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08.27.14

Links 27/8/2014: GNU/Linux in Space, China, LinuxCon

Posted in News Roundup at 11:28 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Why we need an open-source movement for the web

    Now consider open source, the software that powers all these web companies. Open source has a built-in guarantee that users are in control. Always.

    This matters, because open source “is where innovation happens,” as Red Hat’s Gunnar Hellekson opines. From Hadoop to Android to Mesos to MySQL, much of the world’s best software is available for free.

  • prPIG Joins the Open Source Initiative

    The Open Source Initiative ® (OSI), the premiere organization that promotes and protects open source, announced today that the Puerto Rico Python Interest Group (prPIG) has joined the OSI as an Affiliate Member. prPIG’s support of open source software development and its advocacy for the adherence to the open source definition are supporting software innovation in Puerto Rico. prPIG’s affiliation with OSI will help build a sustainable software development community in Puerto Rico, that will drive technological and social innovation.

  • What makes your developers stick around?

    Chawner begins by relating a tale that is probably familiar to many in the open source world. It is the story of Richard Stallman’s battle with a closed source Xerox printer. The printer was subject to frequent paper jams, but because the source code was not available, he could not modify the printer’s software to report the jams to inconvenienced users waiting on their print jobs. This event, along with a general trend towards closed source software, caused Stallman to start the GNU Project and found the Free Software Foundation. The story of that troublesome printer and the subsequent developments in the free software and open source movements led Chawner to explorer her research questions in an attempt to understand participant satisfaction with FLOSS projects.

  • Tux Paint: Doing FOSS Right

    Apparently, I’m not alone in thinking highly of the software, if this page of testimonials is any indication. In fact, the publication “This Old Schoolhouse” recently echoed many other reviews in their article in the June 2012 edition. In the article, Andy Harris, the Tech Homeschooler, wrote, “Tux Paint is just about the most kid-friendly program I’ve ever seen. It’s designed so the adult can set it up, and even very young children can enjoy it thoroughly. It also has sophisticated enough features for siblings and parents to enjoy.”

  • Linux at 23, Desktop Feedback, and GIMP 2.8.14 Released

    The top story tonight is the releases of GIMP 2.8.12 and 2.8.14. Linux celebrated 23 years yesterday and the community had a bit to say about “the desktop.” And finally tonight we have a couple of gaming announcements and Bruce Byfield on the KDE Visual Design Group.

  • Open Source Software: Sailing Into Friendlier Seas

    Open source software is now a force drawing enterprises and developers like a magnet.

    The factors pulling adopters into the open source fold are changing, though. Also changing are the attitudes of software developers and corporate leaders about the viability and adaptability of open source.

  • Netflix Open Source Security Tools Solve Range of Challenges
  • Things I Learned about Open Source…The Hard Way
  • Shortlist of open source software used at NASA lab

    The offer was too good to be true. Three whole weeks at the NASA Glenn Research Center and an invitation to come back. I could scarcely believe it when I read the email. I immediately forwarded it to my parents with an addition of around 200 exclamation points. They were all for it, so I responded to my contact, Herb Schilling, with a resounding “YES!”

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Google Chrome 37 Stable Arrives with Better Unity Integration in Ubuntu

        Google Chrome 37 is now the current stable version of the Internet browser from Google. It’s a release that’s more focused on security than anything else, but there are a few new features. It won’t feel different from the 36.x branch that users have just upgraded from, but that shouldn’t be a reason not to update the software.

    • Mozilla

      • First Firefox OS Smartphones Available in India this Week
      • Mozilla Adding Granular App Permissions to Firefox OS

        Mozilla is set to add a feature to its mobile Firefox OS that will give users the ability to revoke any application’s permissions on a granular basis.

        Firefox OS is the open source operating system that Mozilla built for smartphones. The software runs on a variety of devices from manufacturers such as Alcatel, ZTE and LG. The devices mainly are available outside of the United States, although there’s at least one Firefox OS phone sold in the U.S. The operating system is meant to be flexible and includes many of the security and privacy features that Mozilla has built into the Firefox browser over the years, namely support for Do Not Track.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • VMworld Brings New VMware OpenStack, Docker, and Hardware Technologies

      VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger kicked off his company’s VMworld 2014 conference with a message – Be Brave. Gelsinger’s message was intended for attendees but is also a message that is reflective of his company’s approach to the rapidly evolving Software Defined Data Center landscape.

    • VMware Misses Docker Opportunity
    • An introduction to Apache Hadoop for big data

      Apache Hadoop is an open source software framework for storage and large scale processing of data-sets on clusters of commodity hardware. Hadoop is an Apache top-level project being built and used by a global community of contributors and users. It is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

    • OpenStack can stand on its own, whatever happens to Rackspace

      Four years ago, Rackspace and its early partners came up with an idea for an open source private alternative to Amazon Web Services –and OpenStack was born. Today, the future of Rackspace is murky, but the open source project it helped create is strong enough to stand on its own, whatever happens to one of the founding members.

    • Red Hat Enhances its Linux OpenStack Platform

      Red Hat has introduced updates for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 5, the latest version of its enterprise-focused OpenStack platform built on the Icehouse release. An updated installer and new high availability platform security capabilities are designed to let administrators more easily protect a healthy and fault-tolerant OpenStack deployment.

    • The NSF Pours $20 Million Into Experimental Cloud Test Beds

      Never underestimate the impact that the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) can have on technology. After all, way back when there was no commercial web, it was the NSF that–under pressure from entrepreneurs–opened up the gates for the commercial web to become a low cost way for organizations and individuals to become networked.

    • VMware Debuts OpenStack Open Source Cloud Computing Distribution

  • Education

    • Do kids learn about open source in school?
    • Zuckerberg-backed Panorama Teams With Harvard To Open Source Its Student Survey

      Panorama Education, the Y-Combinator education startup backed by the likes of Mark and Priscilla Zuckerberg’s Startup:Education, Google Ventures and other notable investors, is today announcing a partnership with Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education that speaks to how the startup is evolving its core business model. The pair have teamed up to launch Panorama Student Survey, Panorama’s signature school survey delivered as a free, open source product.

    • Back to school! 5 excellent open education resources

      It’s back to school for many kids in the United States, and soon to be so for many others around the world. While open source software and hardware are used less often to teach kids in grade school about the world, open principles are. They are what you might think of as the most natural methods of teaching. And, they are what we call the open source way.

      Think: sharing, collaboration, transparency, and failing faster.

      When I was a kid, these were the methods practiced by my teachers and taught to the students to use among their groups. To many adults, they are still the principles that guide them in their grown up world of business.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • MediaGoblin 0.7.0: Time Traveler’s Delight

      Welcome to MediaGoblin 0.7.0: Time Traveler’s Delight! It’s been longer than usual for our releases, but we assure you this is because we’ve been traveling back and forth across the timeline picking up cool technology that spans a wide spectrum of space and time. But our time-boat has finally come into the harbor. Get ready… we’ve got a lot of cargo to unpack!

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • US Military To Launch Open Source Academy

      Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center in Mississippi will offer open source training and Linux certification for military personnel and civilians in groundbreaking new program.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • New wiki to help you grow a better garden

      Have you ever tried to grow your favorite summer vegetable or garden herb and something went wrong? Maybe it was poor planting, a disease, or a pesky insect. Likely, you searched the Internet and found some answers, but millions of pages of information remains unviewed and unread on the subject. Maybe you need to troubleshoot problems or want definitive answers to questions like when to plant for your area or exactly when to fertilize.

      This is how the idea for OpenFarm sprouted. The knowledge for all these answers is out there, it’s just not in one place.

    • Open Access/Content

      • PACER Deleting Old Cases; Time To Fix PACER

        For years, we’ve talked about the many problems with PACER, the horribly designed and managed electronic court records system that the federal court system uses here in the US. Beyond being clunky, buggy, horribly designed and slow — it’s also expensive. With some exceptions, it’s 10 cents per page you download, and also 10 cents per search.

  • Programming

    • Checking Out C++14

      C++ has continued to garner more market share from C and the latest C++14 standard will help to continue this trend (see “C++14 Adds Embedded Features”). Most C/C++ developers are using compilers that support both but C still takes precedence for many for a variety of reasons. Support for legacy code is one reason. Corporate mandates are another. Unfortunately many stay away because of perceived complexity, inefficiency or that fact that it is an object oriented programming (OOP) language.

    • R programming language gaining ground on traditional statistics packages

      The R programming language is quickly gaining popular ground against the traditional statistics packages such as SPSS, SAS and MATLAB, at least according to one data statistician who teaches the language.

      “It is very likely that during the summer of 2014, R became the most widely used analytics software for scholarly articles, ending a spectacular 16-year run by SPSS,” wrote Robert Muenchen, in a blog post summarizing his analysis.

    • Programming with OpenCL 1.2

      printf-style debugging and the ability to partition computing devices into subdevices make OpenCL 1.2 a very useful upgrade.

    • Julia Language v0.3 Improves Technical Computing

      For the uninformed, Julia is a high-level, high-performance dynamic language centered around technical computing. The Julia high-performance JIT compiler is LLVM-based and features a large math function library, supports highly parallel execution, and is MIT licensed.

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • Feds: Red light camera firm paid for Chicago official’s car, condo

    The former chief executive officer of Redflex, a major red light camera (RLC) vendor, has been indicted on federal corruption charges stemming from a contract with the City of Chicago.

    On Wednesday, in addition to former CEO Karen Finley, government prosecutors also indicted John Bills, former managing deputy commissioner at the Department of Transportation, and Bills’ friend Martin O’Malley, who was hired as a contractor by Redflex.

  • ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Lands Dumb Criminal In Cuffs

    For those of you who have just woken up from a two-week coma, there are a couple of things you should know. People in Missouri are really pissed off. Iraq is being Iraq. ISIS isn’t a fictional spy agency on Archer any longer. And, finally, there’s this thing going around where people are pouring buckets of ice water over their heads in order to raise money for ALS, which it has successfully done to the tune of millions of dollars.

  • Science

    • Experiments explain why some liquids are ‘fragile’ and others are ‘strong’

      Only recently has it become possible to accurately “see” the structure of a liquid. Using X-rays and a high-tech apparatus that holds liquids without a container, Kenneth Kelton, PhD, the Arthur Holly Compton Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, was able to compare the behavior of glass-forming liquids as they approach the glass transition.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Federal Judge Overturns Kaua’i Pesticide and GMO Law

      U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Kurren overturned Kaua’i County’s law regulating the use of pesticides and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) this week. He ruled that it was preempted by Hawai’i state law, although not by federal law.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • The World as WaPo Would Like It to Be

      So much of our discussion of public policy consists of absurd accusations from the right matched with self-serving justifications from the somewhat-less-right. The most obvious example of this is the perennial think piece on Obama’s foreign policy, which is invariably analyzed as being either foolishly pacifistic or prudently diplomatic.

    • Myth of ‘Limited’ US Airstrikes in Syria

      The US is once again on the warpath against Syria after the beheading of US citizen James Foley was released on the internet a week ago.

    • World War Three?

      Is the US about to attack Syria? President Obama has approved air surveillance of Syria to monitor possible ISIS activity, but the flyovers could be a precursor to eventual airstrikes.

    • US drones begin surveillance flights over Syria

      Barack Obama gives go-ahead for intelligence operation which could pave way for air strikes against Islamic State in Syria

    • We Have No Idea What’s Going on Inside Syria

      The AP reports today that President Obama has authorized surveillance flights over Syria, a move that could be the first sign of the U.S. expanding its operations against ISIS to the other side of the porous Syria-Iraq border. It makes sense that such a mission would begin with an extensive intelligence-gathering effort. That’s because, compared with other areas of the world, the U.S. military knows very little about what’s happening in Syria.

    • U.S. Lays Groundwork for Syria Strike
    • US launches reconnaissance flights over Syria
    • Iran Arming Iraqi Kurds Against Islamic State

      Iran has provided weapons and ammunition to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq, said the region’s President on Tuesday in a joint a press-conference with the Iranian foreign minister.

    • Possible airstrikes in Syria raise more questions

      The intelligence gathered by U.S. military surveillance flights over Syria could support a broad bombing campaign against the Islamic State militant group, but current and former U.S. officials differ on whether air power would significantly degrade what some have called a “terrorist army.”

    • Is the Pentagon preparing to launch air strikes against ISIS in Syria?
    • Gaza live: Long-term ceasefire agreement arrived at, says Hamas official

      A senior Hamas official says a ceasefire has been reached with Israel to end a seven-week war that has killed more than 2,000 people.

    • A ‘leak’ in Hamas’s once-tight system yields crucial leadership kills for Israel

      The alleged money man died in a pile of burnt cash. He was riding in a car in Gaza City when the Israeli missile struck. The blast tore apart the vehicle, ripping open bags of American dollars and blowing the bills across the street. An unidentified witness told the New York Times that security soon collected the dollars billowing across the road and searched the car for more.

    • US bills fly after Israel hits Hamas finance big

      Hamas’ finance chief was killed by a pinpoint missile strike that ripped open his car — and scattered US currency on the streets of Gaza City.

      Bills burned by the blast lay amid the debris near where Muhammad al-Ghoul, who handled “terror funds,” was killed.

    • The death by drone memo: a throwback to U.S. terrorism in Nicaragua

      On September 30, 2011, Anwar al-Aulaki, a radical Islamist cleric and an American citizen, was killed in a targeted drone strike in Yemen.

      Among the many legal questions raised by such an act, a most important and intriguing one relates to the legal status of certain CIA activities given the existence of 18 USC 119, a federal statute which prohibits the (actual or attempted) murder of an American citizen by another American citizen outside of the United States.

      The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memorandum providing the Obama administration’s rationale for the strike was released last week, the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the ACLU and the New York Times.

    • Washington’s Latest War Fever

      War fever is running high again in Official Washington with pols and pundits demanding that President Obama order a major military intervention in Iraq and Syria to stop the violent jihadists of ISIS, a group that got its start with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, as ex-CIA analyst Paul Pillar recalls.

    • What makes you an extremist and at what point will you be breaking the law?

      Will criticising British foreign policy be seen as something that defines how ‘extreme’ you are. If you are a Muslim and chose to state this openly will you be labelled a ‘radical’?

    • Avenging James Foley: Tit for Tat Is Not a Solution

      The ghastly killing of journalist James Foley — more than merely savage — was quite calculated to induce terror and to influence. And it did. Indeed, to discuss his death in a broader political context at this point may seem distasteful, clinical, and disrespectful to the dead and his family.

    • How the Brutalized Become Brutal

      An Egyptian-brokered cease-fire halting the Gaza war held into Monday morning, allowing Palestinians to leave homes and shelters as negotiators agreed to resume talks in Cairo. ()

      The horrific pictures of the beheading of American reporter James Foley, the images of executions of alleged collaborators in Gaza and the bullet-ridden bodies left behind in Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are the end of a story, not the beginning. They are the result of years, at times decades, of the random violence, brutal repression and collective humiliation the United States has inflicted on others.

      Our terror is delivered to the wretched of the earth with industrial weapons. It is, to us, invisible. We do not stand over the decapitated and eviscerated bodies left behind on city and village streets by our missiles, drones and fighter jets. We do not listen to the wails and shrieks of parents embracing the shattered bodies of their children. We do not see the survivors of air attacks bury their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters.

    • China deploys armed drone to multinational drills

      China’s air force said it deployed an armed drone to multinational anti-terrorism drills on Tuesday, underscoring the country’s rapid progress in developing unmanned aerial vehicles.

    • What does the US wants in Irak?

      The humanitarian situation was cynically manipulated by the Obama administration –and echoed by the U.S. media– to provide an excuse for the president to attack Iraq again. President Obama has started another war in Iraq and Congress has been completely silent.

    • The Evil of U.S. Aggression against Iraq

      How can anyone still be an interventionist after what has happened in Iraq?

    • New Iran-Contra book shows how US-Iran ties were scuttled

      The scandal that became known as Iran-Contra is a distant memory for most Americans and Iranians. But an important new book provides fascinating details about US ignorance about Iran, which contributed to the largely botched effort to free US hostages in Lebanon and hindered a possible breakthrough in US-Iran ties 30 years ago.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Pierre Trudeau caused ‘friction’ with U.S. over Arctic policy designed to boost Canadian nationalism

      Pierre Trudeau’s bid to enhance Canadian sovereignty and promote economic development in the Arctic created some “friction” with the United States, says a declassified CIA report.

    • Pierre Trudeau’s Arctic policy sparked international friction: CIA report
    • Trudeau approach to North irked U.S. — CIA
    • Energy ballet-2: Syria, Ukraine and “Pipelineistan”

      As much as Iran, Russia, the US and the EU are involved in a sophisticated nuclear/energy ballet, Syria and Ukraine are also two key power play vectors bound to determine much of what happens next in the New Great Game in Eurasia.

      And both Syria and Ukraine also happen to be energy wars.

      The Obama administration’s Syria master plan was “Assad must go”; regime change would yield a US-supported Muslim Brotherhood entity, and a key plank of Pipelineistan — the $10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline — would be forever ditched.

    • Associated Press Profile Of Koch Brothers Whitewashes Their Fossil Fuel Ties

      Extensive reporting from the Associated Press on the Koch brothers’ financial background and political influence glossed over the duo’s ties to the fossil fuel industry and ignored their efforts to dismantle action on climate change.

      On August 25, the Associated Press published a “primer on the Koch brothers and their role in politics,” headlined “Koch 101,” along with a lengthy overview of the history of the Koch family. A primer on the influence of Charles and David Koch is sorely needed: Their political organizations are reportedly expected to spend nearly $300 million during this year’s election cycle, yet most Americans still haven’t heard of the highly influential brothers.

    • WaPo Bemoans a Climate Debate It Helped ‘Devolve’

      Some of the most high-profile media climate deniers–George Will, Charles Krauthammer and Robert Samuelson–are all Post columnists who have done their part to contribute to the “shape of the climate debate.” Krauthammer most recently (2/20/14) mocked the idea that the science of climate change was “settled,” and that scientists who warn of the disastrous effects of climate change are “white-coated propagandists.” Krauthammer went on TV this year to mock climate change science as “superstition.”

  • Finance

    • World Bank Project Manager in Court for ‘Stealing’ $87k

      Daniel Roberts, a World Bank Project Manager assigned with Ministry of Finance has been forwarded to the court for an attempted Theft of Property and Economic Sabotage in the tune of US$87,486 by the National Security Agency (NSA).

    • Councils in poorest areas suffering biggest budget cuts, Labour says

      The poorest areas of England have endured council cuts under the coalition worth 16 times as much per household as the richest areas, research has claims.

      Hilary Benn, the shadow communities secretary, said his figures showed the government had “failed to apply the basic principle of fairness” when allocating money to local government.

    • The rise of ‘Obama Inc.’

      The presidency of Barack Obama has catapulted a network of former advisers into lucrative positions.

    • An austerity revolt has broken the French government. Will the EU follow?

      If there were any lingering doubts about the seriousness of the crisis hanging over the future of the euro – and potentially of the European Union itself – the shock announcement of the dissolution of the French government should remove them.

    • Washington’s using less than a percent of the power it has to boost federal tech pay

      Under U.S. law, federal agencies are allowed to pay above and beyond normal salary rates for would-be employees who are extraordinarily talented, especially in the fields of science and technology. So-called Critical Position Pay Authority was used, for example, to bump the 2011 salary of the director of the National Institutes of Health — a geneticist who is both a best-selling author and winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom — from $155,000 to just shy of $200,000.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

    • Prof Loses Job Offer Over Israel Hate Tweets. Media Howls About ‘Academic Freedom’

      You would think in uber-liberal academia, a leftist professor could get away saying anything. But apparently you can go too far. Earlier this month, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign rescinded its offer to Steven Salaita, a Palestinian-American former Virginia Tech professor, for a tenured position in the American Indian Studies department. Why?

      Because of dozens of tweets Salaita made from his Twitter account preaching hatred of Israel and bashing America’s ties to the Jewish homeland. At the news of his hiring earlier in the Summer, the university started to get backlash from students, parents and donors who did not appreciate Salaita’s aggressively unfriendly attitude towards Israel. So the Univ. of Illinois’ Chancellor Phyllis Wise wrote to Salaita, stating he was no longer welcome as a professor at the university.

    • EasyDNS Tries To Balance Bogus Requests To Take Down Legit Foreign Online Pharmacies Against Truly Rogue Pharmacies

      We’ve written a few times about domain registrar/hosting company EasyDNS, which has been pretty vocal about how law enforcement and industry groups have recently started targeting registrars and hosting comapnies as “the soft underbelly” for censorship and coercive control. While we’ve covered this issue frequently as it relates to things like copyright, the real ground zero for this may be around online pharmacies. The online pharmacy space is a bit complicated — because there are really a few different kinds. There are US-based accredited/approved pharmacies, there are overseas accredited/approved online pharmacies… and then there are flat-out rogue pharmacies dealing in illegally obtained or counterfeit medicines. Obviously the last one is in a different category altogether from the first two, but US drug companies like to conflate legal foreign online pharmacies with the rogue ones.

    • University Bans Social Media, Political Content and Wikipedia Pages on Dorm Wifi

      “Finally, I can do whatever I want!” thought every incoming college freshman ever. But for some unlucky students arriving on campus this fall, that sought-after right of passage applies to just about everything except internet usage.

      Northern Illinois University enacted an Acceptable Use Policy that goes further than banning torrents, also denying students access to social media sites and other content the university considers “unethical” or “obscene.”

    • University Bans Social Media, Political Content and Wikipedia Pages On Dorm WiFi

      My understanding is that there was once a theory that America’s public universities were havens of free speech, political thought, and a center for the exchange of ideas. I must admit that this seems foreign to me. I’ve always experienced universities primarily as a group-think center mostly centered around college athletics. That said, if universities want to still claim to be at the forefront of idea and thought, they probably shouldn’t be censoring the hell out of what their students can access on the internet.

    • ‘Anarcho-Capitalist’ Stefan Molyneux, Who Doesn’t Support Copyright, Abuses DMCA To Silence Critic

      Either way, if you’re going to go around claiming that you’re against intellectual property and an “anarcho capitalist,” it’s going to look pretty sketchy when you use a federal law like copyright to censor someone else’s speech that is critical of you.

    • Can We Create A Public Internet Space Where The First Amendment, Not Private Terms Of Service, Rules?

      The other issue is that most sites are pretty much legally compelled to have such terms of use, which provide them greater flexibility in deciding to stifle forms of speech they don’t appreciate. In many ways, you have to respect the way the First Amendment is structured so that, even if courts have conveniently chipped away at parts of it at times (while, at other times making it much stronger), there’s a clear pillar that all of this is based around. Terms of service are nothing like the Constitution, and can be both inherently wishy-washy and ever-changeable as circumstances warrant.

    • Internet Uncertainty

      Tufecki should know. As a fellow at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, she focuses on the politics of free speech in social media. Over the years she’s traced this push and pull with particular attention to the Middle East and North Africa (Tufecki is a native of Turkey).

  • Privacy

    • NSA Makes Metadata (Including Info On Americans) Available To Domestic Law Enforcement Via ‘Google-Like’ Search

      The latest report from The Intercept on documents obtained from Ed Snowden (and, yes, they make it clear that these are from Snowden, rather than the purported “second leaker”) is about a “Google-like” search engine that the NSA built, called ICREACH, which lets the NSA share a massive trove (at least 850 billion) of “metadata” records not just with others in the NSA or CIA, but with domestic law enforcement and other government agencies including the FBI and the DEA. The database includes records collected via Executive Order 12333, which we recently noted a State Department official revealed as the main program via which the NSA collects its data (and which is not subject to oversight by Congress).

    • This Is What Happens When You Sleep Through an Earthquake

      The largest earthquake to hit California’s Napa Valley in 25 years struck near the Bay Area early Sunday morning. The 6.0-magnitude quake hit at 3:20 a.m. local time near American Canyon, about 6 miles southwest of Napa, at a depth of 6.7 miles. Nearly 90 people were injured—and countless more woken up, disturbed, and generally freaked out. Thanks to the quantified self phenomenon—the always-on activity and sleep trackers many people now wear—we know more than ever about the psychic effects of such an event.

    • Anti-spy technology remains hot a year after NSA leaks

      More than a year after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked secret documents describing the breadth and depth of US surveillance, policy makers continue to debate the legal framework for such monitoring.

      Yet a number of technology startups are blazing ahead to create a range of products that promise to restore people’s privacy online. Silent Circle, WhisperSystems, and Wickr offer a variety of services, from private instant messaging to secure data storage to encrypted phone calls. Other companies, such as Blackphone, have focused on creating a secure smartphone for the privacy-conscious.

    • ‘Spiral of Silence’ on Social Media Surrounding Snowden Revelations

      A “spiral of silence” has arisen on social media since government spying revelations emerged from Edward Snowden last year, according to a new study.

      Pew Research found that people were less likely to post their views or concerns about NSA surveillance on Facebook and Twitter than in person due to fears that their views are not widely shared.

      Around 86% of people surveyed for the study – which questioned 1,801 US adults in August and September last year – said that they were willing to have an in-person conversation about the surveillance program, but only 42% of Facebook and Twitter users were willing to post about it online.

    • Pew: There’s a ‘Spiral of Silence’ on Social Media
    • Facebook users self-censor on controversial topics in real life, too

      If you didn’t see a lot of talk about Ferguson and Michael Brown on your Facebook feed, maybe that’s because your Facebook friends were afraid you’d disagree.

      The Pew Research Center on Tuesday said a study of nearly 2,000 adults on an earlier hot-button political issue – the massive leak by Edward Snowden of documents that showed the National Security Agency had spied on U.S. citizens – found those surveyed were less willing to discuss the issue in social media than they were in person, and that social media did not provide an alternate platform to talk about the story if they weren’t willing to discuss it in person.

    • When it comes to Facebook, we all just want to be popular, study finds
    • All of Your Facebook Friends Already Agree With You
    • If You Want an Engaging Debate About Ideas, Stay Off Social Media, Study Warns

      The technology many of us use to stay in touch with friends is poorly suited to creating meaningful debate and discussion, argues a new study which examined how revelations of widespread NSA media surveillance played out on Twitter and Facebook. Conducted by Rutgers University and the Pew Center for Research, the study points out that since social media functions as a bonding tool between groups and individuals, those who hold dissenting views are hesitant to express them. Groups formed on social media tend to be like-minded so contradicting people’s opinions can result in exclusion which, psychologically speaking, is not a good feeling.

    • “Obese Intelligence”: The NSA Search Engine. “Over 850 Billion Records about Phone Calls, Emails, Cellphone Locations, and Internet Chats”

      The revelations have a few implications, the most obvious one confirming the seamless transition between intelligence work on the one hand, and the policing function on the other. The distinction between intelligence communities whose interests are targeting matters foreign to the polity; and those who maintain order within the boundaries of a state in a protective capacity, prove meaningless in this form. The use of ICREACH makes it clear that the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are regular clients and users of the system.

    • UK privacy laws might need a technology reboot, says top UK judge

      UK SUPREME COURT PRESIDENT Lord Neuberger is pushing for an update to UK privacy laws.

      Neuberger was speaking in Hong Kong when he turned to the topic of privacy laws in the light of technology advances. He said that technology leaps forward while the legal system shuffles. He suggested that because of this, some sort of overhaul to UK privacy laws will be necessary.

      The judge spoke of the “astonishing advances” and “enormous challenges” presented by technological progress and the need to make adjustments before real problems occur.

      He said that technology developments have radically changed how content moves around, and how easily it can be transmitted, recorded and manipulated.

    • The EU ‘cookie law’: what has it done for us?

      It’s now more than two years since the cookie law began to be ‘enforced’ in the UK, but has it changed anything?

    • ‘Truthy’ joins NSA, IRS in watching you

      Americans’ telephone conversations already are being monitored by the National Security Agency and their health-care policies by the Internal Revenue Service. Now there’s “Truthy,” a government-funded project at Indiana University that will watch their Tweets for “political smears” and “social pollution.”

    • NSA’s metadata search engine used by US, foreign agencies

      The NSA has secretly built a “Google-like” search engine to be used by various US government agencies and intelligence agencies of the Five Eyes countries to sift through phone call, email, and Internet chat metadata, as well as cellphone locations collected and stored in a number of different databases.

    • Banks to meet with Treasury Department on cyber threats: sources

      Bankers and bank regulators have become more vocal lately about concerns that cyber attacks could put customer data and the stability of the financial system at risk.

    • Larry Page believes private medical histories shouldn’t be private

      Bloggers are all a-twitter about Charlie Rose’s recent interview of Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) co-founder Larry Page at a TED conference in Vancouver, Canada. Page, enduring the softball-quickly-followed-by-frustrating-interruption style of Rose, still managed to eke out responses of intense bloggy interest. When asked about government surveillance, Page lamented the “tremendously disappointing” behavior of the NSA. Sounds noble, but it may end up sounding duplicitous. Recent testimony by NSA general counsel stated Google had full knowledge of data harvesting activities from day one, despite the company making denials to the contrary for months.

    • New French surveillance law: From fear to controversy

      America’s NSA scandal has been making headlines all over the world since it first came to light back in July. Somehow, though, France’s surveillance program has managed to fly under the radar for the most part.

    • Russia’s bid to expose users highlights law enforcement’s tricky relationship with Tor

      On Friday, Russia’s Ministry of the Interior (MVD) awarded a contract for $110,000 to an unnamed Russian contractor with top security clearance to uncloak Russian users of the surveillance-evading Tor browser. This is the Russia’s Federal Security Service’s (FSB) response to the surge of Russian Tor users from 80,000 to 200,000 due to the restrictions by the Russian government on free use of the internet, such as the new law that requires all Russian bloggers to register.

      The NSA and the FSB want to puncture Tor anonymty and expose the identities of the people using it because the Tor browser erases identifying browser fingerprints. Almost everyone who uses the internet has a unique traceable fingerprint. An Internet user can check his or her own internet uniqueness in a few seconds with Panopticlick, a one-click test created by the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF). Most people find themselves to be pretty unique; 1 in 4.5 million to be exact. Go ahead, try it.

    • Aussie, Kiwi spies hooked into NSA metadata search engine
    • What is the meaning and what is the use of ‘metadata retention’?

      Privacy and individuals’ ability to remain anonymous are important protections against persecution, bullying, intimidation and retaliation. These can be perpetrated by other people, private businesses and, perhaps most seriously, the state and its police and intelligence agencies.

    • Documents: Tacoma police using surveillance device to sweep up cellphone data

      The Tacoma Police Department apparently has bought — and quietly used for six years — controversial surveillance equipment that can sweep up records of every cellphone call, text message and data transfer up to a half a mile away.

      You don’t have to be a criminal to be caught in this law enforcement snare. You just have to be near one and use a cellphone.

    • Tracking everywhere: Private companies offer worldwide spying tools
    • Cell Phone Tracking Surveillance Systems Hit the Dictator Market

      Dictators around the world can now exploit a fundamental feature of cell phones, leaving individuals at risk of having their whereabouts monitored wherever they go.

    • It’s not just the NSA: Phone surveillance tech lets any government track your movements
    • Report: Surveillance Companies Are Secretly Selling Tech That Tracks Your Phone’s Location

      Cellular carriers already know where you are thanks to your phone. On paper it makes sense: Service providers like AT&T need to know your location in order to relay calls and texts, determining your position from cell towers. But now, according to a new report in the Washington Post, surveillance companies are selling advanced tracking systems that take advantage of this technology, making it possible even for small governments to track users anytime, anywhere–for days or even weeks at a time with stunning accuracy.

    • Surveillance and the Creative Mind

      In a world where many aspects of our daily lives are written or recorded and transmitted digitally, our raw thoughts and casual observations are increasingly open to scrutiny and vulnerable to interception. Our behavior is frequently documented, whether it is by government agencies, corporate entities, news organizations, or fellow citizens. This means that every iteration of an evolving idea, off-hand comment, and emotional outburst could be recorded. Given how often we all misinterpret each other, especially in writing, the exponential increase in documented human behavior is cause for concern.

      [...]

      The American climate of fear about terrorism has combined with this technological shift into a potent mix that stifles debate and free expression.

    • Hands-on: Pwn Pro and Pwn Pulse, mass surveillance for the rest of us

      At Black Hat and Def Con earlier this month, the penetration testing tool makers at Pwnie Express unveiled two new products aimed at extending the company’s reach into the world of continuous enterprise security auditing. One, the Pwn Pro, is essentially a souped-up version of Pwnie Express’ Pwn Plug line of devices; the other, Pwn Pulse, is a cloud-based software-as-a-service product that provides central control of a fleet of Pwn Pro “sensors.” Combined, the two are a whitehat’s personal NSA—intended to discover potential security problems introduced into enterprise networks before someone with malevolent intent does.

    • Satire: NSA Quits Spying on Americans Out of Disgust

      Citing an endless river of filth, vacuous conversations, idiotic Tweets and endless cat videos, the NSA announced it is “freaking done” with spying on Americans.

