a tepee, and started scribbling on his tent walls”. He added: “All of humankind’s history is on parchment and vellum. Magna Carta was written on parchment. The Dead Sea Scrolls: parchment, in 435BC.”

    • Google is shutting down Picasa in favor of Photos

      The Picasa desktop app will continue to function, but after March 15th, you shouldn’t expect any more updates. It also sounds like the download link will be going away, so you might want to also keep the install file stashed somewhere safe.

    • Google Is Shutting Down Picasa On May 1, 2016

      Google has finally decided to kill Picasa Web albums on May 1, 2016. This step was expected by many as it doesn’t make sense investing time and resources in a product similar to Google Photos.

    • Changing your iPhone settings to this date will kill it

      Don’t try this at home. Changing the date on recent models of the iPhone to January 1 1970 will render it completely useless and unable to reboot.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Jeremy Hunt ‘misrepresenting’ data on weekend death rates at NHS hospitals, says research surgeon

      A doctor who was part of a study on links between staffing and deaths in the NHS has accused the Government of “continually misrepresenting” the findings to support its push to change junior contracts.

      Dr Peter Holt, a vascular surgeon at St George’s University of London, said he had written to Jeremy Hunt, the Health Select Committee and shadow Health Secretary Heidi Alexander raising his objection.

      In a post on the Junior Doctors contract forum Facebook group, he wrote that the research published in December “could never have shown that higher staffing on weekends reduced mortality”.

    • The “tough nerd” owns this calamity: Rick Snyder’s anti-government, authoritarian ideology has been nothing but bad news for Flint

      Snyder has since won two general elections. As the world now knows, turning our state government over to a business executive who never held public office before hasn’t turned out so well. The “tough nerd” is the man who presided over a colossal, avoidable and entirely man-made public health disaster. For more than a year, more than 100,000 citizens of Flint have been exposed to a toxic water supply, laced with lead and other contaminants.

      Eight thousand children under the age of 5 who live in the city are most at risk; even at low levels, exposure to lead can cause irreversible damage to their brains. That translates, over time, into reduced intellectual capacity and higher incidence of multiple problems: attention deficit disorder, hypertension, aggressive and impulsive behavior – eventually, according to some researchers, higher rates of violent crime.

      Lead poisoning is no picnic for adults. The substance is a neurotoxin, linked to anemia, brain damage, kidney failure and reproductive disorders for both genders.

      This scandal has bodies, too. There’s been a spike in cases of Legionnaires’ disease – including 10 deaths – in and around Flint since the city’s water troubles began, nearly two years ago. The syndrome can be transmitted through mist or vapor from a contaminated water supply. High-ranking state officials knew about the outbreak in March of 2015, but Snyder didn’t say anything publicly until January 2016. “We can’t conclude the increase is related to the water switch in Flint,” said a state health department spokesperson on Feb. 3, “nor can we rule out a possible association.”

      Trust me: Nobody in Flint now trusts a word state officials have to say about water quality.

    • Flint water crisis: governor’s aides knew of issues within weeks, records suggest

      Among 21,000 documents released by Michigan’s governor one shows officials due to discuss Flint ‘water issues’ in June 2014, within weeks of supply switch

    • Flint: The Legionnaires Will Be What Brings Criminal Charges

      In my discussions about Flint’s water crisis, I keep pointing out that Rick Snyder was largely just making a show of responding until the US Attorney revealed it had started an investigation on January 5.

      The Detroit News has an utterly damning report today about the part of the story that gets less national attention: local and state officials started discussing an outbreak of Legionnaires disease back in October 2014, and national experts offered help as early as March 2015, but the state did not accept assistance offered by both the EPA and CDC until January.

    • Detroit has highest number of abandoned homes, Flint second, website reports

      Flint, the Michigan city that is struggling with a public health crisis involving its water supply, has another issue that is threatening its future: abandoned homes, the Huffington Post reports.

      Flint had the highest rate of vacancy in February at 7.5 percent, according to a report released by RealtyTrac.

      “The real estate data company broke down the data by individual city for The Huffington Post, revealing a more extreme picture of abandonment: 9,800 homes are empty in Flint, 16.5 percent of all residential properties. At the city level, Detroit had the highest vacancy rate, with 53,000 empty houses, nearly one in five. Nationally, close to one of every 63 residential properties that RealtyTrac analyzed are vacant.”

    • Flint’s problems didn’t start with water

      A third of the property in the city of Flint is vacant.

      That’s according to the Genesee County Land Bank, the organization charged with pushing back against the encroaching wave of blight that touches nearly every neighborhood in this struggling city — of 56,000 parcels in Flint, about 20,000 are empty or blighted.

      And it’s going to get worse.

  • Security

    • Fysbis: The Linux Backdoor Used by Russian Hackers

      Fysbis (or Linux.BackDoor.Fysbis) is a new malware family that targets Linux machines, on which it sets up a backdoor that allows the malware’s author to spy on victims and carry out further attacks.

