06.18.15
Posted in Free/Libre Software, FUD at 8:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Many Free/libre software-hostile articles from IDG (worsened this past week) exploit public miscomprehension or misunderstandings about computer security
TECHRIGHTS readers are advised to treat with great caution the output of IDG, perhaps the biggest network writing in a variety of languages about technology on the Internet (the paper publications of IDG are mostly defunct by now).
Readers may still recall the regular FUD from Sonatype [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], a firm which is not itself anything like a Free software firm but sure likes to talk about Free software (negatively). Sonatype’s shameless and self-promotional talking points are now being masqueraded as media articles (in the IDG network) and for extra FUD they are reposted it in many sites of IDG, even rarely-accessed ones. It smacks of misuse of media resources. They are also modifying the headline for extra reach (SEO in the news aggregators) with this same FUD that is based on/derived from a self-promotional Sonatype press release.
“If Edward Snowden’s NSA and GCHQ leaks taught us anything, it’s that proprietary software is not secure and Free software should not tolerate proprietary blobs or hardware (e.g. in hard drives).”Sonatype should issue/produce a study on how many proprietary systems are not being patched. Or worse: say how many don’t get fixed by the vendor; how many bits of proprietary software have severe flaws with never even fix issued? How many flaws are not being revealed to the public? See how Microsoft admits hiding flaws. What about back doors (intentional flaws)? Abandoned software with secret code is almost guaranteed to be Swiss cheese. These debates are mostly missing from corporate media. Only yesterday security guru Bruce Schneier wrote: “One of the biggest conceptual problems we have is that something is believed secure until demonstrated otherwise. We need to reverse that: everything should be believed insecure until demonstrated otherwise.”
Glancing at another IDG piece from the past few days, it looks like there is agenda, maybe the editor’s or publisher’s (Microsoft and Apple are big clients, e.g. with advertising and IDC contracts). The piece is a one-sided attack on Free software security; flaws in Free software aren’t any worse (or more in quantity) than in proprietary software, developers are just not hiding them. That’s not hard to understand, is it? IDG likes to promote this ‘New Illusion’ of Free software being not secure (part of the latest FUD wave/strategy), using bugs with “branding” [1, 2, 3], irrespective or real severity.
If Edward Snowden’s NSA and GCHQ leaks taught us anything, it’s that proprietary software is not secure and Free software should not tolerate proprietary blobs or hardware (e.g. in hard drives). Don’t let IDG change the consensus. Surely IDG has the budget to hire some technical journalists who can challenge myth makers, but would that ultimately suit the agenda and appease existing customers? █
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Posted in News Roundup at 7:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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Free software, like the web, is promoted by corporations when it is useful to their profit margins. Many disparate organisations collaborate and contribute to GNU/Linux and other free and open source software projects, because they are beneficial to their bottom lines and seldom for altruistic reasons. Contributing to GNU/Linux reduces development costs and encourages open standards. open standards are useful because they reduce barriers to entry for technologies that were ‘not invented here’.
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Server
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As I’m sure I’ve mentioned in the past, I’ve worked most of my professional life in the tech industry, specifically working for a managed services consultant in Chicago. One of the things we do is advise our clients on hardware rotations. Client machines, like desktops and laptops for instance, are typically recommended on a four to five year rotation. Because, let’s face it, a five year old computer is either functionally worthless or is probably hanging onto a single strand of twisted copper before crapping out entirely, amirite?
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A 30-year-old computer that has run day and night for decades is what controls the heat and air conditioning at 19 Grand Rapids Public Schools.
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But getting started on a new codebase can be daunting. Docker has many, many lines of code. Fixing even the smallest issue can require reading through a lot of that code and understanding how the pieces all fit together.
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The software described in this article is designed for a Beowulf-style cluster. Such a cluster commonly consists of consumer-grade machines and allows for parallel high-performance computing. The system is managed by a head node and accessed via a login node. The actual work is performed by multiple compute nodes. The individual nodes are connected through an internal network. The head and login node need an additional external network connection, while the compute nodes often use an additional high-throughput, low-latency connection between them, such as InfiniBand.
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DRBD9 provides enterprise Linux users with synchronous server storage replication including support for native remote direct memory access, or RDMA, and OpenStack integration.
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The upgrade to KVM is very easy to carry out, on a Xen Linode’s dashboard, there is a link on the right sidebar titled ‘Upgrade to KVM’. Once you do the upgrade you should then be switched over to KVM. If you want to set your account to default to KVM for new Linodes just go to your Account Settings and set the ‘Hypervisor Preference’ to KVM, any new Linodes you create will be KVM. On a 1GB instance, one user reported the downtime to be between 8-9 minutes while he switched to KVM.
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Kernel Space
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The conversation, combined with Linus Torvalds’s aggression behind the wheel, makes this sunny afternoon drive suddenly feel all too serious. Torvalds—the grand ruler of all geeks—does not drive like a geek. He plasters his foot to the pedal of a yellow Mercedes convertible with its “DAD OF 3” license plate as we rip around a corner on a Portland, Ore., freeway. My body smears across the passenger door. “There is no concrete plan of action if I die,” Torvalds yells to me over the wind and the traffic. “But that would have been a bigger deal 10 or 15 years ago. People would have panicked. Now I think they’d work everything out in a couple of months.”
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On June 16, Jiri Slaby informed us about the immediate availability for download of the forty-fourth maintenance release of the Linux 3.12 kernel, a long-term supported (LTS) branch.
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Are you happy with your life? Maybe you are stuck in a dead-end job. Maybe you are unemployed and living on your mom’s couch. Hell, maybe you just need to enhance your skills for your current job. You know you need to make a change, but you keep putting it off. What is a smart path to take?
Linux. Yes, careers involved in Linux are in high demand. Getting certified in some way is not only personally rewarding, but also improves your employment potential by bolstering your resume. If you do not have money for such a thing, I have good news — you could get a scholarship from The Linux Foundation. In other words, you can get a free education and certification. Will you improve your life by applying?
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Linux Foundation instructor Mike Day is an expert in Linux hypervisors and led IBM’s work on the Xen and KVM hypervisors as a Distinguished Engineer. But he came upon his calling almost by accident, having been “thrown into the project with colleagues who had worked on hypervisors for more than a decade,” he said.
“It was a real challenge for me but not too long after that I became viewed as an expert on the subject,” said Day, who now teaches KVM and Linux developer courses for Linux Foundation Training.
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When you run a program as setuid, it runs with all the permissions of that user. And if the program spawns new processes, they inherit the same permissions. Not so with filesystem capabilities. When you run a program with a set of capabilities, the processes it spawns do not have those capabilities by default; they must be given explicitly.
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The Linux Foundation Training Scholarship Program provides funds to applicants who otherwise would not have the ability to attend Linux Foundation training courses. It attempts to help developers, IT professionals, and promising students to build Linux careers and contribute to shaping the future of the operating system and the enterprise.
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Last year, the free software community was full of debates about systemd, the system manager that replaces init, the process that boots a Linux system. Now that systemd is uneventfully running the latest releases of major distributions like Debian, Fedora, and Ubuntu, you might imagine that opposition to it is melting away — but you’d be wrong.
Instead, casual references on social media show that the rumors are as common as ever. And while you don’t hear much recently about Devuan, the anti-systemd fork of Debian, it is still trudging towards a release while making the same arguments as ever.
The situation is not unique. Some free software circles have always seemed to require an enemy. For instance, in the first decade of the millennium, it was Mono, an adaptation for Linux of Microsoft’s .Net. Hundreds of thousands of words were written denouncing Mono, yet today it attracts no attention, although it is still available in repositories.
Perhaps, too, free software users are becoming conservative as they age, as indicated by the user revolts against GNOME and KDE. Yet no precedent comes close to the viciousness of attacks on systemd, or had so little foundation, either.
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Linus: I’ve never been much of a visionary — instead of looking at huge plans for the future, I tend to have a rather short time frame of ‘issues in the next few months’. I’m a big believer in that the ‘details’ matter, and if you take care of the details, the big issues will end up sorting themselves out on their own.
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Just a few days after asking the Linux community to let him take a break, Linus Torvalds has said the project he kicked off 1991 can now get along without him.
He was, characteristically, blunt in his recent interview with Bloomberg, saying Linux would survive his death.
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Linux 4.1 is going to take a little longer than some of its predecessors, with Linus Torvalds release a rare eighth release candidate on June 14.
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Graphics Stack
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On June 16, Adam Jackson had the great pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download of the second maintenance release of the X.Org Server 1.17 display server for GNU/Linux and UNIX-like operating systems.
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Applications
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A new release for the stable Tor Browser is available from the Tor Browser Project page and also from our distribution directory.
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The release of Blender 2.75 is right around the corner. Granted, with a two[-ish]-month release cycle, that always seems to be the case. Of course, this particular release cycle has happened squarely in the middle of the Blender Institute’s production of Cosmos Laundromat, also known as the Gooseberry Open Movie Project. A lot of the goodies from that project are still in heavy development (and use) in a separate branch; however, there have been a boatload of cool and interesting features—in addition to critical bug fixes—that have found their way into the master branch. Let’s have a gander at some of the big ones.
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When it comes to tools for working with Big Data, open source solutions in general and Apache Hadoop in particular dominate the landscape. Forrester Analyst Mike Gualtieri recently predicted that “100 percent of large companies” would adopt Hadoop over the next couple of years. A report from Market Research forecasts that the Hadoop market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 58 percent through 2022 and that it will be worth more than $1 billion by 2020. And IBM believes so strongly in open source Big Data tools that it assigned 3,500 researchers to work on Apache Spark, a tool that is part of the Hadoop ecosystem.
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Proprietary
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A new Beta version of the Opera Internet browser has been announced by the Opera Software, and the developers have brought a couple of new features, along with a ton of other changes and various improvements.
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Instructionals/Technical
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In March of 2015 the 0.10.0 version of OpenConnect VPN was released. One of its main features is the addition of MS-KKDCP support and GSSAPI authentication. Putting the acronyms aside that means that authentication in FreeIPA, which uses Kerberos, is greatly simplified for VPN users. Before explaining more, let’s first explore what the typical login process is on a VPN network.
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Recently, I’ve been fighting with the never ending issue of timezones. I never thought I would have plunged into this rabbit hole, but hacking on OpenStack and Gnocchi I felt into that trap easily is, thanks to Python.
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Wine or Emulation
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Building on last Friday’s release of Wine 1.7.45, the newest Wine-Staging release is now available that tacks in extra, experimental functionality.
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Games
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Some time ago Minor Key Games published their political stealth action thriller Neon Struct. I think we better cover this game before the big brother comes and censors us.
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The fantastic Steam Monster Summer Sale 2015 continues, and Valve has just announced the titles eligible for discounts for the next 24 hours for Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows users.
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This year’s Steam Summer Sale is probably one of the biggest put together by Valve so far, and it looks like Linux is also present in a way that will certainly get noticed. All of the games in the Top Sellers chart have Linux support.
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The Perils of Man is a traditional point-and-click adventure game with time travel, created by LucasArts veteran Bill Tiller (The Dig, The Curse of Monkey Island) and writer and designer Gene Mocsy (1954: Alcatraz) in collaboration with IF Games. The duo have previously worked together on A Vampyre Story and Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island and recently successfully crowdfunded their next adventure game Duke Grabowski in cooperation with Jeremiah Grant.
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IGN with their paid-for exclusives on XCOM 2 is annoying, but we will have to make the best of what we can get here. XCOM 2 looks good in this first, and it’s getting me excited.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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Cinnamon is best known as one of the two default desktops for Linux Mint, which is fast approaching its next major update. Mint 17.2 will include the brand new Cinnamon 2.6, just released, when delivered later this year.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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There is more to GNOME than just the desktop environment. GNOME is a stack of apps, and many of those applications are constantly improved and worked on. Allan Day, one of GNOME’s designers and developers, detailed some of the changes that are being made to the Music app.
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I wanted to share a brief update on the Outreachy project that Gina and I are working on, where Gina is preparing for a usability test in GNOME.
So far, we’ve been in an “information gathering” mode, where she has been learning about some of the basics of usability testing. In our next step, Gina will now start doing an analysis in preparation for a usability test.
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I’ve been a bit quiet about GNOME’s applications of late. This isn’t because nothing has been happening, though – quite the opposite. We’ve been steadily working away behind the scenes, and our application designs have evolved considerably.
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Reviews
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I’ve been experimenting in Calculate Linux lately because it offered a modern KDE without systemd or selinux installed by default, and perhaps a bit because of my nostalgia for Gentoo. Things got off to a rocky start, but after ironing out most of wrinkles and I’m finding myself right at home. I think you could too.