      The NSA decision came only hours after thousands of analysts, following similar threats at CIA, said they planned to quit and apply for jobs as Apple Geniuses and Best Buy Geek Squad Support workers.

  • Civil Rights

    • Michael Brown, According to the New York Times

      A Times editor defended this assessment of Brown by explaining that it was a reference back to the opening scene of the piece, where Brown talks to his stepfather about seeing the image of an angel in a storm cloud. Of course, this reference was plainly obvious to anyone reading the piece.

    • The FBI’s Criminal Database Is Filling Up With Non-Criminals And No One In Law Enforcement Seems To Care

      America has long held the position as the world’s foremost imprisoner of its own citizens. Around 2 million people are incarcerated in America, giving us nearly one-fourth of the world’s total prison population. Spending any length of time in prison is a good way to destroy your future. But even if you never spend a day inside — or even end up facing charges — there’s a good chance you’ll still be facing a bleak future should you ever have the misfortune to be booked.

    • As Arrest Records Rise, Americans Find Consequences Can Last a Lifetime
    • Kelly McParland: The Ferguson shooting will have the usual result; more guns, not fewer

      According to the New York Times, the White House is having “second thoughts” about the policy of arming U.S. police to the teeth. The images from Ferguson, Missouri – of police kitted out like paratroopers with sniper rifles and armoured cars – is causing consternation in Congress. President Barack Obama has ordered a “comprehensive review.”

    • Ferguson PD Confirms Officer Wilson Shot at Brown as He Ran Away

      As Charles Johnson at LGF says, this is a “big admission”. Although the autopsy suggests none of these shots struck Michael Brown, it explains why more than one eyewitness described his having been shot in the back. Several eyewitnesses said that after these shots were fired, Brown turned around with his hands in the air.

    • Police Officers Facing Potential Felony Charges After Using Government Databases To Screen Potential Dates

      The basic issue is this: many, many people have access to personal information that the government demands you provide in exchange for essential items like driver’s licenses, vehicle/home titles, etc. Connected to these databases is one used to house information on every person booked by police (notably, not every person convicted or even every person charged).

    • Tell Congress: no more weapons of war for local police.
    • Officials: Girl accidentally kills gun instructor

      A 9-year-old girl accidentally killed an Arizona shooting instructor as he was showing her how to use an automatic Uzi, authorities said Tuesday.

      Charles Vacca, 39, of Lake Havasu City, died Monday shortly after being airlifted to University Medical Center in Las Vegas, Mohave County sheriff’s officials said.

    • 4 Weird Decisions That Have Made Modern Cops Terrifying

      We’re pretty much begging cops to be our heroes. Think about it: Every major blockbuster movie is about a brave hero enforcing an important moral code: John McClane, Transformers, every superhero — even if they’re going outside the law, they’re still doing the exact job a cop is supposed to have: upholding the law and protecting the innocent. In fiction, they’re the ideal we strive for.

    • Tomgram: Anya Schiffrin, Who Knew We Were Living in the Golden Age of Investigative Journalism?

      Almost a decade ago, I spent more than a year freelancing for a major metropolitan newspaper — one of the biggest in the country. I would, on an intermittent basis, work out of a newsroom that appeared to be in a state of constant churn. Whoever wasn’t being downsized seemed to be jumping ship or madly searching for a life raft. It looked as if bean counters were beating reporters and editors into submission or sending them out of the business and into journalism schools where they would train a new generation of young reporters. For just what wasn’t clear. Jobs that would no longer exist?

    • ‘Approved Responses to the Civil Unrest in Ferguson’
    • US courts trash a decade’s worth of online documents, shrug it off

      The US Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) has removed access to nearly a decade’s worth of electronic documents from four US appeals courts and one bankruptcy court.

      The removal is part of an upgrade to a new computer system for the database known as Public Access to Court Electronic Records, or PACER.

      Court dockets and documents at the US Courts of Appeals for the 2nd, 7th, 11th, and Federal Circuits, as well as the Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, were maintained with “locally developed legacy case management systems,” said AOC spokesperson Karen Redmond in an e-mailed statement. Those five courts aren’t compatible with the new PACER system.

    • The Police Aren’t So Brave When Someone Has a Weapon

      Compare these stories with two instances of UK police—only about five percent of whom are armed—handling men with knives in an admirably brave (and restrained) fashion: in one, an officer Tasers a man with two knives from just a few feet away, while in the other, 30 cops—the visible ones clearly unarmed—spend nearly six minutes trying to apprehend an aggressively unhinged man holding a machete. If folks with whittling knives, bats, and steak knives are given mere seconds before fatal shots are fired, this guy deserved a millisecond. And yet, the cops brought him in alive—and took him to a mental health facility.

    • Putting Body Cameras On Cops Won’t Fix Misconduct, But It’s A Good Start

      Prompted by the fatal shooting of Ferguson resident Mike Brown, a We the People petition asking the federal government to require body cameras for all law enforcement officers has roared past the 100,000 signature threshold required for a White House response. (Theoretically.)

    • New Orleans Police Officer Turns Off Body Camera Minutes Before Shooting Suspect In Forehead

      In New Orleans, Armand Bennet, 26, was shot in the forehead during a traffic stop by New Orleans police officer Lisa Lewis. However, the police department did not reveal until much later that Lewis turned off her body camera just before shooting Bennett. Bennett survived and has now been charged under prior warrants for his arrest. It also reviewed that Lewis had had a prior run in with Bennet who escaped about a week earlier.

    • Dating On Duty: Officers Accused Of Screening Dates Using Police System

      Court documents show that Fairfield Police Officers Stephen Ruiz and Jacob Glashoff used company time and equipment to search for women on internet dating sites.

      The documents also show that two used the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System – a statewide police database – to screen the women they liked.

    • Obama Review Of Military Gear Handed To Law Enforcement; Thinks Real Problem Is ‘Training And Guidance’

      Not that local law enforcement agencies couldn’t throw an impressive Victory Day parade. The 1033 program, which sends military vehicles, weapons and equipment downstream to law enforcement agencies for pennies on the dollar, has shifted $4.3 billion from the Dept. of Defense to hundreds of police departments across the United States since 1997. Here’s what the President is actually interested in seeing.

      “Among other things, the president has asked for a review of whether these programs are appropriate,” said a senior administration official, who was not authorized to speak on the record about the internal assessment. The review also will assess “whether state and local law enforcement are provided with the necessary training and guidance; and whether the federal government is sufficiently auditing the use of equipment obtained through federal programs and funding.”

    • Calif. Lawmaker Votes for More Regs for Ride-Sharing, Then Gets Busted for DUI

      Courtesy of California political reporter John Hrabe, California Assemblyman Ben Hueso, a Democrat representing the San Diego area, was arrested in the wee hours of the morning for allegedly driving under the influence. This came just hours after voting for legislation that would force more regulation on ride-sharing services like Lyft and Uber.

    • Uber, Lyft, Sidecar fight to block new California regulations
    • California Lawmaker Votes To Kill Uber… Then Caught Driving Drunk Just Hours Later
    • Federal Law Requiring Annual Report on Excessive Force by Police has been Ignored for 20 Years

      The circumstances of the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, have brought that one police shooting into the national conscience. But many other Americans are killed by police and their deaths go unnoticed and mostly uncounted, despite a Congressional mandate.

    • Federal Law Ordering US Attorney General To Gather Data On Police Excessive Force Has Been Ignored For 20 Years

      Are police officers getting worse or is this apparent increase in excessive force nothing more than a reflection of the increase in unofficial documentation (read: cameras) and public scrutiny? What we do know is that as crime has gone down, police forces have escalated their acquisitions of military gear and weapons. With options for lethal and less-lethal force continually expanding, it seems that deployment of force in excess of what the situation requires has become the new normal, but it’s tough to find hard data that backs up these impressions.

      One of the reasons we don’t have data on police use of excessive force is because compiling this information relies on law enforcement agencies being forthcoming about these incidents. Generally speaking, it takes FOIA requests and lawsuits to obtain any data gathered by individual police departments. This shouldn’t be the case. In fact, as AllGov reports, this lack of data violates a federal law.

    • Rep. Mike Honda Introduces Bill Banning Civilians from Buying Body Armor
    • Ferguson Police Officer Justin Cosma Hog-Tied And Injured A Young Child, Lawsuit Alleges

      A Ferguson police officer who helped detain a journalist in a McDonald’s earlier this month is in the midst of a civil rights lawsuit because he allegedly hog-tied a 12-year-old boy who was checking the mail at the end of his driveway.

      According to a lawsuit filed in 2012 in Missouri federal court, Justin Cosma and another officer, Richard Carter, approached a 12-year-old boy who was checking the mailbox at the end of his driveway in June 2010. Cosma was an officer with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office at the time, the lawsuit states. The pair asked the boy if he’d been playing on a nearby highway, and he replied no, according to the lawsuit.

    • As Police Get More Militarized, Bill In Congress Would Make Owning Body Armor Punishable By Up To 10 Years In Prison

      We’ve been writing an awful lot lately about the militarization of police, but apparently some in Congress want to make sure that the American public can’t protect themselves from a militarized police. Rep. Mike Honda (currently facing a reasonably strong challenger for election this fall) has introduced a bizarre bill that would make it a crime for civilians to buy or own body armor. The bill HR 5344 is unlikely to go anywhere, but violating the bill, if it did become law, would be punishable with up to ten years in prison. Yes, TEN years. For merely owning body armor.

    • ‘Revenue Generating’ Traffic Cameras Forcing Governments To Refund Millions Of Dollars

      Technology saves time and labor, but is as ultimately fallible as the humans it displaces. Thanks to the efficiencies of technology, mistakes can now be made faster than ever. Municipalities which have turned over traffic enforcement to cameras probably hoped to generate funds much faster than it could with an un-augmented police force. Instead, they’re finding themselves issuing refunds, deactivating faulty cameras, fighting with contractors and investigating corruption. Not much of a payoff.

    • Justice Dept. Official: We Could Get Lois Lerner’s Emails From Backups, But It’s Too Hard So Naaaaaah

      I try not to go for conspiracy theories generally, but this ongoing IRS nonsense involving conveniently disappearing emails potentially pertaining to the scandal involving targeting certain groups is making my skeptics beacon go off. The official story essentially involves a computer (server?) crash that obliterated the email data of several email accounts that would otherwise be of great interest to those trying to figure out who in the Obama administration knew what about how the IRS was operating. That crash somehow also involves the destruction of any local backups these IRS folks are required to keep as part of their job.

    • Lack Of Diversity In St. Louis Area Police Departments Is Just Flat-Out Embarrassing

      In the wake of Michael Brown’s shooting death at the hands of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, a light was shone on the unbelievable lack of racial diversity within the Ferguson police department. It was revealed that while Ferguson’s population is 67% African-American, only three of the town’s 53 full-time police officers are black. The complete disconnect between the racial makeup of the community and the demographics of law enforcement patrolling Ferguson’s streets has been cited as a prime example of the simmering racial tensions in the town that boiled over in the aftermath of Brown’s killing.

    • “Police State U.S.A.: How Orwell’s Nightmare Is Becoming Our Reality”

      Anybody tuning in to the media coverage of the daily protests of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri can’t help but notice the intimidating police presence that makes the city look more like a battlefield than a suburban enclave.

    • EDITORIAL: Journalism a tough but essential job
    • Why The Obama Administration Wants This Journalist In Jail

      President Barack Obama came into office in 2009 promising a new era of unprecedented transparency in his administration. But when he leaves office, reporters may remember him for an effort that has largely turned out to be the opposite — and for being what one affected reporter has called the “greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation.”

    • Here’s The Story Of A Spectacular CIA Screw-Up That Could Cause Journalist James Risen To Land In Jail

      For the last five years, New York Times journalist James Risen has been embroiled in a legal battle with the Obama administration over his refusal to reveal an inside government source. While that case (and the motivations behind it) is compelling, the leaked story that got Risen in trouble in the first place is one of the most spectacular CIA screw-ups in the agency’s history.

    • The Road to Ferguson and the Necessity of Anti-Imperialist Spirit

      “Since Obama was first elected in 2008, the ‘hope and change’ President has overseen the largest number of Pentagon arms and intelligence giveaways to local police in US history.”

    • CIA reform? Don’t hold your breath
    • Guantánamo Torture Victim Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Harrowing Memoir To Be Published In January 2015 – OpEd
    • In Senate-CIA fight on interrogation report, another controversy

      The background of a key negotiator in the battle over a Senate report on the CIA’s use of interrogation techniques widely denounced as torture has sparked concerns about the Obama administration’s objectivity in handling the study’s public release.

      Robert Litt, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is a former defense lawyer who represented several CIA officials in matters relating to the agency’s detention and interrogation program. Now he’s in a key position to determine what parts of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 6,300-page report will be made public.

    • Forgetting Cheney’s Legacy of Lies

      The neocons – aided by their “liberal interventionist” allies and the U.S. mainstream media – are building new “group thinks” on the Middle East and Ukraine with many Americans having forgotten how they were duped into war a dozen years ago, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

    • Cheney’s Legacy: Honesty Still in Short Supply

      As the world marks the centennial of World War I, the guns of August are again being oiled by comfortable politicians and the fawning corporate media, both bereft of any sense of history. And that includes much more recent history, namely the deceitful campaign that ended up bringing destruction to Iraq and widened conflict throughout the Middle East. That campaign went into high gear 12 years ago today.

      [...]

      Why did Kerry mislead the world on August 30 in professing to “know” that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical attack near Damascus on August 21? It is crystal clear that he did not know. Typically, Kerry adduced no verifiable evidence, and what his minions leaked over the following weeks could not bear close scrutiny. (See Robert Parry’s “The Collapsing Syria-Sarin Case.”)

    • Former head CIA lawyer defends torture in Der Spiegel interview

      In an August 20 interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, former acting CIA General Counsel John Rizzo defends his role as the legal architect of the US government’s international campaign of detention and torture.

      In the interview, Rizzo, who worked at the CIA from 1976 to 2009, declares that although the torture programs he approved “seemed harsh, even brutal,” he does not regret his support for their implementation.

    • Federal Cybersecurity Director Found Guilty on Child Porn Charges

      One of these techniques involved the used drive-by downloads to infect the computers of anyone who visited McGrath’s web sites. The FBI has been using malicious downloads in this way since 2002, but focused on targeting users of Tor-based sites only in the last two years.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Why Internet Access Monopolies Harm Innovation

      When antitrust stories make headlines—as the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger has—even well-intentioned analysis often confuses harm to competitors with harm to competition. Viewing antitrust law through a “competition” lens, as opposed to a “competitors” lens, is not intuitive: consumers are harmed not by being denied access to existing services, but by being denied new ones.

    • How the web lost its way – and its founding principles

      When Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web 24 years ago he thought he’d created an egalitarian tool that would share information for the greater good. But it hasn’t quite worked out like that. What went wrong?

  • DRM

    • Kill Switches on Smartphones Now Mandatory in California

      California Governor Jerry Brown signed historic legislation Monday, mandating that every smartphone sold in California after July 1, 2015, be equipped by default with a kill switch, a feature that can render the device useless if stolen.

      Proposed by state senator Mark Leno and endorsed by a bevy of law-enforcement officials, the new law — the first of its kind in the nation — is designed to curb cell-phone theft in cities like San Francisco, where more than 65% of all robberies involve stolen phones, or Oakland, where it’s 75%.

    • The Califonia Kill Switch Bill Has Been Signed into Law

      The California kill switch bill is a bill that requires all smartphones that have been manufactured after July 1, 2015 to include anti-theft measures if they are to be sold in the state of California.

    • California bill requiring kill-switch on smartphones becomes law

      On Monday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a piece of legislation mandating that all smartphones come with kill-switch software automatically installed so that a user can remotely wipe his or her device if it gets stolen. The bill will affect all smartphones manufactured after July 1, 2015 to be sold in California.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Guy Claims Patent On Photographing People In Races And Then Selling Them Their Photos; Sues Photography Company

      The folks over at EFF have yet another story of patents gone wrong. This time it’s from a guy named Peter Wolf, who owns a company called Photocrazy, that takes photos of sporting events like running and bike races, and then offers to sell people their photos by matching up their bib numbers. This kind of thing has been around forever, but because Peter Wolf paid a lawyer and said some magic words, he got some patents (specifically: 6,985,875; 7,047,214; and 7,870,035).

    • Ryan Seacrest’s Typo Blows Off Injunction, Sells Thousands Of Possibly-Infringing Keyboards

      Ryan Seacrest’s Typo (because it is never to be referred to simply as “Typo” in headlines or opening paragraphs), maker of physical keyboard accessories for iPhones, was sued by RIM (maker of formerly-popular Blackberry phones) for patent infringement earlier this year. The ailing phone manufacturer took issue with the keyboards made by Ryan Seacrest’s Typo, which it felt veered a bit too close to “looking damn near like a Blackberry keyboard.”

    • Intellectual Property Casebook Now Available As A Free Download

      About a month ago I wrote about James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins of the Center of the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School releasing a free download of an Intellectual Property Statutory Supplement (which normally big publishers try to sell for around $50). As noted, this was a kickoff for an even bigger project, an open coursebook in intellectual property. That Open Intellectual Property Casebook is now available. You can download the whole thing for free. If you want a nice printed copy, it’ll currently run about $24 on Amazon — which is about $135 less than other IP case books. The entire book weighs in at nearly 800 pages, so there’s a lot in there if you felt like delving into a variety of topics around copyright, trademark and patent law — including specific efforts by Congress around those laws and the way that the courts have interpreted them.

    • Copyrights

      • Total Wipes A Total Failure: Sends Increasingly Ridiculous DMCA Notices To Wipe Out Unrelated Content

        TorrentFreak has a fun, if ridiculous, post about the near total failure of a digital music distribution company named Total Wipes to “wipe out” certain content via entirely bogus DMCA notices. In what appears to be one of the more egregious attempts out there to issue automated DMCA takedowns without anyone bothering to look at the sites in question, Total Wipes tried to remove all sorts of websites in trying to “protect” a track called “Rock the Base & Bad Format.” It appears that, as a part of that, any site that its automated systems turned up that had both “rock” and “base” on it was targeted for takedown. That was especially problematic for news stories about the death of DJ E-Z Rock, whose most famous track was “It Takes Two,” done in partnership with Rob Base. Note the problem: Base and Rock. That meant that Total Wipes targeted news stories about Rock’s death. It also targeted stories about rock climbing and a “rock” music festival on a military “base.”

      • Copyright Trolling Lawyer Abusing DMCA To Try To Silence Critics

        Nearly three years ago, Fight Copyright Trolls had an interesting post about a copyright lawyer named Mike Meier who “flipped sides” from defending people who had been hit with copyright troll demands to becoming something of a troll himself. It featured two screenshots, showing how Meier’s website quickly flipped from looking to help people who’d received a demand letter to a site that looked similar… but was clearly on the other side.

      • German Regulator Rejects German Newspapers’ Cynical Attempt To Demand Cash From Google

        Back in June we wrote about the ridiculous and cynical attempt by a number of big German newspaper publishers, in the form of the industry group VG Media, to demand 11% of Google’s gross worldwide revenue on any search that results in Google showing a snippet of their content. We noted the hypocrisy of these publishers seeking to do this while at the same time having done nothing to remove themselves from Google’s search — and, in fact, using Google’s tools to help them rank higher in search results. In other words, these publishers know that ranking high helps them… and yet then still demanded cash on top of that.

      • We the goondas

        Have a smartphone? Run for cover. Bizarre as this might sound, the cops are going to come after you if you so much as forward a song to a friend. Forget actually doing it, any plans to do so could land you in serious trouble too. You could be labelled a ‘goonda’ in the eyes of the State and find yourself behind bars.

      • Indian State Says You Can Be Jailed If They Think You’ll Infringe Copyrights Or Share ‘Lascivious’ Content In The Future

        Over the weekend, Engadget had a post claiming that India has said it’s illegal to “like” blasphemous content. The headline there somewhat misstates what’s actually happening, but what’s actually going on is no less ridiculous. It is not all of India, but rather the state of Karnataka (which includes the city of Bangalore), which has passed a new law officially called “The Karnataka Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug-offenders, Gamblers, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders, Slum-Grabbers and Video or Audio Pirates (Amendment) Bill, 2014″ though it is being locally referred to as the Goonda Act. The main thing it has done is taken offenses under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and Indian Copyright Act, 1957, and let the government take people into preventative custody if they think you’re going to break one of those laws.

      • Amazon and Hachette feud could rewrite the book on publishing

        The battle between Amazon and the French publisher Hachette is not just a spat about the price of books. Their row over ebook prices, which led to the online retailer freezing out pre-orders of Hachette books and has provoked angry words from authors such as Donna Tartt and Phillip Pullman, could determine the next chapter of the publishing industry.

      • City Of London Police Turn Down Torrentfreak’s FOIA Request Because It Would Take Too Long To Fulfill

        The City of London Police (notably, not the London Metropolitan Police and you will rue the day you ever make that mistake) have been both a law unto themselves and the UK’s foremost copyright cops… which would make them a copyright law unto themselves… or something. Name another law enforcement agency that has single-handedly done more to pursue the Pirate Bays of the world. I follow this sort of stuff pretty closely and no one else even comes close. Here’s a very brief rundown of the City of London’s efforts in the service of King Copyright.

      • Fast & Furious 6 Pirate Sentenced to 33 Months Prison
      • Crime And Punishment? 33 Months In Jail For Filming And Uploading Fast & Furious 6

        As a whole bunch of folks sent in, over in the UK, a guy named Philip Danks has been sentenced to 33 months in prison for camcording Fast and Furious 6 and then uploading it to the internet. As is all too often the case, the UK authorities more or less let the movie industry, in the form of FACT (the Federation Against Copyright Theft) run the entire investigation. FACT employees were involved in all facets, including controlling most of the interview after Danks was detained. If that seems… questionable, you have a point.

      • Rightscorp’s New PR Plan: The More Ridiculous It Gets (Such As By Claiming To Hijack Browsers), The More Press It Will Get

        Over the last few months, there’s been tremendous press attention paid to a little nothing of a company called Rightscorp, which has basically tried to become the friendlier face of copyright trolling: signing up copyright holders, sending threat letters to ISPs, hoping those ISPs forward the threats to subscribers, and demanding much smaller fees than traditional copyright trolls (usually around $20). The idea is by being (just slightly) friendlier, and keeping the fees much lower, they might be able to “make it up in volume.” The company has been subject to big profiles in Ars Technica, which calls it “RIAA-lite,” and Daily Dot, which referred to it as a “boutique anti-piracy firm.” Frankly, the only thing that Rightscorp has shown itself to be good at is getting press coverage — often through outrageous claims, such as saying it found a loophole in the DMCA that lets it send subpoenas to identify ISP subscribers without filing a lawsuit. Lots of copyright trolls think they’ve found that loophole, only to discover a court already rejected it.

08.25.14

Links 25/8/2014: China’s Linux Revolution Imminent

Posted in News Roundup at 8:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Does open source boost mental health?

    Walk into any makerspace around the world and you’ll encounter this infectious optimism. You’ll see people playing with their Raspberry Pis, their Arduinos, their CNC machines, and their 3D printers. You’ll encounter people intently focused on assembling something, their mind so engaged as to be in a state of flow.

  • What does an open design studio look like?

    I’m really interested in open source philosophies. I like the camaraderie of the communities and the open collaboration. I like being able to have a direct effect on the development of products that I use. I like the idea of the freedom behind the licensing. I like the idea of supporting the underdog fighting picaresquely against the corporate giants. I like that the whole point of open source is being allowed to see (and modify) the code. In simple terms, with open source as a development model it allows access to a product’s plans/blueprints through using a permissive license.

  • Need PCI Compliance? Try Open Source

    In a recent presentation, security professionals unveiled a proposed Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) compliance model that is based on open source technology. The system is designed, they said, to help reduce expenses, enhance scalability and make it easier to manage the technological infrastructure that supports PCI compliance.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Free Nvidia CUDA 6.5 Packs ARM64 Support

      Improved debugging for CUDA Fortran applications (preview) is also here; this includes new debugging support for Fortran arrays (Linux only), improved source-to-assembly code correlation, and improved documentation.

    • Emacs verus notification area, again

      Ages and ages I wrote about letting Emacs code access the notification area. I have more to say about it now, but first I want to bore you with some rambling thoughts and some history.

      The “notification area” is also called the “status icon area” or the “systray” — it is a spot that holds some icons that are under control of various applications.

    • PHP 5.5.16 Officially Released
    • Out in the Open: How Animated GIFs Can Turn You Into a Web Coder

      Basically, all the site’s image effects are stored by a community of developers, much like any other open source software. Anyone can not only use these effects, but build their own and share them with the community by way of the code hosting and collaboration site GitHub. “Since everyone likes glitch art and animated GIFs, it’s a creative outlet for developers to create something new that’s outside their usual field,” say Jen Fong-Adwent, the creator of revisit.link. “But it’s also a way for new people to learn basics.”

    • Programming in Rust

      Discover Rust, the systems programming language developed by Mozilla that’s fast, and wants to be better than C and C++!

Leftovers

  • Security

    • Extra staff for OpenSSL group after Heartbleed drama

      ABOUT four months after the discovery of the Heartbleed bug, the group overseeing the widely used OpenSSL software has added a new full-time staffer and is preparing for a comprehensive code audit.

      Steve Marquess, co-founder and president of the OpenSSL Software Foundation, said the organisation’s team of 14 now had two full-time employees — one started this week — and planned to add two more by the end of the year.

    • Security advisories for Monday

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND JOURNALISM

      Last week, Turkish media reported that “the former employee at the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), Edward Snowden, has revealed that British and American intelligence and Mossad worked together to create the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).” Snowden said intelligence services of three countries created a terrorist organization that is able to attract all extremists of the world to one place, using a strategy called “the hornet’s nest.”

      NSA documents refer to recent implementation of the hornet’s nest to protect the Zionist entity by creating religious and Islamic slogans.

      According to documents released by Snowden, “The only solution for the protection of the Jewish state “is to create an enemy near its borders.” Leaks revealed that ISIS leader and cleric Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi received intensive military training for a whole year at the hands of Mossad, besides courses in theology and the art of speech.”

      Indeed, this is a scandalous claim, one that has been seen on numerous Turkish news websites worded differently. Daily Sabah first reported it with a small news article, and later Daily Sabah columnist Haşmet Babaoğlu wrote about it in the first paragraph of one of his articles. The first paragraph of his article titled “Who benefits from ISIS’s existence in the Middle East?” stated, “Regardless of whether you are enthusiastic about conspiracy theories or not, Global Research’s claim that ‘former National Security Agency (NSA) systems analyst Edward Snowden recently revealed that the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was trained by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence and spy agency’ is a topic worthy of debate.”

      It seems to me that the current phenomena gives more striking signals than conspiracy theories, however.

      [...]

      The news first appeared in French on July 9 on a Hezbollah website with Lebanon’s Hezbollah-sponsored channel, Al Manar, claimed as the source. After a short while, the news was translated into English, but, the source was now claimed to be Iran’s Fars News Agency. According to the news article, former analyst of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), Edward Snowden, proved with leaked documents that ISIS was a MI6, CIA and Mossad joint project. However, there were no indications of when and where Snowden made those remarks.

      [...]

      The best way to prevent this is to present the source. When we read Babaoğlu’s column, we see that he mentioned a website called www.globalresearch.ca. The site belongs to an organization called The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). They identify themselves as “an independent research and media organization based in Montreal. The CRG is a registered non-profit organization in the province of Quebec, Canada.” They claim that their mission is to uncover “the unspoken truth.”

      Babaoğlu presented the news article of Global Research as a source, but what about their source? The claim was not based on evidence; however, this does not render his article worthless. After all, in his article, he speaks of who benefited from recent developments in the Middle East after ISIS’s appearance with actual events. There are views mentioned of several experts as well. Not to mention, there are no inconsistencies and factual errors in the article.

    • Hayden: It’s Just a Matter of Time Before ISIS Attacks America
    • ISIS attack on West ‘a question of timing’: Former CIA chief
    • How Much of a Threat is Isis to the West?
    • Daily Kos: ISIS ‘Politicians’ Are No Threat to U.S., So ‘Stop Freaking Out’ About Them

      In a Sunday-morning post, Daily Kos blogger Mark Sumner argued that the “threat ISIS represents to the United States” is “[e]xactly none” and urged us not to overreact now the way we supposedly did after 9/11 and consequently “hand over freedoms for an illusion of safety. The NSA reading your email and listening in on your phone, idiots mistaking a dropped t-shirt at the Mexican border for the prayer rug of invading Muslims, TSA workers who know you more intimately than your spouse. Those are bin Laden’s victories.”

    • Edward Snowden the Most Wanted Man in the World
    • Venice Film Festival: Latin American Film Birdman to Open

      One of the movies that tackles these topics is “Good Kill”, from the U.S. director Andrew Niccol. This film explores the guilt of a man that controls militar drones to kill Taliban people.

    • Gaza live: Hamas finance official killed in Israeli strikes

      The Israeli army has released what it says is a page from a seized Hamas training manual that would appear to support its case that Palestinian militants deliberately use the cover of residential areas for combat operations.

    • Gaza live: Hamas manual backing civilians as shields found, claims Israel

      Israeli Army says it has found manual showing Hamas tactic of using civilians as shields

    • Gaza live: We will arm Palestine, says Iran as conflict spirals

      Tehran will “accelerate” arming Palestinians in retaliation for Israel deploying a spy drone over Iran, which was shot down, a military commander said on Monday.

      “We will accelerate the arming of the West Bank and we reserve the right to give any response,” said General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, commander of aerial forces of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, in a statement on their official website sepahnews.com.

    • Three killed in Brazil prison riot

      Two prisoners were beheaded and another one died after being thrown off the roof in a riot that erupted in a jail in southern Brazil.

    • Militants Release U.S. Writer Held in Syria Since 2012

      U.S. freelance writer Peter Theo Curtis, who was abducted in Syria and held by militants from al Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front, was unexpectedly freed Sunday. Curtis went missing in October 2012 after crossing into northern Syria from Turkey. Negotiations for his release were mediated by Qatar, and the United Nations facilitated his handover in the Golan Heights Sunday evening. Curtis’s release came just days after the Islamic State posted a video online showing the execution of U.S. journalist James Foley. After the video was released, reports emerged that European countries and organizations had paid ransoms averaging over $2.5 million to negotiate the release of more than a dozen citizens held with Foley. The terms of Curtis’s release are unclear, but U.S. officials denied paying a ransom. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said, “The U.S. government does not make concessions to terrorists.”

    • Iran TV shows off allegedly downed Israeli drone
    • Iran Shoots Down ‘Israeli Drone’ Near Nuclear Site
    • Iran says it downed Israeli drone near nuclear site
    • Iran ‘will arm Palestinians’ after Israel drone downed
    • Israel targets 2 Gaza mosques in latest airstrikes
    • Netanyahu Warns Gazans to Leave Hamas Sites
    • Gaza tower block collapses after Israeli air strike

      A block of residential apartments in Gaza City has collapsed following an Israeli airstrike on Saturday night. An Israeli military spokeswoman said the building was being used as a command centre by Hamas, but local residents say it was purely residential.

    • Syrian govt ‘ready to cooperate’ with US on IS militants

      Any US air strikes against Islamist militants in Syria must be coordinated with the country’s government, according to the Syrian foreign minister.

    • Washington Foreign Policy Hands Make The Case For The Unthinkable: An Alliance With Assad

      Revenge of the realists. “It is not in our interest to defeat Assad as long as groups like ISIS will be winners.”

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Privacy

    • Casualties of Cyber Warfare

      American and Chinese companies are getting caught in the crossfire of the brewing cyber war.

    • Germany spying on Turkey for ‘38 years’

      German foreign intelligence agency has been tapping Turkey for almost four decades, reports Focus amid the ongoing spy scandal between Berlin and Ankara. Some German officials defend the practice, saying that not all NATO allies can be treated as friends.

    • Facebook Messenger Hoax: Illegal Conversations Are Being Automatically Sent To Police

      A new Facebook Messenger hoax claims that illegal conversations being held over private messenger conversations are being analyzed and automatically sent to police. The hoax specifically targets users of the new Facebook Messenger app, and it claims that 250 have already been arrested for their illegal conversations.

    • Spying blind: How polls provide cover for domestic espionage

      Using inappropriately vague and misleading questions, polls have found an American public evenly divided in their support of NSA domestic espionage — and on whether Edward Snowden’s role in revealing the breadth and depth of it makes him a patriot or a traitor. Closer scrutiny indicates these divisions are more likely the result of systemic methodological biases in the polls than an expression of genuine opinion. This points to a far more troubling problem: Bad polls subvert a fair and balanced public debate on mass government spying, resulting in potentially anti-democratic remedies.

    • What others say: USA Freedom Act a testimony to informed public debate

      A little more than a year after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the federal government was collecting and storing the telephone records of millions of Americans, Congress is poised to end the program and provide significant protection for a broad range of personal information sought by government investigators.

      Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has proposed a version of the bill that is significantly more protective of privacy than one passed by the House in May. Like the House bill, Leahy’s proposal would end the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone “metadata” — information about the source, destination and duration of phone calls that investigators can “query” in search of possible connections to foreign terrorism.

    • A closer look at the issue of the NSA and building spyware into apps
    • The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google

      The National Security Agency is secretly providing data to nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies with a “Google-like” search engine built to share more than 850 billion records about phone calls, emails, cellphone locations, and internet chats, according to classified documents obtained by The Intercept.

      The documents provide the first definitive evidence that the NSA has for years made massive amounts of surveillance data directly accessible to domestic law enforcement agencies. Planning documents for ICREACH, as the search engine is called, cite the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration as key participants.

      ICREACH contains information on the private communications of foreigners and, it appears, millions of records on American citizens who have not been accused of any wrongdoing. Details about its existence are contained in the archive of materials provided to The Intercept by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

      Earlier revelations sourced to the Snowden documents have exposed a multitude of NSA programs for collecting large volumes of communications. The NSA has acknowledged that it shares some of its collected data with domestic agencies like the FBI, but details about the method and scope of its sharing have remained shrouded in secrecy.

    • Corporations Spy on Nonprofits With Impunity

      Here’s a dirty little secret you won’t see in the daily papers: Corporations conduct espionage against U.S. nonprofit organizations without fear of being brought to justice.

      Yes, that means using a great array of spycraft and snoopery, including planned electronic surveillance, wiretapping, information warfare, infiltration, dumpster diving and so much more.

      The evidence abounds.

      For example, six years ago, based on extensive documentary evidence, James Ridgeway reported in Mother Jones on a major corporate espionage scheme by Dow Chemical focused on Greenpeace and other environmental and food activists.

      Greenpeace was running a potent campaign against Dow’s use of chlorine to manufacture paper and plastics. Dow grew worried and eventually desperate.

      Ridgeway’s article and subsequent revelations produced jaw-dropping information about how Dow’s private investigators, from the firm Beckett Brown International (BBI), hired:

      • An off-duty DC police officer who gained access to Greenpeace trash dumpsters at least 55 times;

      • a company called NetSafe Inc., staffed by former National Security Agency (NSA) employees expert in computer intrusion and electronic surveillance; and,

      • a company called TriWest Investigations, which obtained phone records of Greenpeace employees or contractors. BBI’s notes to its clients contain verbatim quotes that they attribute to specific Greenpeace employees.

      Using this information, Greenpeace filed a lawsuit against Dow Chemical, Dow’s PR firms Ketchum and Dezenhall Resources, and others, alleging trespass on Greenpeace’s property, invasion of privacy by intrusion, and theft of confidential documents.

    • FBI scuttles contested $500 million, no-bid deal with Motorola

      In the face of multiple vendor protests, the FBI has cancelled plans to hand industry giant Motorola Solutions Inc. a sole-source contract worth up to $500 million, saying that it will reassess how to upgrade the bureau’s antiquated nationwide two-way radio network.

      The FBI had argued, in a justification for skirting competitive bidding requirements, that switching to another vendor would force the purchase of a complete new system costing $1.2 billion. The existing Motorola network has proprietary features that can’t interact with non-Motorola equipment, so the FBI said, sticking with Motorola would extend the use of equipment worth $300 million.

    • For sale: Systems that can secretly track where cellphone users go around the globe

      Makers of surveillance systems are offering governments across the world the ability to track the movements of almost anybody who carries a cellphone, whether they are blocks away or on another continent.

  • Civil Rights

    • Behold, John Brennan’s Scary Memo!
    • Liberal candidates never seem to satisfy liberal voters’ expectations: Farmer

      It seems the worst thing that can befall a liberal is to actually win an election for public office. Just ask President Obama or, better still, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.

      Each man’s election was hailed by liberals as a kind of Second Coming, the arrival of Nirvana, the ultimate rejection, even repudiation, of their predecessors, George W. Bush and Michael Bloomberg, and of conservatism itself.

    • The Reclamation of Torture

      Torture ConceptTorture is making a comeback. Not the practice, at least in this country, but the word. For a decade, politicians and the media fenced the term off to keep it from contaminating their description of American behavior. But gradually, the word is being reclaimed. We should pay close attention to this development, for as we rediscover words that were once taboo, we define anew what it means to be an American.

    • The Ignored History of the Migrant Refugee Crisis

      Friday July 25 will not make history as the first time a war criminal was greeted at the White House. Nevertheless, this was the day that Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina, who has been condemned for his role in the torture and murder of civilians by the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission as well as journalists and academics, sat down with President Obama. Along with the Presidents of El Salvador and Honduras, the Heads of State gathered to discuss the causes of the massive northern exodus from Central America, as well as the 50,000 migrants—largely women and children—that have already been detained by the US government for crossing the border. The silence about the literal skeletons in Molina’s closet reveals a much larger historical legacy that has been ignored in the discourse around the border crisis.

    • Mubarak resisted US pressure to give up the Sinai: The Secret Files

      Towards the end of his tenure, ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak resisted pressures from Washington to cede Egyptian territory in the Sinai Peninsula to help create a Palestinian state, former senior members of Mubarak’s ruling party told Asharq Al-Awsat.

    • Russia’s Humanitarian ‘Invasion’

      Official Washington’s war-hysteria machine is running at full speed again after Russia unilaterally dispatched a convoy of trucks carrying humanitarian supplies to the blockaded Ukrainian city of Luhansk, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

    • Americans are back on the war bandwagon

      Boosting US military involvement in Iraq will make matters worse.

    • Massachusetts SWAT teams claim they’re private corporations, immune from open records laws

      As part of the American Civil Liberties Union’s recent report on police militarization, the Massachusetts chapter of the organization sent open records requests to SWAT teams across that state. It received an interesting response.

    • Cornel West: “He posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency”

      Cornel West is a professor at Union Theological Seminary and one of my favorite public intellectuals, a man who deals in penetrating analyses of current events, expressed in a pithy and highly quotable way.

      [...]

      And we ended up with a brown-faced Clinton. Another opportunist. Another neoliberal opportunist. It’s like, “Oh, no, don’t tell me that!” I tell you this, because I got hit hard years ago, but everywhere I go now, it’s “Brother West, I see what you were saying. Brother West, you were right. Your language was harsh and it was difficult to take, but you turned out to be absolutely right.” And, of course with Ferguson, you get it reconfirmed even among the people within his own circle now, you see. It’s a sad thing. It’s like you’re looking for John Coltrane and you get Kenny G in brown skin.

    • Cop Assigned To Ferguson Protests Threatens Attorney General Holder

      “AG Holder is in St. Louis Today. I should go in early and punch him in the nose for so many different reasons.” – Tweet by Sgt. Mike Weston, Velda City Police

    • Student’s Story About Shooting A Pet Dinosaur With A Gun Ends In Suspension, Arrest

      It would appear that Stone was only “disturbing” school officials who seemed intent on finding some evidence of his desire to shoot people and was understandably frustrated that they wouldn’t believe it wasn’t some sort of threat. Whatever disturbance Stone caused was limited to a single office. There was no reason for anyone to claim, much less believe, that his written assignment, or his behavior inside that office, was “disturbing” his classmates, other classes or anyone else not directly involved.

    • Women need protection from undercover officers

      Imagine the scenario. You meet someone and, from the outset, the attraction is mutual: silently shared smiles, lingering glances. You bond over shared interests and worldviews, and exchange telephone numbers. You start sleeping together and – as your pulse quickens every time the phone rings – you realise you are falling for each other. Days are spent together, walking in parks, trips to the cinema, romantic meals; time apart becomes difficult. Eventually, your partner moves in, and for years you share everything. Maybe you even have a child together. Then – suddenly – they appear depressed and become distant. One day, they are gone, leaving only an apologetic note on the kitchen table. You then discover everything you knew about them was false. They have invented a fake identity; their backstory, opinions, entire life, all a lie. They are undercover police officers, and were sent to spy on you and your friends.

    • Handcuffed Black Youth Killed Himself, Says Coroner

      A coroner’s report obtained exclusively by NBC News directly contradicts the police version of how a 22-year-old black man died in the back seat of a Louisiana police cruiser earlier this year — but still says the man, whose hands were cuffed behind his back, shot himself.

      In a press release issued March 3, the day he died, the Louisiana State Police said Victor White III apparently shot himself in an Iberia Parish police car. According to the police statement, White had his hands cuffed behind his back when he shot himself in the back.

    • Cops admit to false reports in Malmö protest

      Police withdrew statements that ambulance personnel were attacked at the anti-Nazi demonstrations on Saturday, and reported themselves for investigation after trampling protesters.

    • Give Killer Cops a Break, Says NYT

      The message of a New York Times piece by Michael Wines and Frances Robles (8/22/14) was clear: Police officers who shoot unarmed civilians need to be be given the benefit of the doubt.

    • NRA News Praises White Vigilante Patrols That Shot African-Americans After Hurricane Katrina

      Cam Edwards, host of the National Rifle Association’s news show, claimed that after Hurricane Katrina residents of the New Orleans neighborhood Algiers “were looking out for each other by walking the streets armed with firearms.” But according to a federal hate crimes indictment and numerous media reports, after Katrina white gun-toting vigilantes in Algiers targeted African-Americans with racially motivated violence.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Police Freeze Mega Shares in Money Laundering Investigation

        New Zealand authorities have placed 18.8% of the Kim Dotcom-founded cloud hosting service Mega under restraining order. The actions involve multi-millionaire William Yan, one of Mega’s largest shareholders, who is alleged to be involved in money laundering. Mega itself is not suspected of wrong-doing.

      • Witness Offered $3.50/Hr to Testify Against Pirate Bay Founder

        Witnesses are being summoned to appear in the trial of Gottfrid Svartholm set to take place in September. A Cambodia-based former colleague of the Pirate Bay founder has been offered $3.50 per hour to attend, but heated emails with Danish authorities indicate he will not be traveling.

Links 24/8/2014: GNU/Linux Specialisation and Benchmarks

Posted in News Roundup at 4:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • China Developing Its Own OS To Take On Apple, Microsoft, and Google

    If it hasn’t been made clear enough in recent months that China would love nothing more than to cut down on its reliance to American technology companies, its just-announced decision to create its own operating system should remedy that. At first, this OS will target the desktop, but eventually, it’ll make its way to smartphones and other mobile devices.

  • Desktop

    • Specialization and the Linux Desktop

      Our benevolent dictator for life recently claimed that he was still aiming at Linux being as prevalent on the desktop as it is in the datacenter or in the cloud. The statement was meant with roaring applause from the crowd, and a few healthy, and a few not so healthy, doses of skepticism from the press. Recently, IT World asked “Does it still make sense for Linus to want the desktop for Linux?”, and Matt Asay from Tech Repubic asked “Can we please stop talking about the Linux desktop?”. Both publishers are critical of the claim that there is still room for Linux on Personal Computers, and point to Android as a Linux success story. What both articles miss though is that the flexibility of Linux, and the permissiveness of it’s open source license may be the thing that saves Linux on the desktop, just not in the way we were expecting.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linus Torvalds is my hero, says 13 year old Zachary DuPont

      Zachary DuPon is a 6th grader who will turn 13 years old soon. He used to be an Arch Linux user and is looking forward to installing Gentoo Linux soon.

      The story of Zach goes like this – his school organized a project where students were asked to write a letter to their heroes, while most kids wrote to celebrities, Zach wrote to the ‘real’ hero of the modern technology world – Linus Torvalds.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Preview Of AMD Radeon R9 290 Hawaii Open-Source Performance

        Coming up next week is a comparison of the Radeon R9 290 graphics card against various other graphics cards on the latest open-source driver. Additionally, there will be a RadeonSI Gallium3D vs. Catalyst driver comparison for the Radeon R9 290 graphics card. Unfortunately there will be no Radeon R9 290X graphics tests for lacking that GPU and having bought the R9 290 myself. For those that are anxious to see how the R9 290 performs on the open-source driver, I uploaded some initial standalone results this weekend for you to facilitate your own comparisons.

      • Open-Source AMD HSA Should Come To Fruition This Year

        AMD’s open-source OpenCL support has been lagging behind the proprietary drivers, but Bridgman says they’re trying to improve upon that too. In particular, it seems they may try to open-source more of their proprietary OpenCL driver implementation. Bridgman said, “For OpenCL not sure yet — we’re trying to get more people working on it and open up more code from our proprietary implementation, so rate of progress should improve but I don’t know how much yet.”

      • Preview Of AMD Radeon R9 290 Hawaii Open-Source Performance

        Coming up next week is a comparison of the Radeon R9 290 graphics card against various other graphics cards on the latest open-source driver. Additionally, there will be a RadeonSI Gallium3D vs. Catalyst driver comparison for the Radeon R9 290 graphics card. Unfortunately there will be no Radeon R9 290X graphics tests for lacking that GPU and having bought the R9 290 myself. For those that are anxious to see how the R9 290 performs on the open-source driver, I uploaded some initial standalone results this weekend for you to facilitate your own comparisons.

    • Benchmarks

      • Intel Bay Trail Performance With Linux 3.16/3.17 & Mesa 10.3

        The Bay Trail HD Graphics tests for this article came down to:

        - Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS with all available stable release updates.

        - The updated Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS state with then enabling the Oibaf PPA for Mesa 10.3-devel.

        - The Oibaf’ed Ubuntu LTS configuration with then installing the Linux 3.16 stable kernel.

        - The above configuration but then upgrading to the experimental Linux 3.17 kernel in Git form.

      • Radeon Graphics Yield Mixed Results With Linux 3.17 Kernel

        This article serves as a comparison of the stable Linux 3.16 kernel against the latest Linux 3.17 Git kernel when testing a range of graphics cards from the Radeon HD 5770 through the Radeon R9 270X. The system setup was maintained the same through testing and Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS was used as a host but with upgrading to the Mesa 10.3-devel and xf86-video-ati 7.4.99 Git using the Oibaf PPA. With Linux 3.16.0 and Linux 3.17 Git, the following AMD graphics cards were tested on the Intel Core i7 4790K rig:

        - Radeon HD 5770
        - Radeon HD 6870
        - Radeon HD 6950
        - Radeon HD 7850
        - Radeon HD 7950
        - Radeon R9 270X

      • Preview: OS X 10.10 Yosemite vs. Ubuntu Linux GPU Performance

        At the request of many Phoronix readers, here’s our first tests of Apple’s OS X 10.10 “Yosemite” operating system as we see how the OpenGL performance compares between it and Ubuntu Linux with an updated kernel and Mesa.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Releases in the Future

        Long post about releases ahead, brace yourselves!

        Last week we released KDE Applications and KDE Platform 4.14.

        KDE Applications, KDE Platform and KDE Workspaces were sometimes collectively referred as the “KDE Software Compilation” or “KDE SC” in short form, which is arguably a bad name, but it is what it is.

      • My TODO List for LaKademy 2014
      • Release of libmygpo-qt 1.0.8 (Qt5 support inside :) )

        I’m happy to announce the release of a new version of my project libmygpo-qt. It again has been a while, over one year since the last release. And although it took so long, this release doesn’t include many new features, except one: support for building the library with Qt5.

      • How to contribute to the KDE Frameworks Cookbook

        Im a way, the book will partly provide an alternative way to consume the content provided by KDE TechBase. Because of that, the HTML version of the book will integrate and cross-link with TechBase. The preferences of what kind of documentation should be in the book or on TechBase are not yet written in stone, and will probably develop over time. The beauty of Free Software is that it also does not matter much – the content is there and may be mixed and remixed as needed.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • gnome 3 followup

        A quick followup from my previous post about using gnome shell for a week from a sysadmin view. I got a number of responses on irc and via email. Some of them providing handy hints and solutions or at least work arounds to some of the issues I ran into. I am happy to report that everyone who offered me suggestions/workarounds/tips were very polite and many were in agreement that some of these were issues that should get fixed or implemented.

  • Distributions

    • Why I don’t distro-hop: Because work. And pain.

      In any Linux distribution I use, I’d love to have full functionality with the open Radeon graphics driver. I’d also love a packaged Catalyst driver that works with GNOME 3. I can’t get the former with anything just yet, and I can’t get the latter in Fedora due to Wayland code in GNOME 3 that doesn’t yet play with Catalyst. Since I tend to run Xfce instead of GNOME, this isn’t a deal-breaker.

    • Manjaro 0.8.10 Receives New Update Pack and New Kernels

      Manjaro 0.8.10, a Linux distribution based on well-tested snapshots of the Arch Linux repositories and 100% compatible with Arch, has received a new update pack that brings some very important updates and changes.

    • Slackware Family

      • Salix Fluxbox 14.1 Beta 1 Is Light Distro Based on Slackware

        “It’s time to revive our Fluxbox edition! Here is a first beta that is mostly untested for now, so feel free to try it out and post your findings.The Fluxbox edition is designed to bring a minimalist environment to your desktop. The default desktop layout is comprised only from the Fluxbox panel and the right click menu will bring up the Fluxbox menu, so it should be really light on resources. The file manager that is used is PCManFM.”

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • The Ubuntu Touch Image #203 Is Quite Fast And Stable

            The developers have started the work for the RTM (release to manufacturing) version of Ubuntu Touch, which will get only bug-fixes.

            Ubuntu Touch is developed on three branches: Utopic, which is the “stable” branch, the development branch utopic-devel and the RTM branch, which, unlike the two others, is not available for public yet.

            So, if you want an Ubuntu Touch version that receives all the new features in time, got for the “stable” branch. And for an Ubuntu Touch with less bugs and crashes, try the Ubuntu RTM.

          • Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn Now Uses Kernel 3.16.1

            Due to the fact that the Kernel Freeze will arrive in seven weeks, most likely, Ubuntu 14.10 will not ship with the newest version of Kernel 3.16.

          • Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) Hits Feature Freeze

            Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) is going to pass through several development stages and the Feature Freeze is just one of them. This means that developers can no longer get new features and major changes into the system, unless it’s important enough to get an exemption.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Is Open Source Becoming the De Facto Standard in the Data Center?

    Is open source positioned to become the next mode of standardization in the virtualization world?

  • Islamic State militant group used less restrictive social network

    The Islamic State extremist group began using a social networking website with less restrictions on users after other social media sites, Twitter and YouTube in particular, removed content related to the group.

    The social network called Diaspora lets users control their own personal data rather than storing the information itself, and it allows users to designate their own servers to host their data.

  • Events

    • ownCloud to organize Developer Conference in Berlin

      ownCloud is one of the most important free software projects around because we all are moving to the cloud for easy access to our data anywhere, anytime. The ‘so-called’ cloud has it’s own advantages, but it also compromises one’s ownership and control of the data. The moment you put your data on someone else’s cloud you lose the control and ownership over your own data.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Did Brendan Eich Contribute to Firefox’s Decline?

        This may sound like analyzing yesterday’s news, but I think it’s important, and more than that I need to put this here as a resource to point certain people to.

        As we probably all know Brendan Eich [co-]creator of the JavaScript scripting language, co-founder of the Mozilla project, the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation, and ex-chief technical officer of Mozilla Corporation was promoted to chief executive officer (CEO) of Mozilla on March 24, 2014 only to resign on April 3, 2014 due to controversy over his $1,000 donation to the unconstitutional California Proposition 8 in 2008.

  • Freedom

    • on the Dark Ages of Free Software: a “Free Service Definition”?

      Free Software community is winning a war that is becoming increasingly pointless: yes, users have 100% Free Software thin client at their fingertips [or are really a few steps from there]. But all their relevant computations happen elsewhere, on remote systems they do not control, in the Cloud.

  • Misc.

Leftovers

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • 9-year-old trains to be ‘caliphate’ jihadi

      In Raqqah, heavily-armed jihadists are seen celebrating on US armoured vehicles seized during their advances in Iraq, while sharia police patrol streets and markets with rifles over their shoulders. Patrol chief Abu Obida orders traders to remove a poster showing “infidels,” then blithely tells a man to change the fabric on his wife’s veil.

    • US weighs direct military action against ISIS in Syria

      The Obama administration is debating a more robust intervention in Syria, including possible American air strikes, in a significant escalation of its weeks-long military assault on the Islamic extremist group that has destabilized neighbouring Iraq and killed an American journalist US, officials said.

    • The Republican Embrace of ISIL-Type Violence

      Remember when two cops were shot by homegrown white conservative terrorists in Las Vegas and Paul Waldman at the Washington Post, wrote, “It’s long past time for prominent conservatives and Republicans to do some introspection and ask whether they’re contributing to outbreaks of right-wing violence”?

      Remember when Republicans rejected the idea that their rhetoric could incite violence, let alone that it is violent?

      And think again about how Muslims should get a bullet in the head and pro-immigration Republicans should be shot and hanged.

      Remember these instances of violent right-wing rhetoric?

    • British, American special forces forming hunter killer unit ‘Task Force Black’ to smash Islamic State

      Britain’s elite special forces along with US special forces are forming a unit called Task Force Black to hunt down the killer of James Foley and smash the Islamic State.

      According to the Mirror and as reported by the Sunday People, the undercover unit’s aim will be to “cut the head off the snake” by hitting the command structure of the Islamist terror group responsible for a trail of atrocities across Iraq and Syria.

    • Op-Ed: Mystery plane bombs Tripoli again for a second night

      Most reports do not mention Haftar’s links to the CIA nor do the most recent reports I have read mention Haftar’s own remarks to the effect that these bombings are a joint effort with the international community.

    • What’s the truth behind Malaysian Flight 17 downing?: CIA Analysts Won’t Back White House Claims of Russian Culpability

      With the US continuing to push its submissive European “allies” towards an ever more confrontational stance towards Russia over the crisis in Ukraine (a crisis initially provoked by the US itself through CIA and State Department actions that led to the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government), the world appears headed towards a dangerous renewed Cold War between the world’s two nuclear superpowers.

      A central part of that campaign by Washington has been the effort to blame the downing of Malaysian Flight 17, which killed all 298 passengers and crew, on Russia, or failing that, on pro-Russian separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine. This campaign has used innuendo, falsified evidence and, weirdly, spurious and sometimes absurd “evidence” circulating in various social media — all of which which people like Secretary of State John Kerry and president Obama himself have tried to say “prove” that Russia, or at least a Russian-provided high-altitude BUK anti-aircraft missile, was responsible for the downing.

    • Here’s How The Kremlin’s English-Language Propaganda Organs Are Spinning Russia’s Incursion Into Ukraine

      The current situation in Ukraine is reaching a head as Russian armour and aid trucks are freely flowing over the boarder, an act that Ukraine has called a “direct invasion.”

      For the first time in months of crisis, NATO accused Russia of directly intervening in Ukraine’s restive east, where Kiev has been fighting Russian-supported separatists.

    • Reports Of ISIS Beheadings Are Horrifyingly Common

      During the first two weeks of August, Islamic State fighters killed 700 members of the al-Sheitaat tribe in Syria’s Deir al-Zor province, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Many of them were beheaded, the organization said. Islamic State militants had been battling the tribe since seizing two oil fields in Syria in July.

    • Here’s Everything You Need to Know About Hamas

      “Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Sexton explained. “It was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a cleric and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood himself.”

      Sexton said Yassin founded in Hamas in 1987, during the first intifada.

      “In 1988, Hamas established a charter, a mission statement,” Sexton continued. “It said that its goal is to raise the flag of Allah over every inch of Palestine. Well, that’s a problem, because when they say Palestine, they mean Israel.”

    • How Snowden Complicates the Prevention of Future Leaks

      George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and the most prominent members of their teams feel differently, of course, which helps explain why Snowden became a whistleblower in the first place. The national-security state is its own worst enemy, doing more to undermine its own legitimacy than its critics ever could.

    • The truth about Iraq’s liberation

      US air strikes on Iraq are part of a criminal scheme to safeguard western control of the country’s oil, writes Dahlia Wasfi

    • US must consider partnering with Assad to defeat IS: former CIA agent

      The Obama administration is still weighing up how to respond to the Islamic State terrorist group after the beheading of American journalist James Foley. Pressure is growing on president Obama to do more than the current strategy of airstrikes on IS targets in Iraq. Chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Martin Dempsey said IS can only be defeated by countering Sunni militancy in Syria. The World Today spoke to former CIA counter-terrorist officer Patrick Skinner.

    • Why Washington’s War on Terror Failed

      There are extraordinary elements in the present U.S. policy in Iraq and Syria that are attracting surprisingly little attention. In Iraq, the U.S. is carrying out air strikes and sending in advisers and trainers to help beat back the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (better known as ISIS) on the Kurdish capital, Erbil. The U.S. would presumably do the same if ISIS surrounds or attacks Baghdad. But in Syria, Washington’s policy is the exact opposite: there the main opponent of ISIS is the Syrian government and the Syrian Kurds in their northern enclaves. Both are under attack from ISIS, which has taken about a third of the country, including most of its oil and gas production facilities.

    • ‘Germans fed up with NATO allies & US wars’ – Frmr Defense Secretary

  • Transparency Reporting

    • When Google Met WikiLeaks Note

      A pungent account by Assange of the banality of corporate evil, as he terms Google. Assange says the exchange with Eric Schmidt and colleagues may be his best interview — which composes about half the volume.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • FRACK TO FRONT

      Earlier in the summer, SchNEWS broke the story of the infamous Infrastructure Bill. The new law, still winding its way through parliament, will allow for any public land to be ‘transferred’ via a Government body to private developers.The Infrastructure Bill is still very much happening, and it’s got even uglier. We’re talking compulsory fracking uglier.

  • Finance

    • In Detroit, Water Crisis Symbolizes Decline, and Hope

      Nearly 19,500 Detroiters have had their water service interrupted since March 1. The Water and Sewerage Department, under pressure to reduce more than $90 million in bad debt, ordered shutoffs for customers who owed at least $150 or had fallen at least two months behind on their bills. The decision to take such drastic measures, done with little warning, ignited a controversy that prompted protests and arrests, more bad publicity for the struggling city, global dismay, and a warning from the United Nations.

    • How a degree from Duke University dashed my dreams of buying a home

      I didn’t realize just how much of an impact student loan debt would have until I attempted to buy a house

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • BBC’s long struggle to present the facts without fear or favour

      Under such circumstances, it is no wonder that the BBC can appear like a damaged, bullied child, defensive and afraid. The stakes for BBC News are immeasurably high. If we believe in the BBC as a positive and beneficial ideological intervention in our lives, if we believe in it as the greatest, and best loved, signifier of Britain there is, then things have to change – outside the BBC as well as inside it. The bullies need to lay off. The whole culture that surrounds it needs to become less vituperative, more mature.

  • Censorship

    • Europe: A Union of Common Censorship

      Freedom is fundamental to prosperity. Those who cherish freedom most are often those who have not always enjoyed it. Thus the souls whose lives were blighted by Communist totalitarianism often rejoice at the simplest pleasures, even 25 years after the evils of the system were unraveled across Europe. Their joy in being able to travel has been hugely enhanced by that core Western value – freedom. Unfortunately, just as the European Union appears to have forgotten how to create prosperity, so, too, it seems to have gone somewhat patchy on the notion of freedom.

    • India sacks movie censor chief over bribery charge

      MUMBAI: India has removed the chief executive of its film censorship board after he was arrested on accusations he took a bribe to clear a movie for screening.

    • Gavin McInnes Makes a Great Argument Against Censorship

      Last week, performance artist, professional agitator, and Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes took to Thought Catalog—a publication known for particularly vapid and terrible millennial musings—to speculate about how “transphobia is perfectly natural.” People were outraged. People demanded the piece be removed. Thought Catalog responded by slapping on a big old trigger warning—if you go to the McInnes article page now, you’ll get a notice that “the article you are trying to read has been reported by the community as hateful or abusive content” before being allowed to proceed—but like hell it was going to take down such spectacular clickbait.

    • Canada’s despicable climate censorship: Government scientists need permission to tweet basic facts

      New documents reveal the extent of the government’s maddening policy of “suppression through bureaucracy”

    • Twitter’s busy week: Censorship rules and changing timelines
    • ‘Recovered Voices’ initiative studies grim history of Nazi censorship

      The Nazis, of course, had their terrible guidelines based on religion, race or modernist “decadence.”

  • Privacy

    • Corporate hack attack fears drive flash of cash

      Mr Snowden’s exposé revealed that the NSA had gained access to large internet companies’ servers stored in clouds, and inserted “back doors” into encryption software. In the immediate aftermath there were fears that distrust in US cloud-storage providers could cost such companies dearly, with the highest estimates forecasting a 25 per cent hit to overall IT service provider revenues globally.

    • White Paper: Identifying back doors, attack points, and surveillance mechanisms in iOS devices

      I received word from the editor-in-chief that the author of an accepted paper has permission to publish it on his website, and so I am now making my research available to anyone who wishes to read it. The following paper, “Identifying back doors, attack points, and surveillance mechanisms in iOS devices” first appeared published in The International Journal of Digital Forensics and Incident Response in March 2014′s publication. The Editor-in-Chief is Eoghan Casey, with the Information Security Institute, John Hopkins University, Maryland. The editorial board consists of researchers from Google, Microsoft, LG, The Mitre Corporation, and a number of universities. This paper was the basis for my talk at the HOPE/X conference in NYC in July 2014. Please enjoy.

    • THE WEST IS LOSING TURKEY

      The announcements were both as expected and made one smile. Evidently, the main reason is the ambiguity of the policies implemented by the Erdoğan government, which shows an unbounded character according to them. Aside from wiretapping some politicians and bureaucrats of Turkey, the BND also probably used other communication tools such as the Internet. Former BND chief Wieck stated that such authority could only be granted by the German government, while intelligence experts underlined that such an operation could only be conducted by using some intermediaries in Turkey.

    • Germany spies on Albania to monitor ‘organised crime’: report

      Germany’s secret service has been spying on Albania for years to keep tabs on “organised crime”, Der Spiegel claimed on Saturday, days after it was revealed that Berlin had been eavesdropping on Turkey.

  • Civil Rights

    • Ferguson: officer relieved of duty after video of racist remarks surfaces

      A police officer involved in the protests over Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, has been relieved of his duty after video surfaced of him making racist and derogatory remarks.

      Dan Page was recorded in April giving a speech in which he described President Barack Obama as an illegal immigrant, and railed against Muslims and gay people. “I’m into diversity – I kill everybody,” he said.

    • High school student arrested for writing story about shooting dinosaur

      When a South Carolina student was given an assignment by his teacher to create a Facebook-type status report telling something interesting about himself, he allegedly wrote “I killed my neighbor’s pet dinosaur. I bought the gun to take care of the business.”

    • John Yoo and The Senate Torture Report

      John Choon Yoo, aka John Yoo, authored the Torture Memos used to justify torture of human beings by the Bush Administration.

      [...]

      The SSCI Torture report has been approved for public release. However, the SSCI and the CIA are fighting over the CIA’s substantial redactions to the torture report summary. The torture report is 6,000 pages, adopted by the SSCI in December 2012; it is the most comprehensive report on the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a euphemism for torture.

    • This guy accepted a ‘water-boarding challenge’

      Some sheep have been bold enough to show their bravery by accepting the Ice Bucket Challenge. Others demand a greater feat, such as proving one’s capability to read on a fifth-grade level. But some motherfuckers? Some motherfuckers just don’t know when to quit. Some motherfuckers decidedly accepted a means of CIA-endorsed torture–not so much for the ALS children–but, like Bill Burr has already professed, for their own two and a half seconds of fame.

    • Journalist James Risen: will he be jailed for not revealing source?

      While President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder have asked this week for law enforcement in Ferguson, Mo., to not jail reporters for doing their jobs, press advocates are asking the administration and the Justice Department to stop prosecuting a New York Times national security correspondent for doing his. As Ashley Westerman reports from Washington, DC, the years-­long case of James Risen has had a chilling effect on journalists and whistleblowers.

    • The administration should not press reporter James Risen to reveal a source

      LAST WEEK President Obama offered some lofty words about journalism and democracy. Commenting on the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., he declared, “Here, in the United States of America, police should not be bullying or arresting journalists who are just trying to do their jobs and report to the American people on what they see on the ground.”

    • Obama Admits ‘We Tortured Some Folks,’ But Is the Bush Era Over?

      As Taguba noted in his piece for the Times, he knows “from experience that oversight will help the C.I.A. — as it helped the United States military.” He wrote: “Ten years ago, I was directed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior officer in Iraq, to investigate allegations of detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. My report’s findings, which prompted a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, documented a systemic problem: military personnel had perpetrated ‘numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses.’” He believes that the reason American’s support for terrorism has increased in recent years only because there has been no honest accounting. He cited a 2012 YouGov poll and research conducted by Amy Zegart of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Although several years old, that survey showed that 41 percent of Americans supported torturing prisoners, a 14-percentage point increase from 2007. “It turns out that Americans don’t just like the general idea of torture more now,” Zegart wrote for Foreign Policy in September 2012. “They like specific torture techniques more too.”

    • Saudi Arabia executes 19 in one half of August in ‘disturbing surge of beheadings’

      Saudi Arabia has beheaded at least 19 people since the beginning of August in a surge of executions, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.