    • Russian Hackers Spying On Your Linux PC Using Sophisticated Malware “Fysbis”

      A new malware family known as Fysbis (or Linux.BackDoor.Fysbis) is aiming Linux machines by setting up a backdoor that allows the malware’s author to snoop on victims and perform further attacks.

    • Warning: Bug in Adobe Creative Cloud deletes Mac user data without warning

      Adobe Systems has stopped distributing a recently issued update to its Creative Cloud graphics service amid reports a Mac version can delete important user data without warning or permission.

      The deletions happen whenever Mac users log in to the Adobe service after the update has been installed, according to officials from Backblaze, a data backup service whose users are being disproportionately inconvenienced by the bug. Upon sign in, a script activated by Creative Cloud deletes the contents in the alphabetically first folder in a Mac’s root directory. Backblaze users are being especially hit by the bug because the backup service relies on data stored in a hidden root folder called .bzvol. Because the folder is the alphabetically top-most hidden folder at the root of so many users’ drives, they are affected more than users of many other software packages.

      “This caused a lot of our customers to freak out,” Backblaze Marketing Manager Yev Pusin wrote in an e-mail. “The reason we saw a huge uptick from our customers is because Backblaze’s .bzvol is higher up the alphabet. We tested it again by creating a hidden file with an ‘.a’ name, and the files inside were removed as well.”

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • U.S. Supported Shia Militias in Iraq Lead Ethnic Cleansing

      Oh, yes, and also civil war. Here’s a preview of what to expect in Iraq after ISIS is mostly run out of the country.

      Set the scene: the country formerly known as Iraq was basically an steaming pile of ethnic/religious tension in 2003 when the U.S. invaded. It was divided among three broad groups we didn’t seem to know much about then, but damn well do now: Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. The Kurds, who always wanted to be independent, like from nearly the time of the dinosaurs always, saw their opportunity and broke away and are now essentially their own country. The Sunnis and Shia both wanted the same land and resources and freaking hate each other, and so have been fighting one another since 2003 when the post-U.S. invasion chaos unleashed them.

    • “Where to Invade Next” Is the Most Subversive Movie Michael Moore Has Ever Made

      I CAN’T CLAIM this is a neutral review of Where to Invade Next, Michael Moore’s latest movie. Beyond the fact that I worked for Moore for six years, including on his previous documentary Capitalism: A Love Story, I may literally owe my life to the high-quality, zero-deductible health insurance he provides employees.

      What I’ve lost in objectivity, I’ve gained in knowledge of Moore’s career. I even know his darkest, most closely guarded secret: the original name of the 1970s alternative newspaper he started in Flint, Michigan. So I can say this for sure: Where to Invade Next is the most profoundly subversive thing he’s ever done. It’s so sneaky that you may not even notice exactly what it’s subverting.

    • Deconstructing America’s ‘Deep State’

      Americans perceive what has happened to their democratic Republic only dimly, tricked by rightists who call all collective government actions bad and by neoliberals who make “markets” a new-age god. But ex-congressional budget official Mike Lofgren shows how this “Deep State” really works, writes Chuck Spinney.

    • Long live Empire!

      Indians don’t care whether the statue of Queen Victoria stays put or is consigned to a junkyard. Many agree with Ferguson that the British Empire had some plus points.

    • Hillary’s Admission Diplomacy Couldn’t Get Pakistan To Hand Over Bin Laden

      In last night’s debate, Sanders responded — after talking about what good friends he is with the woman who just claimed he had supported regime change — that he had supported more democracy in Libya, not regime change.

    • The anti-US military base struggle in Okinawa, Japan

      Kamoshita and Aihara at their talk in London on 1 February jointly organised and hosted by Voices for Creative Non-Violence UK (VCNV), Nipponzan Myohoji and SOAS CND Society. Native Nomad Pictures Ltd./ Jason Verney. All rights reserved.Not many people outside Japan have even heard of the place called Okinawa, a semi-tropical archipelago of numerous islands with unique and invaluable biodiversity situated in the East China Sea – let alone have any knowledge of its modern history, dominated by the sequence of invasion, colonisation, war and militarisation.

    • ‘ISIS militants shave beards, dress as women to escape Ramadi’

      has arrested a group of ISIS fighters when they tried to escape from the fallen city of Ramadi after shaving their beards and dressing up as women.

      “The terrorists had shaved their beards and dressed as women in a bid to fool our forces and escape the liberated city of Ramadi. However, they were all arrested before escaping the city,” the Iraqi security command was quoted as saying by ARA News.

      The Iraqi army announced on Tuesday the “full liberation” of Ramadi city, capital of Anbar province, from ISIS militants.

    • The Neoconservatives Are Brewing A Wider War In Syria

      Their invasion plan frustrated, the neoconservatives sent the jihadists they had used to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya to overthrow Assad. Initially known as ISIS, then ISIL, then the Islamist State, and now Daesh, a term that can be interpreted as an insult. Perhaps the intention of the name changes is to keep the Western public thoroughly confused about who is who and what is what.