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New Releases
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Black Lab Software, through Robert Dohnert, had the great pleasure of informing us earlier about the immediate availability for download of the Black Lab Linux GNOME 2015.6 operating system based on Ubuntu.
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Gentoo Family
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I first discovered Gentoo Linux when I left Oracle/Sun in 2010, gave up my Mac and decided to experiment with creating a mac-like desktop experience on Linux. The initial reason was the optimizations you can do to squeeze every bit of performance out of your hardware (I’d bought a cheap Lenovo laptop).
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Ballnux/SUSE
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The current stable version of GCC 5, GCC 5.1.1, has been added to openSUSE Factory and in turn will see all packages rebuilt against this new compiler and this will become the default compiler in the openSUSE Tumbleweed snashot due out later in the week.
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The newest GNU Compiler Collection was checked in today to openSUSE Factory, which is the rolling development code base for Tumbleweed, as the default compiler, so all packages will be rebuilt against GCC 5 and the next Tumbleweed snapshot will include GCC 5.1.1
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On June 16, the openSUSE Project, through Douglas DeMaio, had the great pleasure of announcing that the Tumbleweed version of the openSUSE Linux operating system has moved to the 5.x branch of GCC (GNU Compiler Collection).
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Red Hat Family
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When venture capitalists open their wallets and hand out $3.3 million for a seed round, you have to figure the new company has some industry veterans with startup experience, and such is the case with Minio, an open source cloud storage product being built by veterans from Gluster.
Gluster was purchased by Red Hat in 2011 for $136 million.
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Optimism surrounds Red Hat, as it gets ready to report its first quarter results on Thursday, June 18, 2015. Analysts are expecting the company to book a profit of 27 cents a share, up from 24 cents a year ago.
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Red Hat reported strong results in the last quarter with both earnings and revenues surpassing the respective Zacks Consensus Estimate.
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Fedora
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The Fedora Wiki got a new entry last month that makes one wonder if Fedora really wants users at all. If folks complain it’s because they didn’t read the information provided or don’t understand what they’re reading. Users are too dumb or lazy to file bugs reports and would rather complain than test “every possible feature and/or configuration switch.” Hardly anyone bothers to read the source code or its license and, if they do, they’d rather complain than write the code to fix whatever their complaint is themselves. If they do write the fix and it’s not committed, then they’ll complain rather than learn from it. Folks are going to complain, so just ignore it.
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And so, without any application testing, any customization, desktop effects, resource usage testing, and some other bits and pieces, we must bring the Fedora Twenty-Two KDE review to a halt. Because the distro is dead, and it can’t cope with some simple updates and installs. Really a shame. It reminds me that Fedora is a testbed. But it used to be quite stable recently, and now, we’re back in 2010.
I really am disappointed. I wish I had some better news for you, but this release simply doesn’t cut it. It’s riddled with bugs, even when it works, and then it stops working. Slow, laggy, average hardware compatibility including Nvidia problems, a less than ideal presentation layer, all in all, a rushed edition with no soul or passion. You can’t fake those. Grade we must, and so Fedora 22 gets a very feeble 2/10. See you around.
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Fedora 22 comes with the newest version of Gnome – 3.16. You’ve probably heard about this already. The new version brought quite a few shiny changes, a major one of which was a brand new notification area. You don’t have a notification bar at the bottom any more, your notifications now come up at the top with the calendar. It’s really neat! More information can be found in the release notes here.
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An important aspect of xdg-app is application sandboxing, which will require application changes to use sandbox-specific APIs. However, xdg-app is also a good way to deploy and run non-sandboxed (or partially sandboxed) regular applications.
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Pkgdb2 is the application managing in Fedora, who is allowed to access which git repo containing the files necessary to build the packages present in the distribution.
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Still, since the idea for hubs is also to help new contributors get integrated more smoothly into the Fedora community, an effective way to message people did seem like it would be valuable. Since the team/project hubs will have the ability to include an embedded IRC channel, using IRC to send private messages seemed logical. But Fedora Hubs is not an IRC client – it will use IRC to send private messages between users and to enable the channel discussions, but every channel must be directly associated with a hub and the messaging interface will only support messages between Hubs users, not to anyone external. This is an active design choice that Mo and I made, based on the concept of keeping the hub as the central organizing principle of this app in order to help fend off scope creep.
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Debian Family
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“Anyway, I haven’t said that banning such software from Debian would be the only solution… but at least these incidents come far too frequent recently, so apparently something needs to be done at Debian level to pro-actively prevent future cases/compromises like this.”
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Derivatives
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Valve’s SteamOS has been updated once more and the developers have upgraded many of the default packages. More importantly, they have also added a new font called Liberation, which was requested by the community.
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Ubuntu Touch is a young platform, but it’s already getting some apps that would make other platforms jealous, like offline GPS navigation, for example.
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Ubuntu Touch is a young platform, but it’s already getting some apps that would make other platforms jealous, like offline GPS navigation, for example.
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We reported a couple of weeks ago that Martin Pitt, a renowned Ubuntu developer and Canonical employee, proposed the implementation of stateless persistent network interface names in the next major versions of the Ubuntu and Debian operating systems.
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It’s official! The final version of the Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) will be based on the forthcoming Linux 4.1 kernel, due for release at the end of June 2015, according to Canonical.
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I don’t mind a bit of controversy. It’s a good mental exercise. Especially when people go wild over what Microsoft is doing, my favorite, and then Linux conspiracy theories, my even more favorite topic. However, as much as we want these little stories to be our Jason Bourne kind of thingie, they are really just empty, pointless tales that stem from emotion and lack of knowledge, which seems to be the case for pretty much all and any conspiracy theory out there, alien crap included.
You may say, Dedoimedo, look what NSA is doing, it means the conspiracies are true. Nope. There’s no hacking involved, just a bunch of MITM appliances planted inside data centers with compliance from the hosts, which just shows how difficult it really is to obtain digital information on a large scale. Should make you feel relaxed and cozy inside. And the same applies to Canonical and Ubuntu. You may disagree with their business, you may not like the people involved, but at the end of the day, it’s just Linux, compiled by people like you and me, who have no ulterior motives or Illuminati NWO agenda. Oh did I fail to mention that Canonical is NOT a US company? We’re done. Enjoy your Internetz.
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BQ and Canonical were proud to announce a few hours ago on their Twitter account that the recently announced BQ Aquaris E5 HD Ubuntu Edition smartphones moved from pre-order to being available to buy.
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It would appear that many users reported issues after upgrading their Ubuntu phones to the massive OTA-4 software update released by Canonical for their Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system, which is used in devices like BQ Aquaris E4.5.
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Flavours and Variants
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Linux Mint developers have just revealed that Linux Mint 17.2 “Rafaela” MATE RC is now available for download and testing. It integrates the latest MATE 1.10 and numerous other changes and improvements.
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Ubuntu is one of the best overall Linux distributions, but it does have its fair share of detractors. Many people dislike the direction Canonical takes sometimes, including the much-maligned Unity desktop environment. Truth be told, I rather like Unity, but I can understand why some people prefer different desktop environments.
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Axiom’s portable wireless 150W speakers stream music from the web, mobile devices, or USB, and include a WiFi access point and a 9- or 18-hour battery pack.
Speaker and home theater manufacturer Axiom has found Kickstarter success with its AxiomAir wireless speaker system, which has surpassed its $75,000 goal to reach $121,000, with 25 days to go before the July 12 deadline. Two dozen $475 packages were still available at publication time. Other packages go for $497, said to be more than $300 under the retail price, or $950 for a two-pack, among other discounted combo packs.
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The rugged Arcturus “uCP1020″ COM for IoT/M2M gateways runs Linux on Freescale’s QorIQ P1020, with up to up to 64GB eMMC, three GbE ports, and a baseboard.
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The Raspberry Pi Foundation launched the first official case for the Raspberry Pi, which exposes all ports and features a clip-on lid for adding HATs.
A variety of third-party enclosures for the Raspberry Pi have become available over the years, but the vendors no doubt realized the Raspberry Pi Foundation would eventually build one of their own. The time has come, with the unveiling of the “Official Raspberry Pi Case.”
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Sierra Wireless unveiled a Cortex-A5 based “AirPrime WP” IoT module with 3G or 4G radios, plus a modularly expandable, open-source “mangOH” carrier board.
We’ve seen plenty of low-power, Linux-ready Internet of Things computer-on-modules, mostly based on Qualcomm’s MIPS-based Atheros SoCs. The Linux-based AirPrime WP modules from Sierra Wireless instead tackle IoT and industrial M2M with integrated cellular radios. A 3G HSPA+/EDGE/GPRS/GSM version called WP75xx is due in the fourth quarter while a WP8548 version that adds 4G LTE is due in Q1 2016.
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Rejoice Pi fans! The team behind Raspberry Pi have announced an official case for the Pi 2 Model B and the Pi Model B+. The case was announced today on their blog and is available from all the main Pi retailers for a cheap £6 (which works out to about $9).
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Axiom Audio has this week unveiled a new range of wireless speakers they have added to their existing range that are powered by the awesome Raspberry Pi mini PC.
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Phones
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Android
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The company’s annual rollout of big features and small tweaks includes some whizzy capabilities as usual, and finally, mobile apps for Android phones.
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With its latest smartphones, the BlackBerry Classic and BlackBerry Passport, continuing to attract no buyer interest, BlackBerry’s hardware business seems destined for the dustbin of history. Yet fans continue to hope for some Hail Mary move from the once-dominant mobile device maker.
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By moving to Android, BlackBerry might regain some handset business — but it is unlikely that it could recapture anywhere near the market share it had even five years ago. Instead, “BlackBerry is clearly now on track to become an enterprise software and services company first, with its devices playing a minor role,” said Daniel Gleeson, senior analyst for mobile devices and networks at IHS.
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Welcome to this week’s roundup of the latest, greatest Android apps and games, covering smartphones and tablets.
All these apps have been released for the first time – ie not updates – since the last roundup. All prices are correct at the time of writing, with “IAP” indicating use of in-app purchases.
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Bethesda has a lot of fun demo opportunities for fans and media like at E3 2015. Besides the big games like Fallout 4, fans had a chance to check out the company’s journey into mobile gaming with Fallout Shelter.
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On a recent trip to Canada, I decided to take an Android Wear smartwatch. I’d be doing a lot of walking, and I brought it on the principle that carrying the Internet on my wrist would enable me to pay more attention to my environment and less to my phone. (As an Android phone user, I can’t use the Apple Watch.)
The trip with Android Wear left me believing a little more in smartwatches, and appalled to the point of embarrassment by Google’s efforts. It’s all on Google, too, not the watch manufacturers. While the various Android Wear watches look different, and my LG Watch Urbane was handsome and comfortable, they all run stock or nearly stock Google software.
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Google today announced the launch of a security rewards program for Android at Black Hat’s Mobile Security Summit in London. The Android program will only cover vulnerabilities that affect Nexus phone and tablets available for sale in the Google Play Store, though. Right now, that’s the Nexus 6 phone and Nexus 9 tablet.
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Last year, Google released an open-source web project called Topeka. The project demoed the power of Polymer and material design on the web, and aimed to give developers some direction on how to execute material design in their own projects.
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Building a massive viewership for your startup video service can be hard to do without a presence on Android, so today Vessel — the company led by Hulu’s ex-CEO Jason Kilar — is launching an app for Google’s OS. If you’re unfamiliar with Vessel, the service offers subscribers who pay $2.99 per month exclusive early access to popular short form videos. Creators who publish clips on Vessel must wait at least 72 hours before sharing them elsewhere (i.e. YouTube, where many of these viral stars first built their audience), but the company offers higher cuts of ad and subscription revenue in exchange for those early rights.
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In April Google confirmed a new Android 5.1.1 Lollipop update was headed to all Nexus smartphones and tablets, aimed at squashing a few more bugs and improving the Android Lollipop experience, and today that update is arriving for more Nexus 6 users.
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The Google Play store allows developers to list applications as paid for, or for free. Paid for apps can be switched to free apps, but the same is not true in the opposite direction. Once an app is ‘free’, then it’s free for ever. The addition of a ‘Free App Of The Week’ program from Google could herald a change in that policy, with the assumption that the ‘Free App’ is a temporary special offer, rather than highlighting apps that are already set up as free.
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You might have noticed the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, a rather distinctive handset with a curved screen. The extra display can be used to alert you to different notifications and give quick links to contacts and other parts of the TouchWiz OS. Thanks to a clever app, you can get one of these features on your standard flat-screen Android device.
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Vulnerability remains months after discovery, allowing hackers to eavesdrop on calls, steal data and activate camera, microphone and GPS remotely
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Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are fairly evenly matched where functionality is concerned, so the primary differences come down to differences in their core design philosophies.