    • ‘Comprehensive’ CIA Torture Report Won’t Even Name Well-Known Architects of Torture Program

      Some familiar names will be missing from the Senate Intelligence Committee’s long-awaited report on the CIA’s torture program, VICE News has learned.

      Notably, two retired Air Force psychologists, Dr. Bruce Jessen and Dr. James Mitchell, who have been credited with being the architects of the CIA’s so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” have their names redacted in the 480-page executive summary of the report, according to current and former US officials knowledgeable about the contents of the document.

    • The killer on the (Saudi) king’s highway

      The House of Saud, directly and indirectly, and the proverbial wealthy Gulf Cooperation Council donors are the Mom and Dad of ISIS. All duly vetted/approved by the industrial-military-Orwellian-Panopticon complex.

    • Leaks, Whistleblowers, and the Media’s Right to Report

      Their stories are not new. What Spione brought to the screen was the humanity of the whistleblowers and the patriotic idealism that compelled them to work in government agencies like the NSA and the CIA and then to speak out against the excesses they saw there. If anything, Silenced dramatizes how the landscape of government secrecy has changed dramatically since 9/11 and the war on terror. It makes the argument that whistleblowers play an essential role: Leaks are a necessary prophylactic, especially when they reveal the abuse of public authority and the harm done to the rights of citizens.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Police: Finding Pirate Bay Documents is Too Expensive

        City of London Police have denied a Freedom of Information request for access to correspondence relating to The Pirate Bay. According to the police it would take more than 18 hours to locate the requested information and would therefore cost too much money.

08.23.14

Links 23/8/2014: GNU/Linux Growth

Posted in News Roundup at 7:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • The whale that swallowed New Zealand’s election campaign

    A spectacular exposé alleging prime minister John Key and his National party colleagues were involved in dirty tricks campaigns has created the most significant political maelstrom in nearly six years in office and blown the government’s re-election strategy dramatically off course, writes Toby Manhire

  • Women significantly outnumber teenage boys in gamer demographics

    Adult female gamers have unseated boys under the age of 18 as the largest video game-playing demographic in the U.S., according to a recently published study from the Entertainment Software Association, a trade group focused the U.S. gaming industry.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • ASIO explains why Australians can fight for some terrorists and not others

      In the past week, the Abbott government has revealed a new package of anti-terrorism laws targeting Australian jihadists returning from Iraq and Syria that aroused the resentment of several Islamic community representatives. Recently, ASIO chief David Irvine decided to meet with a team of Arab-speaking journalists in Sydney in an attempt to communicate his message, which centred on the distinction between a War on Terror and a War on Islam.

    • Events in Ferguson show why we read the news: entertainment

      When the hysteria began following the revelations about NSA surveillance, I predicted that we’d have an enjoyable hissy fit — then nothing would change (details here). And 14 months later little has changed (perhaps nothing). Now the events in Ferguson MO have sparked a new cycle of outrage over the militarization of police. My prediction is that again little or nothing will change. Here we consider why public outrage has so little effect: news is just entertainment.

    • Indian Army seals cross-border tunnel that sneaks in terrorists

      After Modi ministry came to power, violations per day by Pakistan army has escalated. The reason being that cross border infiltration by terrorists has been stopped by Indian Army. The combined efforts of Indian Army acting on NSA’s advise based in IM, RAW and IB is making J&K becoming hot for jihadis. The tunnel was discovered two weeks back and since then Pakistan has not stopped attack on Indian Army outposts. The Pak Army has admitted that two civilians were dead and soldiers injured on their side.

    • Demand Swells for Straight Answers on the Downing of Malaysian Airlines’ MH17 in Ukraine

      A long list of prominent individuals has signed, a number of organizations will be promoting next week, and you can be one of the first to sign right now, a petition titled “Call For Independent Inquiry of the Airplane Crash in Ukraine and its Catastrophic Aftermath.”

    • ISIS a Jewish Plot? Propaganda and Islamic Jihad

      The combination of events – first, the anti-Semitism expressed by IS supporters and, then, the anti-Semitism by calling IS itself a Jewish plot – is more than simply dizzying. It is treacherous. And it can lead only to the creation of more widespread Jew hate, and thorough confusion among politicians, security agencies, and the police.

    • A pleasant surprise for Washington

      Germany’s announcement that it was ready to arm Iraqi Kurdish fighters against IS was neither expected nor demanded by the US. And yet it’s a welcome boost for the Obama administration – and also helps Berlin.

    • Did an Israeli Sniper Kill an Unarmed Man in Gaza?

      An Israeli activist has told Channel 4 News that he has gathered testimony from three Israeli soldiers who said they witnessed Shamaly’s killing. “They were completely convinced that what they did was wrong,” the Israeli activist, Eran Efrati, said. “They were guilty. The man in the green shirt was not any threat to their lives.”

    • Assassin’s Creed: Taking Out Individuals as a War Strategy

      Israel was the first country to incorporate targeted assassination into its law books, followed by America, which since the September 11, 2001, attacks has perfected the use of sophisticated drones to target terrorist leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

    • How many Palestinian civilians is a single militant worth?

      As of Thursday, 76.8 percent of the 2,090 fatalities documented by the Gazan human rights organization Mizan have been civilians.

    • Drone strike kills 6 Pakistani militants, including senior commander in Kunar

      At least six members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) were killed following a drone strike in eastern Kunar province of Afghanistan.

      Provincial police chief for Kunar province, Gen. Abdul Habib Syed Khel, confirmed that six Pakistani militants were killed following a drone strike by coalition forces.

    • Hamas executes 18 alleged spies for Israel

      Gaza gunmen executed 18 Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel Friday, including seven who were lined up behind a mosque with bags over their heads and shot in front of hundreds of people.

      The killings came in response to Israel’s deadly airstrike against three top Hamas military commanders.The incident occurred after more than six weeks of heavy fighting between Israel and Hamas.

    • US debates more robust Syria intervention

      The Obama administration is debating a more robust intervention in Syria, including possible US airstrikes, in a significant escalation of its weeks-long military assault on the Islamic extremist group that has destabilised neighbouring Iraq and killed a US journalist, officials said on Friday.

    • Hamas executes ‘collaborators’
    • Hamas admits its men abducted Israeli teens, says its leaders didn’t know

      A Hamas official admitted Friday that militants from his group abducted three Israeli teens in the West Bank in June, but the official said the kidnappers did not tell their leaders about the action.

    • Gaza mortar fire kills child in southern Israel

      An Israeli child was killed by mortar fire from Gaza on Friday, the army said, bringing the number of civilians killed in Israel during the 46-day conflict with Hamas to four.

    • Israel says boy killed by Gaza mortar bomb
    • Jury acquits anti-drone protester

      A six-person jury acquitted anti-drone protester Russell Brown on July 31 in an East Syracuse, N.Y., court of all charges after he testified about how current U.S. murderous drone strikes are like the U.S. war crimes committed during the ­Vietnam War.

      Brown was on trial for an April 2013 protest at Hancock National Guard Airbase in Syracuse. He smeared himself with red dye to represent the death of drone victims and lay down in a roadway in front of the base. He was arrested and faced charges carrying a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

    • Egypt Army Bombs Weapons Facility Allegedly Linked To Hamas
    • Families of Victims of One Drone Strike in Yemen Paid more than an Entire Year’s Worth of Victims in Afghanistan

      In the twisted world of compensation for errant drone attacks, an attempt at making up for killing innocent civilians in one country has proven far more valuable than a year’s worth of slaughter in another nation.

    • Yemen: Victims of U.S. Drone Strike on Wedding Party Got $1 Million Payout

      The family members of 12 people killed and others injured in a U.S. drone strike on a wedding party in Yemen last year have received condolence payments totaling more than $1 million. Documents provided by the group Reprieve to The Washington Post show the payment ostensibly came from the Yemeni government, but the high amount suggests the U.S. government is providing reimbursement. The documents also show the identities of those killed. They include a 29-year-old man identified as an associate of a Yemeni group working against Islamist militancy.

    • OPINION: Violations of International Law Denigrate U.N.
    • Civilian Victims Of U.S. Drone Strike In Yemen Reportedly Receive Over $1 Million

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Rupert Murdoch, the man who put the ‘twit’ into Twitter

      It’s a time when PR outfits have to bat on through the dog days of summer with very little of any substance to rely on. So they pump out a welter of verbiage in the hope that equally desperate journalists will discern a gleaming nugget lurking in the dross, pick it up,and give it a polish. Indeed, it is so bad I actually came very close to writing a piece about a GPS service that tracks the whereabouts of cats on their nocturnal peregrinations. In the end though I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Dignity, you know, always dignity.

      That said, I couldn’t resist this one. The Foxy one himself, for it is he, Rupert Murdoch, an occasional user of Twitter after discovering social media in the halcyon years of his mid-dotage, has taken to the medium again to express the opinion that Google is worse than America’s NSA!

      Here’s the twit’s deathless Twitter in full, “NSA privacy invasion bad but nothing compared to Google”. Now that has to be enough to make the aforementioned tabby chortle it’s little furry bootees off.

  • Censorship

    • The Military Is Banning Soldiers from Reading Documents Everyone Else Can See

      The government isn’t just keeping track of what civilians are looking at online. They’re also concerned with the browsing habits of their own soldiers.

    • Islamic State joins Diaspora, let’s debunk some myths

      Diaspora, an open source, distributed social network, has come under fire recently for not being able to censor members of Islamic State in the same fashion that Facebook and Twitter have.

      Recent articles in the mainstream press explain how Diaspora doesn’t have a central body with the ability to remove users or their posts because of the distributed nature of the network, however these claims seem ill-considered as they aren’t correct.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Gabbard calls for demilitarizing police

      Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has called for demilitarizing of American police.

    • Green Party: Demilitarize the police, end racial disparities and bring justice to the criminal justice system

      Greens speak out in the wake of the police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., warn about the emergence of a police state

    • Godwin’s Law

      Keep the sentiment of Godwin’s Law in mind as you read, listen, write and speak here and elsewhere. Hyperbole exists, can be sneaky or unintended, and actually can ruin the importance of what you have to say. The legitimacy of your point could be threatened by such dire comparisons. If you don’t even bother trying to catch it, well then truly, you are worse than Hitler.

    • Militarization of our police threatens democracy

      The killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the heavy-handed police tactics that have followed point to a growing problem in this country: the threat of a police state that endangers not only public safety, but democracy itself.

      After the fatal shooting of the unarmed Brown by Ferguson officer Darren Wilson, local law enforcement descended upon the city like an occupying force, complete with military weapons, tear gas, rubber bullets and armored personnel carriers.

    • Cop-Tech: The Inevitable Future of Policing

      By now, we’ve heard much about the militarization of police forces, but not so much about other advances in cop-tech that could be as consequential. With national attention lingering on the issue of police brutality — some 400 police killings take place per year, according to USA Today — questions around new policing technologies are pressing. Some of the new gadgets, like Taser’s officer cam, are meant to foster accountability. But others aim to keep pace with increasingly connected and tech-savvy criminals. The civil libertarians are fretting.

    • The Same Hashish They Give Out

      As the public release of the Senate’s report on a four-year investigation into the CIA’s torture program approaches, John Brennan, the agency’s director, is in an uncomfortable spotlight. The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is responsible for overseeing the CIA, has accused the agency of abusing its power. See Brave New Films’ short video below.

    • White House Touts Petition Site But Many Await Replies

      The White House could hardly contain itself earlier this month when President Barack Obama signed a bill allowing American consumers to unlock their cell phones. The bill was driven in part by the White House’s own petition website, “We The People,” and touted as an example of a new model of citizen advocacy influencing change in Washington.

    • Police officer suspended after branding Ferguson protesters ‘rabid dogs’

      St Louis police say it has suspended one of its officers expressed contempt for the protesters on his Facebook account

    • Elderly Hackney pastor has heart attack after ‘botched police raid’

      A police spokesman confirmed officers had obtained a warrant for the raid, but admitted no drugs were found or arrests made. She added: “We are aware an official complaint is being lodged. Under these circumstances it would be inappropriate for us to comment at this time.”

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • DeMaio Campaign Says Peters Waffles on Net Neutrality

      The Carl DeMaio campaign on Thursday accused Rep. Scott Peters of siding with the cable industry in efforts to undermine net neutrality.

      Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers should treat all data on the Internet equally. Cable industry leaders argue that providers of data-intensive services such as movie delivery should be given preferential treatment if they pay more.

08.22.14

Links 22/8/2014: Linux Foundation LFCS, LFCE

Posted in News Roundup at 5:40 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Changing times, busy times and why Google will save Usenet.

      Linux however has succeeded by way of form factors diversifying. Be it Android phones or tablets there is a big shift with the mainstream consumer in terms of what devices they want and here Linux has excelled.

      In 2008 my decision remove my Microsoft dependency was for reasons of the control they had on the desktop, the practices alleged against them and the dubious tactics some of their advocates used to promote the products. I also wholeheartedly agree with the ethos of FOSS which was another contributory factor. Today, my feelings about FOSS have not changed, there are caveats to my opinions of FOSS (especially in gaming) but I’ve covered that before in other articles.

      Today I avoid Microsoft not because I feel the need to make a stand against its behaviour, its because I don’t need them. I support Microsoft being a “choice” in the market as I support user freedom, but as for what Microsoft can offer me (regardless of its past) there is nothing.

    • 5 Linux distributions for very old computers

      This is part 4 in a series of articles designed to help you choose the right Linux distribution for your circumstances.

    • Citrix and Google partner to bring native enterprise features to Chromebooks

      Chromebooks are making inroads into the education sector, and a push is coming for the enterprise with new native Chrome capabilities from Citrix. Google and Citrix have announced Citrix Receiver for Chrome, a native app for the Chromebook which has direct access to the system resources, including printing, audio, and video.

      To provide the security needed for the enterprise, the new Citrix app assigns a unique Receiver ID to each device for monitoring, seamless Clipboard integration across remote and local applications, end user experience monitoring with HDX Insight, and direct SSL connections.

    • Can we please stop talking about the Linux desktop?

      Linus Torvalds may still want a Linux desktop, but no one else does. And even if they did, by the time the requisite ecosystem could be developed, the need for a desktop — Linux or otherwise — will largely be gone.

  • Server

    • What is Docker, Really? Founder Solomon Hykes Explains

      Docker has quickly become one of the most popular open source projects in cloud computing. With millions of Docker Engine downloads, hundreds of meetup groups in 40 countries and dozens upon dozens of companies announcing Docker integration, it’s no wonder the less-than-two-year-old project ranked No. 2 overall behind OpenStack in Linux.com and The New Stack’s top open cloud project survey.

      This meteoric rise is still puzzling, and somewhat problematic, however, for Docker, which is “just trying to keep up” with all of the attention and contributions it’s receiving, said founder Solomon Hykes in his keynote at LinuxCon and CloudOpen on Thursday. Most people today who are aware of Docker don’t necessarily understand how it works or even why it exists, he said, because they haven’t actually used it.

      “Docker is very popular, it became popular very fast, and we’re not really sure why,” Hykes said. “My personal theory … is that it was in the right place at the right time for a trend that’s much bigger than Docker, and that is very important for all of us, that has to do with how applications are built.”

    • Founder Explains What Docker Is All About

      Just over a year ago, Solomon Hykes created the open-source Docker project. Since then Docker has exploded in both popularity and hype. In a keynote session at the LinuxCon conference, Hykes explained why the hype is both a blessing and a curse.

    • What Docker does right and what it doesn’t do right… yet

      Docker founder Solomon Hykes, opened his keynote at LinuxCon by saying he knows two things about Docker: “It uses Linux containers and the Internet won’t shut up about it.” He knows more than that. He told the audience what Docker is, what it does right today, and what it still needs to do to be better than it is today.

    • IBM Taps Global Network of Innovation Centers to Fuel Linux on Power Systems for Big Data and Cloud Computing

      At the LinuxCon North America conference today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced it is tapping into its global network of over 50 IBM Innovation Centers and IBM Client Centers to help IBM Business Partners, IT professionals, academics, and entrepreneurs develop and deliver new Big Data and cloud computing software applications for clients using Linux on IBM Power Systems servers.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • LXQt 0.8 Is Almost Ready For Release. How To Install LXQt On Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr

      It uses PCManFM-Qt, a version of PCManFM, re-written in Qt, as the default file manager and Openbox as window manager and has support for both Qt5 and Wayland, Red Hat’s new display server.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Learning to git

        A few years ago, I learned from Myriam’s fine blog how to build Amarok from source, which is kept in git. It sounds mysterious, but once all the dependencies are installed, PATH is defined and the environment is properly set up, it is extremely easy to refresh the source (git pull) and rebuild. In fact, I usually use the up-arrow in the konsole, which finds the previous commands, so I rarely have to even type anything! Just hit return when the proper command is in place.

        Now we’re using git for the KDE Frameworks book, so I learned how to not only pull the new or changed source files, but also to commit my own few or edited files locally, then push those commits to git, so others can see and use them.

      • An update on Plasma Addons

        Since my last blog post on plasma addons there has been a lot of activity, existing contributors are active on their own plasmoids, and there are many new faces coming on to take up the challenge of maintaining their own small part of Plasma.

      • Baloo Natural Query Parser ported to KF5

        In 2013, My GSoC project was about implementing a natural (or “human”) query parser for what was then Nepomuk. The parser is able to recognize simple Google-like keyword searches in which sentences like “videos accessed last week” can also be used. Sample queries include “KDE Baloo, size > 2M” and “files modified two months ago, Holidays, tagged as Important”. An explanation of how the parser can extract the advanced information and of which queries are possible can be found here.

      • Intermediate results of the icon tests: Faenza

        The introduction of the new Breeze icon set in KDE let us again wonder, what aspects of an icon set actually takes what impact on the usability of it. We investigated Oxygen and Tango Icons for the LibreOffice project before, but our focus then was on checking all icons of the standard tool bar. This time we focus on different icon sets and will use 13 common actions to compare them.

      • Qt Creator 3.2 Officially Released

        Qt Creator 3.2, a cross-platform IDE (integrated development environment) tailored to the needs of Qt developers and part of the Qt Project, is now available for download.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GNOME DOCUMENTATION VIDEO IS OUT

        The GNOME Documentation Video has now been released on youtube and as a download (Ogg Theora + Vorbis). This is something I have been waiting for since I finished working on it a few weeks ago. A big thanks to Karen for providing a great voice-over for the second time! Translated subtitles are not online just yet for the video, but should come within the next few days (thanks to pmkovar and claude for setting this up!).

      • Emulator brings x86 Linux apps to ARM devices

        Eltechs announced a virtual machine that runs 32-bit x86 Linux applications on ARMv7 SBCs and mini-PCs, and is claimed to be 4.5 times faster than QEMU.

        The open source QEMU emulator has long been the go-to app for providing virtual machines (VMs) that mimic target hardware during development or otherwise run software in alien territory. Every now and then, someone comes up with software that claims to perform all or part of QEMU’s feature-set more effectively. In this case, Eltechs has launched its Eltechs “ExaGear Desktop,” a VM that implements a virtual x86 Linux container on ARMv7 computers and is claimed to be 4.5 times faster than QEMU. Despite its “desktop” naming, we can imagine many non-desktop possibilities fpr ExaGear in embedded and IoT applications.

  • Distributions

    • Backup Your PC with Clonezilla Live 2.2.4-1

      Clonezilla Live, a Linux distribution based on DRBL, Partclone, and udpcast that allows users to do bare metal backup and recovery, is now at version 2.2.4-1 and is ready for testing.

    • Operating System U

      Are you tired of being forced to upgrade your Operating System regularly? What about the unnecessary changes that end up being made, changes that you don’t even want, much less need? How would you like to pick and choose what aspects of your operating system you want upgraded, and leave the ones you know, love, and are accustomed to how they are?

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Another great experience in Fedora bug reporting: Wine font fix solves my web-browsing problem

          Fedora‘s motto is “Freedom. Friends. Features. First.” I’m here to tell you Fedora lives up to that billing. Why do I say this now? I’ve just had another positive experience with Fedora, this time in finding a bug in my system, adding my information to an existing bug report and now seeing updated packages pushed to the Fedora 20 stable repositories and onto my system, where the problem has been fixed.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • VMware Certifies Ubuntu Linux LTS for vCloud Air Cloud Computing

            Canonical and VMware (VMW) forged a closer bond this week with the announcement of certified Ubuntu Linux images in vCloud Air, VMware’s new enterprise cloud-computing platform.

          • Ubuntu Touch Gets Major Update and the OS Is Now Crazy Fast – Screenshot Tour

            Ubuntu Touch has just received a new major update and the developers have made some serious changes to the operating system, which now feels a lot faster and the experience is a lot smoother.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • It’s Elementary, with Sparks, and Unity

              In today’s Linux news Jack Wallen review Elementary OS and says it’s not just the poor man’s Apple. Jack Germain reviewed SparkyLinux GameOver yesterday and said it’s a win-win. Linux Tycoon Bryan Lunduke testdrives Ubuntu’s Unity today in the latest entry in his desktop-a-week series. And finally tonight, just what the heck is this Docker thing everybody keeps talking about?

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Android-on-ARM mini-PC draws less than 7W

      The DSA2LS runs a pre-installed Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean) with integrated online or offline update functionality on a dual-core, 1GHz Freescale i.MX6 DualLite system-on-chip. The SoC has a Vivante GC880 GPU that’s not as powerful as the Vivante GC2000 GPU found on the Dual and Quad i.MX6 models, but it still plays back 1080p video and offers 3D graphics acceleration. The power-sipping DualLite enables the fanless computer to run at a modest 6.26W active and 1.42W standby, according to Shuttle’s AnTuTu benchmarks.

    • IoT tinkerers get new Linux hub & open platforms

      Cloud Media, the maker of entertainment box Popcorn Hour, launched a project on Kickstarter, Inc. that will add to the growing number of smart hubs for people to connect and control smart devices. Called the STACK Box, it features a Cavium ARM11 core processor, 256MB DDR3 RAM, 512MB flash, SD slot, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth LE 4.0, Z-Wave, standard 10/100 Ethernet port, optional X10 wired communication, 5 USB 2.0 ports, RS-232 port, 2 optocoupler I/O, Xbee Bus, Raspberry Pi-compatible 26-pin bus and runs Linus Kernel 3.10. IT also features optional wireless communications for Dust Networks and Insteon with RF433/315, EnOcean, ZigBee, XBee, DCLink, RFID, IR coming soon.

    • mini Duino+ Open Source Ardunio Board Based On ATmega 1284p (video)

    • Phones

      • Android

        • The top 14 hidden features in Windows, iOS, and Android

          You may think you’re a high-tech power user who knows all the nooks and crannies of Windows, iOS, and Android, but let’s be realistic: There could be at least a few undocumented (or poorly documented) commands, control panels, and apps that have slipped by you—maybe more than a few.

          We’ve dived deep into each OS to uncover the best hidden tips and tricks that can make you more productive—or make common tasks easier. Got a favorite undocumented tip to share with readers? Add them in the comments section at the end of the article.

        • Motorola frenzy with up to 9 devices possibly launching at ‘Moto Launch Exprience’

          We have seen a number of sources revealing upcoming releases and device-launches set for September. However today, we are hearing seriously scary reports that Motorola are set to release EIGHT devices before Christmas. Yes folks, Motorola are about to get extremely serious in terms of the market releasing no less than eight devices over the next few months.

        • OnePlus phones will soon come to India

          Last month we reported on how OnePlus were making clear indications they do intend to sell the One in India. Today it is fair to say that the speculation is certainly over and OnePlus will certainly be selling in India soon.

          On the OnePlus website the company is now advertising for a General Manager for its ‘India Operations’. As the company does not currently sell or deliver to India there is no clearly message the company could have sent to indicate this will soon change in the near future.

        • [Mono warning] Unity adds native Android support for x86

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Notebook Reality

        Meanwhile Android/Linux increases an order of magnitude more than that. Smartphones are shipping more units than desktops ever did and tablets are becoming a mature market. The Wintel PC is becoming a niche market, only thriving with businesses who resist change and need keyboards, large screens and pointers.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source software: The question of security

    The logic is understandable – how can a software with source code that can easily be viewed, accessed and changed have even a modicum of security?

  • Is Open Source an Open Invitation to Hack Webmail Encryption?

    While the open source approach to software development has proven its value over and over again, the idea of opening up the code for security features to anyone with eyeballs still creates anxiety in some circles. Such worries are ill-founded, though.

    One concern about opening up security code to anyone is that anyone will include the NSA, which has a habit of discovering vulnerabilities and sitting on them so it can exploit them at a later time. Such discoveries shouldn’t be a cause of concern, argued Phil Zimmermann, creator of PGP, the encryption scheme Yahoo and Google will be using for their webmail.

  • Islamic State Migrates to Open-Source Social Network After Twitter and YouTube Bans

    After being banned from Twitter and YouTube due to its video of James Foley’s murder, the Islamic State (Isis) migrated to another social network called Diaspora

  • Open-Source Social Network Diaspora Grapples With Use by Terror Group

    Even before its current challenges, Diaspora has had a difficult history (highlighted in this Vice Motherboard feature). Started in 2010 with the promise of creating a decentralized open-source replacement for Twitter and Facebook, the network drew positive press at first and more than $200,000 in Kickstarter funding. But when it was released to the public, it failed to build the audience to match its lofty ambitions.

  • 35 Open Source Tools for the Internet of Things

    In a nutshell, IoT is about using smart devices to collect data that is transmitted via the Internet to other devices. It’s closely related to machine-to-machine (M2M) technology. While the concept had been around for some time, the term “Internet of Things” was first used in 1999 by Kevin Ashton, who was a Procter & Gamble employee at the time.

  • Walmart’s investment in open source isn’t cheap

    This is not done for the love of humanity. Walmart takes the effort to work in the open because there is a return to be had from that investment. When other companies adopt Hapi, Walmart expects their internal implementations will lead them to improve the code to better suit their needs. Since the majority of these improvements are likely to be integral to the code in the commons, any rational actor will make pull requests attempting to have their work integrated in the project trunk.

    Of course — otherwise, the team making the changes would be eternally burdened with the need to refactor and test their changes each time the trunk is updated. Successful pull requests lead to merges that bring the whole community together for the upkeep of the code, not just the developers who originally wrote it.

  • Most popular open-source cloud projects of 2014

    At CloudOpen, a Linux Foundation tradeshow held in conjunction with LinuxCon, the Foundation announced that an online survey of open-source cloud professionals found OpenStack to be the most popular overall project.

  • Tunapanda brings digital literacy to Africa

    The ultimate goal was to bring low-income communities to technological literacy in the most rapid and cost-efficient way possible. Initially, we loaded the hard drive with tons of educational content and FOSS software, intending to allow anyone anywhere to duplicate the contents and set up a learning center. Using these tools, we’ve launched computer learning centers (“hubs”) in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda—in both rural and urban settings.

  • Open source leaders take the ice bucket challenge
  • Apache Tomcat 8.0.0 RC11 Now Available for Download and Testing

    Apache Tomcat, an open source software implementation of the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies, developed under the Java Community Process, is now at version 8.0.0 RC11.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • With New Funding, Adatao Focuses on Bringing Hadoop to the Masses

      Recently, news broke that a small startup called Adatao has secured $13 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz with investment partners from Lightspeed Ventures and Bloomberg Beta. Marc Andreessen is a board advisor to the company, which is run by CEO Christopher Nguyen, a former director of engineering for Google Apps.

      Of course, Nguyen knows his way around Google Docs, and his company Adatao is working on ways to make Hadoop as easy to work with as Google Docs. It’s part of a trend to bring Hadoop’s Big Data-crunching prowess to average users through easier to use tools.

    • Survey Finds OpenStack, KVM Riding High Among Cloud Professionals

      In conjunction with CloudOpen, a sidebar tradeshow held along with LinuxCon, The Linux Foundation has announced that a survey of open source cloud pros established that OpenStack is easily the most popular project. The survey gathered information from more than 550 participants, and the findings came out at CloudOpen in Chicago this week.

    • Survey says: OpenStack and Docker top cloud projects

      When it comes to open source cloud projects, everybody has an opinion. A new survey attempts to take a broad look at those opinions and learn something about the state of the state of the open cloud and where it is headed.

      Conducted in partnership between Linux.com and the New Stack, the survey gathered information from more than 550 participants, and the results were released at the CloudOpen North America event taking place this week in Chicago.

  • Databases

    • Eltechs Debuts x86 Crossover Platform for ARM Tablets, Mini-PCs

      The product, called ExaGear Desktop, runs x86 operating systems on top of hardware devices using ARMv7 CPUs. That’s significant because x86 software, which is the kind that runs natively on most computing platforms today, does not generally work on ARM hardware unless software developers undertake the considerable effort of porting it. Since few are likely to do that, having a way to run x86 applications on ARM devices is likely to become increasingly important as more ARM-based tablets and portable computers come to market.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Video: TedX talk – Richard Stallman

      Well, vp9/opus in a webm container have been supported by both Firefox and Google Chrome for several releases now… so enjoy it in your web browser.

  • Public Services/Government

    • NASA sails to the cloud with AWS, open source, migration

      NASA has migrated 110 websites and applications to the cloud in a cost-cutting technology overhaul that also introduced the Drupal content management system and other open source components to the agency’s enterprise tool chest.NASA has migrated 110 websites and applications to the cloud in a cost-cutting technology overhaul that also introduced the Drupal content management system and other open source components to the agency’s enterprise tool chest.

    • US Military To Launch Open Source Academy

      Open source software, which has become increasingly common throughout the US military from unmanned drones to desktops, has now been enlisted as a career option for military personnel. In September, Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center will open a Linux certification academy, marking the first time such a training program has been hosted on a military base.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Building Cars With Crowdsourced Intelligence

      When Jay Rogers left the U.S. Marine Corps in 2004, he made a promise to his fallen soldier friends that he would go out into the world and make a difference. Speaking at the LinuxCon conference here, Rogers detailed how he has delivered on that promise with Local Motors, a startup that is set to enable a new era of automobiles.

      Local Motors is a platform for designing, building and selling automobiles and automotive products. Rogers said it’s a platform for co-creation and micro-manufacturing of vehicles that completely rethinks the way that cars can and should be built.

    • Linux Foundation offers new certification, Mesos comes to Google, and more

      In this week’s edition of our open source news roundup, we share news on virtual certifications from the Linux Foundation, Mesosphere partnering with Google, government and GitHub, and more!

    • Open Access/Content

      • Why the Future of Education Is Open

        Anant Agarwal, the CEO of online education platform edX, is on a mission to change the way that people learn. In a keynote address at the LinuxCon conference here, Agarwal explained how open source and big data techniques are being used at edX to help educate millions of people.

        The edX platform was founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with the promise of redefining the future of education. The edX platform has 2.7 million students around the world. One of edX’s most popular classes is an introduction to Linux course from the Linux Foundation, which has more than 250,000 students.

Leftovers

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Two SuperPACs Focused On Ending SuperPACs Release New TV Commercials

      We’ve been writing up some of the new political efforts to try to put some limits on money in politics, including Larry Lessig’s Mayday SuperPAC, Represent.us’ satirical campaign for the “most honest politician,” Gil Fulbright, and also CounterPAC, a SuperPAC that tries to get politicians to take a pledge not to accept dark money.

  • Censorship

    • Attacks On Anonymity Conflate Anonymous Speech With Trollish Behavior

      Every so often this sort of thing pops up where people suddenly think it’s a good idea to “end anonymity” online. We’ve discussed this in the past, and it’s always the same basic argument — one that conflates anonymity with “bad things” that people say online. There are all sorts of problems with this, but it starts with this: anonymity also allows people to reveal all sorts of good things online as well and plenty of people say and do horrible things with their names attached. And yet… the arguments keep on coming.

    • Military Prefers To Keep Its Head In The Sand: Bans All Employees From Visiting The Intercept

      Not this again. A few years ago, the US military blocked access to a bunch of news sites, including the NY Times and The Guardian, in an attempt to block military members from reading the news because some of the news included the leaked State Department cables that Wikileaks had released in conjunction with those news sites. Last year, the Defense Department blocked all access to the Guardian after it started reporting on the Ed Snowden leaks. And now, The Intercept reports, the military has also banned access to The Intercept. Of course, no one in the military will know that the public knows about this, because they’re apparently not allowed to read about it.

  • Privacy

    • The Government Uses the Dragnets for Detainee Proceedings

      First, NSA can disseminate this information without declaring the information is related to counterterrorism (that’s the primary dissemination limitation discussed in this section), and of course, without masking US person information. That would at least permit the possibility this data gets used for non-counterterrorism purposes, but only when it should least be permitted to, for criminal prosecutions of Americans!

      Remember, too, the government has explicitly said it uses the phone dragnet to identify potential informants. Having non-counterterrorism data available to coerce cooperation would make that easier.