    • Democrats Use Debate To Embrace History’s Warmongers

      With some important exceptions, such as the issue of regime change, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s foreign policies were largely on the same page, as they have been throughout the campaign. Sanders joined in with the prevailing fear of Russia, praising NATO’s recent provocative amassing of troops along Russia’s border, its largest deployment since the Cold War. The candidates then went on to separately embrace two of history’s worst war mongers.

      Clinton went first. After Sanders criticized her earlier embrace of her predecessor Henry Kissinger, calling him “one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country,” Clinton doubled down, arguing that whatever complaints one may have of Kissinger, “his opening up of China and his ongoing relationships with the leaders of China is an incredibly useful relationship.”

      Clinton’s earlier mention of Kissinger wasn’t just name-dropping. She appears to genuinely view him as a role model while serving as Secretary of State.

    • The 10 most ghoulish quotes of Henry Kissinger’s gruesome career

      Henry Kissinger’s quote released by Wikileaks, “The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer,” likely brought a smile to his legions of elite media, government, corporate and high society admirers. Oh that Henry! That rapier wit! That trademark insouciance! It is unlikely, however, that the descendants of his more than 6 million victims in Indochina, and Americans of conscience appalled by his murder of non-Americans, will share in the amusement. His illegal and unconstitutional actions had real-world consequences: the ruined lives of millions of Indochinese innocents in a new form of secret, automated U.S. executive warfare. (Read Branfman’s extended related essay on Kissinger.)

    • Sanders proudly declaring “Kissinger is not my friend” totally destroys notion that Clinton’s better on foreign policy

      “I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger,” Bernie Sanders declared in the Milwaukee presidential debate Thursday night.

      “Where the secretary and I have a very profound difference,” Sanders explained, “in her book and in this last debate, she talked about getting the approval or the support or the mentoring of Henry Kissinger. Now, I find it rather amazing, because I happen to believe that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country.”

      These are some of the most important words Sanders has ever uttered about foreign policy. And they show he is appreciably better on the issue than Hillary Clinton, in all the ways that matter.

      The historical facts make it clear that Sanders is absolutely correct; Kissinger was, hands down, one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of the U.S.

    • Should Henry Kissinger Mentor a Presidential Candidate?

      At the February 11 Democratic Debate, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton had a spirited exchange about an unlikely topic: the 92-year old former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Sanders berated Clinton for saying that she appreciated the foreign policy mentoring she got from Henry Kissinger. “I happen to believe,” said Sanders, “that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country.”

      In one of Sanders’ rare outbursts of enmity, he added, “I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger. And in fact, Kissinger’s actions in Cambodia, when the United States bombed that country, overthrew Prince Sihanouk, created the instability for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to come in, who then butchered some three million innocent people, was one of the worst genocides in the history of the world. So count me in as somebody who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger.”

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Coal mining has flattened Appalachia by 40%: Scientists reveal dramatic extent of damage done by mountaintop removal

      For more than forty years, mining companies have been destroying entire mountain peaks in West Virginia, Kentucky and other areas of Central Appalachia.

      The technique, known as mountaintop mining, practice provides much-needed jobs and the steady supply of coal that America relies on for more than half of its electricity needs.

      But residents say they are paying a high price, with the practice destroying forests, polluting streams and flooding communities – and now a new study has backed up their claims.

      Scientists have found mountaintop coal mining has made parts of Central Appalachia 40 per cent flatter than they were before excavation.

  • Finance

    • Watch Carrier Workers Find Out Their Jobs Are Moving to Mexico

      Workers at a Carrier Air Conditioner plant in Indianapolis were summoned to a group assembly this week to be told their jobs would soon be moving to Monterrey, Mexico. In all, 1,400 jobs are expected to be lost.

      [...]

      “Now the promise of America has always been you work hard, you do your job, you help your company be profitable and then in return, you hope to have a decent retirement,” he said. “So how do we tell workers who have put their whole heart and soul into a company, who have provided them with over $6.1 billion in sales, that it is not enough? I mean, the reason folks are here is because there has always been a promise: If you work hard, the company in return will stand up and do right by you. So, how is doing right having $6.1 billion in earnings and shipping 2,100 Indiana jobs off to Mexico?”

      Yellen, who has come under fire for rate hikes many fear will undermine the unemployment situation, replied: “This is a miserable and burdensome situation that many households have faced.”

    • Hillary Is a High-Ranking Member of the DC Power Elite — and That’s Why She Can’t Comprehend Bernie’s Revolution

      Let me figure this out. Last year, the Clintons couldn’t believe their good fortune. They were going to face a “democratic socialist” from the marginal state of Vermont and cruise to victory. It would be a romp, with Hillary winning the primaries and then going full mainstream against a reactionary, out of touch Republican opponent on the way to the White House.

      As many commentators are saying now, a serious miscalculation was at the heart of Hillary’s plan. Clinton, Cruz, Bush, Rubio and others are all part of the wealthy elite. Although Trump is as well, he is channeling the anger of the working class American. Bernie Sanders also gets it. He knows what happened to the American dream.