Like most Apple products, CarPlay presents a simplified and well thought-out design that leaves very little room for confusion. With one hand, Apple gives its drivers the largest selection of third-party music and audio apps. With the other, it takes away all other choices with zero support for third-party messaging apps. Considering that messaging is historically more distracting than listening, I can sort of understand Apple’s stance here.
Android Auto on the other hand takes a different tack with nearly the same feature set. Rather than a barebones interface, it brings information to the driver with contextual Google Now cards that seemed to know where I was headed before I did. Google also gains the edge in number of apps supported, thanks to its ability to integrate third-party messaging apps.
Which is best for you will depend on what you prefer from your mobile OS, but realistically your decision was already made when you chose the phone that’s in your hand right now.
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Google has experienced lousy sales of its OEM-partnered Android One smartphones in India. Yet, the company seems committed to the long haul in what is a sizzling smartphone market.
[...]
If this is true, then the whole raison d’etre of the Android One idea faces an existential threat: Consumers want to buy phone brands first, not operating systems. Faced with a flood of what is essentially the same phone in a different skin doesn’t seem to be such a hot proposition after all. Of course, in my opinion, this is pretty much what so many phone companies do anyway; phones are armed with the same processors, cameras, screens, and OSes. Yet, they all tout themselves as being uniquely different. In which case, at a minimum, the appearance of differentiation at the very least seems to be important in order to get the consumer to pick your unit versus an almost identical one offered by a competitor.
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Nvidia has built two Shield devices in the past, but their latest hardware to carry the brand differs a little since it’s the first non-portable in the lineup.
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As a Guy Who Reviews Android Devices™, I’ve been faced with a strange sort of conundrum lately: When someone asks me to recommend a 10-in. Android tablet, I haven’t had a good answer.
Sure, there are plenty of options out there. But it’s been quite a while since there’s been one that’s stood out for being really great. Most of the contenders come with at least one serious caveat, be it chintzy construction, less-than-perfect performance, or software that makes you want to strike yourself with the nearest blunt object. And suffice it to say, those kinds of things take significant tolls on what a device is like to use.
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Razer and a small group of other companies have been trying to standardize how VR headsets work, and today the standard is getting an important update. Razer said this morning that OSVR — the Open Source Virtual Reality platform— now supports Android and position tracking. Position tracking, in particular, was a noted absence from OSVR’s initial release back in January. It’s something that the biggest VR headsets are using, and OSVR had to eventually get on board with it. Android support is a nice update as well, which should allow developers to start creating mobile VR experiences. Hardware support within OSVR will eventually be added to allow Android phones to take the place of a dedicated VR display.
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Razer recently launched its Open Source VR intiative, complete with a virtual reality headset to get more developers into the VR game. The initial launch notably lacked Android support and positional tracking hardware, but it’s now filed those holes with its latest OSVR Hacker Development Kit (HDK) 1.2. The IR system is included in the kit price, including the 100Mhz IR LED system and a camera that provides 360 degrees of position tracking. Previously, Razer included IR position tracking designs and templates, but didn’t supply the hardware.
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Rumor has it BlackBerry is working on building an Android smartphone with a slide-out keyboard. A separate report suggested that Samsung may be a partner on the device, at least in some respects, though it’s unclear what role Samsung will play. Now an image published recently appears to show Android already running on a BlackBerry.
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The subsidized smartphone market is sort of a racket. Well, Okay, it’s not sort of a racket. It’s definitely a racket. Every time your phone starts feeling old or worn out, or if you’re jonesing for the latest superphone bling, most mainstream consumers have to consider dealing with their carrier’s “new every two” plan or some other scheme to lock you into a long term contract. So you’re stuck with potentially lousy coverage if you move or travel a lot to a new area, or if that carrier isn’t keeping up with competitive rates. It’s a catch-22 of course. How else are carriers going to offer reasonable prices on the latest premium smartphones, but to rope you in and make up the profit on service fees?
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Android is an interesting operating system and over the years has gone through some massive changes and evolutions to become the system that we are all familiar with now. Today we bring you the history of Android OS infographic designed with the help of The Smart Phone Company . That said, have you ever wondered about the history of Android OS, each release and how Android has evolved through the generations? Well, chances are that most people associate Cupcake as the first generation of Android, but those who remember, will know there were a couple of generations before. In fact, as you might expect, it all started with Android 1.0 which came pre-loaded on what was the first commercially available android device, the HTC Dream or T-Mobile G1 depending on where you were.
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Ships in the Arctic and Antarctic are turning to using open source software that helps them navigate near or in sea ice-infested waters. This year, the tools are to be used by the Swedish icebreaker Oden, and at least one Antarctic tourist vessel. The software solution, part of EU-funded research projects, is being developed by European scientists.
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There may well be a fair few raised eyebrows at SAP with this headline but there is a seriousness attached to it that is worth exploring. I am not the only one who has thought of this. A few years ago, when SAP Mentor/developers were getting a good amount of attention from SAP’s technical folk, the licensing topic was never very far from people’s minds.
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A robo advisor that is free and open source quietly went live last month and may put more pressure in the digital wealth management space with a unique business model that emulates other open source icons such as WordPress or Magento.
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The technology AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) is open sourcing is being used by the carrier to transform expensive GPON OLTs into virtual network functions running on commodity servers and other hardware. It’s part of AT&T’s Gigapower gigabit Internet service for home and enterprise.
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Those benefits are why companies like Hewlett Packard are jumping in with both feet with their own open-source productivity systems. But too often, the issues with such software turn out to be both practical (it has different needs from proprietary software) and political (those needs may make it a tougher sell to the board).
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For under 80 bucks, OSTraining opens up their vault to you, offering more than 2,500 videos covering the most popular topics in web design and open-source programming. You’ll get in-depth training in WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, SEO, HTML, CSS, PHP and more from field experts with professional and teaching experience.
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The online backup service has open sourced its code for data storage
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Events
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Web Browsers
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On June 16, the Tor Project, through Mike Perry, announced the immediate availability for download of the second maintenance release of the Tor Browser 4.5 web browser for users who want to navigate the Internet anonymously.
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SaaS/Big Data
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A piece of software called Cassandra was originally designed in 2008 as the engine that underpinned storing and searching through all the messages in your Facebook inbox, which is a tall order considering how many millions of messages the company has to deal with every day.
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OpenStack is hardly the first open source project to be the center of broad-based, cross-category investment and collaboration, of course. Linux has been successful on this front for years. But successful projects have typically had a clear sense of purpose and identity: to be an operating system kernel, for example. OpenStack’s raison d’être, by comparison, has been less clear. On a high level, it’s been a mechanism for building an IaaS-type private cloud, but there have been major disagreements between project participants on how to get there, what to build it from and more. In some circumstances, this diversity can be a strength: the ability of OpenStack to substitute different storage subsystems based either on issues with the default choices, customer preferences or both has been useful. Abruptly attempting to redefine the IaaS vision to suddenly extend into PaaS, less so.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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The Document Foundation has revealed that the second RC (Release Candidate) for the LibreOffice 4.4.4 branch has been released and it should now be available for download and testing.
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Openwashing
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The times are changing for open/free/libre software and OSes, and what the words mean. Make no mistake: collaborative, truly open projects are powerful sources of innovation and problem solving. The only way proprietary, corporate models can even survive is through sheer bullying and anti-competition tactics, as have been used for years to keep Linux from wider adoption. Now that that is changing, the tactics are changing too.
The latest trend in this area seems to be bringing disinformation and propaganda tactics into the fray.
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Storage giant EMC stunned the IT community recently with the announcement that it plans to release an open source project based on its ViPR Controller software defined storage product.
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Toyota said it may use an open-source version of Ford Motor’s AppLink connectivity system to speed up development of its connected in-car infotainment systems.
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BSD
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As a Linux sysadmin in the 2010s, it’s hard not to have an opinion on systemd. But what I find baffling about it is how divisive it is; nearly everyone (or at least the most vocal crowd) seems to either love it or hate it. When I tell people that systemd was the catalyst for my defection to OpenBSD last year, their usual reaction is to assume that I am part of the “hate it” group. Nope.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
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Our current outreach and communication coordinator has moved into a new position at the FSF, so we are looking for another person to fill the role.
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Project Releases
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Wireshark, one of the world’s most popular open-source and cross-platform network analyzer software, reached version 1.12.6 on June 16, 2015, for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems.
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Today at 7 it is ownCloud meetup time in C-Base again (and also in Munich, by the way!). As ownCloud Server 8.1 is scheduled for the beginning of next month, I hope to grab a daily ownCloud snapshot, put it on a Banana Pi and run the cool Smashbox testing tool against it to see how it fares.
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Licensing
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Open source licenses and the software programs that go along with them are critical to bringing great minds together to build great technology that spans boundaries while solving real world problems.
I believe open source licensing will continue to play a part in IoT, and I think it has to given the breadth of what IoT is all about. Today many IoT solutions are proprietary as different startups and companies investigate the technology. This is great for pushing the boundaries of what is possible, what will work, and what won’t work. However, each of these proprietary solutions is created in silo of each other. They cannot communicate as there are limited standard protocols for this new generation of technology to adopt. This, by definition, ends up limiting the Internet of Things because it’s now “Company A’s Internet of Things that can talk to each other, but not to Company B’s Internet of Things.” This is commonly seen in household consumer products today. I have home lighting automation that can’t speak to my home security automation that can’t speak to my home TV automation.
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Openness/Sharing
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Smart buildings will soon be able to control themselves using “internet of things” (IoT) technology running on open-source operating systems if a joint project between American IT firms realises its ambitions.
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On Wednesday, June 17, the Open Overheid (Open Government) agency, part of the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, is organising a consultation event to gather input for the next OGP Action Plan. The agency has invited stakeholders, experts and visionaries to be present in Utrecht, where 140 people will be able to contribute to the direction and contents of the Action Plan for the period 2016-2017.
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In yet another move showing its dedication to implementing the IoT, the City of London this week got its very own Smart City network thanks to the Weightless SIG, an IoT standards advocacy body that supports the Weightless open source standard for M2M communications.
The network will operate on Nwave technology. Nwave, an international hardware and software provider of IoT technology, has been deployed by Digital Catapult, a British national centre for technological innovation, to make the base station infrastructure available for developers.
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Open Access/Content
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Taking a lesson from the open-source movement wouldn’t mean turning church doctrine into a free-for-all. There’s still hierarchy in open source, and there’s still process. Certain people decide, based on experience and authority, which code submissions to approve or reject.
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Open Hardware
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Further refinements of the design will include some primitive graphics routines. Not OpenGL or anything fancy, just something to reduce the number of writes on the SPI bus. It’s a great project, and perfect if you want to add video out to an Intel Galileo or other microcontroller project. [PK] has a video demo, you can check that out below.
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Aleph Objects has reported a successful two years for the growth of its open source 3D printing technology including a string of award nominations and an impressive 809% revenue growth.
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3DPrinterOS has this week announced it is making its cloud 3D printing management software and features open source.
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Programming
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Open source communities are often recognized for their constructive debate. There is a commonly held philosophy among open source contributors and developers that the best ideas result from disagreement and smart people discussing the merits of decisions and, of course, code. The Node.js and io.js communities are no different. Node.js, for example, is downloaded more than 2 million times a month and is supporting a new generation of network applications. io.js has a strong developer community innovating at the speed of light.
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The Git development team was happy to announce on June 16 the immediate availability for download of the fourth maintenance release for Git 2.4, the stable branch of the widely used open-source distributed version control system.
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The Linux Foundation started talking to Node.js stakeholders last summer and was a facilitator in discussions that took place over the last eight months or so among the community and companies that support Node.js, according to Zemlin.
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Standards/Consortia
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We have evaluated tenders in accordance with the evaluation criteria set out in the Invitation to Tender (ITT) and have reached an advanced stage in this process. Any suppliers who have been unsuccessful at the qualification stage have been notified separately. All tenders successful at the qualification stage will proceed in the procurement.
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Stockmann announced on Thursday a plan to sell off its Academic Bookstores to Swedish media conglomerate Bonnier Books. In accordance with the newly inked letter of intent to sell, the bookstore will continue to operate in connection with the department store chain after the acquisition.
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UK Anti-Doping are to issue a statement on Thursday, which will respond to newspaper claims that Mo Farah missed two drugs tests leading up to the London Olympic Games in 2012.
A report in the Daily Mail says the double Olympic champion missed one test in 2010 and another after joining forces with coach Alberto Salazar the following year.
Salazar, who manages the Nike Project in Oregon, is currently under suspicion after a TV documentary made allegations against the 56-year-old with regards to doping abuse.