    • Researchers create privacy wrapper for Android Web apps

  • Civil Rights

    • “Negro Spring”: Ferguson Residents, Friends of Michael Brown Speak Out for Human Rights

      As peaceful protests continued Wednesday in Ferguson, Missouri, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder arrived in the city to meet with residents and FBI agents investigating the police shooting of Michael Brown. Democracy Now! traveled to Ferguson this week and visited the site where the 18-year-old Brown was killed. We spoke to young people who live nearby, including some who knew him personally. “He fell on his knees. Like, ’Don’t shoot.’ [The police officer] shot him anyway in the eye, the head, and four times down here,” said one local resident Rico Like. “Hands up, don’t shoot is all I got to say. RIP Mike Brown.”

    • A Fox News Tantrum And A Split-Screen: A Metaphor for The Decline Of White America
    • Cop in Ferguson Tweets Lies to Justify Tear-Gassing Protesters in Their Own Back Yard

      A Velda City police officer who has been part of the militarized police apparatus holding down operations on West Florissant Avenue is spreading lies about Ferguson protesters online.

      Sergeant Mike Weston, going by the handle “officeranon2″ on Twitter, engaged with users of the social-media network about a tear-gas attack by St. Louis County police on protesters in their own back yard on Monday, August 11. In the conversation, a Twitter user wanted to know why police would fire tear gas at people on their own property. Weston tells them it’s because protesters were firing guns from their back yard. But that’s not true…

    • NYT Responds on Torture

      Responding to messages inspired by the alert, Sullivan went to Times foreign editor Joseph Kahn, who said the paper’s Kabul bureau “decided it did not add much to what we have already, on many occasions, reported. Much of it appeared to be recycled from United Nations reports and other news coverage, including our own.”

    • In Ferguson, Cops Hand Out 3 Warrants Per Household Every Year

      We’ve all seen a number of stories like this recently, and it prompts a question: why are police departments allowed to fund themselves with ticket revenue in the first place? Or red light camera revenue. Or civil asset forfeiture revenue. Or any other kind of revenue that provides them with an incentive to be as hardass as possible. Am I missing something when I think that this makes no sense at all?

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Why we sued Getty Images

        On August 20, 2014, our firm filed a lawsuit on our own behalf against Getty Images, Inc. Why did we do it? Here is why.

        On July 1, 2014, our firm received an unsigned letter from Getty Images Inc. that claimed unauthorized copying and display of a Getty photograph on this website and demanded immediate payment of a $380 licensing fee or legal action would follow.

        There was a problem, however. We never copied or displayed the Getty image referred to in Getty’s letter.

        We looked more closely at what Getty was doing and were shocked to discover what was really going on.

        You see, Getty is apparently using an image recognition system to generate its letters to accused infringers. Getty’s system identified a thumbnail image on our website here. Getty matched the thumbnail to an image more than six times the size on Getty’s site.

      • Getty Threatens The Wrong IP Law Firm In Its Copyright Trolling Efforts

        Image licensing giant Getty Images has quite a reputation for being something of a copyright maximalist and occasional copyright troll. The company has been known to blast out threat letters and lawsuits not unlike some more notorious copyright trolls. And that’s true even as the company just recently lost a copyright infringement suit in which Getty helped in the infringement. A few months ago, we had told you about Getty starting a new program in which it was making many of its images free to embed, saying that it was “better to compete” that way on the internet, rather than trying to license everything. We actually just tried embedding some Getty images ourselves recently.

      • New Zealand Court Freezes Kim Dotcom’s Assets, Again

        The Internet entrepreneur accused of running a massive global piracy ring suffered a rare setback in his adopted country today. The New Zealand Court of Appeal extended for another year the restraining orders over some of the assets and property belonging to Kim Dotcom. The ruling “means millions of dollars, several luxury cars, jewelry and other property remain frozen,” the New Zealand Herald reported. The original 2012 orders were scheduled to expire in April after a lower court ruled in favor of Dotcom. Now they will extend to April, 2015.

08.21.14

Links 21/8/2014: Conferences of Linux Foundation, Elephone Emerges

Posted in News Roundup at 4:19 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 12 oddball odes to open-source
  • Beer and open source with Untappd

    We use a lot of open source software within Untappd daily, from MongoDB to jQuery. It’s what powers software evolution, and without it, we would have a hard time developing solutions effectively and efficiently. With every library that we develop for use on Untappd, we try to open source it, including our PHP Library For Amazon CloudSearch, UntappdPHP, and MemcacheJS. We hope that other developers can use these libraries to save some time and help them focus on building great projects. Any library we use, we try to think about how to build it with “openness” in mind, for re-usability by all.

  • Seven Bridges Introduces Open Source Cancer Genomics Workflow
  • Want To Start An Open Source Project? Here’s How

    Regardless of the reason, this isn’t about you. Not really. For open source to succeed, much of the planning has to be about those who will use the software. As I wrote in 2005, if you “want lots of people to contribute (bug fixes, extensions, etc.,” then you need to “write good documentation, use an accessible programming language … [and] have a modular framework.”

  • Events

    • Ken Starks to Keynote At Ohio LinuxFest

      Ken had mentioned this in a email a few months back, I believe, but I’d put it on a back burner, where it fell off and landed hidden behind the stove. If Larry Cafiero, better known as the free software and CrunchBang guy, hadn’t made mention of the fact on Google+ the other day, I probably wouldn’t’ve remembered until it was way too late.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox gets preliminary support for casting to Chromecast

        Mozilla is in the process of adding the ability to “cast” videos from Firefox to Chromecast devices, and you can try it now if you have the right hardware.

        As announced in a post on Google+ post by Mozilla developer Lucas Rocha, “Chromecast support is now enabled in Firefox for Android’s Nightly build.”

  • Funding

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU hackers discover HACIENDA government surveillance and give us a way to fight back

      GNU community members and collaborators have discovered threatening details about a five-country government surveillance program codenamed HACIENDA. The good news? Those same hackers have already worked out a free software countermeasure to thwart the program.

      According to Heise newspaper, the intelligence agencies of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, have used HACIENDA to map every server in twenty-seven countries, employing a technique known as port scanning. The agencies have shared this map and use it to plan intrusions into the servers. Disturbingly, the HACIENDA system actually hijacks civilian computers to do some of its dirty work, allowing it to leach computing resources and cover its tracks.

  • Project Releases

    • G`MIC (GREYC`s Magic For Image Computing) Sees New Stable Release

      G’MIC (GREYC’s Magic for Image Computing) is a framework for image processing that comes with a large number of pre-defined image filters and effects (almost 400, with an extra 300 testing filters). There are several interfaces for G’MIC: a command line tool, a web service, a Qt based interface for real-time webcam manipulation, a library and a GIMP plugin.

  • Public Services/Government

    • NHS open-source Spine 2 platform to go live next week

      Last year, the NHS said open source would be a key feature of the new approach to healthcare IT. It hopes embracing open source will both cut the upfront costs of implementing new IT systems and take advantage of using the best brains from different areas of healthcare to develop collaborative solutions.

      Meyer said the Spine switchover team has “picked up the gauntlet around open-source software”.

      The HSCIC and BJSS have collaborated to build the core services of Spine 2, such as electronic prescriptions and care records, “in a series of iterative developments”.

    • Open-source electronic patient records in the NHS

      Lessons learnt from NPfIT suggest that a one-size-fits-all approach for EPRs has its limitations, as every trust made the case, rightly or wrongly, that it was somehow different. This is why we believe that open source provides another way of delivering those clinical benefits; trusts can take ownership of the code and develop it alongside clinicians to their requirements.

      But open source is not for everyone. Each healthcare provider has varying degrees of IT maturity; some may be close to becoming paperless or have systems in place that just need to be built on, some may decide that a new approach is right for their organisation.

      For our trust, the timing and opportunity of open source just came together and made it the logical choice. Open source fits with our culture and our approach, clinicians liked the IMS Maxims software, and it was particularly affordable for us, giving us the ability to manage change from our current system – it lets us control our own IT requirements.

  • Licensing

    • Qt5 Will Now Support LGPLv3 Modules

      With the upcoming Qt 5.4 release, LGPLv3 is now an optional license alongside the existing LGPLv2.1 license and the commercial combination for Qt Enterprise.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • The dubious rise of open-source architecture

      Ten years have passed since the launch of the big, talkative, landmark show called Massive Change, which went on a tour that eventually took it from Vancouver to Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario, then on to Chicago. Organized by designer Bruce Mau and the Institute Without Boundaries, a Toronto work-study design program, the exhibition and the accompanying book showcased gadgets, systems and ideas that promised to heal some of contemporary humankind’s most urgent maladies – slums, starvation, economic under-performance and much else.

    • Open Data

      • Out in the Open: This Man Wants to Turn Data Into Free Food (And So Much More)

        Such is promise of “open data”—the massive troves of public information our governments now post to the net. The hope is that, if governments share enough of this data with the world at large, hackers and entrepreneurs will find a way of putting it to good use. But although so much of this government data is now available, the revolution hasn’t exactly happened.

    • Open Hardware

      • Are you ready for open source CPUs?

        Open source software has been around for years, and for obvious reasons — all it takes is a PC to churn out code. And developers can make anything — operating systems, networking systems, administration systems, databases.

      • Local Motors: Cars Should be Open Source Hardware

        Though Local Motors was the first car company to produce an open source vehicle, Founder Jay Rogers says it is not an open source car company. It’s a hardware company.

        Traditional car companies have long product cycles, intricate assembly processes, and high production and distribution costs. Local Motors’ approach is instead akin to a software or microelectronics company that’s iterative, fast and lower cost.

  • Programming

    • Look, no client! Not quite: the long road to a webbified Vim

      Programming the Web, Pt. III The most revolutionary aspect of all the changes that have taken place in web development over the last two decades has been in the web browser.

      Typically we think of web browsers as driving innovation on the web by providing new features. Indeed this is the major source of new features on the web.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • Thursday’s security updates
    • Security advisories for Wednesday
    • Kaspersky Lab Partners London Police To Tackle Cyber Crime

      The fight against cybercrime continues with the news that a London police force is getting outside help to become a bit more security savvy.

      The City of London police is teaming up with Russian cybersecurity specialist Kaspersky Lab, in an effort to help educate both the police, and businesses around the UK, on dealing with the growing menace of cybercrime.

    • Phishing

      Someone just like me had the ability to push up whatever they wanted to the DNS server. This is usually fine: only the Authoritative DNS server for a site is allowed to replicate changes. It did mean, however, that anyone that was looking at this particular DNS server would be directed to something they were hosting themselves. I’m guessing it was a Phishing attempt as I did not actually go to their site to check.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Why Australians can fight for the IDF, but not the Islamic State: ASIO chief explains

      ASIO boss David Irvine has tried to explain how and why Australians join foreign armies, and allay concerns about the Coalition’s proposed anti-terrorism laws. But given its murky past, ASIO’s reassurances should be taken with a grain of salt, writes freelance journalist Andrea Glioti

    • Kiev’s Dirty War

      “According to our soldiers’ information, the Ukrainian forces are using chemical ammunition on DPR territory.”

      “Once a shell bursts, a gas affecting sense organs is emitted. We have this information.”

      In early June, Southeastern Ukrainian freedom fighters said Kiev forces attacked Semyonovka near Slaviansk with an unknown chemical weapon.

    • Israeli Strike in Gaza Strip Kills 3 Top Hamas Commanders

      sraeli airstrikes killed three senior commanders of the armed wing of Hamas early Thursday in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, Israeli and Palestinian officials said, the most significant blow to the group’s leadership since Israel’s operation in Gaza began more than six weeks ago.

    • Drone attack kills two Pakistani Taliban commanders in Afghanistan

      Foreign forces’ drone strike killed three Taliban commanders, two alleged Pakistani insurgents and wounded five others in eastern Kunar province, Afghan officials said on Wednesday.

    • Global Warriors Revisiting Iraq’s Wounds to Destroy the Arab World
    • Op-Ed: Where would more citizenship revoking lead to?

      The UK right wing government wished to recall passports and citizenship for any UK citizen who went to fight for the Islamic State (IS) militants in the Middle East. One of the first of many letters of this nature to be sent was to a Mr. Mohamed Sakr, who had been stripped of his citizenship after arriving at the estate owned by his family in London in 2010.

    • Civilian Victims Of U.S. Drone Strike In Yemen Reportedly Receive Over $1 Million
    • Anatomy of an air strike: Three intelligence streams working in concert

      Besides human spotters on the ground, the main U.S. intelligence assets in Iraq include armed surveillance drones fitted with cameras, radar and communications eavesdropping gear. Jet fighters also carry camera pods under their wings. The intelligence-gathering effort includes the most high-tech ground-based and space-based communications eavesdropping equipment. Drones and camera-equipped jets were the first surveillers to return to Iraq after 2011. The Air Force had pulled its 21 Predator drones from Iraq that year, redeploying them to Kuwait for patrols over the Middle East.

    • What have we accomplished in Iraq?

      What have we accomplished in Iraq? And isn’t it time we left them alone?

      We have been at war with Iraq for 24 years, starting with Operations Desert Shield and Storm in 1990. Shortly after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait that year, the propaganda machine began agitating for a U.S. attack on Iraq. We all remember the appearance before Congress of a young Kuwaiti woman claiming that the Iraqis were ripping Kuwaiti babies from incubators. The woman turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S., and the story was false, but it was enough to turn U.S. opposition in favor of an attack.

      This month, yet another U.S. president — the fifth in a row — began bombing Iraq. He is also placing U.S. troops on the ground despite promising not to do so.

      The second Iraq war in 2003 cost the U.S. some two trillion dollars. According to estimates, more than one million deaths have occurred as a result of that war. Millions of tons of U.S. bombs have fallen in Iraq almost steadily since 1991.

      What have we accomplished? Where are we now, 24 years later? We are back where we started, at war in Iraq!

    • ISIS: Region-wide Genocide Portended in 2007 Now Fully Realized

      American journalist James Wright Foley was allegedly brutally murdered on video by terrorists of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS). The development would at first appear to portray a terrorist organization openly declaring itself an enemy of the West, but in reality, it is the latest attempt by the West itself to cover up the true genesis of the current region-wide catastrophe of its own creation now unfolding in the Middle East.

      As early as 2007, the stage was being set for the regional genocide now unfolding from Syria and Lebanon along the Mediterranean to northern Iraq. The “sudden” appearance of the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq, otherwise known as ISIS, betrays years of its rise and the central part it played in Western-backed violence seeking to overthrow the government of Syria starting in 2011 amid the cover of the so-called “Arab Spring.”

    • Op-Ed: CIA-linked General Haftar strikes Islamist militia in Tripoli

      Many reports speak of airstrikes in the Libyan capital Tripoli as being launched by an unknown party against Islamist militia from Mistrata on Monday August 18.
      Actually there should be no mystery ab

    • CIA-Linked Haftar claims international support for Tripoli attack

      Even though CIA-linked General Haftar claims his bombing of Misrata militia in Tripoli was a joint effort with the international community there seems little attention let alone analysis in the media of what is happening in Libya

      On Monday, Libyan air force units loyal to General Kahlifa Haftar struck positions of the Misrata militia in Tripoli. The militia has been in a prolonged battle at and near the Tripoli international airport with allies of Haftar, the Zintan brigades. The battle has moved closer to the center of Tripoli now as unidentified militia have fired Grad rockets into two upscale districts killing three people according to local residents. The area is home to many foreign brand outlets including Marks and Spencer, and Nike and fancy cafes.

    • McCain visits Raytheon, speaks in favor of Tomahawk

      At a town hall Tuesday with Raytheon Missile Systems employees, Arizona’s senior senator said the cut would have been to “probably the best and most-proven missile system ever.” McCain also spoke in support of a modernization program for the Tomahawk that would make the weapon threat-relevant through about 2040.

    • This Obama-Appointed Judge Signed off on the CIA Killing of a U.S. Citizen

      David Barron now sits on the bench of the First Circuit Court of Appeals despite having given President Barack Obama the legal justification for killing an American citizen overseas without a trial.

    • What If the Military or CIA Had Killed Mike Brown?

      Not so, however, if the killing had come at the hands of the military or the CIA. In that case, the soldier or the CIA agent would be immune from criminal prosecution and civil suit, so long as they claimed that the killing took place as part of a “national-security” operation. Once their lawyers cited those two magical words, every judge in the land, both state and federal, would immediately slam down the gavel and declare “Case dismissed.”

    • The CIA Double-Dip: Drugs, Fraud, & the JFK Assassination

      The investigation uncovered incontrovertible, if unsurprising, proof of involvement in the operation by the Mob (in this case, the Chicago Outfit) by Texas oil interests, Saudi financiers, and, of course, the CIA.

      But unearthing new evidence about the CIA’s role in the drug trade for the past 50 years no longer provides much grist for the gossip mill. Time marches on. Gary Webb was right. Everybody knows it.

  • Transparency Reporting

    • Interactive: 19 calls for transparency around US drone strikes

      The drone campaign in Pakistan, which is conducted by the CIA, remains an official secret. In June 2012, Obama declassified the campaigns in Yemen and Somalia – but details of the attacks remain shrouded in mystery. The US has declined to release even the most basic details about the strikes, such as when or where they take place. As a result we also rarely know who or what they hit. But a growing number of voices have been calling for transparency.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

    • Hewlett-Packard posts surprise revenue gain after PC sales jump

      Hewlett-Packard Co posted a surprise increase in quarterly revenue after sales from its personal computer division climbed 12 percent, but a flat to declining performance from its other units underscored the company’s uphill battle to revive growth.

      HP sales rose a mere 1 percent to $27.6 billion in its fiscal third quarter from $27.2 billion a year earlier. Wall Street analysts had forecast a modest drop in revenue to $27.01 billion.

    • Does Apple throttle older iPhones to nudge you into buying a new one?

      Every time Apple releases a new iPhone there’s a dramatic spike in the number of Google searches for the phrase “iPhone slow”. Does this give credence to the conspiracy theory that Apple intentionally slows down iPhones to encourage you to buy a new one?

    • Scotland’s currency choices in the event of independence

      (1) Use the pound anyway

      Even if the Westminster government does not agree to share the pound, Scotland could use it anyway, without a say in monetary policy
      Ecuador and Panama, for example, have adopted the US dollar

      (And, I should add, Tasmania uses the Australian dollar … There, that should get me in trouble for today … :-D )

      (2) Join the euro

      It would not be an immediate option

      (3) Launch a Scottish currency

      Without its own borrowing history, an independent Scotland might find the currency quickly loses value when traded and markets could demand a higher interest rate on its debt

    • The 1% are “wealthy beyond measure”

      Welcome to globalization. Wasn’t it supposed to make up all richer?

    • More Military Families Are Relying On Food Banks And Pantries

      Despite the economic recovery, more than 46 million Americans — or 1 in 7 — used a food pantry last year. And a surprisingly high number of those seeking help were households with military members, according to a new survey by Feeding America, which is a network of U.S. food banks.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Real Reporting Is About Revealing Truth; Not Granting ‘Equal Weight’ To Bogus Arguments

      Journalism Professor Jay Rosen has long been the leading advocate in condemning the prominence of “he said/she said” journalism in the mainstream media. This kind of journalism is driven by a complete distortion of what it means to be an “objective” journalist. Bad journalists seem to think that if someone is making a claim, you present that claim, then you present an opposing claim, and you’re done. They think this is objective because they’re not “picking sides.” But what if one side is batshit crazy and the other is actually making legitimate claims? Shouldn’t the job of true journalists be to ferret out the truth and reveal the crazy arguments as crazy? Rosen’s latest calls out the NY Times for falling into the bogus “he said/she said” trap yet again. This time it’s on an article about plagiarism and copyright infringement charges being leveled from one biographer of Ronald Reagan against another. We wrote about this story as well, and we looked at the arguments of both sides, and then noted that author Craig Shirley’s arguments made no sense at all, as he was trying to claim ownership of facts (something you can’t do). Furthermore, his claims of plagiarism were undermined by the very fact that he admitted that competing biographer Rick Perlstein’s quotes were different. Shirley claimed that “difference” in the quotes showed that Perlstein was trying to cover up the plagiarism, but… that makes no sense.

    • When quoting both sides and leaving it there is the riskier call

      If the weight of the evidence allows you to make a judgment, but instead you go with “he said, she said,” you’re behaving recklessly even as you tell yourself you’re doing the cautious thing.

      It’s my job to notice when a piece of standard brand pressthink “flips” around and no longer works as intended. I have one.

      For a very long time, the logic behind “he said, she said” journalism, and “get both sides,” as well as, “I’m sorry, but we’ll have to leave it there” was that operating this way would reduce risk to a news publisher’s reputation. (See my 2009 post.) When you have both sides speaking in your account, you’re protecting yourself against charges of favoring one or the other. By not “choosing” a side — by not deciding who’s right — you’re safer.

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Saudi Arabia: Surge in Executions

      19 Beheaded in 17 Days; 8 for Nonviolent Offenses

    • It’s not just Ferguson, it’s what’s brewing for the rest of America that should scare us: opinion and live chat

      I wish I had retained more from my college Latin American politics class. The banana republics, juntas, civil wars and CIA interventions have all faded, but there’s one concept that stuck in my head and it has been haunting me ever since – the four key components necessary to make a healthy democracy.

    • Why Do Police In Suburban St. Louis Have More Powerful Weapons Than Marines In Afghanistan?

      We’ve been covering some of the more troubling details of police militarization across the US, and specifically what’s going on in Ferguson, Missouri over the past couple of weeks. However, we knew fairly little about the actual military equipment being used there. And we know that sometimes scary looking military equipment isn’t necessarily so scary when put to use. So it’s interesting to read a former Marine’s analysis of the military equipment being used in Ferguson, which more or less confirms that it not only looks scary but absolutely is scary. Much of the discussion is about how all those “non-lethal” “riot control” weaponry is actually quite dangerous and potentially lethal.

    • St. Louis Police Release Video Of Kajieme Powell Killing That Appears At Odds With Their Story

      The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department released cell phone footage Wednesday of the police shooting of Kajieme Powell, a 25-year-old black man killed on Tuesday in St. Louis, according to St. Louis Public Radio.

      A convenience store owner called 911 on Tuesday when he suspected Powell stole drinks and donuts from his shop, according to a recording of the call. Another woman called to report Powell was acting erratically and had a knife in his pocket.

      Two officers in a police SUV responded to the calls, the cell phone video shows. When the officers got out of their vehicle, Powell walked in their direction, yelling and telling them to shoot him already.

      St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said Tuesday that both of the officers opened fire on Powell when he came within a three or four feet of them holding a knife “in an overhand grip.”

      But the newly released cell phone footage undermines the statement, showing Powell approaching the cops, but not coming as close as was reported, with his hands at his side. The officers began shooting within 15 seconds of their arrival, hitting Powell with a barrage of bullets.

    • A private military company is now providing security in Ferguson, for just one person

      A menagerie of armed state and federal agents have filtered in and out of Ferguson, Missouri for more than a week as unrest has grown there, and now even a private military company is joining the mix. Asymmetric Solutions, a PMC that claims to be “capable of deploying highly qualified former special operations personnel” to “anywhere on the globe in a moments notice” will be providing a security detail to an unnamed individual visiting Ferguson.

    • New Police Hacking Technologies Raise Familiar Questions About Civil Liberties

      “We need automatic transparency, rigorous external oversight, and a statutory framework that explicitly prohibits abuses . . . When the government knows everything about its citizens, we become subjects,” Crockford told Truthout.

      “But the future is ours if we claim it, if we reject fear and embrace our own power. If we want our children to have anonymity in a crowd, privacy at home, and the possibility for freedom in their world, we must make it so.”

    • Love: The threat of a police state

      Police assaulted peaceful, nonviolent protesters, arrested Antonio French, an alderman in nearby St. Louis, and tear-gassed Missouri state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal.

    • Ferguson, Ethnicity and American Idealism

      Shame on those in government and media, those who trample others underfoot and then claim more of the same is the way to our “greater good”. May the Great Spirit who dwells above and within us all convict you of shame, which seems to be of the only two arrows in your quivers: shame and fear.

    • Somalia: Three Journalists Tortured While in Detention

      Reporters Without Borders condemns the closures of Mogadishu-based Radio Shabelle and Sky FM and arrests of 19 journalists and employees on 15 August, and the continuing detention and reported torture of the directors of the two radio stations and their owner.

    • Targeting Pakistan on Human Rights Violations in Sri Lanka

      The civilized Western World has always shown double standard of human rights in the modern era of open diplomacy, economic development and maintenance of fundamental rights of various peoples. But, it is regrettable that major powers like the US and some European countries have continuously been acting upon duplicity regarding human rights violations. In this regard, their silence over the massacre of the Rohingya Muslim community at the hands of the Rakhine extremist Buddhists in Burma (present Myanmar), perpetual bloodshed of Kashmiris in the Indian occupied Kashmir and unending genocide of several Palestinians in Gaza might be cited as example. In these cases, US-led Western World which was overtly or covertly supporting the state terrorism of Myanmar’s military junta, Indian and Israeli regimes was strongly condemned by the Islamic Word’s intellectuals. In wake of Muslim tragedy, it was also exposed that world’s apex body, the UNO has also been following double standard of human rights, and has become instrument of America and its allies at the cost of the Muslim World.

    • James Puz: Kennedy deserves credit for civil rights

      Hair-brained, if not totally moronic, theories emerged. The new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, was the culprit. while others thought the military-industrial complex hatched the plan. The mob (pick one) paid a trigger man, while the CIA was viewed as the guilty party. The Soviets were thought capable of killing our president. Even Cuban exiles were targeted with unfounded accusations. In the end, a discontented Oswald, alone or in concert with others, eventually became the fall guy. Or was he a patsy? In any event, nobody came up with a specific reason for why the president had to be killed.

    • The Rise Of The Mafia Nation

      A collaboration between governments and organized crime is nothing new, of course, with corruption being a characteristic of their operations in whichever field of criminality they pursue. Pay offs and backhanders, considerations and favors have all played their part in sealing a relationship between criminals and government officials, with some government agencies seeking to use the mafia in order to further their goals. The CIA asking the mafia to knock off Castro might seem a bit wild-eyed and optimistic, but it was hardly unthinkable.

    • The luck of the Irish

      This autobiography was written eight years ago, and then self published overseas and secured. The reason for this subterfuge was the autobiography contained my dealings with ASIO and covert agencies in the UK and the United States of America while working in China.

      Since these events took place I have been gagged by ASIO “Dire consequences would befall me should I ever speak of these events.” I had organised for my autobiography to be released after my death so as my family would finally know the reason why our lives were irrevocability devastated by the aforementioned covert agencies.

    • [Bush partner:] The tortuous debate over the CIA’s ‘torture’ report

      The CIA’s objection to releasing the report seems strange because in 2012 Attorney General Eric Holder announced that there would be no prosecution of CIA interrogators. The CIA’s fear must be that whatever conduct the report blames them for is so terrible that it could ignite another round of intelligence “reforms” like those of the 1970s Church Committee which obstructed intelligence-gathering for many years.

    • Wyden: ‘Big league’ economy needs long-term transportation funding

      “If a 19-year-old had hacked into the Senate computers the way this was done, that person would be sitting in jail right now.”

      Although they were CIA computers, Wyden said the agency had stipulated they contained Senate Intelligence Committee files. CIA staffers launched the search to discover if the committee had obtained an internal CIA study while investigating a now-defunct detention and interrogation program for terrorism suspects. The Senate report is pending.

    • The not so transparent government

      First, CIA officials broke into computers that were being used by the committee — a clear constitutional violation — and then, using false information, tried to have committee staffers prosecuted. CIA Director John Brennan apologized for spying on the senators’ activities. President Obama, in a news conference on Aug. 1, said the Intelligence Committee was free to issue its report, “the declassified version that will be released at the pleasure of the Senate committee.”

      But Brennan’s apology must not have been sincere, and the committee, to its displeasure, learned that the CIA has “redacted” — read: censored — key elements of the report. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairman of the committee, said she couldn’t release the report because the CIA had attempted to redact key details that “eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions.”

    • Congress and CIA battle over torture investigation
    • CIA should answer for its crimes

      He asks: “Did any CIA agent get indicted for torturing people? No.

      “Did any CIA agent get indicted for destroying the videotapes that showed the torture? No.

      “Did any CIA agent get indicted for murdering prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq? No.”

    • President Barack Obama’s admission of torture by the CIA, and Navi Pillai’s International probe into war crimes in Sri Lanka.

      But in Sri Lanka there were no torture committed against the terrorists. There were no torture of the terrorists for the simple reason that in the war against terrorism in Sri Lanka the Armed Forces knew where exactly the terrorists were and there was no necessity to interrogate terrorists taken as prisoners under tortured to get information with regard to; movements of terrorists or where they were hiding. There were also Tamil civilians who gave information of meeting sites of terrorists to enable the Sri Lanka Air Force use precision bombing.

    • What the CIA is trying to hide

      Beginning in the 1990s, and accelerating after September 11, the CIA flew terrorism suspects to secret police custody in Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, and Libya. Many of them were tortured. Starting in 2002, the CIA began operating secret prisons all over the world: Thailand, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Afghanistan, Djibouti, briefly Guantanamo Bay.

      There, the agency subjected detainees to torturous “enhanced interrogation techniques,” in a program designed and implemented by two contractor psychologists named James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) authorized a great deal of this brutality—but the CIA made false factual representations to OLC in order to obtain that authorization, and tortured detainees in ways that were never authorized. Two CIA detainees, Manadel al-Jamadi and Gul Rahman, died as a result.

    • Yet Again, CIA is Concealing Information Americans Should See

      Once again, the CIA is concealing information that Americans have a right to know, and once again President Obama should ensure its release.

      The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is set to release a landmark report on the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program. But Obama allowed the CIA to oversee redactions, and it predictably went to town with the black marker. According to committee Chair Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the redactions “eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions.”

    • EFF Pioneer Awards Honor U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Trevor Paglen, and Frank La Rue

      The Electronic Frontier Foundation will honor former U.N. Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue, U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, and artist Trevor Paglen during its annual EFF Pioneer Awards in San Francisco. The award ceremony will be held the evening of October 2 at the Lodge at the Regency Center in San Francisco. Keynote speakers will be Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos, better known as the Yes Men, who are known for their elaborate parodies and impersonations to fight government and corporate malfeasance

    • The Bankers To The Terrorists

      WikiLeaks documents prove that the United States has known for quite some time (years) that the fictitious pseudo-state of Qatar bankrolls Hamas as part of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ikhwan. While Iran is the world’s major facilitator of terror, Qatar is their bank. The US Administration knows this well.

    • Press Freedom Groups Rally For Journalist James Risen, Who Faces Jail Time for Refusing to Reveal Sources

      At an Aug. 14 news conference in Washington, D.C. press freedom organizations rallied to support New York Times reporter and author James Risen, who faces prosecution for refusing to disclose his sources. In advance of the press event, held at the National Press Club, organizers presented a petition to the U.S. Justice Department with more than 100,000 signatures, demanding that the federal government stop its six-year prosecution of Risen.

    • Cracking Down on Truth-telling

      President Obama entered office vowing to run a transparent government. But instead he has clamped down on leaks, prosecuted whistleblowers and threatened truth-telling journalists with jail if they don’t reveal sources, as Marcy Wheeler recounts.

    • James Risen vs. the security state
    • The Real “Dirty Wars” in the Horn of Africa – “Expiration by Starvation” Sanctioned by the Obama White House

      The Great Horn of Africa Famine started at the beginning of 2011 and lasted about 2 years. 250,000 dead in Somalia from starvation equals 10,000 dying a month, 300 or more dying a day on average. And this just in Somalia where there was aid being distributed. Next door in the Ogaden, with a population of almost as many as in Somalia the same famine was raging and no aid what so ever was being allowed.

    • Traffic Enforcement: Over-Zealous and Heavy-Handed

      The use of CCTV for handing out traffic fines is something that has raised concerns from a number of sources, for example Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who accused councils of “bending the law as a means of filling their coffers with taxpayers’ cash.” The Surveillance Camera Commissioner (SCC) also published guidance on this practice, stating that cameras should only be used “when other means of enforcement are not practical”.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • How to Save the Net: Keep It Open

      For all of its history, the Internet has enjoyed the fruits of an openness principle: the idea that anyone can reach any site online and that information and data should be freely exchangeable. Applications such as YouTube and Skype have been introduced without the need to seek permission of any Internet service provider or government. Nearly 3 billion users enjoy myriad mobile apps and other Internet-based services thanks to the open standards, common interfaces, and rich connectivity that permissionless innovation has delivered.

    • How AT&T’s Own Legal Fights Show It’s Lying In Claiming Broadband Reclassification Would Create Collateral Damage

      Earlier this year, we shared our own comments to the FCC on the issue of net neutrality and keeping the internet open. The key, as we noted, is that if this issue is left to the FCC (as appears to be the case), it should use Title II reclassification in combination with forbearance to narrowly tailor rules for broadband access providers that maintain an open internet. As with so many things related to net neutrality, this gets a bit down in the weeds, and is a bit wonkish, but it’s important to understand. Even the EFF — a longtime critic of Title II reclassification — changed its position in light of other factors, but made sure to emphasize forbearance as a key part of this. Forbearance, in short, is effectively a statement from the FCC that it’s using certain rules, but has committed to not enforcing parts of what it’s allowed to do under those rules.