      Hillary Clinton thinks, in her gut, that America is a prosperous country, and that the policies that led to our prosperity should simply be continued, that they work. But this hasn’t been true since the 1970’s, back when America was the world’s economic powerhouse, with a manufacturing base that was the envy of the world, highly paid unionized workers and a booming housing market.

    • John Kasich and the Clintons Collaborated on Law That Helped Double Extreme Poverty

      Republican presidential candidate John Kasich has promoted himself both as a friend of the working poor and as a foe of Hillary Clinton, but as House Budget Committee chairman in the 1990s, he worked with the Clintons to roll back welfare programs, helping double extreme poverty in America.

      In 1996, the Clinton administration and congressional Republicans worked hand in hand to pass what they called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, colloquially known as “welfare reform.”

      The legislation famously “ended welfare as we know it,” replacing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The newly-created TANF placed a time limit on how long the federal government would extend financial assistance to poor families.

    • 7 Reasons I’m Not On Board With Uber

      It’s common practice in the tech world to rush your product to market, picking up the pieces as you go. This works fine when you’re in the business of selling ideas, or soft-serve ice cream delivery (somebody do this, please), or artisanal organic laundry service. Get it out there, apologize in advance that nothing’s perfect, do better next time. No harm done.

      Then there’s a product like Uber. Uber, if you’re just joining the conversation, is supposed to change the way city dwellers think about transportation. It’s supposed to put taxis out of business, or at least make them change their wicked ways.

    • Taxes on trial

      Demands for tax justice have resounded worldwide, with inequality at historic and unsustainable levels and increased attention towards the tax practices of major multinational corporations from Google to Starbucks.

      Governments must be able to change their tax systems to ensure multinationals pay their fair share and to ensure that critical public services are well funded. States must also be able to reconsider and withdraw tax breaks previously granted to multinationals if they no longer fit with national priorities.

      But their ability to do so, to change tax laws and pursue progressive tax policies, is limited, thanks to trade and investments agreements. In rapidly developing ‘corporate courts’, formally known as investor-state dispute settlement system (or ISDS), foreign investors can sue states directly at international tribunals.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Donald Trump Blames George W. Bush for 9/11

      “I lost hundreds of friends, the World Trade Center came down during the reign of George Bush,” Trump said, while the crowd’s boos nearly drowned him out. “That is not safe, Marco, that is not safe,”

      Trump has made this claim before, but this time Bush’s brother Jeb pushed back. “This is a man who insults his way to the nomination,” he said. “I am sick and tired of him going after my family.”

    • Hillary Clinton’s Congressional Black Caucus PAC Endorsement Approved By Board Awash in Lobbyists

      Ben Branch, the executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus PAC told The Intercept that his group made the decision after a vote from its 20-member board. The board includes 11 lobbyists, seven elected officials, and two officials who work for the PAC. Branch confirmed that the lobbyists were involved in the endorsement, but would not go into detail about the process.

      Members of the CBC PAC board include Daron Watts, a lobbyist for Purdue Pharma, the makers of highly addictive opioid OxyContin; Mike Mckay and Chaka Burgess, both lobbyists for Navient, the student loan giant that was spun off of Sallie Mae; former Rep. Al Wynn, D-Md., a lobbyist who represents a range of clients, including work last year on behalf of Lorillard Tobacco, the makers of Newport cigarettes; and William A. Kirk, who lobbies for a cigar industry trade group on a range of tobacco regulations.

      And a significant percentage of the $7,000 raised this cycle by the CBC PAC was donated by white lobbyists, including Vic Fazio, who represents Philip Morris and served for years as a lobbyist to Corrections Corporation of America, and David Adams, a former Clinton aide who now lobbies for Wal-Mart, the largest gun distributor in America.

    • Why Brother Bernie Is Better for Black People Than Sister Hillary
    • Bernie Sanders is a Candidate for, Not of, Today’s Movements

      Yesterday, The Atlantic’s Eric Liu asked what it would take to move presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’s ambitious proposals from “we’re gonna” to “we’ve done it,” outlining seven steps to bridge the gap. First among Liu’s recommendations is a call for a “Bernie’s 30” of progressive congressional Democrats to oust Republican incumbents, throwing the weight of the Sanders campaign’s small donor base into strategic races around the country.

    • ‘Bomb the Sh*t out of ‘Em’: Inside the Madness of a Donald Trump Rally

      After Roy Wood Jr., skipped out on a Donald Trump rally on Wednesday night’s “Daily Show,” I felt as if I had an itch left unscratched. So you can imagine how excited I was when another correspondent, Jordan Klepper, made the “the circus that is Donald Trump” the centerpiece of his profile on last night’s “Daily Show.” (And by some divine stroke of luck, Klepper ended up at the now-infamous rally at which Trump almost-kinda-sorta called Ted Cruz a “pussy.”)
      To build a contextual foundation, Klepper spoke to a Adam Realman (not to be confused with John Q. Sample), a Coney Island sideshow performer about the proper elements of a compelling circus act.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Why I don’t like smartphones

      They have led to massive centralization. Part of the “cloud” movement is probably driven by the fact that while smartphones have substantial computational resources, you can’t actually use them because of battery life. So instead the computation is done in the cloud, creating a dependency on a centralized entity.