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Science
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No one was more pleased by the Food and Drug Administration’s decision Tuesday to eliminate artificial trans fats from the U.S. food supply than Fred Kummerow, a 100-year-old University of Illinois professor who has warned about the dangers of the artery-clogging substance for nearly six decades.
“Science won out,” Kummerow, who sued the FDA in 2013 for not acting sooner, said in an interview from his home in Illinois. “It’s very important that we don’t have this in our diet.”
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Health/Nutrition
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Ségolène Royal says Nutella is made using palm oil, which is contributing to deforestation, and urged Ferrero to make the spread with ‘other ingredients’
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Security
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The National Security Agency may find and purchase zero days, but that doesn’t mean it’s sharing its hoard with other government agencies such as the U.S. Navy, which apparently is in the market for some unpatched, undisclosed vulnerabilities of its own.
A request for proposal posted last Wednesday—which has since been taken down—to FedBizOpps.gov was a solicitation by the Naval Supply Systems Command seeking a CMMI-3 (Capability Maturity Model Integration) contractor capable of producing operational exploits that integrate with commonly used exploitation frameworks, the RFP said.
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Six university researchers from Indiana University have revealed that Apple’s password manager, Keychain, is susceptible to hackers. If exploited, the flaw would give a hacker access to the users passwords. The really worrying thing here is that Apple has known about the issue for months and still hasn’t managed to issue a fix.
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Transparency Reporting
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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One of Eurasia’s most abundant bird species has declined by 90% and retracted its range by 5000 km since 1980 a new study shows.
Yellow-breasted Bunting Emberiza aureola was once distributed over vast areas of Europe and Asia, its range stretching from Finland to Japan. New research published in the journal Conservation Biology suggest that unsustainable rates of hunting, principally in China, have contributed to not only a catastrophic loss of numbers but also in the areas in which it can now be found.
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Finance
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Jeb Bush thinks the next president will need to privatize Social Security, he said at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire on Tuesday — acknowledging that his brother attempted to do so and failed. It’s a position sure to be attacked by both Republicans and Democrats.
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About 600,000 payments that failed to enter the accounts of RBS customers overnight may not be completed until the end of the week, the bank has said.
Payments of wages, tax credits and disability living allowance were among those that failed to be credited to accounts.
RBS initially said some payments were “missing”, but it had now identified and fixed the underlying problem.
Delayed payments would be processed “no later than Saturday”, it said.
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Tyrel Ventura and Tabetha Wallace from Watching the Hawks interview Professor Richard Wolff about the House vote to reject the Trans Pacific Partnership and where this massive trade deal will go from here.
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PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
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So here is a challenge to the Sunday Times, BBC and rest of the mainstream media.
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Jeb! is fine, as far as logos go. It’s uninspired, sure, but it gets the job done. But as a piece of typography, it’s crap.
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I woke up on Sunday and checked the news as I usually do. “British spies ‘moved after Snowden files read’” exclaimed the BBC, probably hoping to whip up anti-Russian/Chinese sentiment, immediately I rolled my eyes, surely revealing mass spying to the billions being spied upon is more important than a few spies having to be moved.
After reading the headline, I was left puzzling, I was sure that Snowden handed everything he had over to journalists. A day later my understanding of the issue had been confirmed, Glenn Greenwald said that Snowden doesn’t have access to the documents anymore and hasn’t been able access them since they were handed over in 2013.
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Censorship
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The Estonian courts had found that Delfi AS, the news portal, should have prevented clearly unlawful comments from being published in the portal’s comments section, even though Delfi had taken down the offensive comments as soon as it had been notified about them. When Delfi lodged a complaint with the European Court, the Court concluded unanimously that the domestic courts’ findings were a justified and proportionate restriction on Delfi’s right to freedom of expression.
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In a surprise decision, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg has ruled that the Estonian news site Delfi may be held responsible for anonymous and allegedly defamatory comments from its readers. As the digital rights organisation Access notes, this goes against the European Union’s e-commerce directive, which “guarantees liability protection for intermediaries that implement notice-and-takedown mechanisms on third-party comments.” As such, Peter Micek, Senior Policy Counsel at Access, says the ECHR judgment has “dramatically shifted the internet away from the free expression and privacy protections that created the internet as we know it.”
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Swearing at someone via WhatsApp in the UAE could land you with a $68,000 (£45,000) fine, under a new law.
Those living in the country could also face jail, and foreigners deportation.
The new law was brought to light when the UAE’s supreme court ordered the retrial of a man fined $800 for the offence, arguing the fine was too lenient.
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Privacy
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Privacy will be on the docket at a Belgian court on Thursday — and Facebook will be the defendant.
The Belgian Privacy Commission has sued Facebook and will take the world’s largest social network to court on Thursday for allegedly violating privacy laws both in Belgium and in the European Union. Speaking to Belgian news outlet DeMorgen, the country’s chairman of the Privacy Commission William Debeuckelaere said that Facebook’s behavior “cannot be tolerated.” He added that he hopes the court will force Facebook to change its privacy practices.
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Imagine a piece of information that would be useful to store digitally if it could be kept secure, but that would do more harm than good if it ever fell into the wrong hands. With Friday’s news that “hackers have breached a database containing a wealth of sensitive information from federal employees’ security background checks,” just that sort of fraught information has arguably been exposed to hackers.
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The ostensible reason for this massive surveillance is to catch people who steal mobile phones, but that really doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The database that the 100,000 faces were matched against was “custody images from across Europe”, but it seems improbable that criminals would travel all the way across Europe to this particular music festival in the hope that they might be able to relieve a few spaced-out musicgoers of their phones. Nor was general criminal behavior an issue: apparently, last year there were just 91 arrests with 120,000 people attending. It’s more likely that the facial scans were born of a desire to see if the hardware and software were capable of capturing such large numbers and comparing them with the pan-European database.
[...]
It’s easy to see this kind of technology being rolled out ever-more widely. First at other music festivals — purely for safety reasons, you understand — and then, once people have started to get used to that, elsewhere too. Eventually, of course, it will become routine to scan everyone, everywhere, all the time, offering a perfect analog complement to the non-stop, pervasive surveillance that we now know takes place in the digital world.
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EFF has signed on to a joint civil society statement welcoming the groundbreaking report supporting encryption and anonymity by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, David Kaye. The Special Rapporteur will present the report on June 17th at the 29th regular session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
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Given all the fuss over the ridiculous article this past weekend — which has since been confirmed as government stenography rather than actual reporting — security maven Bruce Schneier has written up an article making a key point. It’s quite likely that the underlying point in the article — that Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies have access to the documents that Snowden originally handed over to reporters — is absolutely true. But, much more importantly, he argues, the reason likely has almost nothing to do with Snowden.
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Last weekend, the Sunday Times published a front-page story (full text here), citing anonymous British sources claiming that both China and Russia have copies of the Snowden documents. It’s a terrible article, filled with factual inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims about both Snowden’s actions and the damage caused by his disclosure, and others have thoroughly refuted the story. I want to focus on the actual question: Do countries like China and Russia have copies of the Snowden documents?
I believe the answer is certainly yes, but that it’s almost certainly not Snowden’s fault.
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The Government is facing calls to review a little-known policy under which Downing Street emails “self-destruct” after three months.
Any messages which David Cameron’s aides fail to save and store are automatically deleted – a practice that campaigners claim is designed to thwart later freedom of information requests.
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Civil Rights
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Saudi Arabia has reportedly taken its number of executions for the year to 100, far exceeding last year’s tally and putting it on course for a new record.
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Earlier this month Google announced that the company’s self-driving cars have had just thirteen accidents since it began testing the technology back in 2009, none the fault of Google. The company has also started releasing monthly reports, which note Google’s currently testing 23 Lexus RX450h SUVs on public streets, predominately around the company’s hometown of Mountain View, California. According to the company, these vehicles have logged about 1,011,338 “autonomous” (the software is doing the driving) miles since 2009, averaging about 10,000 autonomous miles per week on public streets.
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If we accept the premise that law enforcement and intelligence agencies encroach on personal freedoms and rights in “the public interest” — i.e., to ensure the safety of non-criminals — then we have to ask ourselves how this raid of a medical marijuana dispensary fits into this thought process.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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Three in four families are not getting the headline broadband speed promised by their internet service provider, according to damning research published today.
The failure means as many as 15.4million users are suffering painfully slow access to the internet, emails and video streaming services, such as the BBC’s iPlayer and Netflix.
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Up to three-quarters of UK households are still not getting the top broadband speeds promised by advertisements, according to consumer watchdog Which?
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As Australia’s site blocking Bill took a step closer to becoming law yesterday, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull made it extra clear that VPN use won’t be a problem under the legislation. Ordering “the big boys” to sort out the VPN issue between themselves, Turnbull told rightsholders to leave consumers alone.
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DRM
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Amazon has removed the popular media center Kodi from the app store claiming it facilitates piracy. The software, formerly known as XBMC, doesn’t link to or host any infringing content, but third-party add-ons are giving the software a bad reputation.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Trademarks
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Some months ago I received a Cease and Desist (C&D) letter from the agent of Inter IKEA Systems B.V., citing that my site IKEAhackers.net has infringed upon its intellectual property rights. In that letter they asked that I agree to voluntarily transfer the domain name IKEAhackers.net to them, failing which they reserve the right to take any legal action it deems necessary against me.
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Copyrights
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That mistake could cost this restaurant to the tune of several thousands of dollars for each of the four songs that Broadcast Music Inc. claims the venue played one Friday night in May 2014.
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The heirs of Hergé, the creator of the popular Tintin comics, were dealt a crushing blow in Dutch court this week. In a shocking decision, the court ruled that they do not have the rights to the iconic boy reporter character.
The ruling hinged on the unexpected production of a long-lost 1942 document in which Hergé, whose real name was Georges Remi, transferred the Tintin rights to his publisher, Casterman.
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The MPAA is refusing to hand over documentation discussing the legal case it helped Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood build against Google. According to the Hollywood group, Google is waging a PR war against Hollywood while facilitating and profiting from piracy.
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Following the largest case of its type in Denmark, in October 2014 Gottfrid Svartholm was found guilty of hacking IT company CSC. The Pirate Bay founder immediately appealed but after a technically complex hearing a jury at the High Court today unanimously upheld the decision of the lower court.
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When Neil Young released his anthemic track “Rockin’ in the Free World” off 1989′s Freedom, the song quickly became a rallying cry in post-Reagan America for “American values” and the fall of communism. With George H. W. Bush still settling into his presidency, Young criticized the president’s ideology, specifically referencing Bush’s “thousand points of light” comment and blasting Republicans for what he felt was a disregard toward the lower-class.
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06.17.15
Posted in Europe, Patents at 5:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The EPO’s abuses culminate in another lawsuit, this time a lawsuit against the selfish political system which harbours these abuses
THE EPO cannot seem to manage the media, which has increasingly turned against it in a very vocal way. Last week we wrote about de Volkskrant slamming the EPO, and not for the first time, either.
After much abuse in Netherlands (we last summarised it on the ninth of June) there is a lawsuit from SUEPO.
SUEPO has this translation of the Volkskrant article. Translated into English it states:
The boss of the European Patent Office posing on the organisation’s 40th anniversary in 2013 © EPA
Government in court over malpractice at the Patent Office
SUEPO, the Staff Union of the European Patent Office (EPO) is taking the Dutch government to court. In February, the Court of Appeal ruled that the EPO in Rijswijk is breaching human rights. Despite this, the Dutch government has not intervened, while Suepo is of the opinion that it should.
By: Anneke Stoffelen 9 June 2015, 06:00
At the five EPO offices, each day the patent researchers consider European patent applications for every imaginable kind of invention and product, from diving goggles to rockets. The Dutch office, based in Rijswijk, employs 2,700 staff.
In February the Appeal Court in The Hague ruled that the EPO is acting in conflict with the European Convention on Human Rights. © ANP
For some time now a vehement conflict has been raging between the staff and the French president of the organisation, Benoît Battistelli, who according to SUEPO is conducting a reign of terror. Battistelli has been unilaterally implementing changes to working conditions. For example, from now on long-term incapacity for work can only be established by a doctor appointed by Battistelli. Staff who express criticism can expect reprisals.
In February the Court of Appeal in The Hague ruled that the EPO is acting in conflict with the European Convention on Human Rights. The ruling states that the executives of the organisation may not frustrate the work of the union and must stop blocking e-mails from Suepo to the staff.
Legal immunity
However, the EPO says that it can ignore the ruling because as an international organisation it enjoys legal immunity. ‘The aim of that is to ensure the integrity of the organisation and to protect its neutral position against national interference’, Battistelli stated in an explanatory letter to staff. The EPO has lodged an appeal against the ruling with the Supreme Court.