    • Behind The Veil Part 5: Comcast Metrics For All Employees As Simple As ABC, Always Be Closing

      In the ongoing fallout Comcast is facing due to the high-pressure sales tactics of their non-sales employees, the company has consistently indicated that these employees are not behaving in a manner consistent with the company’s wishes. The common thread in most of these stories consists of customer service duties being handled by customer retention reps as often as not and complaints or attempts to cancel service being met with sales pitches instead of service. Comcast has specifically indicated that these examples are outside of the way they train employees to conduct their business.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Delaware Passes Law Granting Residents The Right To Pass On Digital Goods To Their Heirs

      As rights holders have made clear time and time again, your digital purchases are never truly yours. If someone decides to shut down a service, it’s likely your purchases will vanish into the ether along with the service itself. If you want to resell your mp3s or ebooks, you’re facing any number of unsettled legal questions and various industries pushing the assertion that your money was exchanged for a limited use license, rather than the acquisition of a product.

    • Copyrights

      • Thomson Reuters: we’ll take your articles if you don’t tell us not to

        We received an email from Thomson Reuters last evening, informing us that unless we write back to them in 14 days denying them the use of our articles, they will take the lack of refusal, as an indication of consent to use them. What’s more, they will presume that we have given them the “right to use, incorporate and distribute the Content in its Services to its subscribers and to permit such subscribers to use and redistribute the Content.”

      • Thomson Reuters Thinks Not Responding To Their Email Means You’ve Freely Licensed All Your Content
      • Dotcom’s Millions Will Remain Frozen, Court Decides

        Kim Dotcom’s battle to regain control over millions in seized assets has received another setback. Today the Court of Appeal overturned a ruling by the High Court by extending the restraining orders against the entrepreneur’s property until at least April 2015.

      • Judge Says You Don’t ‘Own’ The Facebook ‘Likes’ On Your Page

        In a world where people are always pushing the idea of “intellectual property” over just about everything, is it really any surprise when people assume all sorts of property-like rights in things that clearly shouldn’t have any such thing? In a slightly bizarre lawsuit over the control of a Facebook fan page for the TV series The Game, the creator of the page, Stacey Mattocks, argued that BET effectively appropriated the approximately 6.78 million “likes” the fan page got. The details of exactly how this happened aren’t worth getting into, but suffice it to say it was a contract negotiation gone wrong, as BET sought to bring the fan page under its official control. All that matters here is that among the other charges in the lawsuit, Mattocks claims that BET got Facebook to transfer those likes to its official page, which she alleged is a form of unlawful conversion.

      • Monkeys, ghosts and gods ‘cannot own copyright’ says US

        In the wake of a controversial move by Wikipedia to distribute a monkey ‘selfie’ for free, against the wishes of the photographer whose camera was used, the US has issued new guidance that says animals, ghosts and gods are all banned from owning copyright

      • Australian Movie Studio Boss Skips Out On Public Q&A, Claiming It Will Be Filled With ‘Crazies’

08.20.14

Links 20/8/2014: Linux Event, GNOME Milestone

Posted in News Roundup at 3:57 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • About the use of linux for normal people

      I was trying to write this blog post for quite a long time, and it become so, so big that I’ll have to split it in three posts, It is like a ‘people of kde’ but different, the focus is not to show someone that works for KDE, but someone that tried to use KDE to work – being it a non-tech person. Since I spend most of my days helping people that is struggling with Free Software to pass the hate feeling, I feel that I have lots of things to say being that I’m activelly maintaining over 5 laptops from different friends that lives on different states.

      I also like to study humans, this very strange animal that has so many different ways of expressing himself that it’s so, so hard to get it right.

    • The OS LinuX Desktop

      Reader Oliver wanted to make his Linux Mint desktop look as much like a Mac as possible so others would find it easy to use. Given some of our previous Linux featured desktops, we know it wasn’t tough, but the end-result still looks great. Here’s how it’s all set up.

    • Dangling the Linux Carrot

      Sometimes the direct sell method isn’t the best way to close the deal. How do you think the whole “play hard to get” thing got traction throughout the years? That method is successful in any number of applications.

  • Server

    • Docker’s Improved Stability Fuels Continued Growth

      This is the summer of Docker’s ripening as it begins to mature into stable, enterprise-worthy software. The release of version 1.0 coincided with the first annual DockerCon, and finally moves Docker from an experimental state into a production-capable application. The pace of development is not slowing down after these successes, but rather appears to be ramping up as Docker adoption continues to grow and more companies get involved in the development process.

  • Kernel Space

    • Proposed: A Tainted Performance State For The Linux Kernel

      Similar to the kernel states of having a tainted kernel for using binary blob kernel modules or unsigned modules, a new tainting method has been proposed for warning the user about potentially adverse kernel performance.

    • Linux 3.17 Lands Memfd, A KDBUS Prerequisite

      Memfd is a mechanism similar to Android’s Ashmem that allows zero-copy message passing in KDBUS. Memfd effectively comes down to just a chunk of memory with a file descriptor attached that can be passed to mmap(). The memfd_create() function returns a raw shmem file and there’s optional support for sealing.

      Memfd is needed by KDBUS for message passing and now the code — after being public but out-of-tree for several months — is finally mainline. As a result, the KDBUS code has been updated to take advantage of the mainline Linux 3.17 state.

    • The Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board election
    • Linux Kernel Development Gets Two-Factor Authentication
    • Systemd 216 Piles On More Features, Aims For New User-Space VT

      Lennart Poettering announced the systemd 216 release on Tuesday and among its changes is a more complete systemd-resolved that has nearly complete caching DNS and LLMNR stub resolver, a new systemd terminal library, and a number of new commands.

      The systemd 216 release also has improvements to various systemd sub-commands, an nss-mymachines NSS module was added, a new networkctl client tool, KDBUS updates against Linux 3.17′s memfd, networkd improvements, a new systemd-terminal library for implementing full TTY stream parsing and rendering, a new systemd-journal-upload utility, an LZ4 compressor for journald, a new systemd-escape tool, a new systemd-firstboot component, and much more.

    • LinuxCon NA 2014 kicks off in Chicago, new Linux Certification Program announced
    • Linux Founder Linus Torvalds ‘Still Wants the Desktop’

      The Linux faithful gathered today at LinuxCon to hear core Linux developers, especially Linus Torvalds—and the audience wasn’t disappointed. In a keynote panel session, Torvalds spoke of his hopes and the challenges for Linux in 2014.

      Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman moderated the discussion and commented that Linux already runs everywhere. He asked Torvalds where he thinks Linux should go next.

    • Linux Foundation Debuts Linux Certification Effort

      The new certifications mark the first time the Linux Foundation has offered formal certification after years of success with training programs.

    • Linux Foundation to offer new certification for IT workers

      With an eye toward deepening the global Linux talent pool, the Linux Foundation today announced that it will offer two new certifications for engineers and administrators.

      The Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator, or LFCS, and the Linux Foundation Certified Engineer, or LFCE certificates will be granted to applicants who pass an automated online exam. The cost will be $300, although the foundation will hand out 1,000 free passes to attendees at LinuxCon, where the announcement was made.

    • Linux Growth Demands Bigger Talent Poo

      Today at LinuxCon and CloudOpen we’re making an announcement that signifies the natural next step in helping to build a qualified talent pool of Linux professionals worldwide:The Linux Foundation Certification Program.

    • GitHub, Seagate, Western Digital & Others Join The Linux Foundation

      With LinuxCon starting today in Chicago, the Linux Foundation has announced their latest sponsorship recruits for some major organizations that are now backing the foundation.

      Adapteva, GitHub, SanDisk, Seagate, and Western Digital are the latest organizations joining the Linux Foundation. Nearly all Phoronix readers should now GitHub along with storage companies Seagate and Western Digital. Adapteva is the start-up Parallella super-computing board.

    • Graphics Stack

      • AMD’s Catalyst Linux Driver Preparing For A World Without An X Server?

        AMD’s proprietary Catalyst Linux driver installer is interestingly being prepared for an environment without an X.Org Server.

        While there’s no announcement out of AMD indicating any future support directions for their Catalyst Linux driver, it seems their Catalyst driver will soon be equipped with an option for building the driver packages without X.Org Server support, a.k.a. no building of the fglrx DDX driver.

      • Mesa 10.2.6 Has Plenty Of OpenGL Driver Bug Fixes

        For those living on the Mesa 10.2 stable series rather than the experimental Mesa 10.3 code, there’s a new point release out today.

        Carl Worth of Intel released Mesa 10.2.6 as the latest bug-fix update. Mesa 10.2.6 has at least 28 bugs fixed, including many affecting core Mesa, some AMD RadeonSI fixes (affecting Hawall and Tahiti hardware), and various other fixes. Anuj Phogat contributed the most fixes at 15 followed by Marek Olšák at 4.

      • Open-Source Radeon Graphics Have Some Improvements On Linux 3.17

        Early benchmarking of the Linux 3.17 kernel have indicated faster performance for AMD’s open-source Linux graphics driver thanks to Radeon DRM improvements.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • LXQt 0.8 Is Being Released Soon

      Fans of LXQt, the merge of the Qt version of LXDE along with the Razor-qt desktop project, will soon see out a big update.

      LXQt 0.8.0 is being readied for release as the latest of this next-generation lightweight desktop environment. Heavy development continues on LXQt and recently the most important bugs have been addressed for the upcoming LXQt 0.8 milestone. Holding back the LXQt 0.8 release is finishing the language translations and figuring out what to do about their RandR utility.

    • A Linux Desktop Designed for You

      Desktop environments for Linux are not released ready-made. Behind each is a set of assumptions about what a desktop should be, and how users should interact with them. Increasingly, too, each environment has a history — some of which are many years old.

      As you shop around for a desktop, these assumptions are worth taking note of. Often, they can reveal tendencies that you might not discover without several days of probing and working with the desktop.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Prep for Akademy

        In preparation for Akademy I wanted to swap out the drive from my laptop — which is full of work-work things — and drop in a new one with stuff I actually want to have with me at Akademy, like git clones of various repositories.

      • LaKademy 2014 – KDE Latin America Summit

        Two years have passed since the reality of the first Latin American meeting of KDE contributors in 2012 in Porto Alegre, capital of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Now we are proud to announce that the second LaKademy will be held August 27th to 30th in São Paulo, Brazil, at one of the most important and prestigious universities in the world—the University of São Paulo.

      • KDE Applications and Development Platform 4.14

        Packages for the release of KDE SC 4.14 are available for Kubuntu 14.04LTS and our development release. You can get them from the Kubuntu Backports PPA. It includes an update of Plasma Desktop to 4.11.11.

      • GSOC 2014: Akonadi Commandline Client’s Current Status

        I recently finished adding documentation (man pages) to the project and also finished improving upon the add command and it’s test cases. And I beleive this completes all the tasks that I had planned for in my GSoC proposal.Features of AkonadiClient

      • what is “the desktop”: laptops now
      • Intermediate results of the icon tests: Oxygen

        The Oxygen icon set performs very well in general. Most icons are quickly and reliable identified with the corresponding term. As found in previous studies there is a minor setback for Add/New, Undo/Redo, and especially Copy/Paste which are mutually mistaken. Also the Search icon shows quite a high number of missing values. Perhaps the field glasses are not such a good metaphor.

      • The features I have implemented in my Google Summer Of Code project

        So I have coded three features for Calligra Sheets.

      • What’s new in porting script: clean-forward-declaration.sh?

        I wrote it for kde 4.0 but it was not perfect. I took time to fix it last week end.

        What does it do ? It allows to remove not necessary forward declaration. It’s very useful during kf5 migration because we change a lot of code. So sometime we keep some “class foo;” which will not create a compile error, but it will keep an unused code line.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • GNOME’s Window and Compositing Manager Mutter 3.14 Beta 1 Gets More Wayland Improvements

        Florian Müllner has announced that Mutter 3.14 Beta 1 has been released, featuring a number of changes and improvements.

      • GNOME 3.14 Beta Makes GLSL Optional, Supports Wayland Gesture/Touch Events

        For the upcoming GNOME 3.13.90 release are updates to GNOME Shell and Mutter that bring a few notable last-minute changes.

        The GNOME 3.13.90 Beta release is scheduled to happen today and as such the Mutter and GNOME Shell updates were checked in this week. With the Mutter 3.13.90 comes an enforcement that XSync() is only ever called once per-frame, the GLSL support is optional, gesture and touch events are now handled on Wayland, and there’s a variety of other fixes/changes. The Mutter 3.13.90 changes can be found via its release announcement.

  • Distributions

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Sets New 12-Month High at $61.97 (RHT)

        They now have a $70.00 price target on the stock, up previously from $57.00. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and eighteen have issued a buy rating to the company’s stock. Red Hat has an average rating of “Buy” and an average price target of $63.50.

      • Red Hat Introduces Open Virtual Appliance for Seamless OpenStack Evaluations

        Red Hat, Inc. RHT, -1.58% the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced Open Virtual Appliance for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform, enabling organizations with VMware-based infrastructures to easily and rapidly deploy and evaluate Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform for proof of concept deployments. Designed to meet growing interest in Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform from users, Open Virtual Appliance for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform is designed to enable users to have a working deployment of OpenStack in mere minutes.

      • Scientific Linux 7.0 x86_64 BETA 3

        Fermilab’s intention is to continue the development and support…

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • The Connected Car, Part 3: No Shortcuts to Security

      The Linux Foundation wants an open source platform in the pole position. The nonprofit consortium already has a fully functional Linux distribution, called “Automotive Grade Linux,” or AGL. It is a customizable, open source automotive software stack with Linux at its core.

    • Home automation hub runs Linux, offers cloud services

      Cloud Media launched a Kickstarter campaign for a Linux-based “Stack Box” home automation hub with cloud services and Raspberry Pi expansion compatibility.

    • Is it time to automate your home with Linux?
    • Raspberry Pi Devices Spread in Schools, Help Teach Programming

      According to a new DigiTimes report, sales of credit-card sized Raspberry Pi devices, which run Linux, remain very strong. The Raspberry Pi Foundation says that 3.5 million units have sold worldwide, with demand from China and Taiwan staying strong. The devices are helping to teach children basic programming skills and are arriving in educational systems all around the world.

    • The Many Things You Can Build With A Raspberry Pi

      Ruth Suehle and Tom Callaway are presenting at LinuxCon 2014 Chicago tomorrow about many different Raspberry Pi hacks and other Linux capabilities of these low-cost, low-performance single board computers.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • OneNote for Android tablets added, with handwriting support

          Microsoft released OneNote for Android tablets today with handwriting input, bringing Android users closer to the OneNote experience the company envisioned for the Microsoft Surface.

        • These Are the Biggest Android Tablets That Money Can Buy

          How big do you like your tablet? If you’re designing a kid-friendly device that can be used as an easel, learning resource and game platform, the answer is probably: roughly Monopoly-board big.

          No, 10 or even 12 inches isn’t going to do it for you. You’re going to want a device with a 20- or 24-inch display, like nabi’s new Big Tab tablets, made by Fuhu. The Big Tabs are the biggest Android slates we’ve ever seen for sale (although there have been demos of significantly bigger models).

        • Five things Android smartphones have that are unlikely to come to the iPhone 6

          It is likely I will buy an iPhone 6, but there are many things I like about Android that I doubt we will see come to an Apple flagship smartphone any time soon.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla and Open Diversity Data

        I would encourage other Mozillians to support the push for opening this data by sharing this blog post on the Social Media as an indicator of supporting Open Diversity Data publishing by Mozilla or by retweeting this.

        I really think our Manifesto encourages us to support initiatives like this; specifically principle number two of our manifesto. If other companies (Kudos!) that are less transparent than Mozilla can do it then I think we have to do this.

        Finally, I would like to encourage Mozilla to consider creating a position of VP of Diversity and Inclusion to oversee our various diversity and inclusion efforts and to help plan and create a vision for future efforts at Mozilla. Sure we have already people who kind of do this but it is not their full-time role.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Tesora Launches Certification Program for OpenStack Cloud Storage

      As the OpenStack cloud storage ecosystem grows more and more diverse, how can enterprises ensure compatibility between their OpenStack distribution and their database of choice? Tesora hopes that providing a solution to that quandry can help win it customers through a new certification program.

    • Mesosphere Launches Clusters on Google Compute Engine

      Mesosphere is bringing its Mesos clusters to Google Compute Engine, enabling Google’s (GOOG) cloud users to launch Mesos clusters on the public cloud. This provides customers with the ability to abstract basic devops, simplifying the data center so it looks to developers more like a single piece of hardware.

    • Tesora Delivers Certification Program for OpenStack Cloud Storage

      As the OpenStack cloud computing arena grows, a whole ecosystem of tools and front-ends are growing in popularity as well. And, one of the most notable tools in the ecosystem is the database-as-a-service offering focused on building and managing relational databases, called Trove.

      Tesora recently announced that it has open sourced its Tesora Database Virtualization Engine, and now it is offering the Tesora OpenStack Trove Database Certification Program, which provides “assurance that the most widely used databases can be deployed with Trove into the most popular OpenStack environments via the Tesora DBaaS Platform.”

    • The Top Open Source Cloud Projects of 2014

      OpenStack is the most popular open source cloud project, followed by Docker and KVM, according to a survey of more than 550 respondents conducted by Linux.com and The New Stack and announced today at CloudOpen in Chicago.

    • Using Clocker and Apache Brooklyn to build a Docker cloud

      With the growing potential of Docker, it’s becoming clear that the future of at least some of the data center is going to be containerized. But there are still challenges in getting containerized applications deployed and managed across real and virtual hardware.

      To learn more about one of the available options for performing this management and deployment, yesterday I attended a Google Hangout which was part of the OpenStack Online Meetup series. This month’s topic was centered around providing information and a walk-through of a new open source project called Clocker. Much as the name might suggest, Clocker is a tool designed for spinning up a cloud out of Docker containers.

  • Databases

    • EnterpriseDB chucks devs free tools to craft NoSQL web apps with PostgreSQL

      Enterprise-class PostgreSQL database vendor EnterpriseDB has launched a free turnkey development environment designed to make it easier for coders to build web applications using PostgreSQL’s new NoSQL capabilities.

      The open source PostgreSQL project has been adding NoSQL-like features for the past couple of versions, most notably support for the JavaScript-friendly JSON data format and the JSONB binary storage format.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Desktop Obsessions, Steam Sacrifices, and LibreOffice Review

      We’ve been reading a lot about the desktop lately and we’re not stopping tonight. We have three stories tonight on the desktop. In other news, the kernel repositories beef-up security and Alienware says Steam Machine users will “sacrifice content for the sake of Linux.” The new Linux version of Opera is making progress and CNet has a review of LibreOffice 4.3. This and more in tonight’s Linux news.

    • Why do so many Linux users hate Oracle?

      Oracle has always had a rather touch and go relationship with the open source community, to say the least. The company has never been shy about doing whatever is necessary to earn a profit, even if it means alienating people in the open source community. A redditor asked why Oracle is hated by so many and got quite an earful of responses.

  • Healthcare

    • Black Hat 2014: Open Source Could Solve Medical Device Security

      On the topic of source code liability, Greer suggests that eventually software developers, including medical device development companies, will be responsible for the trouble their software causes (or fails to prevent). I think it’s fair to say that it is impossible to guarantee a totally secure system. You cannot prove a negative statement after all. Given enough time, most systems can be breached. So where does this potential liability end? What if my company has sloppy coding standards, no code reviews, or I use a third-party software library that has a vulnerability? Should hacking be considered foreseeable misuse?

    • Open health community management at Clinovo

      Olivier Roth, Community Manager at Clinovo, has grown an open source community around the open health platform ClinCapture, an open source Eletronic Data Capture (EDC) system.

      Opensource.com caught up with Olivier, who was tasked with not only marketing an open source product but building genuine and natural interest around it to help move it forward. In this interview, we explore the importance of a community to an open source project with tips for how to create and maintain one.

  • BSD

  • Public Services/Government

    • Does government finally grok open source?

      Yes, the government — one U.S. federal government employee told me that government IT tends to be “stove-piped,” with people “even working within the same building” not having much of a clue what their peers are doing, which is not exactly the open source way.

      That’s changing. One way to see this shift is in government policies. For the U.S. federal government, there is now a “default to open,” a dramatic reversal on long-standing practices of spending heavily with a core of proprietary technology vendors.

    • U.S. Digital Services and Playbook: “Default to Open”

      About this time last year, I laid out some trends I saw for the coming year in government take up of open source software. Looking back now, it appears those trends are not only here to stay, they are accelerating and are more important than ever.

      In particular, I wrote that “open source will continue to be the ‘go to’ approach for governments around the world” and that “increasingly, governments are wrestling with the ‘how tos’ of open source choices; not whether to use it.”

      Recent developments in the United States highlight these points.

      First, the White House (via OMB and the Federal CIO) has issued a Digital Services Playbook—described in some quarters as “something of a marvel for an official government policy: it’s elegantly designed, has clear navigation, and is responsive to any device you choose to view it upon.” It is well worth a read.

  • Licensing

    • Protecting Software Freedom – the Qt License Update

      The KDE Free Qt Foundation is a legal entity, set up by KDE e.V. and Trolltech, the company originally developing Qt. It aims to safeguard the availability of Qt as Free Software and already fulfilled an important role. Trolltech was bought by Nokia, who sold Qt later to Digia. The contracts stayed valid during all these transitions.

      The foundation has four voting board members (two from Digia, two from KDE e.V.) and two non-voting advisory board members (the Trolltech founders). In case of a tie, KDE e.V.’s board members have an extra vote.

      Through a contract with Digia, the KDE Free Qt Foundation receives rights to all Free Qt releases “for the KDE Windowing System” (currently defined as X11 – we plan to extend this to Wayland) and for Android. As long as Digia keeps the contract, the KDE Free Qt Foundation will never make use of these rights.

    • Qt Licence Update

      Today Qt announced some changes to their licence. The KDE Free Qt team have been working behind the scenes to make these happen and we should be very thankful for the work they put in. Qt code was LGPLv2.1 or GPLv3 (this also allows GPLv2). Existing modules will add LGPLv3 to that. This means I can get rid of the part of the KDE Licensing Policy which says “Note: code may not be copied from Qt into KDE Platform as Qt is LGPLv2.1 only which would prevent it being used under LGPL 3″.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • FarmBot: An Open Source 3D Farming Printer That Aims to Create Food For Everyone

        When most of us think of 3D printers, we typically imagine the desktop machines that are used for creating small plastic objects, or the larger scale industrial level machines used for prototyping, and in some cases the printing of production ready parts. Then there are the extremely large 3D printers that have been created for the printing of concrete structured buildings and other large objects. Perhaps the printers which have the most intriguing uses are those which can print food. These printers, which are still only in the early stages of development, allow those with minimal food preparation experience to print out meals using specially designed software. All of these 3D printers have the potential to bring resources to countries and people who typically don’t have access to traditional means of manufacturing. Yet, none of them ensure massive food production that could help feed the world’s hungry.

      • RISC creator is pushing open source chips for cloud computing and the internet of things

        Fed up with the limitations of current computer chips and their related intellectual property, a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, is pushing an open source alternative. The RISC-V instruction set architecture was originally developed at the university to help teach computer architecture to students, but now its creators want to push it into the mainstream to help propel emerging markets such as cloud computing and the internet of things.

        One of the researchers leading the charge behind RISC-V is David Patterson, the project’s creator and also the creator of the original RISC instruction set in the 1980s. He views the issue as one centered around innovation. Popular chip architectures historically have been locked down behind strict licensing rules by companies such as Intel, ARM and IBM (although IBM has opened this up a bit for industry partners with its OpenPower foundation). Even for companies that can afford licenses, he argues, the instruction sets they receive can be complex and bloated, requiring a fair amount of effort to shape around the desired outcome.

  • Programming

    • Minecraft mod teaches kids to code by modding Minecraft

      Like many nine-year-olds, Stanley Strum spends a lot of time building things in Minecraft, the immersive game that lets your create your own mini-universe. The game has many tools. But Stanley is one of many players taking the game a step further by building entirely new features into the game. And, more than that, he’s also learning how to code.

Leftovers

  • Pay up: The free ride is over for corporate BYOD

    No, BYOD has not been dealt a death blow by a California Court of Appeals ruling that says employers must reimburse a reasonable part of employees’ cellphone bills when use of their personal phone is required to do their work. But it will kill the practice of using BYOD as an excuse to make some employees buy personal equipment and pay for personal cell plans to do their jobs.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Swedish docs puzzled by deformed penis trend

      Hypospadias, a birth defect where the urethral opening is abnormally placed, is becoming a more common case among Sweden’s new-born boys.

      Researchers at Stockholm’s Karolinksa Institute have published results from a 40-year study in which they collected data from all males born between 1973 and 2009.

      They found that before 1990, cases of hypospadias were recorded in 4.5 boys out of every thousand. After 1990, the figure increased to 8 per 1,000 boys.

      The study looked into factors that are known to cause the defect, such as low-birth weight, being born a twin, or parents who used in vitro fertilization (IVF) to conceive, but researchers stated that the increase did not correlate with these factors.

    • Beware of the Robobee, Monsanto and DARPA

      The RoboBee is a mechanical bee in the design stage at the Microrobotics Lab, housed in a well-appointed building at Harvard University. The RoboBee project’s Intelligence Office declares that the robotic inventors are inspired by the bee. The RoboBee project’s website and press releases use the imagery of the golden bees that we remember from our love of the cuddly buzzy honey-maker.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Finance

    • The Bulgarian Banking Disaster

      Two months after it was taken into conservatorship by the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) after a catastrophic bank run, Bulgaria’s CorpBank is still closed.

  • Censorship

    • Cameron’s big stand will have little impact

      Yesterday, the Prime Minister David Cameron announced his latest effort to take a ‘big stand on protecting our children online’. In a three-month pilot, that starts in October, online music videos will be given an age classification by the British Board of Classification. This rating will be displayed when the music videos are uploaded to YouTube or the music video site Vevo. Cameron claims that such a rating system will bring music videos in line with offline media such as films.

    • City Of Peoria Claims No Rights Were Violated When Police And Mayor Shut Down Parody Twitter Account

      This very public display of stupidity may cost the City of Peoria, along with the many other defendants named in the lawsuit filed on behalf of the Twitter account owner (Jon Daniel) by the ACLU. Obviously, the First Amendment was all but forgotten in the mayor’s quest to make this account — one that was only seen by Mayor Jim Ardis and a handful of others — disappear.

    • Facebook To Ruin Our Good Time With ‘Satire’ Disclaimer; The Onion Responds With Satire

      Forget confusing, this is yet another inch down the slippery slope in the war on humor and me-getting-to-make-fun-of-people, and I won’t stand for it, damn it. People I haven’t seen since high school getting fooled by The Onion has been one of the great pleasures in my life and it’s just not right for Facebook to chip away at that fun just because it appears to have finally acknowledged that its users are, by and large, idiots.

  • Privacy

    • panicd: An approach for home routers to securely erase sensitive data

      On August 15rd 2014, our student Nicolas Benes gave a talk on “panicd: An approach for home routers to securely erase sensitive data” defending his almost finished Bachelor’s Thesis at GHM 2014 hosted at TUM. The goal of his work is to ensure that secrets (especially key material) stored on your hardware (especially in memory) remain secret even if an adversary attempts to take physical control over the device. You can now find the video below.

    • The Security of al Qaeda Encryption Software

      I don’t want to get into an argument about whether al Qaeda is altering its security in response to the Snowden documents. Its members would be idiots if they did not, but it’s also clear that they were designing their own cryptographic software long before Snowden. My guess is that the smart ones are using public tools like OTR and PGP and the paranoid dumb ones are using their own stuff, and that the split was the same both pre- and post-Snowden.

    • Binney: ‘The NSA’s main motives: power and money’

      Whistleblower William Binney recently made headlines when he told the German parliament that the NSA, his former employer, had become “totalitarian.” DW spoke to him about NSA overrreach and the agency’s power.

    • Money And Power: The Real Reason For The NSA Spying On Everyone

      More than four years ago, we wrote about all the buzz that you were hearing about “cyberwar” was little more than an attempt to drum up FUD to get the government to throw billions of dollars at private contractors. We noted that Booz Allen Hamilton (yes, the last employer of one Ed Snowden) had hired former NSA director and also Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell as its Vice Chairman. He was the leading voice out there screaming about the threat of “cyberwar” getting on TV and having lots of opinion pieces in big name publications — all of which mentioned his former government jobs, but almost none of which mentioned that his current employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, stood to make billions selling “solutions” to the government. And, indeed, Booz Allen has been raking in the cash on “cybersecurity.”

      This is worth keeping in mind as you read this fascinating interview with NSA whistleblower, Bill Binney, in which he lays this out plain and simple. The real reason for all this NSA surveillance is about money and power. “Stop terrorism” is secondary.

    • don’t encrypt all the things

      Making things easy means making them transparent. It means pushing the crypto away from the user. That’s how we end up with our lolcats and dogecoins all mixed up together. Maybe some things should be hard, to remind us that they are important.

    • No Photos: Parents Opt to Keep Babies off Facebook

      Behold the cascade of baby photos, the flood of funny kid anecdotes and the steady stream of school milestones on Facebook.

      It all makes Sonia Rao, a stay-at-home mother of a 1-year-old in Mountain View, California, “a little uncomfortable.”

      “I just have a vague discomfort having her photograph out there for anyone to look at,” says Rao. “When you meet a new person and go to their account, you can look them up, look at photos, videos, know that they are traveling.”

    • German Officials Mull the Ultimate in Document Security – Manual Typewriters

      Politicians from Germany have come up with a unique way of safeguarding documents that even the NSA would have trouble in breaching. Far from a cutting-edge online security measure, the idea has been floated of once again breaking out the typewriters for the scripting of the most sensitive documents of all.

    • GERMANY’S SPYING ON TURKEY MIGHT BE LINKED WITH KURDISH QUESTION

      Political tension between Turkey and Germany has been continuing since the German weekly Der Spiegel revealed that the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has been spying on its NATO ally, Turkey, since 2009. Even though German Chancellor Angela Merkel is no stranger to spying since she discovered her cellphone had been tapped by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), she refused to comment on the work of BND when questioned about the surveillance of Turkish targets.

    • Yes, Berlin has its own spying scandals, but don’t expect Germany to forgive the NSA

      For politicians in Washington, the German uproar over allegations that the NSA had spied on Merkel and collected the data of millions of Germans was remarkable. The usually calm Chancellor Angela Merkel angrily rejected American explanations and forced the CIA station chief in Berlin to leave the country after further allegations were made public. German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble went even further, saying publicly that he wanted to cry over “such stupidity.”

    • Gaycken: ‘We’re being plundered’

      Deutsche Welle: One of the goals the German government has set in its “Digital Agenda” is increasing trust in the internet. Do you think complete digital safety can be achieved?

      Sandro Gaycken: At this point, definitely not. The internet is inherently unsafe. At its inception, we simply didn’t include a whole lot of factors that would have been needed to guarantee security. That list starts with computers but includes web mechanisms. Wanting to create security by spouting off a few nice words, and even wanting to become the safest nation in the world is illusionary. And so far, we haven’t heard any more than these phrases.

    • ​NSA, BND and MIT: Whose Big Brother is watching whom?

      When news broke last summer that a certain NSA contractor had “leaked” an inordinate amount of secret data to various media outlets, global public opinion suddenly realized that the world we live in today does resemble the Orwellian dystopia 1984.

      The National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden made material available to journalist Glenn Greenwald, and the British broadsheet The Guardian published its first Snowden-related article on 5-6 June 2013. Greenwald laconically wrote then that the “National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers,” revealing the tip of the surveillance iceberg that was made public by the contractor. Edward Snowden outed himself as the NSA leaker on 9 June 2013 “in a video interview with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras.”

    • GCHQ Is Mapping Open TCP Ports Across Whole Countries

      German journalists and academics have criticised Britain’s intelligence service GCHQ for scanning servers round the world, and maintaining a database of open ports which could be used in attacks.

      British intelligence agency GCHQ has been cataloguing open TCP ports across entire countries as part of a secret programme codenamed ‘Hacienda’, reports German publication Heise Online.

    • Spy office defends ‘extensive and multi-layered’ oversight

      The nation’s top spy office is publicly defending a controversial executive order that authorizes some types of foreign snooping.

      The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (ODNI) civil liberties protection officer, Alexander Joel, wrote an op-ed in Politico Magazine on Monday arguing that the Reagan administration order is covered by “extensive and multi-layered” oversight and includes multiple protections for Americans and foreigners alike.

    • Why the Tor browser and your privacy are under threat

      Private companies and governments track everything you do online. While these intrusions on your freedom and privacy may seem benign, for many anonymity is a matter of life and death. People living under repressive regimes, political activists, spies, journalists and even the military all need to access the internet and remain truly anonymous and impossible to track.

      [...]