      How many of these smartphone applications being sold would still work if their makers went bust? By comparison, there is much PC software no longer sold but which is still cherished and used.

    • For Analysts, Loving LinkedIn Was Wrong

      LinkedIn is unlikely to be the last company hit by a pitch, says Sanwal. Investors in private companies often base their valuations on publicly traded stocks like LinkedIn. With even Apple and Amazon.com being punished mightily for their recent quarterly disappointments, companies in the spotlight can’t afford many missteps, says SunTrust’s Peck. As for his own line of work, he says: “At the end of the day analysts need to rely on their research, not what the company says.”

    • How Google Searches Pretty Much Nailed the New Hampshire Primary

      Google’s ability to look into the future of political contests just notched another win: New Hampshire.

      Searches of presidential candidates conducted by Google users in New Hampshire on Feb. 9 corresponded closely with the voting results of the state’s primary. The top-searched Democratic candidate was Bernie Sanders, who won with 60 percent of the vote in New Hampshire, according to the Associated Press. He got 72 percent of the searches, according to Google, while Hillary Clinton got 28 percent of the queries and 38 percent of the vote.

    • Google isn’t your diary – stop trusting it with your secrets

      If you have a problem in the 21st century, the typical first port of call is Google. It doesn’t matter if it’s about your health or your embarrassing crush – the search engine will be there to answer your questions.

      My recent search history varies from ‘my iPhone won’t charge abroad’ to ‘do I have cystitis’? But that’s nothing compared to what I’d pour out to Google as a teenager. Back then, the search engine wasn’t just a substitute for rubbish PSHE lessons at school – it was the big sister I never had.

    • Four men—including a pair of pastors—sue Tacoma police over stingray documents

      The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state has sued the Tacoma Police Department (TPD) on behalf of four community leaders, claiming that TPD has not adequately responded to their public records requests concerning the use of cell-site simulators, or stingrays.

      The Thursday lawsuit comes nine months after Washington imposed a new warrant requirement for stingray use in the state and about 15 months after local Pierce County judges imposed stricter guidelines for their use.

      Stingrays are in use by both local and federal law enforcement agencies nationwide. The devices determine a target phone’s location by spoofing or simulating a cell tower. Mobile phones in range of the stingray then connect to it and exchange data with the device as they would with a real cell tower. Once deployed, stingrays intercept data from the target phone along with information from other phones within the vicinity—up to and including full calls and text messages. At times, police have falsely claimed that information gathered from a stingray has instead come from a confidential informant.

    • Austrians Need Constitutional Right to Pay in Cash, Mahrer Says

      Austrians should have the constitutional right to use cash to protect their privacy, Deputy Economy Minister Harald Mahrer said, as the European Union considers curbing the use of banknotes and coins.

      “We don’t want someone to be able to track digitally what we buy, eat and drink, what books we read and what movies we watch,” Mahrer said on Austrian public radio station Oe1. “We will fight everywhere against rules” including caps on cash purchases, he said.

    • New York Police Have Used Stingrays Widely, New Documents Show

      The NYPD has used cell-site simulators, commonly known as Stingrays, more than 1,000 times since 2008, according to documents turned over to the New York Civil Liberties Union. The documents represent the first time the department has acknowledged using the devices.

      The NYPD also disclosed that it does not get a warrant before using a Stingray, which sweeps up massive amounts of data. Instead, the police obtain a “pen register order” from a court, more typically used to collect call data for a specific phone. Those orders do not require the police to establish probable cause. Additionally, the NYPD has no written policy guidelines on the use of Stingrays.

    • Lawyers Speak Out About Massive Hack of Prisoners’ Phone Records

      Last fall, Bukowsky received an unexpected phone call related to McKim’s case. The call came from The Intercept, following our November 11, 2015, report on a massive hack of Securus Technologies, a Texas-based prison telecommunications company that does business with the Missouri Department of Corrections. As we reported at the time, The Intercept received a massive database of more than 70 million call records belonging to Securus and coming from prison facilities that used the company’s so-called Secure Call Platform. Leaked via SecureDrop by a hacker who was concerned that Securus might be violating prisoners’ rights, the call records span a 2 1/2-year period beginning in late 2011 (the year Securus won its contract with the Missouri DOC) and ending in the spring of 2014.

    • Apple: Dear judge, please tell us if gov’t can compel us to unlock an iPhone

      In a new letter, Apple has asked a judge to finally rule in a case where the government is trying to force the company to unlock a seized iPhone 5S running iOS 7. Currently, United States Magistrate Judge James Orenstein has been sitting on the case for nearly three months.