The Ministry of Justice is also of the opinion that the ruling by the court of Appeal cuts no ice. In response to clarification requested by MPs, Minister Van der Steur (Justice) wrote ‘Enforcement of the ruling would be in conflict with the Kingdom’s obligations under international law’.
Van der Steur did however say that as a host State the Netherlands shall ‘urge dialogue with the EPO in order to resolve the conflict between the staff and the management’.
Financial interest
However, the government also has a financial interest that means it won’t come down too hard on the EPO. The economy does well from the establishment of international organisations on Dutch soil. In Rijswijk, the EPO is currently building a new office for more than 200 million euro.
According to lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld of SUEPO nothing appears to have changed. ‘After the ruling in February we waited a while to see whether anything would improve at the EPO. That has not happened.’ According to Zegveld the government may not look on passively when human rights are being breached on Dutch territory.
Social dialogue
In the meantime the EPO has hired in the controversial British firm of risk consultants Control Risks in order to investigate its own staff.
The management of EPO points out that a ‘social dialogue’ has started in recent months, in which staff representatives can express their opinion about the policy being pursued.
According to SUEPO those discussions are for appearances’ sake only. ‘The staff are not being listened to and all of the deteriorations in the working conditions remain in place’, says a SUEPO member. ‘Battistelli is only organising the meetings so that he can later say to the judge: look, we’re doing our best.’
In the meantime the EPO has hired in the controversial British firm of risk consultants Control Risks in order to investigate its own staff. A spokesperson says that they are only investigating when there is suspicion of misconduct. But according to lawyer Zegveld union representatives and elected staff representatives are being investigated systematically.
French and German translations are also available in this PDF (copied here in case Benoît Battistelli and/or his circle of thugs try to force it offline, as they sometimes do, e.g. in Croatia). █
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Posted in America, Patents at 5:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Corporate media continues its obsession with a so-called ‘reform’ that simply is not; it’s an accelerated passage of wealth to large corporations
THE so-called ‘PATENT Act’, as we have explained before [1, 2, 3, 4], won’t tackle the big abuses but only solidify them. The biggest abusers will become more powerful.
“These are not reforms. These are reminders that corporations still get whatever they please in Washington.”US politicians, who are funded by the biggest abusers, happily let nothing substantial change (definitely not scope of patenting at the USPTO). The House Committee lets through the so-called ‘Innovation Act’, another misleadingly-named output of lobbyists and corporations that they work for. There are news headlines that mention the corporations-leaning brand ('Innovation Act') by name [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] and many more that do not [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22]. Having reviewed these, we discourage our readers from wasting time on these. What we have here is fee shifting (legal costs) to the smaller entities that already struggle with such fees, unlike large corporations (they have full-time staff for that). If there’s any ‘reform’ here, it’s just the empowerment of large corporations. “America Invents Act Cost the US Economy over $1 Trillion,” says this alarmist headline from Patently-O. It’s a propaganda piece from “President of New England Intellectual Property, LLC” (legal firm) and we are surprised that even Dennis Crouch, who runs the site, let in such sensationalist BS. The ‘reform’ is more about passage of wealth. More to the billionaires, less to the rest of us. The farcical claim of “Cost the US Economy over $1 Trillion” reminds us a great deal of anti-Snowden propaganda with similar kinds of headlines (alluding to estimated ‘costs’ or losses incurred bt the NSA leaks).
The PATENT Act (not Patent Reform) has been reduced into something which everyone is happy with, except the public. Corporate coup is what it really is and as TechDirt correctly points out, it has “basically been watered down to nothing”. Apart from this good article from TechDirt (the corporate media and lawyers’ sites are largely off point) there is also this piece from Brian Fung, who wrote: “The head of a powerful House committee faces a potential revolt from fellow lawmakers — some of them from within his own party — who believe a bill targeting abusive patent lawsuits is being watered down.”
Really? It took them this long to realise that lobbyists have hijacked and diluted every meaningful change that does not aid corporations?
Whether these so-called ‘reforms’ pass or not isn’t all that important. These are not reforms. These are reminders that corporations still get whatever they please in Washington. The system is rigged. █
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Posted in Apple, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft, Patents at 4:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A quick roundup of news of interest about patent abusers, especially those who jeopardise the freedom of software
“Ray Niro, one of the lawyers who pioneered the wave of contingent-fee patent litigation, says he’s ready to exit the business,” according to an article cited by a patent trolls expert. Given all the things we have seen coming from Niro, this sure seems like a relief. As Mike Masnick put it: “Anyone remember Ray Niro? He’s the lawyer who so perfected patent trolling that the term “patent trolling” was first used (by future patent troll Peter Detkin) back in the 1990s to describe… Ray Niro for his lawsuits. Niro was the original uber patent troll, demanding settlements and suing all sorts of people. Perhaps his most famous move was that he had control over a patent that he argued covered any use of a JPEG image — and would use it to go after basically anyone who displeased him (if they had any JPEGs on their websites). This included the Green Bay Packers and a resort in Florida. When noted patent system critic Greg Aharonian described that patent as “crap,” Niro sued him for infringing on it as well. Niro also put a bounty on the identify of an (at the time) anonymous blogger who called himself the “Patent Troll Tracker.””
Meanwhile, the world’s largest patent troll IV (which now targets companies that distribute Android) fights more companies in court (not through shell entities/proxies but directly) and another infamous troll, Vringo, targets ZTE (which also distributes Android). Vringo has been behind plenty of anti-Android and anti-Google actions. There are Microsoft connections as we pointed out before (Microsoft gave Vringo patents with which to attack Microsoft’s competition), just like in IV’s case.
Microsoft itself is now being accused of infringing on ‘out-of-band’ patents. As the Washington Examiner put it: “A New Jersey-based software company has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft Corp., alleging the computer giant is infringing on three of its patents.
“StrikeForce Technologies Inc., headquartered in Edison, N.J., filed its lawsuit against Microsoft in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware June 5.”
Apple, being Apple, is hoarding more patents and its promotion sites celebrate this [1, 2, 3], even if Apple is a patent aggressor with a notorious track record (especially against Samsung). Samsung too is making headlines for some of its latest patents (Samsung is one of the top companies when it comes to patent numbers in recent years, but it’s hardly an aggressor).
Ericsson, acting similarly to patent trolls in Europe (yes, even in Europe!), is still chasing Apple with patents. Sometimes Ericsson feeds trolls with patents, hurting not only Apple but also Android (which Ericsson itself uses).
Apple’s patents are especially annoying because some of them limit the freedom to develop in my field, computer vision. Here is a new article which alludes to “Apple’s camera software patents.” It says that “June’s co-founders seem like the right kind of people to bring this product to reality. CEO Matt Van Horn helped found Zimride, which spun off the popular ride-sharing service Lyft. Nikhil Bhogal, who serves as CTO, designed the camera software used on the first five generations of the iPhone, and is listed as an inventor on many of Apple’s camera software patents.”
Software patents are still the leading issue, especially if one minds the freedom of software (without it, there is no secure software, among other things). The media does not entertain this debate anymore, or hardly ever does. It’s all about “trolls” now. █
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell at 4:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Promoting a future of subservience to Microsoft even when it comes to GNU/Linux, Android, and Chromebooks
“Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” (EEE) is alive and well at Microsoft. The word subsume is defined as “to include or place within something larger or more comprehensive,” so it’s a good word by which to describe Microsoft’s treatment of GNU/Linux and Free/libre software, be it in Azure or Cyanogen etc.
Microsoft hired Mr. Srinivasan (above) from Novell to help subsume Linux, the kernel. We are concerned about this latest personality grooming from the Linux Foundation, having noted Srinivasan’s role before [1, 2, 3]. Grooming the Microsoft developers who help Microsoft subsume Linux is not wise. The Linux Foundation presents Srinivasan as “an architect in the Windows Server Division at Microsoft where he focuses on making Linux run well on the Hyper-V hypervisor and Azure cloud environment.” In other words, this man puts GNU/Linux in Microsoft’s hands, managed by proprietary software with back doors. Great, eh? As we wrote last week, it’s an entrapment. Microsoft is trying to do the same thing to Android, putting software that captures users’ voice in it (transmitting it to Microsoft, a notorious privacy violator). Microsoft-friendly authors are right now celebrating the extension of Microsoft’s spying network Skype (with NSA access) to GNU/Linux and Chromebooks. What a terrible thing to be doing.
The stupidest suggestion one can come up with right now is Microsoft buying a GNU/Linux vendor or anything along these lines, but corporate media (Fortune) has Barb Darrow say that it “makes sense for Microsoft to buy hot cloud startup Docker” despite Docker being quite closely tied to GNU/Linux (or UNIX). “Other emerging startups like CoreOS and Mesosphere are also working on capabilities that compete with what Docker’s cooking,” Darrow wrote. “And then there’s the aforementioned Google Kubernetes, which is also open source and free, and also promises similar capabilities. Some analysts have said that the product works better than Docker’s nascent orchestration features.”
Docker already responded to this nonsense, saying that it’s not for sale, but the Microsoft-friendly, Bill Bates-bribed media (yes, he subsidises them) released this puff piece which sells the ‘new Microsoft’ illusion. Microsoft's booster Tim Anderson, in the mean while, contributes to the openwashing of Microsoft using abandoned software.
Microsoft has not changed and it is definitely no friend of GNU/Linux and Free software. The Fortune article (finance-leaning) shows what non-technical writers can do when they don’t actually understand what containers are and how they work (unless it was intentional propaganda). Microsoft buying Docker makes as much sense as Coca Cola buying Nokia or something bizarre like that. Do editors even check what they print? Is this just agenda disguised as an article? █
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Posted in Europe, Patents at 3:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: EPO abuses are attracting more political attention, leading to complaints and concrete steps/actions. Articles continue to come, highlighting more of them.
A YEAR ago staff of the EPO complained, but the media did not and politicians certainly did not. The landscape is profoundly different right now because any European politician who follows the press must know about the EPO scandals and utter lack of oversight. Here is a very detailed and helpful summary from Merpel, reporting on what has happened this year (so far). “The social reform programme is being pushed through,” she wrote, “just as Mr Battistelli announced at the end of 2014. However, given that Mr Battistelli has refused to authorise a full complement of staff representatives on the committee that oversees such proposals, it’s hardly surprising that the 10 loyal managers voted his proposals through over the heads of the 9 staff members and an empty seat.”
Battistelli continues to run an authoritarian and oppressive regime. Anyone who does not agree with him will likely find his or her way out and anyone who dares to speak about Battistelli and his cronies negatively behind their back will most likely be accused of “defamation” (that’s what Battistelli calls facts). We have covered some of the facts for nearly a year now and we cataloged everything chronologically. There will shortly be another summary from us, it’s just that things are moving too fast at the moment (this month has been the busiest, with the highest volume of posts on this subject). It’s too dynamic to be worth documenting or summarising just yet.
“In a well attended General Assembly,” writes SUEPO, “staff of the EPO adopted a resolution to be sent to Heiko Maas, Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection. The letter informs Heiko Maas of the investigation of staff representatives and/or union executives by the company Control Risks during the trilateral talks on union recognition.” (source: “Letter to Heiko Maas, Resolution adopted by staff of the European Patent Office” at suepo.org)
Here is the letter [PDF]
in German. Translations would help expand the scope/reach of this letter, so we invite readers to help.
“Letter to EU commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska,” says SUEPO, was also sent. It was sent to the “JURI committee and the Members of the Policy Department C (Citizen’s Rights and Constitutional Affairs) of the EU Parliament.”
Here is the letter [PDF]
as HTML, excepting the annexes and other material which was published here before:
To,
the Commissioner ElZbieta Biefikowska,
the JURI Committee, via Pavel SVOBODA
(Chair) and,
the Members of the Policy Department C (Citizen’s Rights and Constitutional Affairs) of the European Parliament, DG Internal Policy, via Dr Udo BUX (Department administrator)
All by e-mail
Amsterdam, 12 June 2015
Our ref. –
Your ref. –
Direct tel.nr: (020) 344 62 15
Direct faxnr: (020) 344 62 01
Re: “The European Patent Office State of Play — In depth analysis for the JURI Committee”
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
As counsel of the Staff Union of the European Patent Office (SUEPO), we would like to ask your attention for the following.
SUEPO has read the above-mentioned document with interest. Please allow us, however, to complete the picture portrayed in the report with the following considerations.
While the EPO is undoubtedly capable of providing the EU with valuable services in respect of the Unitary Patent, there are serious concerns that its internal structure does not meet the standards of transparency and labour
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1 http:/www.europarl.europa.eu/RepDat2/etudes/IDAN/2015/519208/IPOL IDA(2015)519208_EN. pdf
12 June 2015, page 2
conditions which the EU institution expect of themselves. This project will be in jeopardy if it relies on a system in violation of fundamental human rights and on deficient labor conditions, and if staff performing quasi-judicial work does not enjoy internationally acceptable and agreed legal standards. Let us explain this.