      It is odd then that the technology behind Tor was originally developed by the US Navy in an attempt to develop a secure way of routing traffic over the internet. In fact the US government is still the single biggest financial supporter of Tor and donated over $2.5 million to the project in the past two years. Despite that the NSA and its UK equivalent GCHQ have made several determined attempts to break open Tor’s encryption and unmask its users. An old bug in Tor’s browser software let spooks identify 24 users in a single weekend, according to The Washington Post while the NSA has also looked for patterns in entry and exit points on the Tor network to try and spot individual users. But despite best efforts Tor remains secure and there is no evidence that the NSA or any other agency is capable of unmasking Tor on a global scale.

    • Gov’t Says NSA Phone Spying Suit Should Be Tossed

      The U.S. government on Monday asked a Washington, D.C., federal judge to dismiss one of three lawsuits filed by a former U.S. Department of Justice antitrust attorney who is challenging the constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s collection of phone and online data records.

    • Why A Philosopher Teaches Privacy

      Next week, the new term begins and I’ll be teaching an undergraduate philosophy course called, “Technology, Privacy, and the Law.” The first order of business will be to explain why thinking critically about privacy—determining what it is, deciding when it should be protected, and pinpointing how it ought to be safeguarded—means doing philosophy. Given the practical stakes of these issues, you might not realize that getting into them involves philosophical thinking. But if you’ve got a principled bone to pick with corporate, peer, or governmental surveillance, or if you’ve good reasons for being displeased with the activists who are taking stands against it, you’ve got your philosopher’s cap on.

    • EFF to Ethiopia: Illegal Wiretapping Is Illegal, Even for Governments

      Earlier this week, EFF told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that Ethiopia must be held accountable for its illegal wiretapping of an American citizen. Foreign governments simply do not have a get-out-of-court-free card when they commit serious felonies in America against Americans. This case is the centerpiece of our U.S. legal efforts to combat state sponsored malware.

    • A first step in reining in the NSA’s power

      A little more than a year after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the federal government was collecting and storing the telephone records of millions of Americans, Congress is poised to end the program and provide significant protection for a broad range of personal information sought by government investigators.

    • Editorial: Leahy bill a step toward rebalancing privacy, national security

      For all its limitations, Leahy’s USA Freedom Act testifies to the importance of informed public debate. Snowden’s disclosures brought into the open a dramatic expansion of government power. As a result, liberal Democrats in Congress joined libertarian Republicans in pushing back against an overweening national security establishment.

    • For German, Swiss Privacy Start-Ups, a Post-Snowden Boom

      US and Chinese tech companies are not the only ones profiting from the “Snowden effect.”

      Since news broke that former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden disclosed alleged U.S. government surveillance methods worldwide, secure messaging and so-called ‘NSA-proof’ products and companies have sprouted across Germany and Switzerland, two countries who take their privacy laws very seriously.

    • Facebook notes huge jump in secure email connections

      Facebook Inc., which sends billions of notification emails to users each day, said it has discovered a rapid rise in email programs using secure connections.

      Facebook said in a blog post that the number of third-party email providers who hold strict security certificates and deploy encryption of outbound notifications jumped from roughly 30 percent in March to 95 percent in mid-July.

    • Facebook reports enormous uptick in use of snoop-proof email
    • Close to All Facebook Notification Emails Encrypted
    • Meet John Tye: the kinder, gentler, and by-the-book whistleblower

      The way John Tye tells it, we’ve all been missing the forest for the trees.

      Over the course of two phone calls, the former State Department official told Ars that anyone who has been following the government surveillance discussion since the Snowden disclosures has been too concerned with things like metadata collection. Since last summer, journalists, politicians, and the public have been inundated with largely-unknown terminology, like “Section 215” and “Section 702.”

  • Civil Rights

    • Why Ferguson PD has no video of Michael Brown’s death

      There is no video of the death of Michael Brown; there are only two diametrically opposed stories.

      Police in Ferguson, Mo., say an officer killed Brown after the teenager tried to take the officer’s gun. Witnesses say Brown never assaulted the cop and was actually waving his hands in the air before being shot six times. More than a week after Brown’s death, still nobody knows exactly what happened, because no cameras were rolling. In 2014, with HD video neither costly nor scarce, is this acceptable?

    • How Body Cameras Affect Police Accountability
    • “He Wasn’t A Regular Guy”

      How is whether or not Brown was a “regular guy” relevant to the question of whether the police officer was justified in shooting him to death? We do not have one set of laws for “regular guys” and another for everyone else.

    • Intercept Issues Statement on Reporter Shot With Non-Lethal Bullet, Arrested in Ferguson

      He “was doing his job, presented a threat to no one, and clearly identified himself as a member of the press,” Glenn Greenwald’s news organization says

      A reporter for Glenn Greenwald’s news agency, the Intercept, is the latest to be targeted by police in Ferguson, Mo.

    • In Ferguson, echoes of Middle East?

      A summer of global turmoil has culminated in nightmarish scenes from Ferguson, Mo., a St. Louis suburb torn apart by protests after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager.

    • Fox Turns To New Black Panthers Fabulist To Argue “Eric Holder Cannot Be Trusted” To Investigate Michael Brown Shooting
    • CNN Attempts Actual Journalism–But Reverts to Embedded Reporting

      In a matter of minutes, members of the media, who had been objectively and effectively reporting on a protest greeted with a militarized crackdown worthy of a war-torn country, suddenly agreed to become embedded journalists–just like in a war-torn country. Embedded journalism, as FAIR has often written (e.g, Extra!, 9/03), is one of the worst practices of media if you want independent and accurate reporting.

      [...]

      Johnson didn’t think Ferguson police were getting positive enough coverage, so he asked Tapper and Lemon to join him the next day and report alongside him.

    • CNN’s Rosemary Church Asks “Why Not Perhaps Use Water Cannon” In Ferguson
    • Russia, Iran and Egypt Heckle US About Tactics in Ferguson
    • You Know Things are Bad When Egypt and Russia Are Chastising the U.S. Over Ferguson

      The ridiculous police response in Ferguson, Mo., has provoked plenty of reactions from other countries, some of whom seem to be reveling in the chance to troll the U.S. (while seemingly forgetting their own records on human rights).

    • Tear Gas Is A Banned Chemical Weapon, But US Lobbying Made It Okay For Domestic Use… And, Boy, Do We Use It

      If you’ve been watching what’s going on in Ferguson, Missouri, lately, you’re quite well aware that the police have been basically spraying tear gas almost everywhere they can. Suddenly, articles are springing up all over the internet about the use of tear gas — which, it turns out is technically banned for use in warfare as a chemical weapon. The history of how that came about, however, is a bit complicated, as this State Department notice on tear gas discusses. Basically, there was a dispute over whether or not tear gas violated the Geneva Conventions. Here’s a snippet:

    • Administration Proudly Announces That If Your ‘We The People’ Petition Aligns With Its Priorities, Something Might Actually Happen

      Let’s get this right out in the open. I don’t have any particular animosity towards this administration. I just don’t find it to be an improvement over the last one (which I found to be pretty much terrible from all angles). This wouldn’t be notable except for the fact that this administration definitely considers itself to be a vast improvement over the last one and has made several proclamations advancing that theory. (“Most transparent administration,” anyone?)

    • US ‘deeply disturbed’ after Afghans bar reporter from leaving country

      The United States is “deeply disturbed” that Afghanistan’s attorney general has blocked a New York Times reporter from leaving the country, the State Department said Tuesday.

      Times journalist Matthew Rosenberg said Tuesday that he was questioned after writing a story alleging that unnamed Afghan officials were plotting to seize power if the country’s electoral crisis continued.

    • EXCLUSIVE: Brooklyn man wins $125,000 settlement after claiming he was arrested for recording stop-and-frisk

      Dick George claimed that he was pulled from his car in Flatbush after cops realized he was recording them as they searched three youths and overheard him advising the youths to get cops’ badge numbers in June 2012.

    • The Revolutionary Document That Is The UK’s 184-Year-Old Idea Of ‘Policing By Consent’

      Jason Kottke of the always informative and entertaining kottke.org just posted a very interesting look at the genesis of UK law enforcement. In 1829, the UK government shifted policing from a paramilitary force comprised mainly of volunteers to an organized force comprised of citizens. But it made it very clear that UK police derived their power from the consent of the people, rather than from a government mandate.

    • NYPD Settles Case In Which It Arrested Guy For Recording Stop And Frisk, Pays $125,000

      In yet another case in which police illegal arrested someone for filming the police, the police have been forced to pay up. Unlike the big Simon Glik case, it appears that the NYPD (under new management!) decided to do its best to settle the case and get it off the books. They’re paying $125,000 to Dick George, who recorded police doing one of its infamous stop-and-frisks.

    • LAPD Officer Says Tragedies Could Be Prevented If Citizens Would Just Shut Up And Do What Cops Tell Them To

      In the continuing furor that is Ferguson, Missouri, someone is finally asking, “Won’t anyone think of the poor police officers?” Naturally, the person raising this question is a police officer — a 17-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department. And the question isn’t so much being raised as it is being thrown in the reader’s face.

    • Church denies buying victims’ legal rights

      The Catholic Church denies buying off sexual abuse victims for a modest sum to avoid being sued, but says it understands why people believe it did.

      Hundreds of victims of paedophile priests signed away their rights to sue the church for compensation payments under its Melbourne Response scheme for handling clergy sex abuse complaints.

    • We wouldn’t need whistleblowers’ bravery if Morrison did his job properly

      Without whistelblowers working in immigration centers, we would not know the devastating conditions that refugees, including children, suffer under

    • Somalia: After 19 Initial Arrests, Three Journalists Still Held and Reportedly Tortured

      Reporters Without Borders condemns the closures of Mogadishu-based Radio Shabelle and Sky FM and arrests of 19 journalists and employees on 15 August, and the continuing detention and reported torture of the directors of the two radio stations and their owner.

    • Government Repeatedly Threatening Reporter Who Exposed Blackwater With Arrest

      If you blinked at the end of June, you may have missed one of the best pieces of journalism in 2014. The New York Times headline accompanying the story was almost criminally bland, but the content itself was extraordinary: A top manager at Blackwater, the notorious defense contractor, openly threatened to kill a US State Department official in 2007 if he continued to investigate Blackwater’s corrupt dealings in Iraq. Worse, the US government sided with Blackwater and halted the investigation. Blackwater would later go on to infamously wreak havoc in Iraq.

    • Should Luxembourg offer asylum to Snowden & Assange?

      A Luxembourg computer hacking group has called on the Luxembourg government to offer asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and whistleblower Edward Snowden.

      In an open letter, the Chaos Computer Club (C3L) said that such an invitation would be a “long overdue” political action.

      “Both (Assange and Snowden) have taken significant risks and consequences around the world to expose the intentions of power-hungry institutions and demonstrate their activities. Threats, lawsuits and denunciations were the responses of the States concerned; and only very little attention from those who could provide political and institutional changes.”

      The letter referred to C3L’s “Freedom Not Fear” initiative, on which a round table discussion was held with all Luxembourg political party representatives, excluding the ADR and PID.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • How to Save the Net: Don’t Give In to Big ISPs

      The Internet has already changed how we live and work, and we’re only just getting started. Who’d have thought even five years ago that people would be streaming Ultra HD 4K video over their home Internet connections?

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Movie Boss Avoids Copyright Q&A to Avoid Piracy “Crazies”

        A public discussion forum centered on new copyright proposals will go ahead without Australia’s main Hollywood-affiliated studio. In an email just made public, Village Roadshow Co-CEO Graham Burke said his company would be boycotting the event due to it being dominated by “crazies” with a pro-piracy agenda.

      • Attackers Can ‘Steal’ Bandwidth From BitTorrent Seeders, Research Finds

        New research reveals that BitTorrent swarms can be slowed down significantly by malicious peers. Depending on the number of seeders and the clients they use, download times can be increased by 1000%. The attacks are possible through an exploit of the BitTorrent protocol for which the researchers present a fix.

      • Unsealed documents show Prenda parties’ twisted finances

        Prenda’s recent devastating defeat in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals was a result of Dan Booth’s / Jason Sweet’s titanic work and John Steele’s / Paul Hansmeier’s incurable hubris. Trolls’ hubris made them foolishly believe that they had more than a “between slim and zero” chance of prevailing on appeal despite the compelling evidence of not so laundry-fresh financials.

      • Unsealed Motions Shows How Team Prenda Sought To Hide Money

        Back in April, we wrote about a really enraged John Steele (famous for his likely leading role in the Prenda scam) angrily hitting back against a sealed motion for contempt against him, arguing that he was lying and hiding assets in his attempt to plead poverty, after a court ordered Team Prenda to file detailed financial statements. They did not do so.

      • Nintendo Goes Copyright On Woman Making Pokemon-Inspired Planters

        We all know that Nintendo wraps itself in copyright law like some kind of really boring security blanket. Every once in a while, the company will make some noise about being more open and accommodating to its biggest fans and the like, but that noise is usually followed up by a rash of takedowns and C&D letters. The most recent battlefront Nintendo has entered in the war against its own fans is the floral planter arena. One woman, admittedly inspired by her love of the Pokemon game series, shared her design for a 3D printed planter on a commerce website.

      • Licensing Boards Think Studying For A Test Is Copyright Infringement, Forbid Memorization Of Material

        Today’s copyright-induced stupidity is brought to you by… a whole host of regulatory institutions. An anonymous Techdirt reader sent in a pointer to this ridiculous warning that greets those accessing the National Association of Legal Assistants practice tests.

      • Who Needs SOPA? US Court Wipes Sites From The Internet For ‘Infringement’ Without Even Alerting Sites In Question

        TorrentFreak has the exceptionally troubling story of a federal district court in Oregon issuing an incredibly broad and questionable order, effectively wiping a bunch of websites out, without ever letting the websites in question know that they were being “tried” in court. The request came from ABS-CBN, a giant Filipino entertainment company arguing infringement, of course. But the argument against these sites is somewhat questionable already, made worse by the demand that the whole thing be done under seal (without alerting the site operators). Then Judge Anna Brown granted the temporary restraining order, basically deleting these sites from the internet, without even a sniff of an adversarial hearing.

08.19.14

Links 19/8/2014: Humble Jumbo Bundle 2 Betrayal, Mercedes-Benz Runs GNU/Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 3:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • European Space Operations Centre Now Runs on SUSE Linux Enterprise Servers

    The European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) is now powered by SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and it’s making a firm commitment towards open source and Linux software.

    This is not exactly something completely unexpected. The European Space Agency and openSUSE have been friends for a few years, but now the level of implication manifested by both parties has gone beyond the adoption of a Linux distro.

  • Server

    • A beginners guide to Docker
    • Why the operating system matters in a containerized world

      Applications running in Linux containers are isolated within a single copy of the operating system running on a physical server. This approach stands in contrast to hypervisor-based virtualization in which each application is bound to a complete copy of a guest operating system and communicates with the hardware through the intervening hypervisor. As a result, containers consume very few system resources such as memory and impose essentially no performance overhead on the application.

    • Panamax Connects Docker Linux Containers Like Lego

      n open-source community resource for complex Docker architectures

      CenturyLink has contributed the Panamax Docker management platform to open source. Panamax is described as a tool (its makers would prefer we said “platform”) for developers to create, share, and deploy a Docker-containerized application.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 3.17 Release Cycle Begins as LinuxCon Opens

      Big week on the Linux Planet as a new Linux kernel release cycle begins and Kernel developers congregate in Chicago for LinuxCon.

      “I’m going to be on a plane much of tomorrow, and am not really supportive of last-minute pull requests during the merge window anyway, so I’m closing the merge window one day early, and 3.17-rc1 is out there now,” Linus Torvalds wrote in his Linux 3.17 rc1 release announcement.

    • Linux kernel source code repositories get better security

      Almost three years ago, crackers broke into the kernel.org, Linux’s most important site. While no damage was done, it was still worrisome. So, at the Linux Kernel Summit, the Linux Foundation announced that it was securing Linux’s Git source code repositories with two-factor authentication.

    • Btrfs Gets Talked Up, Googler Encourages You To Try Btrfs

      This week at LinuxCon North America in Chicago is a presentation by Google’s Marc Merlin that’s entitled “Why you should consider using btrfs, real COW snapshots and file level incremental server OS upgrades like Google does.” The presentation does a good job at looking at the state of Btrfs on Linux and comparing it to ZFS.

      Marc Merlin, a Linux admin at Google for more than one decade, is presenting on Thursday at LinuxCon Chicago about Btrfs. His slides are already available for those that can’t make it to the windy city or are looking for an overview of what he’ll be discussing.

    • Kpatch Gets Exposure This Week, kGraft Misses Out

      This week at LinuxCon Chicago are two talks about Red Hat’s Kpatch live kernel patching solution to reduce downtime. However, there aren’t any scheduled talks about SUSE’s kGraft solution with neither yet being in the mainline kernel.

      On Thursday at the Sheraton in Chicago will be the “Kpatch Without Stop Machine” presentation by Hitachi’s Masami Hiramatsu while on Friday afternoon will be “kpatch: Have Your Security And Eat It Too!” by Red Hat’s Josh Poimboeuf.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Mesa Now Supports Another OpenGL 4.5 Extension

        While Mesa is still racing towards OpenGL 4.0 compliance, another OpenGL 4.5 extension can now be crossed off the Mesa TODO list.

        Some Mesa developers have already started tackling some of the easier OpenGL 4.5 extensions and today another can be crossed off the list. Thanks to Tobias Klausmann. GL_ARB_conditional_render_inverted is now supported by Mesa. The core work for GL_ARB_conditional_render_inverted is complete and is implemented currently by the Gallium3D-based Nouveau NVC0 (Fermi+), Softpipe, and LLVMpipe drivers. Support will surely come in time for mainline Mesa with this extension for the RadeonSI Gallium3D and Intel drivers.

      • AMD Launches Radeon R7 Series SSDs

        Not to be confused with the Radeon R7 graphics cards, AMD today officially announced the Radeon R7 SSD line-up.

  • Applications

    • Git 2.1.0 Version Control System Now Available for Download

      Git 2.1.0, a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency, has been officially released.

    • XBMC 13.2 Released, One Of The Last Before Kodi

      XBMC 13.2 has been released as one of the last “Gotham” series bug-fix releases before the project renames itself to Kodi.

    • XBMC 13.2 Gotham – Final release

      Here it is. One of the last versions ever that will be using the XBMC name, as we are renaming XBMC to Kodi. All our future releases will be using the Kodi name. You can read about that here. However lets focus on this release. After three beta releases and a release candidate, we are happy to announce the final 13.2 release. This follows a couple of months after the 13.1 release, and is considered a small bug fix release. Unfortunately we cannot fix all things reported. Below you will find a list of most important fixes included in this release.

    • BitTorrent Client Vuze 5.4 Officially Released

      Vuze, a BitTorrent client previously known as Azureus, which is built on Java, has reached version 5.4 and is now available for download.

    • Proprietary

      • Viber 4.2 For Linux Available For Download

        Quick update for Viber users: Viber for Linux was updated to version 4.2.x recently, finally catching up with the Windows version. Unfortunately, the application continues to be available for 64bit only.

      • New Massive Google Chrome 38 Dev Update Lands on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X

        The Development branch of Google Chrome, a browser built on the Blink layout engine that aims to be minimalistic and versatile at the same time, is now at version 38.0.2125.0 and is available for all supported platforms.

      • Opera 25 Dev for Linux Now Features MP3, H.264, and HiDPI Support

        The Opera developers have released a new version of their Internet browser and a new build has been made available in the 25.x branch.

      • New VM Software Claims To Be 4.5x Faster Than QEMU

        Eltechs is preparing to introduce ExaGear Desktop next month as new proprietary software for running Linux x86 software on Linux ARM using their own virtual machine technology.

        Eltechs claims that ExaGear is great for running a virtual Linux x86 container on ARMv7 hardware. From there you could also run the x86 version of Wine for running x86 Windows programs on ARM hardware. This can already be done right now (using QEMU and other open-source Linux technologies for running emulated software for another CPU architecture separate from the host platform), but Eltechs claims that their binary-only solution “It is like QEMU but 4.5 times faster!”

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • Civilization-Inspired Freeciv 2.4.3 Receives Major Overhaul

        Freeciv, a free turn-based multiplayer strategy game, in which each player becomes the leader of a civilization, is now at version 2.4.3.

      • Empire: Total War Might Be Getting a Linux Release Soon

        Empire: Total War, a real-time strategy game developed by The Creative Assembly and published by Sega, might be a getting a Linux release soon.

        Empire: Total War is one of the most successful games in the entire franchise and now it shows up in the Steam database, under the Linux category. The title might have been initially developed by The Creative Assembly, but those developers only made the Windows version.

      • Alienware: Steam Machine owners will “sacrifice content” for the sake of Linux

        It’s been tough to parse Alienware’s position on the Linux-based SteamOS. At E3 they told us that the Steam Machine will increase Linux gamers by “20, 30 fold, overnight”. But with the first Steam Machines delayed into 2015, they’ve upstaged their own Linux box with a Windows-based living room PC: the Alienware Alpha.

        So who would win in a fight, Alienware? A living room PC running Windows, or the same PC running SteamOS?

        “It depends on what you’re looking for; there’s advantages to both,” said Alienware general manager Frank Azor. “[With] the Linux version I do think you’re going to sacrifice a little bit of content.”

      • Humble Jumbo Bundle 2 Shafts Linux Gamers

        The Humble Jumbo Bundle 2 was just announced with “$210 worth of awesome games” that can be found on Steam, but before Linux gamers get too excited, they’re mostly left in the dust.

        Of the seven launch games part of the Humble Jumbo Bundle 2, only one of the games is currently available as a native port on Linux: Crusader Kings 2. That game has been available on Linux since early 2013.

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Krita At Siggraph 2014

        For the first time, Krita has been present at Siggraph! Siggraph is the largest conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques and it has a big trade show as well as presentations, posters, book shops and animations. While Krita has been presented before at the Mobile World Congress, Siggraph really is where Krita belongs!

      • Randa Meetings 2014 – Impressions

        I want to thank very much to Mario Fux who organizes these meetings since 2009 and contributed a lot to my participation since I heard about this year’s meeting after the registrations had closed and he still offered to organize the accommodation for me. So, thanks once again Mario. I’d also want to thank everyone present at Randa this year for this great experience. This was my first participation in a KDE event but not the last one for sure

  • Distributions

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source forms the backbone of the most significant projects

    Companies increasingly understand that open source allows them to create faster, cheaper, and more secure products than they did by constantly reinventing the wheel in closed-source development environments. And the drivers of OSS adoption go beyond cost cutting and time savings. Participating in open source communities is a goal in itself—one that gives companies a competitive edge and helps them to attract top talent and influence project direction.

  • Beautiful Open: A compendium of beautiful open source projects

    Here’s a neat little online resource for you, courtesy of Chicago-based GroupOn developer Trek Glowacki.

    Beautiful Open is a compendium of beautifully-designed open source projects, showcasing everything from content management systems (CMS) to Javascript SVG libraries.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Is the Firefox-based Chromecast Competitor to Be Called Matchstick?

        Google has made quite a splash with its Chromecast dongle, which performs many of the tasks that set-top boxes do, but Chromecast may be headed for some competition. Android Police has reported that Firefox for Android has gained support in nightly builds for Chromecast, and GigaOM reports that Mozilla is continuing to work on a Chromecast competitor possibly called Matchstick.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Startup Platform 9 Focuses on Cloud Management Based on OpenStack

      There is quite a buzz surrounding Platform 9, which came out of stealth mode a few days ago with $4.5 million in venture funding, and interesting plans aimed at the private cloud market. Platform 9′s technology platform is based on OpenStack, and the company is run by a group of VMware veterans.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice 4.3 (PC) review: A powerful but dated Office clone

      LibreOffice is an excellent Microsoft Office alternative that’ll do just about everything you need it to, quickly and efficiently. And in a world without WPS Office, I wouldn’t think twice about recommending it. But while LibreOffice has championed mimicking and even one-upping Microsoft’s apps, the competition was busy marching ahead, developing tools to address the new ways we get to work. The most crucial of these is cross-device support.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Access/Content

      • Why Do People Trust Wikipedia? Because An Argument Is Better Than A Lecture

        I’ve never really understood the debate about how trustworthy Wikipedia is compared with once-printed, more “official” encyclopedia volumes, like the old Encyclopedia Britannica. What rarely made sense to me was the constant assertions that an information system to which anyone could contribute was inherently unreliable because anyone could contribute to it. Sure, you get the occasional vandals making joke edits, but by and large the contributions by the community are from informed, interested parties. The results tend to be close to, if not on par, with traditional encyclopedias.

  • Programming

    • C++14 Is Complete

      The ISO C++14 draft international standard was unanimously approved and is now clear for publication.

    • We have C++14!
    • Git Tracking Relationships: Use the Full Power of Git Branches

      Branching is, undoubtedly, one of the best and most important features in Git. If you already understand the basics of Git, you can take your knowledge one step further and get the most out of the popular distributed SCM by using one of its core capabilities: tracking relationships.

Leftovers

  • Rick Perry Defends Himself Against Two Felony Charges

    On Friday, Rick Perry was indicted by a grand jury on two felony charges for abuse of power. Speaking in Austin on Saturday, his first public statement since the indictment, Perry called the allegations “outrageous” and a “farce of democracy.” Perry is the first Texas governor to be indicted since 1917.

  • Security

    • Def Con: the ‘Olympics of hacking’

      When tens of thousands of computer hackers hit Las Vegas for a weekend, a drab convention centre is transformed for a very different kind of conference. There are no monotonous PowerPoint presentations or “networking breaks” here. Instead, hackers are bent double over tables, busily dissecting hard drives and picking locks; others huddle in a dark and cavernous room showing off their skills by breaking into each other’s computers. Almost all are making mischief until dawn.

    • Security advisories for Tuesday

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Iraq crisis: Fighting resumes at Mosul dam a day after Barack Obama claims victory over Isis

      Fighting has reportedly resumed at the strategic Mosul dam in northern Iraq just a day after Barack Obama claimed victory reclaiming it from Islamist militants.

    • Judge Jails Anti-Drone Granny

      Judge David Gideon’s words refer not to the use of drones, but the activities of anti-drone activists. He has uttered this phrase from the bench repeatedly in recent months as activists have appeared before him, and the words must have been echoing through his mind as he sentenced Mary Anne Grady Flores, a 58-year-old grandmother from Ithaca, New York, to one year in prison on July 10. Her crime? Participating in a nonviolent anti-drone protest at an upstate New York military base after being ordered by the local courts to stay away from the site. The base is used to train drone pilots and technicians, and to control drone surveillance and strikes in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

    • Stossel: Libertarian fears about spying, death are real

      Drones — unmanned flying machines — will soon fill our skies. They conjure up fears, especially among some of my fellow libertarians, of spying and death from above.

    • Australian police seek to block anti-Israel protesters

      Police in Sydney are trying to block a protest at the opening of the Israeli Film Festival this week as the Gaza war continues to fuel passions in Australia.

      Members of the Palestine Action Group are listed for a hearing on Monday in the Supreme Court of New South Wales ahead of their planned protest outside the cinema on Thursday night.

    • US drone strike payout in Yemen points to civilian deaths

      New details about compensation in excess of $1m suggest that civilians with no ties to Al Qaida were among casualties

    • The Profits Behind Drone Warfare

      War is a highly profitable investment for corporations, especially in times of capitalist economic crises, therefore any examination of the illegality and immorality of imperialist military activities should start with an examination of the capitalist system itself.

    • Stigmatised Yemeni woman bakes to break barriers

      Through baking, Abeer al-Hassani has found a way to feed her family and to overcome the trauma of losing her brothers to a US drone strike

    • WASHINGTON POST FAILS TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN ‘OLD’ AND ‘NEW’ TURKEY

      A couple of days ago the Washington Post published an editorial titled “Turkey needs to turn away from Mr. Erdoğan’s repression.” It was stated in the article that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan achieved his ninth election victory and became the 12th president of Turkey. As it was outlined in the title, the article went on by providing evidence for why this strong man should not be left completely uncontrolled.

      The article also touched upon Erdoğan’s victory speech in which he said that he wanted to establish a “new” Turkey and that he would be sensitive to the desires of all the people of the country. After these statements, without changing its course, the article went on to say that the country was facing a deep polarization and some of Erdoğan’s actions in recent years raised suspicion regarding their harmony with democracy. It also raised the question of whether a new Turkey would be different from the old one.

      The article further suggested that Turkey, as a Muslim country, which keeps itself away from radical elements in the region, should have bridged the gap between the Middle East and EU and that this would be highly appreciated. However, this was hindered due to Erdoğan’s “erratic and disconcerting” behavior.

      For example, during his election rallies, Erdoğan criticized Israel with harsh words. It is highly interesting that the Washington Post associates the reason why the ideal of democratic Turkey failed with Erdoğan’s firm stance against Israel, which used brutal and disproportionate force and killed some 2,000 Palestinians. It also claimed that Turkey hosted and protected the militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), which held 49 Turkish people, including a consul, captive and threatened Turkey saying they would bomb the Atatürk Dam by challenging Erdoğan. It is the same ISIS that is said to be trained by the collaboration of the American CIA, British MI6 and the Israeli MOSSAD to wage war against all terror organizations in the region for the security of Israel with a strategy called “the hornet’s nest,” according to what former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden revealed.

    • US Navy conducts first joint test of unmanned stealth drone AND manned fighter jet operations from aircraft carrier
    • Navy conducts first series of drone and manned fighter jet operations

      The U.S. Navy said its jet-powered, bat-winged X-47B drone has conducted carrier deck operations and performed maneuvers alongside an F/A-18 fighter jet, marking the first time manned and unmanned aircraft have operated together on the same carrier. – See more at: http://westhawaiitoday.com/news/nation-world-news/navy-conducts-first-series-drone-and-manned-fighter-jet-operations#sthash.BynyIp9i.dpuf

    • ‘US and NATO using ISIS to re-intervene into the region’

      One of the ironies is that the US pretending to fight ISIS in Iraq, when it is in Syria, too; Washington is using the ISIS to wage new wars in the region and create new military bases, especially in Iraqi Kurdistan, Iraq analyst Sami Ramadani told RT.

    • U.S. to boost Kurds’ firepower

      The Obama administration and U.S. allies are preparing to rush antitank weapons and other arms to Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq who are battling Islamic militants near Irbil, officials said.

      The CIA had already rushed small shipments of arms to the Kurds in recent days as U.S. airstrikes targeted the militants’ convoys and mortars.

    • Ukraine: In The West Respect for Truth No Longer Exists
    • Why have the media and Obama administration gone silent on MH17?

      The deafening silence of the US media and government about the investigation into the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 one month ago reeks of a cover-up.

      In the hours and days immediately after the crash, without a single shred of evidence, US officials alleged that the passenger jet was shot down by an SA-11 ground-to-air missile fired from pro-Russian separatist-held territory in eastern Ukraine. They launched a political campaign to obtain harsh economic sanctions against Russia and strengthen NATO’s military posture in Eastern Europe.

      Picking up on the scent, the CIA attack dogs in the US and European media blamed the crash squarely on Russian President Vladimir Putin. The cover of the July 28 print edition of German news magazine Der Spiegel showed the images of MH17 victims surrounding bold red text reading “Stoppt Putin Jetzt!” (Stop Putin Now!). A July 26 editorial in the Economist declared Putin to be the author of MH17′s destruction, while the magazine ghoulishly superimposed Putin’s face over a spider web on its front cover, denouncing Putin’s “web of lies.”

    • Cherry-picking Clinton’s words

      That’s my take-away from reading the transcript of her long interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, published Aug. 10. In total, it was Clinton’s description of the world as she sees it and hardly an attempt to highlight her differences with President Obama, as Goldberg and others have written by cherry-picking her answers to some leading questions.

      For example, Clinton does not say it was the U.S. “failure” to aid Syrian rebels that created the vacuum that led to the rise of Islamic State militants.

      Clinton said she had proposed that “if we were to carefully vet, train, and equip early on a core group of the developing Free Syrian Army, we would, number one, have some better insight into what was going on on the ground.”

    • Benghazi: When America Switched Sides In The War On Terror And Armed Al-Qaida

      Focusing on this under-reported, critical shift in American foreign policy, Clare Lopez discusses how an American ambassador and others were killed in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11 because the Obama administration decided to promote and defend their narrative that “al-Qaida was on the run,” even as we were outright arming militants affiliated with the terrorist group.

    • U.S. Empire of Death and Lie

      No mention was made that Iraq’s Christians had been safe and sound under President Saddam Hussein – even privileged – until President George Bush invaded and destroyed Iraq. We can expect the same fate for Syria’s Christians if the protection of the Assad regime is torn away by the US-engineered uprising. We will then shed crocodile tears for Syria’s Christians.

    • Armed humanitarian 2.0

      ARMED HUMANITARIANISM 2.0. That’s the new Western version of old-fashioned 19th century imperialism, now feminised by President Barack Obama’s lady advisors, painted pink and accompanied by saccharine piano music.