      In the Friday letter, Apple attorney Marc Zwillinger says that ruling now is important, as the government plans to make similar requests of Apple in the future. Prosecutors have invoked the All Writs Act, an 18th-century federal law that simply allows courts to issue a writ (or order) that compels a person or company to do something. For some time now, prosecutors have turned to courts to try to force companies to help in situations where authorities are otherwise stymied.

    • At Berkeley, students learn ins and outs of NSA surveillance

      This spring, computer science lecturer Nicholas Weaver will give a class of UC Berkeley undergraduates a novel yet practical assignment: build a National Security Agency-style surveillance system.

    • House bill would kill state, local bills that aim to weaken smartphone crypto

      On Wednesday, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) introduced a new bill in Congress that attempts to halt state-level efforts that would weaken encryption.

      The federal bill comes just weeks after two nearly identical state bills in New York state and California proposed to ban the sale of modern smartphones equipped with strong crypto that cannot be unlocked by the manufacturer. If the state bills are signed into law, current iPhone and Android phones would need to be substantially redesigned for those two states.

    • UK Privacy Campaigners Lose Hacking Case Against GCHQ

      Handed down by the Investigative Powers Tribunal (IPT), the ruling dismissed complaints from campaign group Privacy International. The group had teamed up with seven internet service providers to challenge GCHQ’s surveillance of phones and other electronic devices both within the U.K. and internationally.

      Privacy International said it was “disappointed” with the ruling, but said the case had raised public debate on some of the GCHQ’s most controversial practices.

    • GCHQ hacking does not violate the UK’s human rights laws, rules tribunal

      Hacking of smartphone, computer and network by the British security and intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is legal, says a security tribunal. The investigatory power tribunal (IPT) has recently ruled the computer network exploitation (CNE) technique, which might include remotely activating microphones and cameras on electronic devices without the owner’s knowledge, is legal.

  • Civil Rights

    • Justice Antonin Scalia dead

      There is likely to be significant pressure on the Senate, which is in Republican hands, to hold off on confirming anyone nominated by President Obama, who is in his last year in office.

    • Justice Scalia Unexpectedly Dies, Scrambling Balance Of U.S. Supreme Court

      Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead at a West Texas ranch on Saturday. He was 79 years old. Scalia died in his sleep during a hunting trip, apparently of natural causes.

      The sudden death of Scalia, one of the Court’s most outspoken conservatives, potentially shifts the balance of the Supreme Court, currently 5-4 in favor of conservatives, setting up an enormous battle in the Republican-controlled Senate that will play out simultaneously with the presidential campaign.

    • Conservatives: GOP Senate Should Block Any Obama Selection For Supreme Court

      Scalia was part of a conservative bloc on the Supreme Court that regularly overturned progressive legislation and precedent, making any replacement a contested issue in both the Senate and the 2016 presidential election with major national implications.

    • Why Scalia’s Death Is a Huge Blow to the Right-Wing Agenda in Washington

      Justice Antonin Scalia is dead, and his passing is nothing less than a legal and political earthquake. It will have a huge impact, not only on the court’s present term but on the course of constitutional law.

      Beginning with his appointment to the high court in 1986, Scalia was the intellectual leader of what I and many other legal commentators have termed a conservative “judicial counterrevolution,” aimed at wresting control of the nation’s most powerful legal body from the legacy of the liberal jurists who rose to power in the 1950s and ’60s under the leadership of then-Chief Justice Earl Warren.

    • CNN Analyst: Potential SCOTUS Nominees “Have Impeccable Qualifications,” But GOP Doesn’t Want To Vote For “An Obama Nominee”
    • Iran says it is cracking down on Valentine’s Day celebrations and shops engaging in them will be guilty of a crime

      Iran says it is cracking down on Valentine’s Day celebrations and shops engaging in them will be guilty of a crime.

      Iranian news outlets reported the police directive Friday warning retailers against promoting “decadent Western culture through Valentine’s Day rituals.” Police informed Tehran’s coffee and ice cream shops trade union to avoid any gatherings in which boys and girls exchange Valentine’s Day gifts.

      The annual Feb. 14 homage to romance, which tradition says is named after an early Christian martyr, has become popular in recent years in Iran and other Middle East countries.

    • Amid Anti-Semitism Controversy, NRA’s Nugent Attacks His “Mentally Challenged” “Devil” Critics

      National Rifle Association (NRA) board member Ted Nugent participated in a softball interview to attack his critics as “mentally challenged” and “the devil” following outrage over his promotion of an anti-Semitic image.

      On February 8, Nugent posted an anti-Semitic image to his Facebook page alleging that Jews were behind a conspiracy to enact gun regulations. After being condemned by civil rights organization the Anti-Defamation League, Nugent doubled down by posting more inflammatory content, including an image of Jews being rounded up by Nazis alongside his comment “Soulless sheep to slaughter. Not me.”