1.On 17 February 2015, the Dutch Court of Appeal in The Hague2 found that the EPO is in breach of fundamental rights, relating to the staff union’s freedom to operate and bargain. The EPO has however refused to remedy the situation. While formally claiming immunity from execution, the President of the EPO has suggested that the Judges of the Dutch Court of Appeal are ignorant and incompetent. In line with this attitude, the EPO has systematically turned down requests for professional mediation to restore social peace. All of this should be seen as an alarm signal about the way the Rule of Law is perceived by the top management and the Administrative Council of the EPO.
2.Another example of deficient labor conditions and the EPO’s far reaching use of powers, is the organisation ́s commissioning of an external company, Control Risks, to carry out investigations and interrogations on elected staff representatives and union officials who voice criticism of the management policies of President Battistelli (Annex 2).
3.Furthermore, according to a recent press report (Annex 3), the EPO has installed machinery to hack the communications from a number of PCs installed in the public areas of the EPO’s premises. Please be also be aware that data protection in the EPO appears to be woefully inadequate (Annex 1).
4. The EPO has drastically weakened the position of vulnerable staff, in particular sick staff. Such staff members are put under increased pressure bordering on systematic harassment. Their freedom of movement as European citizens is severely curtailed. Measures to safeguard medical confidentiality have been weakened. The EPO has gone as far as abolishing the notion of occupational diseases and accidents.
5. Independent sources have found that there is currently no effective mechanism in place to resolve legal disputes. The dispute resolution system is dysfunctional and burdened by huge backlog that de facto leads to such delays as to deny justice for staff. The Administrative Council of the EPO, at the behest of the President and without any democratic control from the Member States, enacts rules and decisions that are not subject to any independent legal or political check other than financial considerations.
____________
2 http://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2014:420
Translation in English: http://www.suepo.org/public/su15088cpe.pdf
[...]
EPO data protection is not in line with EU institutions
1.The President of the EPO recently (with effect from 1 April 2014) adopted new guidelines for data protection at the EPO. He did so without informing, let alone consulting the national delegations of the Administrative Council, the body supervising the EPO. The new guidelines have drastically enlarged the scope of the data protection guidelines previously in force: the new guidelines now also concern external users of the EPO, e.g. patent applicants. It is questionable whether European Patent Convention gives the President of the EPO such a competence, cf. Articles 10(2)c) and 33 of European Patent Convention.
2.The new data protection guidelines are not in line with general regulations on data protection applicable to EU institutions and EU public on the territory of the EU (cf. Regulation EC 45/2001 & Directive 95/46/EC). They do not provide the necessary safeguards for the persons or entities affected both inside the EPO, e.g. staff or contractors, and outside, e.g. patent applicants or companies. They do not provide the required independence and authority of the data protection Officer. They miss a function equivalent to the Data Protection Supervisor that exists in all EU institutions. The way the data protection guidelines are currently implemented at the EPO would not be considered as adequate in any EU institution.
3.The reference to fundamental rights, present in both the Directive 95/46/EC and in Regulation (EC) 45/2001, and that was present in the previous EPO data protection guidelines has are been removed from the new EPO guidelines on data protection.
4.Whereas in the EU institutions, data can only be processed for purposes other than those for which they have been collected under very strict conditions, at the EPO, the President is able to decide on a change of purpose, without anybody being able to oppose it.
5.The new data protection guidelines have been drafted to remove any obstacle to the implementation of the controversial – and legally challenged – EPO investigation guidelines. For instance, the EPO guidelines give the EPO investigation Unit the right to operate without any control from the Data Protection Officer.
6.In view of the above, a check by the appropriate EU body seems appropriate before entrusting the EPO with the granting of the Unitary Patent.
[18 more pages in the original PDF, includes news clippings]
SUEPO writes in reference to this article which we covered last week: “The Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that Thomas Petri, the Bavarian Data Protection Commissioner wants to have an external data protection supervisor deployed at the European Patent Office. It has become a matter of public knowledge that publicly accessible computers at the EPO were placed under observation using surveillance technology after the receipt of letters containing [allegedly] defamatory remarks against the Management.
“Data Protection Commissioner Petri previously investigated the data protection arrangements at the EPO in the Spring of 2014 following a complaint and he came to the conclusion that they were deficient. “It emerged that nobody was really in charge”, told Petri.”
Privacy violations are only few among many bigger violations. Members of the French Parliament slam the EPO, perhaps owing to media coverage that keeps them abreast. “The Huffington Post,” wrote SUEPO about this article, “a website partly owned by Le Monde, published a tribune signed by Members of the French Parliament, the French Senate and the European Parliament.
“The signatories regret that the success story of the European Patent Office is “now endangered since 2012 by authoritarian social policies which do not respect the fundamental rights of staff”.”
If any of our French-speaking readers can provide a translation, that would help a lot.
Articles about the EPO’s abuses (at management level) would discourage potential staff and harm recruitment of talent. Who would want to work for an institution that ignores EU law, defies court orders, uses keyloggers against staff, and has the reputation which increasingly mirrors FIFA’s?
The EPO quickly became synonymous with a corrupt “ogre”, much like FIFA. As IP Kat put it yesterday,: “If you thought that the European Patent Office (EPO) was the only international intellectual property administration that was coming under the scrutiny of an increasingly critical world for behaviour that ill befits its status, think again: the African Intellectual Property Organization — better known by its French acronym OAPI — seems to be suffering from the same malaise.”
So EPO has become a yardstick for abuse. There’s clearly an urgent need for a reset. The problem is not the examiners but those at the top who rally them to expand scope and pursue quantity, not quality, while squashing their ability to antagonise. █
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06.16.15
Posted in News Roundup at 11:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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When I stated that the Year of the Linux desktop has already happened, I am speaking about hundreds of individual school-age students who use their Linux computers for day to day work. To our Reglue kids, Linux is a way of life. It is the way they access their computers and hence, the world.
But in the larger sense, in the sense that it will become a household product like Microsoft Windows, I think we all know we’ve lost that war. We were screwed from the gate, as far as ever seeing a competitive version of Linux in the market place goes. Why? Whew, them be lots of reasons.
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If you are working with Linux and, like me, want to explore all of the desktop options of a distro, you’ll wind up downloading an endless list of disk images. I find this both mildly annoying and quite time consuming and apparently so do other people. Much to my pleasure, a small team (Milan Rajcic, Zeljko Popivoda, Erich Eickmeyer, and Milos Mladenovic) decided to do something about it. They created the Linux AIO project.
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The company is putting a major stake in the ground in support of Apache Spark, the high-speed analytics and machine-learning engine that is the hottest thing in Big Data right now. IBM said it will embed Spark into all of of its analytics and ecommerce platforms, commit more than 3,500 researchers and developers to work on Spark-related projects and open-source its SystemML machine learning technology for plug a key hole in the Spark technology stack. It will also offer courses to train more than one million data scientists and engineers to use Spark.
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Just as IBM put Linux on the commercial open-source operating system (OS) map, it plans to do the same thing with Apache’s Spark platform — promising to educate more than one million data-scientists and -engineers as well as to build Spark into its analytics and commerce platforms, according to keynote speaker Beth Smith, General Manager of Analytics Platforms at IBM, at the Spark Summit 2015 (June 15-to-17, San Francisco).
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What should be an emerging market for the classic PC is instead an emerging market for smartphones and tablets. The poor, newbies, youth, and consumers don’t need the bloat of Wintel, folks. The markets are speaking because people have a choice in IT these days, thanks to */Linux and ARM.
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Desktop
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Linux is widely used in the majority of the world’s most critical infrastructure, especially in the military and banking andfinance sectors. Ninety-eight percent of the world’s supercomputers run Linux and open source software so the value and performance is irrefutable. So our thinking was centered around bringing the same functionality, serviceability, affordability, reliability, security, agility and flexibility to businesses across the globe so that they, too, can benefit from Linux without the traditional barriers to entry. Luckily innovation in the cloud helps us see this reality come true.
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Dell is making sure that everyone knows that they are selling Ubuntu-powered laptops, and the company is now promoting them on Twitter, with a limited offer for the new Inspiron 14 3000 Series.
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Server
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In particular, Linux has seen solid growth with a 15.9 per cent year-on-year increase in shipments in Q1 2015.
Eckhardt Fischer, research analyst of European infrastructure at IDC, said: “Linux continues to make positive strides in Western Europe, and its reported 15.9 per cent year-on-year growth in Q1 2015 can be attributed to higher levels of attraction seen by this OS in cloud, HPC, and Big Data scenarios.”
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If you asked me to name the hottest enterprise tech startup right now, I would have to say it’s Docker. The startup’s open-source container technology has become a hit among developers, and several major tech companies have moved to integrate with it.
When Docker announced its $95 million funding round in April, PitchBook told VentureBeat in an email that it had a $1.07 billion post-money valuation. Now the startup has plenty of money to spend.
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Local price hikes from major vendors failed to blow the strengthening EMEA server market off course in the first quarter of 2105, according to IDC.
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Looking at the market in euros, EMEA reported very strong year-on-year revenue growth (29,2%) in 1Q15, but a weakening euro has had a negative impact on some vendors that have been forced to adopt new pricing structures in Europe as the euro continues to depreciate against the dollar.
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Dell will now offer Pluribus’ Open Netvisor Linux operating system on its S6000-ON and S-4048-ON 10G/40G switches. This is an addition to the Cumulus Networks, Big Switch Networks, Midokura and VMware packages Dell already supports on those switches.
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Kernel Space
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In May, Linux overlord Linus Torvalds warned that his holiday might delay the release of Linux 4.1.
That scenario’s now come to pass, with the benevolent dictator of the penguin palace posting that he’s off on his vacation.
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Linux Weekly News had a write-up in their Weekly Edition last week… of Lennart Poettering’s talk (Containers with systemd) at LinuxCon Japan 2015. That article should be available freely later this week… but I found a recording of what appears to be the same talk at a different event from April 2015.
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Graphics Stack
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Nvidia has published details about the immediate availability of an updated proprietary video driver for GNU/Linux operating systems, Nvidia 352.21, the long-lived branch version.
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The latest talk is that Imagination Technologies may be developing an open-source Linux graphics driver for their PowerVR hardware.
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Work on the new OpenGL Transmission Format was mentioned in the EETimes. The report should be accurate given that it comes from the Khronos President, Neil Trevett. Additionally, I found out about this report as it came along this morning from the official Khronos.org news feed.
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Earlier this month Catalyst 15.5 was released for Linux as the first official Linux graphics driver update since last December when Catalyst 14.12 was released (sans the special fglrx driver packaged by Canonical for Ubuntu 15.04). As discussed by users in our forums and elsewhere, Catalyst 15.5 does offer better performance for certain OpenGL workloads compared to the earlier driver, but the gains aren’t universal.
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NVIDIA released the 352.21 Linux driver today as the latest release in their 352.xx driver series.
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While it’s coming a bit behind schedule, Mesa 10.6 has been released today as the newest version of the user-space, open-source graphics drivers for Linux and other platforms. Officially only OpenGL 3.3 support is there, but many OpenGL 4.x extensions were implemented over the past three months.
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After three months of hard work, the development team behind the Mesa 3D Graphics Library has had the pleasure of announcing the immediate availability for download of the final version of Mesa 10.6.0.
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Applications
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Just over a decade ago, I took the reigns on a Fedora package called gnome-theme-clearlooks-bigpack. Among other niceties, it had many color themes and Cairo-enabled widgets for the Clearlooks (now Adwaita) GTK+ theme engine. But there was one and only one reason I took it: The Cairo_Curve theme.
This theme was a very smooth and rounded (thank you, Cairo rendering) but otherwise faithful reproduction of the Bluecurve color scheme and design philosophy (whether written or not) of just being simple and easy on the eyes for long periods of time. As you can imagine, this is great for people like myself who are using their systems for many hours at a time every day. As someone who used it on a daily basis, when it was orphaned I could not simply let it go unmanaged.
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I had a presentation to make and while LaTeX and Beamer make it very easy to make multi-monitor presentations with notes and so on, I couldn’t find a PDF viewer for Linux that would project the files correctly. Evince doesn’t seem to have the feature, and none of the other ones I tried had it either. After some looking, I found pdfpc. It works really well and is actively developed. Take a look at the website here. I’ve packaged it for Fedora already but haven’t submitted a review ticket yet. While I do, and the new package ticket is reviewed and the package installable from the Fedora repositories, you can get it from the copr repository here.