      The Obama administration latched onto the plight of Iraq’s Yazidis who were being persecuted by those awful ISIS folks just in time to divert attention from the massacre in Gaza.

  • Finance

    • Economists Don’t Understand The Information Age, So Their Claims About Today’s Economy Are A Joke

      On top of that, the ongoing march of technology continues to make things cheaper and better (yay, Moore’s Law), but getting a computer that’s twice as powerful for half the price shows up in GDP calculations as half the economic output, rather than 4x the value. That’s why it’s great to see economic historian Joel Mokyr take this issue on in a great Wall Street Journal piece pointing out that too many economists focus on GDP and don’t understand the information age.

    • Are bungalows really the solution to our housing crisis? The housing minister thinks so. And their design needn’t leave you feeling flat

      Over the years, more than one politician has been damned as “a bungalow” – as in “there’s nothing upstairs”. And possibly that’s what people thought of the new Tory minister for housing and planning over his suggestion that we should all be “looking to love bungalows a little bit more”. But perhaps Brandon Lewis, who reckons we need more single-storey dwellings for older people, and that this in turn would free up houses for families, has a point.

    • Kos, the IMF, the EU and the ECB

      The IMF – responsible for mass impoverishment in the developing world – is now forced to admit it got Greece wrong. Its economists admit they exacerbated the near-destruction of the Greek economy after the 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Last summer, Christine Lagarde’s organisation first blamed the “fiscal multiplier” – technocratic speak for endangering lifesaving public services. Then, the IMF, in effect, said they had got it wrong merely because they were “over optimistic”.

    • No Common Opinion on the Common Core

      But when new issues arise, important shifts can occur before opinion sorts itself into settled patterns. And, on occasion, critical events can jar opinion from settled patterns into a new equilibrium.

  • Censorship

    • EU justice commissioner slams Google and Right to be Forgotten critics

      Reicherts attacked critics of the reform during a speech in Lyon, France, arguing that anti-Right to be Forgotten groups are covertly working to poison businesses’ and citizens’ opinions with false information.

      “Just as work on the data protection reform has picked up speed and urgency, detractors are attempting to throw a new spanner in the works. They are trying to use the recent ruling by the European Court of Justice [ECJ] on the Right to be Forgotten to undermine our reform,” she said.

    • Goodbye, Facebook. Supporting anti-gay marriage, anti-human rights candidate was finally too much.

      After all Facebook has done, there’s only so much a person can take.

    • Islamic State shifts to new platform after Twitter block

      A sustained clampdown on the Twitter presence of Islamic State (IS) has forced the hardline jihadist group to explore less well-known social media platforms, setting up a string of accounts on the privacy-focused Diaspora.

    • Controversy Over Popular Game: “Psychiatric Ward — Enter if you dare, escape if you can!”

      The Toronto Transit Commission has removed billboards for a popular escape game after The Toronto Star reported on four complaints about its mental health-themed ads. Modeled on similar games in Japan, “Mystery Room” invites groups of participants to gather clues and work together to try to escape from different rooms in a large building. “Enter if you dare — Escape if you can!” read the dark billboards for the game, listing four rooms called Satan’s Lair, Prison Break, Mummy’s Curse, and Psychiatric Ward. The Mystery Room’s website description for the Psychiatric Ward explained that, “Ward 15 is the place the mentally disturbed were contained. Dr. Johansson had a passion for experimenting on the unanesthetised living…”

  • Privacy

    • Government’s Response To Snowden? Strip 100,000 Potential Whistleblowers Of Their Security Clearances

      Snowden just re-upped for three years in picturesque Russia, a land best known for not being a US military prison. Not exactly ideal, but under the circumstances, not entirely terrible. The government knows where Snowden is (more or less) and many officials have a pretty good idea what they’d like to do to him if he returns, but the NSA is still largely operating on speculation when it comes to what documents Snowden took.

    • [Old] America’s Spies Want Edward Snowden Dead
    • Meet the Man Leading the Snowden Damage Investigation

      Among the many actions the Obama administration took in the “post-Snowden” era of insider threats was to appoint a new governmentwide counterintellligence chief.

      The man filling that role, or the “NCIX,” as acronym-inclined national security feds call the National Counterintelligence Executive, is Bill Evanina, 47, a former FBI special agent with a counter-terrorism specialty.

    • Should the Entire Internet Be Encrypted?
    • How to Save the Net: Break Up the NSA

      By treating the Internet as a giant surveillance platform, the NSA has betrayed the Internet and the world. It has subverted the products, protocols, and standards that we use to protect ourselves. It has left us all vulnerable—to foreign governments, to cybercriminals, to hackers. And it has transformed the Internet into a medium that no one can trust.

      The world has changed dramatically since the NSA was founded 62 years ago. Back then, it was easy to spy on foreign governments while shielding our own from snoops. Today, the NSA’s intelligence mission has expanded from just government-on-government espionage to government-on-population surveillance. At the same time, the communications world has shifted from dedicated circuits that can be passively tapped to a single global Internet infrastructure that requires active attack to eavesdrop on. Everyone uses the same networks, and creating the capability to eavesdrop on foreign communications by engineering backdoors into US technology leaves domestic transmissions vulnerable to eavesdropping. The NSA’s aggressive data-gathering, with seemingly little regard for how that might compromise the security of everyday digital communications—and with only loose oversight (at best) by government watchdogs—has far exceeded what any modern and free society should reasonably expect. Breaking up the agency would do a lot to bring it under control.

    • Your identity at stake – Local experts reveal how to keep your privacy online

      Haass and other experts will tell you the best way to protect the information you may have stored on a computer and/or mobile device is to use multiple passwords, and change them.

    • Germany Eavesdropped on Clinton, Kerry, but It Can’t Be Considered ‘Spying’ – US Expert
    • Turkey summons German ambassador over BND spying allegations

      Turkey has summoned the German ambassador to demand a “formal and satisfactory explanation” following reports that the country was spied on by Germany’s intelligence agency (BND).

      German media reported at the weekend that the BND had not only “accidentally” listened in on phone calls made by the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and his predecessor Hillary Clinton in 2012 and 2013, but that it also – less accidentally – monitored the activities of Turkish politicians. According to news magazine Der Spiegel, the Nato member has been listed as a target for BND surveillance since 2009.

    • Opinion: The BND, a completely normal secret service

      The German intelligence service, the BND, treats its NATO partner Turkey just as America’s NSA treats Germany. Everyone mistrusts everyone else, but nobody’s prepared to admit it, says Marcel Fürstenau.

    • Germany Electronic Spying on Turkey Rankles Both Sides
    • German surveillance upsets Turkish trust
    • Germany criticised over Turkey spying allegations
    • German spying report angers Turkey
    • CHP submits parliamentary question on German spying scandal

      Main opposition Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP) İzmir deputy Erdal Aksünger has submitted a parliamentary question concerning the allegations that Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) spied on Turkey.

    • Aphex Twin announces album over anonymous browser Tor

      Irish-born musician and enigmatic DJ Aphex Twin has released details of his first album in 13 years – that are only accessible through the Tor anonymous browser.

    • Tor-rorists get sneaky Aphex Twin album peek in dance guru hypegasm
    • Tweetstorm: Rupert Murdoch Says Google Is Worse Than the NSA
    • Rupert Murdoch ‘Hypocritically’ Attacks Google In Twitter Tirade
    • Rupert Murdoch says Google is a bigger threat to privacy than the NSA
    • Twitter users pour scorn on Murdoch after Google tweet
    • Rupert Murdoch redefines irony with Google privacy attack on Twitter

      Sneak loves to spend his lunch hour lurking on Twitter, scrolling through the tawdry thoughts of bored IT execs and publicity-hungry tech corporations.

      But sometimes, when the hum of the server room is getting too much, Sneak stumbles upon a wonderful gem of bile, hypocrisy, anger and opinion.

      Today’s nugget of controversy comes courtesy of Rupert Murdoch, who tweeted: “NSA privacy invasion bad, but nothing compared to Google.”

      [...]

      Given that Murdoch was all but forced to put the century-old News of the World out to pasture over phone hacking, to call out Google’s approach to privacy is so hypocritical that a new catalogue of pot and kettle-esque idioms needs to be written.

      Then again perhaps one could consider Murdoch to be an expert on such issues, given how far the News of the World went to destroy the concept of privacy for so many.

    • Hyprocrite alert: Rupert Murdoch ripped to pieces on Twitter after laughable update about Google and NSA

      Rupert Murdoch has incurred the wrath of the online community after publishing an ever-so-hypocritical tweet about privacy.

    • Rupert Murdoch stabs at Google in curious Twitter tirade
    • Clear-text must die

      The Citizen Lab “hackers” at University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs have released a report which reveals the use of network injection by law enforcement as a method to undermine internet security – and it makes for frightening reading.

    • The Truth About Executive Order 12333

      But first I want to commend Tye for raising his concerns through the processes established for that purpose. Using those processes, he has been able to review his concerns with intelligence oversight bodies as well as with the public, all while continuing to protect classified information.

    • Scientists, Not Politicians, Should Regulate NSA Surveillance

      The raging public debate over the surveillance state could actually benefit from the expertise of an unsuspecting source, a recent academic article suggests.

      Instead of relying on the myriad privacy and legal experts, congressmen, or former NSA directors chiming in on the NSA surveillance state, a new article in Science argues that we should really be asking more scientists what they think about domestic signals intelligence for American policymaking.

    • The Show That Warned Us Enemy of the State Was a Documentary

      If you watched the 2009 NOVA episode “The Spy Factory,” or the 2007 Frontline episode “Spying on the Homefront” you’ll see it all there — the phone surveillance, the internet monitoring, and even the whistleblowers from the NSA facilities who were listening to your phone calls. We knew American intelligence agencies were spying on Americans with impunity.

    • Judge critical of NSA’s ‘systemic overcollection’
    • Report: US May Take Years to Prevent Another Snowden

      U.S. intelligence officials are months or even years away from preventing classified information from being leaked in cases similar to fugitive NSA contractor Edward Snowden, The Daily Beast reported.

      The officials say that due to the vast number of computer systems and networks in the 70 U.S. agencies dealing with secret data, it will be a long process before they are able to keep an eye on the computers of federal employees with security clearance.

      The intelligence officials are almost a year away from being able to monitor public databases for clues that government workers have transgressed federal laws or run into financial hardship, the Beast said.

      Due to the delays in mounting a sweeping monitoring service to “watch the watchers,” the intelligence agencies are also struggling to keep an eye on its employees. The setbacks resulted in a “second Snowden,” who leaked secret files to The Intercept from the National Counterterrorism Center, the Beast said.

    • US Privacy Official Leaves the White House

      Wong previously held positions such as director of legal products at Twitter and deputy general counsel at Google, the latter of which involved making calls on censoring certain content on YouTube and in searches. She earned herself the nickname “the Decider” while in the position.

      She joined the Obama administration in June of last year in what was, at the time, considered a positive move just after the NSA revelations had rocked the administration.

    • A first step in reining in the NSA

      A little more than a year after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the federal government was collecting and storing the telephone records of millions of Americans, Congress is poised to end the program and provide significant protection for a broad range of personal information sought by government investigators.

    • Bishop latest hacking casualty in global game of phones

      Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has joined the likes of former United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in a political game of phones, after her smartphone was compromised while on a two-week overseas trip.

      Australian intelligence authorities seized and replaced Bishop’s phone on her return from a two-week trip to Ukraine, the US, and Holland, in which she worked to broker a deal to get Australian police into the Ukrainian crash site of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 — shot down by a surface-to-air missile on July 17 by Russian-backed rebels.

    • A beginner’s guide to Tor: How to navigate through the underground internet

      I’ll begin with a warning. Everything you’ve heard about the deep web is probably true. Yes, it’s a hub for illegal activity. Yes, cyber criminals run loose. And yes, users can find terrifying illegal behavior–including a bitcoin funded assassination market. In short, the Deep Web has a reputation for being virtual refuge for people who have something to hide. The most popular gateway into the Deep Web is Tor, a free network which allows users to anonymously browse the Web, and has been under NSA’s microscope since its inception in 2002. Countries like Russia and the US are trying to expose Tor users. Russia has issued a bounty, offering upwards of $100,000 for anyone who can successfully deanonymize Tor.

    • All of Your Tumblr Photos Will Now Be Scanned for Branded Content

      Tumblr, it seems, is also ready to help corporations cash in on its users’ impeccably curated tastes. It just inked a deal with Ditto, a company that scans images on the web for branded products and sells the results to multinationals like Coca-Cola and Kraft, and part of the deal involves giving Ditto wholesale access to all of Tumblr’s (which is to say Tumblr users’) photos.

    • ‘Without privacy we can’t have a free democracy’ – Former MI5 officer Annie Machon
    • What You Need To Know About The FISA Court—And How It Needs To Change
    • The Internet Metadata Memo: A Summary

      In the latter category, and likely of interest to anyone seeking to know more about the larger bulk collection story, is this 2004 submission to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (“FISC”). The brief sought—and evidently, for a time, won—FISC sign-off for the NSA to collect internet metadata in bulk, pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (“FISA”) pen register and trap and trace rules. That’s consequential, considering what had happened earlier. As is well known, that year Department of Justice officials, including then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey and then-Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith (who had no role in editing this post) had protested the legality of highly secret surveillance program that President George W. Bush had authorized pursuant to his independent constitutional powers. The White House relented and agreed to changes—one being, apparently, a bid to bring the surveillance within the FISA framework.

    • Secret GCHQ system can map web connections of entire countries
    • GCHQ scanned entire countries for vulnerabilities with Hacienda programme
    • Masters of the Internet: GCHQ scanned entire countries for vulnerabilities
    • GCHQ Scans Entire Countries for Flaws to Exploit – Report

      British spy agency GCHQ has since 2009 been port scanning every available IP address in 27 countries across the globe for vulnerable systems to exploit, according to a new report.

      The HACIENDA program was exposed in secret documents obtained by reporters writing for German publisher Heise.

    • Russia and China Expand Trade in Computer Software

      As Russia’s relations with the West sour over Ukraine, the Kremlin has agreed to broaden software deliveries to China, with increased supplies of Chinese servers, storage systems and other IT products set to come the other way, Russian Communications and Mass Media Minister Nikolai Nikiforov said Monday.

      The deal is likely aimed at helping Russia replace deliveries of U.S. information technology products in light of Western sanctions imposed on Moscow for its role in the Ukraine crisis.

  • Civil Rights

    • Defense Industry Donations and the Alan Grayson Police Militarization Amendment

      With images of heavily armed police confronting protesters in Ferguson, Mo., sparking a national debate about police militarization, a campaign finance research organization has released a study showing how much defense industry money House members got before a June 19 vote that rejected Rep. Alan Grayson’s amendment to block military equipment transfers to local law enforcement. The organization, MapLight, found that those who voted against it got 73 percent more in defense industry donations than those who voted in favor.

    • How America’s police became so well armed

      Americans, at last, appear to have had enough. A Reason-Rupe poll released in December found that 58% of Americans believe police militarisation has gone “too far”. Whether their politicians heed them is another question. Rand Paul, a Republican senator from Kentucky and a likely contender for his party’s presidential nomination in 2016, just wrote an editorial arguing that it is time to “demilitarise the police”, but he has yet to introduce any legislation to back those words up. In June Alan Grayson, a liberal Democrat from Florida, sponsored an amendment that would have forbidden the Defence Department from transferring to local police “aircraft (including unmanned aerial vehicles), armoured vehicles, grenade launchers, silencers, toxicological agents (including chemical agents, biological agents, and associated equipment), launch vehicles, guided missiles, ballistic missiles, rockets, torpedoes, bombs, mines, or nuclear weapons.” It failed: not a single House leader of either party voted for it. America’s defence industry donates millions of dollars to politicians, and spends even more on lobbyists. Those who opposed Mr Grayson’s bill received, on average, 73% more in defence-industry donations than those who voted for it.

    • If police in Ferguson treat journalists like this, imagine how they treat residents

      You don’t arrest reporters just to stifle journalism — you do it to make a statement

    • From Boston to Ferguson: Have We Reached a Tipping Point in the Police State?

      The difference between what happened in Boston in the wake of the Boston Marathon explosion and what is happening now in Ferguson, Missouri, is not in the government’s response but in the community’s response.

      [...]

      This is what happens when you fail to take alarm at the first experiment on your liberties.

    • KKK raising money for Ferguson police officer

      A Missouri chapter of the Ku Klux Klan is planning a fundraiser this weekend for the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen.

    • 25 Images From The Worst Night Of Violence In Ferguson

      olice and protesters clashed again Sunday, hours before midnight curfew went into effect.

      Armed riot police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse a large group of protestors who marched toward a police command center in the parking lot of a shopping mall. Protesters threw back gas canisters and rocks at the police. Police responded to reports of multiple shootings, looting, and throwing of Molotov cocktails.

    • Autopsy Report Says Michael Brown Shot Twice in the Head

      An autopsy report conducted at the request of Michael Brown’s family shows that he was shot six times — four in the right arm and twice in the head — with all shots coming from the front of his body. The autopsy was the second of three that will be conducted on Brown’s body. Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered a federal medical examiner to do an independent examination. State officials performed the first autopsy. This second autopsy, performed on Sunday, was conducted by Dr. Michael Baden, a former chief medical examine for New York City, at the request of Brown’s family.

    • The US War Culture Has Come Home to Roost
    • The state of emergency in Ferguson, Missouri
    • Blowback in Ferguson

      The fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager and the ensuing protests in Ferguson, Missouri has rocked America. Even the mainstream media with its aversion to the truth, has been forced to address the militarization of the police in America — albeit years too late.

    • [CIA Post] I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me.

      But if you believe (or know) that the cop stopping you is violating your rights or is acting like a bully, I guarantee that the situation will not become easier if you show your anger and resentment. Worse, initiating a physical confrontation is a sure recipe for getting hurt. Police are legally permitted to use deadly force when they assess a serious threat to their or someone else’s life. Save your anger for later, and channel it appropriately. Do what the officer tells you to and it will end safely for both of you. We have a justice system in which you are presumed innocent; if a cop can do his or her job unmolested, that system can run its course. Later, you can ask for a supervisor, lodge a complaint or contact civil rights organizations if you believe your rights were violated. Feel free to sue the police! Just don’t challenge a cop during a stop.

    • German journalists arrested in Ferguson

      Ansgar Graw and Frank Hermann were cuffed and jailed for three hours the day after arriving in the beleaguered suburb of St. Louis. Graw and Hermann were there to cover the town of Ferguson, whose African-American population has clashed fiercely with local police since the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a white police officer on August 9.

    • Chinese State Media Weigh In On Ferguson Riots, Citing Persistent Racism In ‘Every Aspect Of U.S. Social Lives’
    • Defense Contractors’ Funds Fuel Vote To Keep Dept. Of Defense’s Police Militarization Program Funded

      Color me unamazed. Politicians who are in favor of the government’s 1033 program — which distributes excess military gear and weapons to police departments engaged in our country’s two favorite “wars” (v. Terror, v. Drugs) — received a lot more money from defense contractors than those who oppose it.

    • The House voted not to demilitarize cops just two months ago. Will it be different after Ferguson?

      On June 19, the House voted on an amendment to a Department of Defense appropriations bill authored by Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.). In short, the amendment would have prevented the military from distributing to local police forces some of heavy weapons and vehicles that the country has seen deployed in response to unrest in Ferguson, Mo.

    • Police militarization catches eye of Congress
    • The continued war on black males

      The killing of Michael Brown at the hands of a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer is a reminder that, if you are a black man in America, you continue to be the nation’s number-one threat. There has been a long and protracted war against black men dating back to the antebellum period, where fear of plantation rebellions drove the country to enact heinous and draconian slave-revolt laws.

    • Police Militarization Escalates Even As Violence Declines — And There’s A Good Chance It’s Going To Get Worse

      We’ve been writing about the militarization of police, and why it’s problematic, for years — but the events of the last week in Ferguson, Missouri, have really shone a (rather bright) light on what happens when you militarize the police. Annie Lowrey, over at New York Magazine, highlights what may be most disturbing about all of it: all of this has happened while violence has been on a rapid decline, and, no it’s not because your local suburban police force now has a SWAT team and decommissioned military equipment from the Defense Department…

    • A Militarized Police, a Less Violent Public

      The story of Michael Brown’s death has in no small part been a story of police overreaction. The local force evidently killed an unarmed teenager, and then suited up as if going to war to police the generally peaceful protests that followed. And it’s revealed an irony: Over the past generation or so, we’ve militarized our police to protect a public that has broadly become less and less violent.

      It all starts back in 1990, a time when the country found itself with less demand for military equipment abroad and new use for it back home. Within our shores, the drug wars were escalating; gang violence was surging; and sociologists were warning of sociopathic child “superpredators.” At the same time, the military was starting to shrink as the Cold War ended. Put two and two together and you get the 1033 program, which transferred assets from the military to the police. (Here’s a capsule history.)

    • Ferguson, Missouri, and Trayvon Prove America Is No Democracy For Blacks

      The protests and riots in Ferguson, Missouri are providing proof the U.S. government sanctions racial injustice in this country while denouncing it abroad. The federal government spends trillions of dollars so we can be the world’s peacekeepers. We start wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of freedom. We help rebel groups oust dictators and oppressors like Muammar Gaddafi and the Taliban. We send drones and warplanes to bomb rebels from Islamic rebels in Iraq and Syria who are killing Christians. And we put sanctions on Iran for putting protesters in jail.

    • Ferguson Killing Exposes the Reality Of Militarized, Racist Policing directed against African Americans
    • Video: LAPD Tells Drone Operator Not To Fly Over Ezell Ford Protest

      Ezell Ford, a 25-year-old unarmed, mentally-challenged African-American man, was shot and killed by police last week in South L.A. The circumstances surrounding Ford’s death vary depending on who’s talking. The LAPD say the fatal shooting occurred only after a struggle in which Ford tried to grab an officer’s gun, while Ford’s family say there was no struggle.

    • East Turkestan: The Use of Drones in Yarkent Raises Concerns

      The Uyghur American Association urges the Chinese government to provide transparency over the use of drones in security operations in Yarkent County, fearing that deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles and militarization of the region will escalate further tensions and result in violence against Uyghur civilians.

    • China Said to Deploy Drones After Unrest in Xinjiang

      Three days after an eruption of violence in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang this summer left nearly 100 people dead, the region’s “antiterrorist command” asked the country’s biggest space and defense contractor for help. It wanted technical experts to operate drones that the authorities in Xinjiang had ordered last year in anticipation of growing unrest. The target was “terrorists,” according to the online edition of People’s Daily, a Communist Party media outlet.

    • PR workers outnumber journalists 5 to 1 in the US

      Back in 2004, public relations specialists outnumbered journalists about 3 to 1 in the United States. Today, as steady jobs in journalism disappear, it’s roughly 5 to 1. One reason more Americans are taking home a PR paycheck? It certainly pays a lot better than working in journalism.

    • The Crisis in Investigative Journalism

      Such investigative journalists are the vanguard of the so-called Fourth Estate, bearing the formidable task of watchdogging the other three estates – the Executive, Judiciary and Legislative – to ensure that they remain ‘checks and balances’ to each other in their assigned constitutional tasks of maintaining the Democratic Republic’s integrity and vibrancy. While such journalists are often associated with a ‘paper of record’, their work is so crucial that sometimes some separation even from their publisher is necessary, since publications are owned, and owners have political agendas, and those agendas may conflict with the findings of deep journalism. Recall, for instance, the New York Time’s decision to hold back, on the brink of the November 2004 presidential election, an explosive investigatory report on the Bush administration’s use of the NSA for warrantless domestic wiretapping (shocking revelations that beat Snowden’s by years) – a delay with serious repercussions for the Times’ reputation.

      Prior to Glenn Greenwald’s in-depth journalistic interpretation and analysis of Edward Snowden’s raw NSA revelations last year, undoubtedly the most significant investigative journalism in US history came with the publication and analysis of the Pentagon Papers, released to the press by ex-Rand analyst Daniel Ellsberg back in 1971. Of the three branches of government, the Executive is the one that requires the most watchdogging because it is the branch wherein a single individual – the president – has a disproportionate and unilateral power at his disposal, compared to the Judiciary and Legislative, where decisions must come as the result of conference and consensus. The president can potentially become another form of king, if not checked. What the Pentagon Papers uncovered was the history of America’s secret presidential war-mongering in Viet Nam, beginning with the Eisenhower administration down through Nixon’s utterly corrupt regime – a history of unilateral and illegal foreign policy decision-making that by-passed Congress and the people they represent.

      This is not merely academic or specious. It seems that very few people recall now that when the chips were down for Nixon, he was actively considering a military coup to stay in office. As legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote in a long-form piece for the Atlantic in 1983,

      The notion that Nixon could at any time resort to extraordinary steps to preserve his presidency was far more widespread in the government than the public perceived in the early days of Watergate or perceives today.

    • NYT reporter James Risen: Obama a ‘hypocrite,’ ‘greatest enemy to press freedom’

      It’s not a secret that the Obama administration has cracked down on whistle-blowers harder than any previous administration. Now a New York Times reporter and former Pulitzer Prize-winner has some harsh words for the president.

    • James Risen: Obama ‘greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation’
    • Embattled Reporter: Obama’s Support for Press Freedom ‘Hypocritical’
    • New York Times reporter has harsh words for Barack Obama’s view of the press
    • Obama Admin ‘Greatest Enemy to Press Freedom in a Generation’
    • 910 KINA Coffee Talk: Is President Obama one of the greatest enemies of press freedom?
    • 2. New York Times reporter calls Obama A “Press Enemy”
    • NYTimes Reporter: Obama ‘Greatest Enemy To Press Freedom In A Generation’ [VIDEO]
    • James Risen calls Obama ‘greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation’
    • Journalist James Risen denounces President Obama as the “greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation”
    • Obama denounced as ‘greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation’
    • Reporter to get Newspaper Guild award for defying subpoena
    • NY Times’ James Risen: Obama Is ‘Greatest Enemy of Press Freedom in a Generation’
    • Obama May Soon Send This Reporter to Jail. Here Are the Embarrassing Secrets He Exposed.

      The Obama administration has fought a years-long court battle to force longtime New York Times national security correspondent James Risen to reveal the source for a story in his 2006 book State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. Risen may soon serve jail time for refusing to out his source. The fight has drawn attention to Obama’s less-than-stellar track record on press freedom—in a recent interview, Risen called the president “the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation.” But lost in the ruckus are the details of what Risen revealed. Here’s what has the government so upset.

      In State of War, Risen revealed a secret CIA operation, code-named Merlin, that was intended to undermine the Iranian nuclear program. The plan—originally approved by president Bill Clinton, but later embraced by George W. Bush—was to pass flawed plans for a trigger system for a nuclear weapon to Iran in the hopes of derailing the country’s nuclear program. “It was one of the greatest engineering secrets in the world,” Risen wrote in State of War, “providing the solution to one of a handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the United States and Russia from the rogue countries like Iran that were desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short.”

    • A Tale of Two Alleged Iran Nuke Leakers

      Over a year ago, NBC reported that General Cartwright had received a target letter informing him he was under investigation as the source for one of David Sanger’s stories on US-Israeli efforts to stall Iran’s enrichment program with the StuxNet cyberattack.

    • Muslim states should learn a lesson from 1953 coup in Iran: Larijani

      Last year, the CIA publicly admitted for the first time that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup against Iran’s democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddeq, in documents that also showed how the British government tried to block the release of information about its own involvement in his overthrow.

    • BSC President and retired Gen. Charles Krulak calls for full disclosure of CIA torture program (Opinion)

      In a strongly worded commentary Birmingham Southern College President and former Marine Corps commandant, retired Gen. Charles C. Krulak, said the CIA must not be allowed to “circle the wagons” to prevent the full disclosure by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence of a report detailing the agency’s torture program during the early years of the War on Terror.

    • UK ambassador ‘lobbied’ US senators to obscure Britain’s complicity in CIA rendition program

      Records published under Britain’s Freedom of Information (FOI) Act have compounded concerns that the UK government lobbied US officials to keep Britain’s role in CIA torture and rendition out of a soon-to-be published Senate report.

      Newly-released data reveals Britain’s ambassador to the US, Peter Westmacott, engaged in at least 21 separate meetings with members of the US Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) prior to its publication of this report, heightening existing allegations that the British government may be seeking to sanitize the document.

    • UK lobbied to hide role in CIA torture program: Report
    • Ackerman: CIA snooping on Senate strikes at Constitution

      CIA spying on the Senate is the constitutional equivalent of the Watergate break-in. In both cases, the executive branch attacked the very foundations of our system of checks and balances.

      President Barack Obama is not Richard Nixon. Obama hasn’t been implicated personally in organizing this constitutional assault. But he is wrong to support the limited response of his CIA director, John Brennan, who is trying to defer serious action by simply creating an “accountability panel” to consider “potential disciplinary measures” or “systemic issues.”

    • Nation’s true heroes fought to expose and end torture

      After more than a decade of denial and concealment on the part of our government, President Barack Obama’s recent acknowledgment that “we tortured some folks” felt like a milestone. Even in its spare, reductive phrasing, the president’s statement opened up the possibility, finally, of national reflection, contrition and accountability.

    • Letter: We must turn our backs on torture

      Let’s turn our backs on torture

      Editor: Torture is the intentional infliction of pain to make someone talk. President Obama used plain English to describe what the CIA did during the Bush administration. The New York Times just decided to stop sugar-coating it. It no longer uses “enhanced interrogation methods”, and now uses the word “torture” I urge The Record to tell it like it is. This helps us, as citizens, face clearly what was done in our name.

    • How Abu Zubaydah’s Torture Put CIA and FBI in NSA’s Databases

      In other words, the justification for creating a database where CIA and FBI could directly access much of NSA’s data was a mirage, one created by CIA’s own torture.

      All that’s separate from the question of whether CIA and FBI should have access directly to NSA’s data. Perhaps it makes us more responsive. Perhaps it perpetuates this process of chasing ghosts. That’s a debate we should have based on actual results, not the tortured false confessions of a decade past.

    • Women bring challenge against London police for sending undercover officers to have sex with them

      I just came across these videos while reading about the ongoing litigation in the UK against the Metropolitan police department, related to its red-squad undercover infiltration of left-wing movements in London and beyond. They look really interesting and well worth watching (full disclosure, though: I can’t vouch for them, because I haven’t yet watched them).

    • 7 Pages That Gave President Obama Cover to Kill Americans
    • Here Are the 7 Pages That Gave President Obama Cover to Kill Americans

      Before David Barron was confirmed this year to a lifetime seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, his critics objected that the cover he gave President Obama to carry out extrajudicial killings of American citizens ought to disqualify him from the bench. “I rise today to oppose the nomination of anyone who would argue that the president has the power to kill an American citizen not involved in combat and without a trial,” Senator Rand Paul declared in remarks opposing the nomination. “I rise to say that there is no legal precedent for killing citizens not involved in combat and that any nominee who rubber stamps and grants such power to a president is not worthy of being one step away from the Supreme Court.”

    • Nazi Resister Returns Holocaust Medal to Israel After Losing Relatives in Gaza

      A 91-year-old man honored by Israel for saving a Jewish life during the Nazi Holocaust has returned his medal in protest of the Gaza assault. Henk Zanoli was given Israel’s Righteous Among the Nations award for his actions under Nazi occupation in Amsterdam. In 1943, Zanoli smuggled out a Jewish boy and helped hide him in his home for two years, despite Nazi suspicion he and his family backed the resistance.

    • Israel Blocks Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch from Gaza

      The Israeli government is blocking Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch from entering the Gaza Strip, preventing researchers from investigating the assault. The Israeli journalist Amira Hass reports the groups have been told they must register as a humanitarian aid organization, only to later be informed they do not qualify. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have previously issued reports that raised allegations of potential war crimes by Israel, as well as on a smaller scale by Hamas.

    • This Week in Transparency: The Mosaic Effect

      Among the many, many issues raised by the fatal police shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old black kid in Ferguson, Missouri this week was police transparency. The Ferguson police initially refused to release the name of the officer who shot the victim, Michael Brown, leading to a national outcry.

      It is one of the peculiarities of police departments that officers are afforded great privacy protections when they are involved in such an incident. Officer safety is cited, which is well and good, but police departments often feel no similar compunction to protect the identity of civilian suspects.

    • Has the US Legal System Always Been Such a Joke?

      It’s easy to feel cynical about law and order in America. Just peruse the tales of paramilitary police forces exerting their will on minorities in places like Ferguson, Missouri while rich bankers routinely escape from punishment for their white-collar crimes. Now the US Sentencing Commission is considering curbing the jail terms dished out for financial crimes like fraud, figuring that since the Feds have finally started to scale back mandatory minimums for drug offenses, we might as well take it even easier on corporate execs.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Court: Usenet Provider Doesn’t Have to Filter Pirated Content

        The defunct News-Service.com, once one of the leading Usenet providers with many prominent resellers, has scored a court victory against Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN. The appeals court overturned a previous verdict and ruled that the Usenet provider doesn’t have to monitor and filter pirated content.

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