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Republican Anti-Net Neutrality Crusade Advances in Congress

      The Republican crusade to sabotage federal net neutrality protections took a significant step forward on Thursday when a key House subcommittee approved a bill that could severely limit the Federal Communications Commission’s ability to police the nation’s largest cable and phone companies.

      Under the guise of prohibiting the FCC from regulating broadband internet prices, the legislation could ultimately kneecap the FCC’s authority over a variety of potentially abusive industry practices, according to open internet advocates.

      The bill, innocuously titled the “No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act,” is just the latest effort in a multi-pronged Republican campaign to undermine the FCC’s ability to protect net neutrality, the principle that all content on the internet should be equally accessible.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • 82-Year-Old Great-Grandmother is a Pirate, Trolls Say

        People who’ve managed to live for more than eight decades should be enjoying a peaceful and uncomplicated existence but for UK-based Sky customer Sheila Drew things are not so straightforward. She’s being accused of being an Internet pirate – and has two letters and a £600 bill to prove it.

02.13.16

Links 13/2/2016: Debian 6.0 EOL

Posted in News Roundup at 12:46 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Pinterest open-sources its Teletraan tool for deploying code

    As promised last year when the company introduced it, Pinterest today announced that it has released its Teletraan tool for deploying source code on GitHub under an open source Apache license.

    “Teletraan is designed to do one thing, deploy code,” Pinterest software engineer Baogang Song wrote in a blog post. “Not only does it support critical features such as zero downtime deploy, rollback, staging and continuous deploy, but it also has convenient features, such as displaying commit details, comparing different deploys, notifying deploy state changes through either email or chat room, displaying OpenTSDB metrics and more.”

  • Split Emerges in Open Source MANO Efforts

    A broad attempt to create a single open source effort around managing and orchestrating NFV is now bifurcating into two separate groups, based on irreconcilable views of how to best standardize the MANO going forward.

  • Events

    • Share your love for free software

      Yes, we love Free Software and this readily means that we love technology, people, social equanimity, and the various meanings one may take on for the word “freedom”. We care about it and we all want to bear witness of the growth and consolidation of new projects, and the progress of elder ones into full-fledged solutions driven by healthy and thriving communities. Free Software communities are inherently diverse and put together people with different motivations, expectations, and interests. Some are there to make friends and advance their technical and social skills, while others want to pursue the dream of an open world or even have Free Software as their daily paid job. In spite of such a diversity, one thing unite all of us in this Free Software odyssey: we love what we do.

    • Encryption: probably better than a box of chocolates

      This is a fun activity, but it can also make a difference. The right to encrypt is endangered around the world, with governments threatening our security and freedom by demanding legal or technological crippling of encryption. Resist with the power of love — encrypt with your valentine, and tell the world!

      And as we’ve discussed at length, free software is necessary for privacy online. Because nonfree software’s code can’t be audited publicly, we can never trust it to be free of back doors inserted by accident or by design. We’re thankful to all the hardworking free software developers who give us a fighting chance at digital privacy. It goes without saying, but we do love FS.

    • Sharing the free software love #ilovefs

      I like to think of every day on Opensource.com as I love Free Software Day, but we couldn’t miss celebrating the official I love Free Software Day 2016, too. Granted, the official day to say “thank you” is on February 14th, so we’re showing our love a little early to make sure you don’t miss it.

    • OpenStack Summit Austin 2016 Presentation Votes (ends Feb. 17th, 2016)

      Open voting is available for all session submissions until Wednesday, Feb 17, 2016 at 11:59PM PST. This is a great way for the community to decide what they want to hear.

      I have submitted a handful of sessions which I hope will be voted for. Below are some short summary’s and links to their voting pages.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 44.0.2 Arrives for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X

        Mozilla launched a second update for the Firefox 44.0 branch, but this is a smaller release with just a couple of smaller fixes, albeit the security issue is quite important.

      • Mozilla Thunderbird 45.0 to Finally Bring GTK3 Integration for Linux, Sort Of

        Earlier today, Mozilla has come out with the sixth point release of the stable 38.0 branch of its Thunderbird e-mail, news, and chat client, fixing a few minor issues reported by users since the 38.5.x series.

      • Make your own Firefox OS TV

        Mozilla may not be actively developing Firefox OS for smartphones anymore… but the company is still pushing the operating system as an option for smart TVs and Internet-of Things products.

        Don’t want to spend money on a TV that comes with Firefox OS? You can build your own Firefox-based smart TV device… sort of.

      • Mozilla refocuses Firefox OS on connected devices

        One by one, the promising new smartphone operating systems, which hoped to chip away at the Android/iOS duopoly, are admitting defeat and refocusing on the less entrenched world of wearables and the Internet of Things. Mozilla has joined that sad procession, in the wake of Samsung Tizen, webOS and Baidu Cloud OS, and perhaps just ahead of Windows Phone, to judge by that platform’s increasingly tiny showing in Microsoft’s results.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Education

    • Feedback on teaching open source usability

      I was pleased that ten students signed up for the elective. This may seem small, but it is a significant number for a campus of some 1,900 students and a small computer science department. The same number of students also signed up for other electives that semester, including a course on databases. I organized the class similarly to the usability projects I mentor for Outreachy. Over thirteen weeks, students learned about open source software and usability testing. Most weeks included two assignments: summarizing several assigned articles, and exercising their knowledge of that week’s topic. Later in the semester, students moderated two in-person usability tests; the second was their final project.