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Is the default image viewer in your desktop environment just not working the way you want? need more features (or maybe something simpler) from an image viewer? Well, you are in luck, as there is no shortage of choices when looking at alternative image viewers in Fedora. This article covers 17 image viewers in Fedora.
Typically, an image viewer does one thing — shows you the images in a directory (sometimes in a thumbnail view), and lets you quickly flip through them. Some image viewers also allow you do simple edits of an image, and will also show you some added details of your pictures (like metadata, and color histograms).
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Proprietary
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The development team behind the upcoming Vivaldi cross-platform web browser for GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, and Mac OS X operating systems has announced the release of a new snapshot, which includes many improvements in various areas, as well as a new gray skin.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions was originally released in November of last year and was a day one Linux port thanks to Aspyr. This large content update was released in April on other platforms and for one reason or another we were left waiting until now.
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Fallout 4 is the latest installment in the Fallout franchise, and it’s developed by Bethesda. The launch date has been set for November 10, 2015, and users are already asking for a Linux version. I think that we can safely assume that it’s not happening.
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The Steam Monster Summer Sale Day 5 is here, and more Linux games have been discounted. Each new day of sales has brought us more Linux titles for our collections, and the same can be said about the current offering.
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Space Drifters 2D is a new minimalist top-down space shooter developed and published on Steam by Matthew Coyle. The developer also covered the Linux platform.
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The latest Steam Summer sale is a pretty massive one, and it’s very difficult to keep track of everything that’s promoted and see how long the discounts will last. This is where the excellent SteamDB sales tracker comes into play.
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Guild Software published a few days ago details about a new update for their awesome Vendetta Online 3D space combat massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Android, and iOS operating systems.
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Last Friday, Dota 2 – Reborn Beta has been announced, which will not only get a completely new user interface, but will also be powered by the new Steam-Engine “Source 2″, which will finally be replacing the 10 years old game engine “Source”.
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Desktop Environments/WMs
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No matter if you’re using a GNU/Linux operating system for some time now or you’ve just started discovering the wonderful and diverse world of Open Source technologies, you will eventually find out that the choices are overwhelming.
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K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
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The Skrooge Team announces the release 2.0.0 version of its popular Personal Finances Manager based on KDE Frameworks.
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I found out about Krita when I bought a graphic tablet and I was looking for an appropriate drawing tool.
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GNOME Desktop/GTK
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While the current stable release of the F-Spot open-source photo manager is almost five years old, the software remains under development and a student participating in this year’s Google Summer of Code is hoping to finish porting it to the GTK3 tool-kit.
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Aside from larger items on my list like the previously covered Initial Setup experience, I am also working on a lot of smaller items in Polari. After finishing the GNOME 3.16 release video, I have been submitting small patches to Polari with great assistance from Florian.
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Cinnamon, one the default desktops of Linux Mint (alongside Mate) has recently been updated. Version 2.6 has a boatload of fixes, tweaks and improvements.
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Clement Lefebvre has published earlier today, June 14, details about the eighth maintenance version of the stable Cinnamon 2.6 open-source desktop environment for the upcoming Linux Mint 17.2 (Rafaela) operating system.
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antiX has one of the most well-stocked settings menus of any Xfce desktop I have used. Actually, it has two. One is for system tools, and the other is for system settings. You scroll down the alphabetical listing to find just what you need. However, if you prefer the Control Panel approach to corralling all of the settings in one spot with large icons serving as launch buttons, it is there.
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Reviews
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My point is that people who are likely to enjoy Chromebooks and use their computers almost solely for accessing the web will probably find Chromixium quite useful. However, while it is technically possible to access more features and off-line software through Chromixium’s application menu, the process is slow and awkward when compared with other desktop Linux distributions. Granted, Chromixium is still in its early stages, it just hit version 1.0, so the standalone features will probably improve in time. For now, I think Chromixium offers an interesting web-focused environment with the fallback option of using locally installed applications. The implementation has some rough edges at the moment, but I suspect it will get better in future releases.
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New Releases
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On June 15, Yann Le Doaré was more than happy to announce the release of his independently developed and lightweight LinuxConsole 2.4 Linux kernel-based operating system.
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Yesterday a new lightweight hypervisor for OS X was released called xhyve; if you are familiar with qemu-kvm on Linux, it provides a roughly similar experience. In this post we are going to show how to run CoreOS Linux under xhyve. While this is all very early and potentially buggy tech, we want to give you some tips on how to try CoreOS Linux with xhyve and run Docker or rkt on top.
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OpenELEC, the embedded operating system built specifically to run the KODI (XBMC) media player hub, has just received an update for the new 6.0 branch, and it brings it a little bit closer to the stable version.
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Screenshots/Screencasts
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Arch Family
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If you are a Linux desktop user, you probably have a favorite distribution. Sticking to one distro is a good option, as it is generally less stressful and easier to master. With that said, however, some people are distro hoppers; constantly trying new Linux-based operating systems. This can be fun too, but the downside is that you are in a constant state of change — a solid foundation has its benefits.
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A new stable update for Manjaro has been released: Manjaro 0.8.13. Manjaro 0.8.13 is the latest version in the ever popular operating system based on Arch-Linux. The development team took its time with this release, which is powered by Plasma 5.3.1, Xfce4.12, KDE Apps 15.04.1, and KDE Frameworks5.10.0. The four months of development seem justified after taking a look at all the changes and improvements this branch underwent.
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Red Hat Family
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On Thursday, RedHat ran a Microservices Architecture Development Day in London, aimed at demonstrating a set of open-source tools that can be combined to provide a microservice architecture. With Kubernetes being demonstrated to orchestrate Docker containers that are running Fabric8 and Apache Camel routes, along with logging and metrics, the combined presentation was a great introduction to the tools and techniques that are useful in building a distributed application.
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The largest distributor of open-source enterprise Linux products, Red Hat (RHT), is due to announce its first quarter fiscal 2015 results on Thursday. While some investors have remained skeptical regarding whether RHT can maintain the strong momentum it has shown over the past few quarters, there are good reasons to believe that the company is on the right track and can continue to exceed investor expectations.
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Red Hat CEO JIm Whitehurst and his wife Lauren have made a crucial donation to SoarTriangle, an organization donated to help female entrepreneurs secure funding for startup ventures. Mrs. Whitehurst also is involved with the group as a principal.
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Fedora
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In the past week I started working on the Question and Answer page of AskFedora according to my mockups. I followed a mobile first approach in coding the web page and you can view it here at my Openshift instance – http://askfedoratest-anuradhaw.rhcloud.com/
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Recently Fedora developer and all-around good gal Máirín Duffy has been working on what she calls “The Fundamental Theorem of Developing FLOSS“. Inspired by what she called “opinionated non-doers”, this is an attempt to catalogue the sorts of behaviors a FLOSS developer should expect. Most of the entries revolve around change, particularly the addition or removal of features.
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Fedora 22 was released recently and it has been a rock solid release. However, systems with Pre-Sandybridge era, Intel-based graphics solutions have seen some issues. For example, an Intel 4 series motherboard with G41 chipset and GMA X4500 graphics might produce a display like this screenshot on Fedora 22 :
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Debian Family
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Canonical has just released the fourth major update for Ubuntu Touch, and it marks the switch to a new Ubuntu 15.04 base, not to mention the fact that it comes with new features and improvements.
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Full shell rotation on Ubuntu Touch is now a little bit closer to land on everyone’s phones after the feature made its way onto the latest rc-proposed image for the mobile operating system.
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Canonical’s Snappy Ubuntu Core development team has started reporting the new features and changes that have been implemented lately in the operating system for Internet of Things.
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Canonical has published earlier a new security notice for all of its supported Ubuntu Linux operating systems, informing users that a Linux kernel vulnerability has been patched, urging them to update their systems as soon as possible.
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Flavours and Variants
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After announcing the release of the Cinnamon 2.6.8 desktop environment earlier today for the upcoming Linux Mint 17.2 (Rafaela) operating system, it would appear that Clement Lefebvre already published the ISO images of the Release Candidate (RC) version on the main servers.
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Two weeks after the announcement of the Beta version of the upcoming Mangaka Nyu Linux distribution for anime and manga fans, based on Ubuntu, Animesoft International has released the RC (Release Candidate) version.
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Inforce Computing has announced a major upgrade to its 100 x 70mm, Linux- and Android-friendly, Pico-ITX form factor IFC6410 single board computer, which it introduced in 2013 to showcase Qualcomm’s quad-core, 1.7GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 system-on-chip. The S4 Pro, which is more commonly known as the Snapdragon 600, stays put on the new Inforce 6410Plus SBC, along with the previous 2GB of DDR3 RAM, 4GB of eMMC flash, and $143 price. However you get new MIPI interfaces, a beefier 12V power supply, a new GPS radio, and a shorter 16mm profile, and a new expansion connector aimed at robotics and IoT applications.
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CompuLab’s three Linux-friendly x86 COM Express modules include a Type 6 COM with 5th Gen Core CPUs and Type 10 COMs with Atom E3800 and AMD G-Series SoCs.
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What is an Arduino? Maybe you’ve heard of it, or seen a project built with one. But what is that little piece of open hardware, and what exactly does it do?
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Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a collaborative open source project developing a common, Linux-based software stack for the connected car, has announced availability of the AGL Requirements Specification 1.0. It’s the industry’s first open in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) software specification that allows automakers and suppliers to collaborate directly with AGL’s global community of developers and advance the creation of a de facto reference platform for the connected car.
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Phones
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Android
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BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY), (TSE:BB) is, according to rumors breaking in recent days, going to put Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Android on a new smartphone. There are mixed feelings about the story on Wall Street. Some feel that jumping to Google’s popular Android OS could save the firm, while others feel the move shows Blackberry is in “dire straits.”
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Android is no longer just an operating system you choose to get on your smartphone or tablet. The industry is evolving and welcoming new platforms, form factors and applications. You can now even opt to get Android Auto with your car!
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If BlackBerry is looking to experiment and make an Android phone, it makes sense to try it out on the mass market.
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Wireless carrier Verizon is letting Motorola Droid Turbo users in the US get a feel of how the Android 5.1 (Lollipop) OS update will look and feel on their smartphones.
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Once one of the slowest to update its Android handsets, Samsung is leading the pack with Android 5.1.1. The company is pushing the latest software update to its flagship Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge phones.
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All very convenient and in the interests of consumers planning to leap to iPhone or iPad. But while it’s built an app that concludes by telling you that your Android device can be be recycled at your nearest Apple Store, the company won’t tolerate the equivalent any time soon.
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Gaming accessory maker Razer has acquired Android game console maker Ouya. Rumors had suggested Ouya was looking for a buyer, and recently we’d heard that Razer was close to reaching a deal to acquire the company.
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Following much clamor on the part of Android users — and keeping its promise — Adobe has launched four Creative Cloud apps on the Google Play store.
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Now that the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge have become the first devices with software updates not directly handled by Google to get Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, you may be wondering when this version of the OS will land on other phones.
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And before you have a chance, yes, that is a screenshot of the iOS version. I just wanted a pretty picture for the article. I’m sorry. Now, back to the news! If you’ve been keeping an eye on E3 the last 24 hours, you probably heard something about Fallout Something Or Other For Mobile, or more accurately, Fallout Shelter – Bethesda’s new vault-builder game for mobile devices. It’s out on iOS now, and it’s super fun. You can expect our review of it later this week.
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An update to Android M for most Android devices has been confirmed for later this year, likely around October or November, and Google’s even released it early as a developer preview or beta for the Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 9 and the Nexus Player. And while updating to the latest M release may be tempting, there are a few reasons why you should skip the Android M developer preview release.
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Have you been using Android Lollipop and are ready for what’s next for the platform? Get ready, there’s some serious improvements in store. Jack Wallen takes a look at what’s coming for Android “M.”
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These days, smartphones and tablets have all but overtaken the PC in terms of user adoption. Even those folks who own desktop PCs usually spend far more time in front of their smart phones or tablets.
This reflects my experience as well, since I do most of my work from an Android tablet when I’m not at home. In this article, I’ll explain how common mobile users such as myself are able to substitute their PC with Android devices when access to a desktop PC isn’t available.
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There is a civic hacker in you! He or she is in there… I promise! Today, technology has evolved into a perfect storm of open source tools, code, social networks, and lots of data. Civic technologists thrive on all of these getting together with like-minded hackers and turning all these sources into useful applications, websites and visualizations.
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Jen Krieger used her first computer in the early 80s and maintained a strong interest in technology ever since. She started her career as a financial analyst and eventually moved into IT where she gained expertise in software development and releases. Jen has worked with many development methods, from waterfall to Agile.
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The Open Source Initiative® (OSI) announced today that Associazione LibreItalia, a non-profit organization working to reduce the digital divide and tear down barriers to digital citizenship throughout Italy, has joined the internationally recognized steward of open source as an Affiliate Member.
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If you have been burnt by the decline of the organic reach of your Facebook pages, you may consider trying something different, although of course it’s hard to replace a website that has become such an integral part of our lives.
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Events
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The presentations are conducted in German, so it’s mainly interesting for German people. There are several OpenStack and also Ceph related talks on the schedule, including a work shop on Ceph. As far as I know there are still tickets available for the conference.
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SaaS/Big Data
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With open-source cloud endeavours, it’s not so much a question of maturity as it is figuring out which offering is the best fit for your organisation. As Amanda McPherson, chief marketing officer at the Linux Foundation points out, “Open source and collaboration are clearly advancing the cloud faster than ever before. Just consider the many OpenStack distributions and ecosystem emerging around Linux containers that didn’t even exist a year ago. Yet, as the open source cloud evolves so quickly, it can sometimes be difficult for enterprises to identify the technologies that best fit their needs.”
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If a new stack is to take root in the modern enterprise, then something has to give. Not only must an old infrastructure make room for a new way of work, but the new stack must open itself up to the prospect of interoperability and co-existence with something that, at least in our frame of reference, is no longer new.
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It’s no secret that OpenStack is becoming the de-facto standard for private cloud…
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Datto, a company that offers data backup and recovery solutions are teaming up ownCloud which will allow Datto customers to securely sync and share enterprise files. Initially the ownCloud secure file sync and share capabilities will come to Datto’s SIRIS product line.
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The central role of the open-source movement in analytics rose back to the surface last week after LinkedIn Inc. released another one of its internally-developed data crunching technologies under a free license to help promote emerging use cases. And in particular, performing real-time business intelligence at the kind of scale where the traditional databases typically used for the task fall short.
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Databases
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Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL) won’t experience a risk any time soon from open-source software vendors, an analyst said Monday.
Deutsche Bank’s Karl Keirstead said vendors, like privately held MongoDB Inc., “don’t represent a near-term threat” to Oracle, which is set to post results Wednesday.
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Bloomberg recently reported how Oracle is heavily leaning on its existing customers as it sees a slump in new product sales. Not just the smaller companies, big players are also moving away from fancy products with big price tags and choosing open source software. As open source becomes increasingly reliable, the threat looms large for Oracle and the likes. The report shows that Oracle’s sales of new software licenses have declined for seven straight quarters compared with the same period a year earlier. It heavily relies on revenue from update and maintenance contracts more than from new business.
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Licensing
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Apple announced last week that its Swift programming language — a currently fully proprietary software successor to Objective C — will probably be partially released under an OSI-approved license eventually. Apple explicitly stated though that such released software will not be copylefted. (Apple’s pathological hatred of copyleft is reasonably well documented.) Apple’s announcement remained completely silent on patents, and we should expect the chosen non-copyleft license will not contain a patent grant. (I’ve explained at great length in the past why software patents are a particularly dangerous threat to programming language infrastructure.)
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Let me get this straight, Apple: you send me an e-mail outlining the terms under which you will redistribute my content, and you will just assume that I agree to your terms unless I opt out?
This makes typical clickwrap EULA nonsense look downright reasonable by comparison. You’re going to consider me bound to terms you just declared to me in an e-mail as long as I don’t respond? That’s completely crazy. You don’t even know if I received the e-mail!
I’m conflicted about this. On one hand, the whole reason I have an RSS feed for this blog is to make it easy to access it in a variety of ways. The RSS feed exists precisely so it can be used by programs like this, which take the content and display it to the user. I don’t like the idea of showing ads next to my content in this situation, but I’m pretty sure I have no right to control that. If I didn’t want people taking my blog and putting it in an app and showing it to people that way, I wouldn’t have a feed.
On the other hand, Apple isn’t just taking my feed and displaying it. They’re shoving terms and conditions at me, and unilaterally assuming that I agree to them unless I take explicit steps to respond and say that I don’t.
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Openness/Sharing
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Robyn Bergeron makes life awesome for people participating in the Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana communities. Passionate about improving ease of development and deployment of infrastructure and applications, she tirelessly advocates for end-users of open source projects, which why her current title is Operations Advocate at Elastic.
She has been a sysadmin, program manager, and business analyst, and has an ongoing role as mother of two stellar kids. Her most recent gig was as the Fedora Project Leader at Red Hat, where she herded cats through several releases of the Linux distribution.
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The open-source model for biopharma R&D yields better results when it comes to late-stage success, according to a new report released by Deloitte at this week’s BIO convention in Philadelphia. Collaboration, even with competitors, helps usher a drug into successful development.
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Open Data
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On March 11, 2013 New York State launched open.ny.gov which is dedicated to increasing public access to data. The state hopes to spark innovation, foster research, provide economic opportunities, and increase public participation in state government. Officials hope this increase in transparency will better inform decision making throughout the state.
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Open Hardware
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Facebook’s Open Compute Project (OCP) has upended the data-center computer-hardware in just four years. How did it get so far so quickly?
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Programming
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The Node.js open source project and its fork, io.js, have decided to kiss and make up, with the aid and support of the Linux Foundation.
Node.js is an open-source, OS-agnostic runtime environment that allows developers to write server-side web applications using JavaScript.
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Health/Nutrition
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The French Ministry of Ecology declared a ban on the use of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide in the nation’s nurseries and garden centers Sunday, citing the previous UN classification of the chemical glyphosate as “possibly carcinogenic.”
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Security
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The company that sells itself on securing your password has messed up (my language is possibly too strong) and lost some of your data. Luckily user’s master passwords was not part of the compromised data, despite this they are warning users of the service of the attack and have suggested users change their password immediately and wherever else it may have been used.
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The aggressive SSHPsychos botnet that struck the Internet last summer at one point accounted for more than a third of all global SSH traffic until it was sinkholed, Level 3 Communications has detailed in its latest quarterly report.
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The latest security update for OpenSSL cryptographic library includes a fix for a vulnerability that permits a threat actor to weaken the encryption mechanism that secures communication between two parties.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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A June 13 New York Times article about the pope’s forthcoming climate change encyclical failed to follow leading Times staffers’ recommendations by using the term “climate skeptic” to refer to those who blatantly deny established climate science.
The Times article stated that the Vatican’s stance on climate change has “rankled … climate change skeptics, who have suggested that Francis is being misled by scientists[.]” It added that “a group of self-described climate skeptics, led by the Heartland Institute” organized a protest of the Vatican’s position in Rome, and described Marc Morano, a member of the Heartland delegation to Rome, as a former “aide to Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican and climate change skeptic.”
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Finance
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It’s no secret that the American middle class has been on the ropes for a while now. The problem isn’t just a crippling recession and an economic “recovery” that has mostly gone to the richest one percent, but the larger shifting of wealth from the middle to the very top that’s taken place since the late ‘70s. Add in things like the dismantling of unions that has accelerated apace since Ronald Reagan crushed the air-traffic controllers, and we’ve seen the middle class more solid in places like Canada, Germany, and Scandinavia, and begin to grow in a number of nations even while it shrinks here. Economists like Thomas Piketty thinks the process is inevitable with global capitalism, while others – the equally wise Joseph Stiglitz, for example – think the balance can be restored if we can find the political will.
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Censorship
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The Rupert Murdoch controlled Sunday Times of London finds itself embroiled in controversy today, over both a front page article that appeared in the paper yesterday and a related DMCA Notice it issued against the U.S. based political website The Intercept.
The Sunday Times article, with the headline “British Spies Betrayed to Russian and Chinese,” carries the byline of Tom Harper, Richard Kerbaj and Tim Shipman and expands on a news story spreading across the UK on the pulling of some intelligence operators from Russia and China by the UK government over fears that they might have been compromised by information leaked by Edward Snowden.
This article prompted an article published last night on The Intercept by Glenn Greenwald: “The Sunday Time’ Snowden Story is Journalism at It’s Worst — and Filled With Falsehoods.”
The Intercept article, which attempts to detail alleged inaccuracies in The Sunday Times article, has prompted Times Newspapers Ltd., the owner of the Times, to circle the wagons and issue a DMCA takedown notice in the U.S. The notice indicates that The Times takes exception to the posting of a photograph of yesterday’s Times front page, as well the inclusion of a handful of quotes from the Times article — all of which would appear to be covered under U.S. “fair use” copyright provisions.
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Privacy
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After 2.5 years of operations the Mega cloud storage service has published its first transparency report. Aimed at inspiring confidence in how the company deals with complaints and protects privacy, the document reveals that Mega takes content down faster than Google and a maximum of 0.165% of users have been suspended.
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None of it was true, but it was part of a concerted effort by administration officials to smear Ellsberg as a “Soviet spy” and a “traitor” when all he really did was blow the whistle on things by sharing documents with reporters.
Does that sound familiar? Over the weekend, a big story supposedly broke in the UK’s the Sunday Times, citing anonymous UK officials arguing that the Russians and Chinese got access to all the Snowden documents and it had created all sorts of issues, including forcing the UK to remove undercover “agents” from Russia. That story is behind a paywall, but plenty of people have made the text available if you’d like to read the whole thing.
There are all sorts of problems with the report that make it not just difficult to take seriously, but which actually raise a lot more questions about what kind of “reporting” the Sunday Times actually does. It’s also worth noting that this particular story comes out just about a week or so after Jason Leopold revealed some of the details of the secret plan to discredit Snowden that was hatched in DC. Even so, the journalism here is beyond shoddy, getting key facts flat out incorrect, allowing key sources to remain anonymous for no reason, and not appearing to raise any questions about the significant holes in the story.
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So we’ve already written about the massive problems with the Sunday Times’ big report claiming that the Russians and Chinese had “cracked” the encryption on the Snowden files (or possibly just been handed those files by Snowden) and that he had “blood on his hands” even though no one has come to any harm. It also argued that David Miranda was detained after he got documents from Snowden in Moscow, despite the fact that he was neither in Moscow, nor had met Snowden (a claim the article quietly deleted). That same report also claimed that UK intelligence agency MI6 had to remove “agents” from Moscow because of this leak, despite the fact that they’re not called “agents” and there’s no evidence of any actual risk. So far, the only official response from News Corp. the publisher of The Sunday Times (through a variety of subsidiaries) was to try to censor the criticism of the story with a DMCA takedown request.
Either way, one of the journalists who wrote the story, Tom Harper, gave an interview to CNN which is quite incredible to watch. Harper just keeps repeating that he doesn’t know what’s actually true, and that he was just saying what the government told him — more or less admitting that his role here was not as a reporter, but as a propagandist or a stenographer.
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For most of us, festivals are a way to escape our invisible prisons of technology. “I’m not taking my iPhone to Glasto,” you mutter to your pal, “I’m going off the grid.” Who can blame you? For just a few days, you want to enjoy yourself in a priceless disconnected moment of Gaymers fuelled euphoria. Up until very recently, you could be granted that small civil liberty, but this weekend at Download, new technology is being trialled by Leicestershire Police that could change the way your carry yourself at major events.
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So why do we spend so much of our time ignoring the thousands of words of legally binding “end-user licence agreements” (EULAs, if you like) legally-binding contracts we agree to every day? Is it even possible to read the T&Cs for everything a typical person does? Is there any value in reading all this anyway?
“The biggest lie on the internet is ‘I have read and agree to the terms and conditions’,” says security expert Mikko Hyppönen. Setting out to prove his point, Hyppönen’s company F-Secure set up a free WiFi hotspot in the heart of London’s financial district in June 2014.
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Ask any two people in government today their stance on encryption and you’ll almost certainly get very different (and often opposing) answers.
As the White House pushes for greater encryption across federal sites to help better protect data flowing between a user’s computer and the federal agency, other factions in government want to weaken the encryption used by installing “backdoors” for law enforcement uses.
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As of right now, the data that moves between Wikipedia.com and most users is unencrypted, which increases the chances that someone else may be eavesdropping on you. That, however, is about to change: On Friday, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that it’s moving its sites toward HTTPS by default, so that all data transferred between you and its servers will be encrypted.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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For years artists had grumbled about record labels, cable networks and distributors controlling them, restricting their artistic freedom, and taking more than their fair share of the coffers. Napster offered a new way for artists to reach their fans. While the labels and networks condemned this as “piracy,”many artists detected the first ripple of a new revolution.
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As the result of a rather broadly interpreted court order, many innocent Cox Communications subscribers have been dragged into a piracy lawsuit. The account holders are involved because their current IP-addresses were used to download infringing content in the past, but some weren’t even a Cox subscriber at the relevant time.
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