      At the end of each semester, students responded to a course evaluation, called the Student Rating of Teaching. The evaluation is totally anonymous. I don’t know which students made which comments, or indeed which students chose to respond to the survey.

  • Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

    • Swift’s Benchmarking Suite is Now Open Source [Ed: to help Apple lock-in]

      Apple has open sourced Swift’s benchmarking suite, a key piece in tracking Swift performance and catching performance regressions when adding new features to the language.

      Swift’s benchmarking suite is a collection of Swift source files that implement test suites and benchmarking helper functions, plus a number of Python scripts that implement a test harness and facilities for metrics comparison.

  • Funding

    • Faking Open, Debian Influence, Da Linux

      Matt Asay today said that there is no money in Open Source software because the “open source companies” that get rich don’t do it with Open Source software. The big story today must be the Russian government’s plan to dump Windows for Linux. Debian 6.0 will reach its end-of-life at the end of the month and Tecmint.com recently looked at the influence Debian has had on the Linux community. A new website helps you decide what you can do for Fedora and I Love Free Software day approacheth. New openSUSE Board member Bryan Lunduke sees some problems in KDE Neonland and Swapnil Bhartiya shared his picks for best distros of 2016.

    • Face it: There’s no money in open source [Ed: says Asay from Adobe]

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Access/Content

      • Open-Source Textbooks Gain Support to Improve College Affordability

        Universities and state governments are supporting open-source textbooks as a way to make college more affordable.

        The open textbooks are produced with publicly available material. They are issued to students for free or a small fraction of the hundreds of dollars they typically spend annually on books.

      • OUR VIEW: Making college texts — if not college — affordable

        We’re all familiar with the high cost of a college education: estimated expenses for a year at the University of Connecticut, including on-campus housing, is, according to the school’s website, $25,802. So that’s a little over $100,000 for a four-year education. And that’s only the beginning.

        If a student takes four courses each semester and each requires one or more textbooks, the annual cost for books and supplies could be as much as $1,200, according to the College Board. Of course, if more than one book is required or if the student selects one of the high-cost majors, it could be far more. The standard textbook for Fundamentals of General Chemistry I at the University of Connecticut has a list price of $303.

      • Researcher illegally shares millions of science papers free online to spread knowledge

        A researcher in Russia has made more than 48 million journal articles – almost every single peer-reviewed paper every published – freely available online. And she’s now refusing to shut the site down, despite a court injunction and a lawsuit from Elsevier, one of the world’s biggest publishers.

        For those of you who aren’t already using it, the site in question is Sci-Hub, and it’s sort of like a Pirate Bay of the science world. It was established in 2011 by neuroscientist Alexandra Elbakyan, who was frustrated that she couldn’t afford to access the articles needed for her research, and it’s since gone viral, with hundreds of thousands of papers being downloaded daily. But at the end of last year, the site was ordered to be taken down by a New York district court – a ruling that Elbakyan has decided to fight, triggering a debate over who really owns science.

      • WHO Full Speed On Zika R&D, Two Candidate Vaccines Emerging; Funders, Journals Commit To Sharing Of Data

    • Open Hardware

      • $99 CowTech Ciclop Open Source 3D Scanner Hits Kickstarter (video)

        So if you think CowTech Ciclop 3D scanner is something you could benefit from, visit the Kickstarter website now to make a pledge and help this awesome $99 open soruce 3D scanner become a reality.

      • Faircap Project: Open source 3D printed water filter aims to solve global crisis for just $1

        The Faircap Project is a collaborative, clean water initiative, whose aim is to create an affordable open source 3D printed water filtration device that could provide clean, safe, drinkable water to those in need. The startup has already created a working prototype, but is now calling on engineers, designers, microbiologists, or anyone interested in helping to pitch their own open source ideas and make the Faircap filter as low cost and accessible as possible.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Is the vinyl LP an open music format?

      This is my first article for a new column here on Opensource.com about music from an open point of view. Some things I won’t be doing: I won’t be concentrating solely on music released under an open license. I won’t be writing (much) about making one’s own music. I won’t be writing (much) about music theory or professional matters, or probably really very much of anything of interest to professional musicians.

      I will write about music I encounter that interests me for one reason or another. I’ll tell you about how to enjoy music in an open environment, like on a Linux-based laptop, desktop, or server. I’ll share hardware I’ve purchased or tried out that works well, and some that doesn’t, in an open environment. I promise to write about good places to buy music that are Linux-friendly (that is, those that don’t require installing downloaders that only run on other operating systems). And I will point out some other websites, and occasionally print media, that increases my enjoyment of music.

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